THE REGENCY IN FRANCE.--ALBERONI IN SPAIN.--POLICIES OF WALPOLE
AND FLEURI.--WAR OF THE POLISH SUCCESSION.--ENGLISH CONTRABAND
TRADE IN SPANISH AMERICA.--GREAT BRITAIN DECLARES WAR AGAINST
SPAIN.--1715-1739.
The Peace of Utrecht was soon followed by the deaths of the rulers of
the two countries which had played the foremost part in the War of the
Spanish Succession. Queen Anne died August 1, 1714; Louis XIV. on the
1st of September, 1715.
The successor to the English throne, the German George I., though
undoubtedly the choice of the English people, was far from being their
favorite, and was rather endured as a necessary evil, giving them a
Protestant instead of a Roman Catholic king. Along with the coldness
and dislike of his own partisans, he found a very considerable body of
disaffected men, who wished to see the son of James II. on the throne.
There was therefore a lack of solidity, more apparent than real, but
still real, in his position. In France, on the contrary, the
succession to the throne was undisputed; but the heir was a child of
five years, and there was much jealousy as to the possession of the
regency, a power more absolute than that of the King of England. The
regency was obtained and exercised by the next in succession to the
throne, Philip, Duke of Orleans; but he had to apprehend, not only
attempts on the part of rivals in France to shake his hold, but also
the active enmity of the Bourbon king of Spain, Philip V.,--an enmity
which seems to have dated from an intrigue of Orleans, during the late
war, to supplant Philip on the Spanish throne. There was therefore a
feeling of instability, of apprehension, in the governments of England
and France, which influenced the policy of both. As regards the
relations of France and Spain, the mutual hatred of the actual rulers
stood for a while in the way of the friendly accord Louis XIV. had
hoped from family ties, and was injurious to the true interests of
both nations.
The Regent Orleans, under the advice of the most able and celebrated
French statesman of that day, the Abbé Dubois, made overtures of
alliance to the King of Great Britain. He began first by commercial
concessions of the kind generally acceptable to the English,
forbidding French shipping to trade to the South Seas under penalty of
death, and lowering the duties on the importation of English coal.
England at first received these advances warily; but the regent would
not be discouraged, and offered, further, to compel the Pretender,
James III., to withdraw beyond the Alps. He also undertook to fill up
the port at Mardyck, a new excavation by which the French government
was trying to indemnify itself for the loss of Dunkirk. These
concessions, all of which but one, it will be noted, were at the
expense of the sea power or commercial interests of France, induced
England to sign a treaty by which the two countries mutually
guaranteed the execution of the treaties of Utrecht as far as their
respective interests were concerned; especially the clause by which
the House of Orleans was to succeed to the French throne, if Louis XV.
died childless. The Protestant succession in England was likewise
guaranteed. Holland, exhausted by the war, was unwilling to enter upon
new engagements, but was at last brought over to this by the remission
of certain dues on her merchandise entering France. The treaty, signed
in January, 1717, was known as the Triple Alliance, and bound France
to England for some years to come.
While France was thus making overtures to England, Spain, under the
guidance of another able churchman, was seeking the same alliance and
at the same time developing her national strength with the hope of
recovering her lost Italian States. The new minister, Cardinal
Alberoni, promised Philip V. to put him in a position to reconquer
Sicily and Naples, if granted five years of peace. He worked hard to
bring up the revenues, rebuild the navy, and re-establish the army,
while at the same time promoting manufactures, commerce, and shipping,
and the advance made in all these was remarkable; but the more
legitimate ambition of Spain to recover her lost possessions, and with
them to establish her power in the Mediterranean, so grievously
wounded by the loss of Gibraltar, was hampered by the ill-timed
purpose of Philip to overthrow the regency of Orleans in France.
Alberoni was compelled to alienate France, whose sea power, as well as
that of Spain, was concerned in seeing Sicily in friendly hands, and,
instead of that natural ally, had to conciliate the maritime powers,
England and Holland. This he also sought to do by commercial
concessions; promising promptly to put the English in possession of
the privileges granted at Utrecht, concerning which Spain had so far
delayed. In return, he asked favorable action from them in Italy.
George I., who was at heart German, received coldly advances which
were unfriendly to the German emperor in his Italian dominions; and
Alberoni, offended, withdrew them. The Triple Alliance, by
guaranteeing the existing arrangement of succession to the French
throne, gave further offence to Philip V., who dreamed of asserting
his own claim. The result of all these negotiations was to bind
England and France together against Spain,--a blind policy for the two
Bourbon kingdoms.
The gist of the situation created by these different aims and
feelings, was that the Emperor of Austria and the King of Spain both
wanted Sicily, which at Utrecht had been given to the Duke of Savoy;
and that France and England both wished for peace in western Europe,
because war would give an opportunity to the malcontents in either
kingdom. The position of George, however, being more secure than that
of Orleans, the policy of the latter tended to yield to that of the
former, and this tendency was increased by the active ill-will of the
King of Spain. George, as a German, wished the emperor's success; and
the English statesmen naturally preferred to see Sicily in the hands
of their late ally and well-assured friend rather than in Spain's.
France, contrary to her true policy, but under the urgency of the
regent's position, entertained the same views, and it was proposed to
modify the Treaty of Utrecht by transferring Sicily from Savoy to
Austria, giving the former Sardinia instead. It was necessary,
however, to consider Spain, which under Alberoni had already gained a
degree of military power astounding to those who had known her
weakness during the last war. She was not yet ready to fight, for only
half of the five years asked by the cardinal had passed; but still
less was she ready to forego her ambitions. A trifling incident
precipitated an outbreak. A high Spanish official, travelling from
Rome to Spain by land, and so passing through the Italian States of
the emperor, was arrested as a rebellious subject by order of the
latter, who still styled himself King of Spain. At this insult,
Alberoni could not hold Philip back. An expedition of twelve ships of
war and eighty-six hundred soldiers was sent against Sardinia, the
transfer to Savoy not having yet taken effect, and reduced the island
in a few months. This happened in 1717.
Doubtless the Spaniards would at once have moved on against Sicily;
but France and England now intervened more actively to prevent the
general war that seemed threatening. England sent a fleet to the
Mediterranean, and negotiations began at Paris, Vienna, and Madrid.
The outcome of these conferences was an agreement between England and
France to effect the exchange of Sardinia and Sicily just mentioned,
recompensing Spain by giving her Parma and Tuscany in northern Italy,
and stipulating that the emperor should renounce forever his absurd
but irritating claim to the Spanish crown. This arrangement was to be
enforced by arms, if necessary. The emperor at first refused consent;
but the increasing greatness of Alberoni's preparations at last
decided him to accept so advantageous an offer, and the accession of
Holland to the compact gave it the historical title of the Quadruple
Alliance. Spain was obstinate; and it is significant of Alberoni's
achievements in developing her power, and the eagerness, not to say
anxiety, of George I., that the offer was made to purchase her consent
by ceding Gibraltar. If the Regent Orleans knew this, it would partly
justify his forwarding the negotiations.
Alberoni tried to back up his military power by diplomatic efforts
extending all over Europe. Russia and Sweden were brought together in
a project for invading England in the interest of the Stuarts; the
signing of the Quadruple Alliance in Holland was delayed by his
agents; a conspiracy was started in France against the regent; the
Turks were stirred up against the emperor; discontent was fomented
throughout Great Britain; and an attempt was made to gain over the
Duke of Savoy, outraged by being deprived of Sicily. On the 1st of
July, 1718, a Spanish army of thirty thousand troops, escorted by
twenty-two ships-of-the-line, appeared at Palermo. The troops of Savoy
evacuated the city and pretty nearly the whole island, resistance
being concentrated in the citadel of Messina. Anxiety was felt in
Naples itself, until the English admiral, Byng,[80] anchored there the
day after the investment of Messina. The King of Sicily having now
consented to the terms of the Quadruple Alliance, Byng received on
board two thousand Austrian troops to be landed at Messina. When he
appeared before the place, finding it besieged, he wrote to the
Spanish general suggesting a suspension of arms for two months. This
was of course refused; so the Austrians were landed again at Reggio,
in Italy, and Byng passed through the Straits of Messina to seek the
Spanish fleet, which had gone to the southward.
The engagement which ensued can scarcely be called a battle, and, as
is apt to happen in such affairs, when the parties are on the verge of
war but war has not actually been declared, there is some doubt as to
how far the attack was morally justifiable on the part of the English.
It seems pretty sure that Byng was determined beforehand to seize or
destroy the Spanish fleet, and that as a military man he was justified
by his orders. The Spanish naval officers had not made up their minds
to any line of conduct; they were much inferior in numbers, and, as
must always be the case, Alberoni's hastily revived navy had not
within the same period reached nearly the efficiency of his army. The
English approached threateningly near, one or more Spanish ships
opened fire, whereupon the English, being to windward, stood down and
made an end of them; a few only escaped into Valetta harbor. The
Spanish navy was practically annihilated. It is difficult to
understand the importance attached by some writers to Byng's action at
this time in attacking without regard to the line-of-battle. He had
before him a disorderly force, much inferior both in numbers and
discipline. His merit seems rather to lie in the readiness to assume a
responsibility from which a more scrupulous man might have shrunk; but
in this and throughout the campaign he rendered good service to
England, whose sea power was again strengthened by the destruction not
of an actual but a possible rival, and his services were rewarded by a
peerage. In connection with this day's work was written a despatch
which has great favor with English historians. One of the senior
captains was detached with a division against some escaping ships of
the enemy. His report to the admiral ran thus: "SIR,--We have taken or
destroyed all the Spanish ships upon this coast, the number as per
margin. Respectfully, etc., G. Walton." One English writer makes, and
another indorses, the uncalled-for but characteristic fling at the
French, that the ships thus thrust into the margin would have filled
some pages of a French narration.[81] It may be granted that the
so-called "battle" of Cape Passaro did not merit a long description,
and Captain Walton possibly felt so; but if all reports of naval
transactions were modelled upon his, the writing of naval history
would not depend on official papers.
Thus the Spanish navy was struck down on the 11th of August, 1718,
off Cape Passaro. This settled the fate of Sicily, if it had been
doubtful before. The English fleet cruised round the island,
supporting the Austrians and isolating the Spaniards, none of whom
were permitted to withdraw before peace was made. Alberoni's
diplomatic projects failed one after the other, with a strange
fatality. In the following year the French, in pursuance of the terms
of the alliance, invaded the north of Spain and destroyed the
dock-yards; burning nine large ships on the stocks, besides the
materials for seven more, at the instigation of an English _attaché_
accompanying the French headquarters. Thus was completed the
destruction of the Spanish navy, which, says an English historian, was
ascribed to the maritime jealousy of England. "This was done," wrote
the French commander, the Duke of Berwick, a bastard of the house of
Stuart, "in order that the English government may be able to show the
next Parliament that nothing has been neglected to diminish the navy
of Spain." The acts of Sir George Byng, as given by the English naval
historian, make yet more manifest the purpose of England at this time.
While the city and citadel of Messina were being besieged by the
Austrians, English, and Sardinians, a dispute arose as to the
possession of the Spanish men-of-war within the mole. Byng,
"reflecting within himself that possibly the garrison might capitulate
for the safe return of those ships into Spain, which he was determined
not to suffer; that on the other hand the right of possession might
breed an inconvenient dispute at a critical juncture among the princes
concerned, and if it should at length be determined that they did not
belong to England it were better they belonged to no one else,
proposed to Count de Merci, the Austrian general, to erect a battery
and destroy them as they lay."[82] After some demur on the part of the
other leaders, this was done. If constant care and watchfulness
deserve success, England certainly deserved her sea power; but what
shall be said of the folly of France at this time and in this
connection?
The steady stream of reverses, and the hopelessness of contending for
distant maritime possessions when without a navy, broke down the
resistance of Spain. England and France insisted upon the dismissal of
Alberoni, and Philip yielded to the terms of the Quadruple Alliance.
The Austrian power, necessarily friendly to England, was thus firmly
settled in the central Mediterranean, in Naples and Sicily, as England
herself was in Gibraltar and Port Mahon. Sir Robert Walpole, the
minister now coming into power in England, failed at a later day to
support this favorable conjunction, and so far betrayed the
traditional policy of his country. The dominion of the House of Savoy
in Sardinia, which then began, has lasted; it is only within our own
day that the title King of Sardinia has merged in the broader one of
King of Italy.
Contemporaneously with and for some time after the short episode of
Alberoni's ministry and Spain's ambition, a struggle was going on
around the shores of the Baltic which must be mentioned, because it
gave rise to another effectual illustration of the sea power of
England, manifested alike in the north and south with a slightness of
exertion which calls to mind the stories of the tap of a tiger's paw.
The long contest between Sweden and Russia was for a moment
interrupted in 1718, by negotiations looking to peace and to an
alliance between the two for the settlement of the succession in
Poland and the restoration of the Stuarts in England. This project, on
which had rested many of Alberoni's hopes, was finally stopped by the
death in battle of the Swedish king. The war went on; and the czar,
seeing the exhaustion of Sweden, purposed its entire subjugation. This
destruction of the balance of power in the Baltic, making it a Russian
lake, suited neither England nor France; especially the former, whose
sea power both for peace and war depended upon the naval stores
chiefly drawn from those regions. The two western kingdoms interfered,
both by diplomacy, while England besides sent her fleet. Denmark,
which was also at war with her traditional enemy Sweden, readily
yielded; but Peter the Great chafed heavily under the implied
coercion, until at last orders were sent to the English admiral to
join his fleet to that of the Swedes and repeat in the Baltic the
history of Cape Passaro. The czar in alarm withdrew his fleet. This
happened in 1719; but Peter, though baffled, was not yet subdued. The
following year the interposition of England was repeated with greater
effect, although not in time to save the Swedish coasts from serious
injury; but the czar, recognizing the fixed purpose with which he had
to deal, and knowing from personal observation and practical
experience the efficiency of England's sea power, consented finally to
peace. The French claim much for their own diplomacy in this happy
result, and say that England supported Sweden feebly; being willing
that she should lose her provinces on the eastern shore of the Baltic
because Russia, thus brought down to the sea-shore, could more easily
open to English trade the vast resources of her interior. This may
very possibly be true, and certainty can be felt that British
interests, especially as to commerce and sea power, were looked after;
but the character of Peter the Great is the guarantee that the
argument which weighed most heavily with him was the military
efficiency of the British fleet and its ability to move up to his very
doors. By this Peace of Nystadt, August 30, 1721, Sweden abandoned
Livonia, Esthonia, and other provinces on the east side of the Baltic.
This result was inevitable; it was yearly becoming less possible for
small States to hold their own.
It can readily be understood that Spain was utterly discontented with
the terms wrung from her by the Quadruple Alliance. The twelve years
which followed are called years of peace, but the peace was very
uncertain, and fraught with elements of future wars. The three great
grievances rankling with Spain were--Sicily and Naples in the
possession of Austria, Gibraltar and Mahon in the hands of England,
and lastly, the vast contraband trade carried on by English merchants
and ships in Spanish America. It will be seen that England was the
active supporter of all these injuries; England therefore was the
special enemy of Spain, but Spain was not the only enemy of England.
The quiet, such as it was, that succeeded the fall of Alberoni was due
mainly to the character and policy of the two ministers of France and
England, who agreed in wishing a general peace. The policy and reasons
of the French regent are already known. Moved by the same reasons, and
to remove an accidental offence taken by England, Dubois obtained for
her the further concession from Spain, additional to the commercial
advantages granted at Utrecht, of sending a ship every year to trade
in the West Indies. It is said that this ship, after being anchored,
was kept continually supplied by others, so that fresh cargo came in
over one side as fast as the old was sent ashore from the other.
Dubois and the regent both died in the latter half of 1723, after an
administration of eight years, in which they had reversed the policy
of Richelieu by alliance with England and Austria and sacrificing to
them the interests of France.
The regency and the nominal government of France passed to another
member of the royal family; but the real ruler was Cardinal Fleuri,
the preceptor of the young king, who was now thirteen years of age.
Efforts to displace the preceptor resulted only in giving him the
title, as well as the power, of minister in 1726. At this time Sir
Robert Walpole had become prime minister of England, with an influence
and power which gave him practically the entire guidance of the policy
of the State. The chief wish of both Walpole and Fleuri was peace,
above all in western Europe. France and England therefore continued to
act together for that purpose, and though they could not entirely
stifle every murmur, they were for several years successful in
preventing outbreaks. But while the aims of the two ministers were
thus agreed, the motives which inspired them were different. Walpole
desired peace because of the still unsettled condition of the English
succession; for the peaceful growth of English commerce, which he had
ever before his eyes; and probably also because his spirit, impatient
of equals in the government, shrank from war which would raise up
stronger men around him. Fleuri, reasonably secure as to the throne
and his own power, wished like Walpole the peaceful development of his
country, and shrank from war with the love of repose natural to old
age; for he was seventy-three when he took office, and ninety when he
laid it down in death. Under his mild administration the prosperity of
France revived; the passing traveller could note the change in the
face of the country and of the people; yet it may be doubted whether
this change was due to the government of the quiet old man, or merely
to the natural elasticity of the people, no longer drained by war nor
isolated from the rest of the world. French authorities say that
agriculture did not revive throughout the country. It is certain,
however, that the maritime prosperity of France advanced wonderfully,
owing mainly to the removal of commercial restrictions in the years
immediately following the death of Louis XIV. The West India islands
in particular throve greatly, and their welfare was naturally shared
by the home ports that traded with them. The tropical climate of
Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Louisiana, and cultivation by slaves, lent
themselves readily to the paternal, semi-military government which
marks all French colonies, but which produced less happy results in
the bitter weather of Canada. In the West Indies, France at this time
obtained a decided preponderance over England; the value of the French
half of Hayti was alone equal to that of all the English West Indies,
and French coffee and sugar were driving those of England out of
European markets. A like advantage over England in the Mediterranean
and Levant trade is asserted by French historians. At the same time
the East India Company was revived, and its French depot, whose name
tells its association with the East, the Breton town of L'Orient,
quickly became a splendid city. Pondicherry on the Coromandel coast,
and Chandernagore on the Ganges, the chief seats of French power and
commerce in India, grew rapidly; the Isle of Bourbon and the Isle of
France, now the Mauritius, whose position is so well suited for the
control of the Indian Ocean, became, the one a rich agricultural
colony, the other a powerful naval station. The monopoly of the great
company was confined to the trade between home and the chief Indian
stations; the traffic throughout the Indian seas was open to private
enterprise and grew more rapidly. This great movement, wholly
spontaneous, and even looked on with distrust by the government, was
personified in two men, Dupleix and La Bourdonnais; who, the former at
Chandernagore and the latter at the Isle of France, pointed out and
led the way in all these undertakings, which were building up the
power and renown of the French in the Eastern seas. The movement was
begun which, after making France the rival of England in the Hindustan
peninsula, and giving her for a moment the promise of that great
empire which has bestowed a new title on the Queen of Great Britain,
was destined finally to falter and perish before the sea power of
England. The extent of this expansion of French trade, consequent upon
peace and the removal of restrictions, and not due in any sense to
government protection, is evidenced by the growth of French merchant
shipping from only three hundred vessels at the death of Louis XIV.,
to eighteen hundred, twenty years later. This, a French historian
claims, refutes "the deplorable prejudices, born of our misfortunes,
that France is not fitted for sea commerce, the only commerce that
indefinitely extends the power of a nation with its sphere of
activity."[83]
This free and happy movement of the people was far from acceptable to
Fleuri, who seems to have seen it with the distrust of a hen that has
hatched ducklings. Walpole and himself were agreed to love peace; but
Walpole was obliged to reckon with the English people, and these were
prompt to resent rivalry upon the sea and in trade, however obtained.
Moreover, Fleuri had inherited the unfortunate policy of Louis XIV.;
his eyes were fixed on the continent. He did not indeed wish to follow
the course of the regency in quarrelling with Spain, but rather to
draw near to her; and although he was not able for a time to do so
without sacrificing his peace policy, because of Spain's restless
enmity to England, yet his mind was chiefly bent upon strengthening
the position of France on the land, by establishing Bourbon princes
where he could, and drawing them together by family alliances. The
navy was allowed to decay more and more. "The French government
abandoned the sea at the very moment that the nation, through the
activity of private individuals, was making an effort to regain it."
The material force fell to fifty-four ships-of-the-line and frigates,
mostly in bad condition; and even when war with England had been
imminent for five years, France had but forty-five ships-of-the-line
to England's ninety. This difference foreshadowed the results which
followed a quarter of a century of war.
During the same period Walpole, relying upon Fleuri's co-operation,
resolutely set his face against open war between England and Spain.
The difficulties caused by the threatening and exasperating action of
the latter country, and of such allies as she from time to time could
raise, were met, and for a while successfully met, by naval
demonstrations,--reminders of that sea power which one nation after
another had felt and yielded to. In 1725, the Spanish king and the
emperor agreed to sink their long-standing feud, and signed a treaty
at Vienna, in which there was a secret clause providing that the
emperor would support the claim of Spain to Gibraltar and Port Mahon,
by arms if necessary. Russia also showed a disposition to join this
confederacy. A counter-alliance was formed between England, France,
and Prussia; and English fleets were sent, one to the Baltic to awe
the czarina, another to the coast of Spain to check that government
and protect Gibraltar, and a third to Porto Bello, on the Spanish
Main, to blockade the fleet of galleons there assembled, and by
cutting off the supplies remind the Spanish king at once of his
dependence upon the specie of America, and of England's control of the
highway by which it reached him. Walpole's aversion to war was marked
by giving the admiral at Porto Bello the strictest orders not to
fight, only to blockade; the consequence of which, through the long
delay of the squadron upon the sickly coast, was a mortality among
the crews that shocked the nation, and led, among other causes, to the
minister's overthrow many years later. Between three and four thousand
officers and men, including Admiral Hosier himself, died there.
Walpole's aim, however, was reached; though Spain made a foolish
attack by land upon Gibraltar, the presence of the English fleet
assured its supplies and provisions and averted the formal outbreak of
war. The emperor withdrew from the alliance, and under English
pressure also revoked the charter of an East India company which he
had authorized in the Austrian Netherlands, and which took its name
from the port of Ostend. English merchants demanded the removal of
this competitor, and also of a similar rival established in Denmark;
both which concessions the English ministry, backed by Holland,
obtained. So long as commerce was not seriously disturbed, Walpole's
peace policy, accompanied as it naturally was by years of plenty and
general content, was easily maintained, even though Spain continued
threatening and arrogant in her demands for Gibraltar; but
unfortunately she now entered more deeply upon a course of annoyance
to English trade. The concessions of the Asiento, or slave-trade, and
of the annual ship to South America have been mentioned; but these
privileges were but a part of the English commerce in those regions.
The system of Spain with regard to the trade of her colonies was of
the narrowest and most exclusive character; but, while attempting to
shut them out from foreign traffic, she neglected to provide for their
wants herself. The consequence was that a great smuggling or
contraband trade arose throughout her American possessions, carried on
mainly by the English, who made their lawful traffic by the Asiento
and the yearly ship subserve also the unlawful, or at least
unauthorized, trade. This system was doubtless advantageous to the
great body of the Spanish colonists, and was encouraged by them, while
colonial governors connived at it, sometimes for money, sometimes
swayed by local public opinion and their own knowledge of the
hardships of the case; but there were Spanish subjects who saw their
own business injured by the use and abuse of English privileges, and
the national government suffered both in pocket and in pride by these
evasions of the revenue. It now began to pull the strings tighter.
Obsolete regulations were revived and enforced. Words in which the
action of Spain in this old controversy have been described are
curiously applicable to certain recent disputes to which the United
States has been a party. "The letter of the treaty was now followed,
though the spirit which dictated it was abandoned. Although English
ships still enjoyed the liberty of putting into Spanish harbors for
the purpose of refitting and provisioning, yet they were far from
enjoying the same advantages of carrying on a friendly and commercial
intercourse. They were now watched with a scrupulous jealousy,
strictly visited by guarda-costas, and every efficient means adopted
to prevent any commerce with the colonies, except what was allowed by
the annual ship." If Spain could have confined herself to closer
watchfulness and to enforcing in her own waters vexatious customs
regulations, not essentially different from those sanctioned by the
general commercial ideas of that day, perhaps no further harm would
have resulted; but the condition of things and the temper of her
government would not let her stop there. It was not possible to guard
and effectually seal a sea-coast extending over hundreds of miles,
with innumerable inlets; nor would traders and seamen, in pursuit of
gain which they had come to consider their right, be deterred by fears
of penalties nor consideration for Spanish susceptibilities. The power
of Spain was not great enough to enforce on the English ministry any
regulation of their shipping, or stoppage of the abuse of the treaty
privileges, in face of the feelings of the merchants; and so the
weaker State, wronged and harassed, was goaded into the use of wholly
unlawful means. Ships-of-war and guarda-costas were instructed, or at
least permitted, to stop and search English ships on the high seas,
outside of Spanish jurisdiction; and the arrogant Spanish temper,
unrestrained by the weak central government, made many of these
visits, both the lawful and the unlawful, scenes of insult and even
violence. Somewhat similar results, springing from causes not entirely
different, have occurred in the relations of Spanish officials to the
United States and American merchant-ships in our own day. The stories
of these acts of violence coming back to England, coupled with cases
of loss by confiscation and by the embarrassment of trade, of course
stirred up the people. In 1737 the West India merchants petitioned the
House of Commons, saying,--
"For many years past their ships have not only frequently been
stopped and searched, but also forcibly and arbitrarily seized
upon the high seas, by Spanish ships fitted out to cruise, under
the plausible pretext of guarding their own coasts; that the
commanders thereof, with their crews, have been inhumanly
treated, and their ships carried into some of the Spanish ports
and there condemned with their cargoes, in manifest violation of
the treaties subsisting between the two crowns; that the
remonstrances of his Majesty's ministers at Madrid receive no
attention, and that insults and plunder must soon destroy their
trade."
Walpole struggled hard, during the ten years following 1729, to keep
off war. In that year a treaty signed at Seville professed to regulate
matters, restoring the conditions of trade to what they had been four
years before, and providing that six thousand Spanish troops should at
once occupy the territory of Tuscany and Parma. Walpole argued with
his own people that war would lose them the commercial privileges they
already enjoyed in Spanish dominions; while with Spain he carried on
constant negotiations, seeking concessions and indemnities that might
silence the home clamor. In the midst of this period a war broke out
concerning the succession to the Polish throne. The father-in-law of
the French king was one claimant; Austria supported his opponent. A
common hostility to Austria once more drew France and Spain together,
and they were joined by the King of Sardinia, who hoped through this
alliance to wrest Milan from Austria and add it to his own territory
of Piedmont. The neutrality of England and Holland was secured by a
promise not to attack the Austrian Netherlands, the possession of any
part of which by France was considered to be dangerous to England's
sea power. The allied States declared war against Austria in October,
1733, and their armies entered Italy together; but the Spaniards,
intent on their long-cherished projects against Naples and Sicily,
left the others and turned southward. The two kingdoms were easily and
quickly conquered, the invaders having command of the sea and the
favor of the population. The second son of the King of Spain was
proclaimed king under the title of Carlos III., and the Bourbon
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies thus came into existence. Walpole's
aversion to war, leading him to abandon a long-standing ally, thus
resulted in the transfer of the central Mediterranean to a control
necessarily unfriendly to Great Britain.
But while Walpole thus forsook the emperor, he was himself betrayed by
his friend Fleuri. While making the open alliance with Spain against
Austria, the French government agreed to a secret clause directed
against England. This engagement ran as follows: "Whenever it seems
good to both nations alike, the abuses which have crept into commerce,
especially through the English, shall be abolished; and if the English
make objection, France will ward off their hostility with all its
strength by land and sea." "And this compact was made," as the
biographer of Lord Hawke points out, "during a period of intimate and
ostentatious alliance with England itself."[84] "Thus the policy
against which William III. had called on England and Europe to arm, at
last came into existence." Had Walpole known of this secret agreement,
it might have seemed to him an additional argument in favor of peace;
for, his keen political sagacity warning him of the existence of a
danger which he yet could not see, he told the House of Commons that
"if the Spaniards had not private encouragement from powers more
considerable than themselves, they would never have ventured on the
insults and injuries which have been proved at your bar;" and he
expressed the opinion that "England was not a match for the French and
Spaniards too."
Fleuri had indeed given his old friend and fellow-statesman an ugly
fall. The particular question which excited the two years' War of the
Polish Succession, the choice of a ruler for a distracted kingdom
fated soon to disappear from the list of European States, seems a
small matter; but the turn imparted to European politics by the action
of the powers engaged gives it a very different importance. France and
Austria came to an arrangement in October, 1735, upon terms to which
Sardinia and Spain afterward acceded, the principal points of which
were as follows: The French claimant to the Polish throne gave up his
claim to it, and received instead the duchies of Bar and Lorraine on
the east of France, with the provision that upon his death they were
to go to his son-in-law, the King of France, in full sovereignty; the
two kingdoms of Sicily and Naples were confirmed to the Spanish
Bourbon prince, Don Carlos; and Austria received back Parma. The
Sardinian monarchy also got an increase to its Italian territory.
France thus, under the peace-loving Fleuri, obtained in Bar and
Lorraine an accession of strength which more warlike rulers had
coveted in vain; and at the same time her external position was
fortified at the expense of England, by the transfer of controlling
positions in the central Mediterranean to an ally. Yet the heart of
Fleuri might well have failed him as he remembered the secret
agreement to check the commerce of England, and thought of her mighty
sea power alongside of the decayed navy of France. That compact
between France and Spain, to which the Two Sicilies acceded later,
bore within it, in the then strained relations between England and
Spain, the germ of the great wars between England and the House of
Bourbon which issued in the creation of the British Empire and the
independence of the United States.
The clamor in England over Spanish outrages continued, and was
carefully nursed by the opposition to Walpole. The minister was now
over sixty years of age, and scarcely able to change the settled
convictions and policy of his prime. He was face to face with one of
those irrepressible conflicts between nations and races toward which a
policy of repression and compromise can be employed but for a short
time. The English were bent upon opening the West Indies and Spanish
America, the Spanish government equally bent upon obstructing them.
Unfortunately for their policy of obstruction, they strengthened
Walpole's enemies by unlawful search of English ships on the open sea,
and possibly also by outrages to English seamen. Some of the latter
were brought before the bar of the House of Commons, and testified
that they had been not merely plundered, but tortured, shut up in
prison, and compelled to live and work under loathsome conditions. The
most celebrated case was that of a certain Jenkins, the master of a
merchant-brig, who told that a Spanish officer had torn off one of his
ears, bidding him carry it to the king his master, and say that if he
had been there he would have been served likewise. Being asked what
were his feelings at such a moment of danger and suffering, he was
said to have replied, "I commended my soul to God and my cause to my
country." This well-turned dramatic utterance from the mouth of a man
of his class throws a suspicion of high coloring over the whole story;
but it can be readily imagined what a capital campaign-cry it would be
in the heat of a popular movement. The tide of feeling swept away
Walpole's patchwork of compromise, and war was declared against Spain
by Great Britain on the 19th of October, 1739. The English ultimatum
insisted upon a formal renunciation of the right of search as claimed
and exercised by the Spaniards, and upon an express acknowledgment of
the British claims in North America. Among these claims was one
relating to the limits of Georgia, then a recently established colony,
touching the Spanish territory of Florida.
How far the war thus urged on and begun by England, against the
judgment of her able minister, was morally justifiable has been warmly
argued on either side by English writers. The laws of Spain with
regard to the trade of her colonies did not differ in spirit from
those of England herself as shown by her Navigation Act, and Spanish
naval officers found themselves in a position nearly identical with
that of Nelson when captain of a frigate in the West Indies half a
century later. American ships and merchants then, after the separation
from the mother-country, continued the trade which they had enjoyed as
colonists; Nelson, zealous for the commercial advantage of England as
then understood, undertook to enforce the act, and in so doing found
against him the feeling of the West Indians and of the colonial
authorities. It does not seem that he or those supporting him searched
unlawfully, for the power of England was great enough to protect her
shipping interests without using irregular means; whereas Spain
between 1730 and 1740, being weak, was tempted, as she has since been,
to seize those whom she knew to have injured her wherever she could
find them, even outside her lawful jurisdiction.
After reading the entirely sympathetic presentation of the case of
Walpole's opponents, urging war, which is given by Professor Burrows
in his Life of Lord Hawke, a foreigner can scarcely fail to conclude
that the Spaniards were grievously wronged, according to the rights of
the mother-country over colonies as commonly admitted in that day;
though no nation could tolerate the right of search as claimed by
them. It chiefly concerns our subject to notice that the dispute was
radically a maritime question, that it grew out of the uncontrollable
impulse of the English people to extend their trade and colonial
interests. It is possible that France was acting under a similar
impulse, as English writers have asserted; but the character and
general policy of Fleuri, as well as the genius of the French people,
make this unlikely. There was no Parliament and no opposition to make
known popular opinion in the France of that day, and very different
estimates of Fleuri's character and administration have found voice
since then. The English look rather at the ability which obtained
Lorraine for France and the Sicilies for the House of Bourbon, and
blame Walpole for being overreached. The French say of Fleuri that "he
lived from day to day seeking only to have quiet in his old age. He
had stupefied France with opiates, instead of laboring to cure her. He
could not even prolong this silent sleep until his own death."[85]
When the war broke out between England and Spain, "the latter claimed
the advantage of her defensive alliance with France. Fleuri,
grievously against his will, was forced to fit out a squadron; he did
so in niggardly fashion." This squadron, of twenty-two ships, convoyed
to America the Spanish fleet assembled at Ferrol, and the
reinforcement prevented the English from attacking.[86] "Still, Fleuri
made explanations to Walpole and hoped for compromise,--an ill-founded
hope, which had disastrous results for our sea interests, and
prevented measures which would have given France, from the beginning
of the war, the superiority in eastern seas." But "upon Walpole's
overthrow," says another Frenchman, "Fleuri perceived his mistake in
letting the navy decay. Its importance had lately struck him. He knew
that the kings of Naples and Sardinia forsook the French alliance
merely because an English squadron threatened to bombard Naples and
Genoa and to bring an army into Italy. For lack of this element of
greatness, France silently swallowed the greatest humiliations, and
could only complain of the violence of English cruisers, which
pillaged our commerce, in violation of the law of nations,"[87] during
the years of nominal peace that elapsed between the time when the
French fleet was confined to protecting the Spanish against the
English and the outbreak of formal war. The explanation of these
differing views seems not very hard. The two ministers had tacitly
agreed to follow lines which apparently could not cross. France was
left free to expand by land, provided she did not excite the jealousy
of the English people, and Walpole's own sense of English interests,
by rivalry at sea. This course suited Fleuri's views and wishes. The
one sought power by sea, the other by land. Which had been wiser, war
was to show; for, with Spain as an ally to one party, war had to come,
and that on the sea. Neither minister lived to see the result of his
policy. Walpole was driven from power in 1742, and died in March,
1745. Fleuri died in office, January 29, 1743.
FOOTNOTES:
[80] Afterward Lord Torrington; father of Admiral John Byng, shot in
1757.
[81] Campbell: Lives of the Admirals; quoted by Lord Mahon in his
History of England.
[82] Lives of the Admirals
[83] Martin: History of France.
[84] Burrows: Life of Lord Hawke.
[85] Martin: History of France.
[86] The peculiar political relation which France bore toward England
between 1739 and 1744, while the latter country was at war with Spain,
needs to be explained, as it depended upon views of international
duties which are practically obsolete. By her defensive alliance with
Spain, France had bound herself to furnish a contingent of specified
force to the Spanish fleet when that country was involved in war of a
certain kind. She claimed, however, that her sending these succors was
not such an act of hostility to England as involved a breach of the
peace existing between the two nations. The French ships-of-war, while
thus serving with the Spanish fleet under the terms of the treaty,
were enemies; but the French nation and all other armed forces of
France, on sea and land, were neutrals, with all the privileges of
neutrality. Of course England was not bound to accept this view of the
matter, and could make the action of France a _casus belli_; but
France claimed it was not justly so, and England practically conceded
the claim, though the relation was likely to lead to formal war, as it
did in 1744. A few years later the Dutch will be found claiming the
same privilege of neutrality toward France while furnishing a large
contingent to the Austrian army acting against her.
[87] Lapeyrouse-Bonfils: Hist. de la Marine Française.