THE "FAMILY COMPACT."
[Sidenote: 1735--The Polish throne]
The new Parliament met on January 14, 1735. The Royal intimation was
given to the House of Commons by the Lord Chancellor that it was his
Majesty's pleasure that they should return to their own House and
choose a Speaker. Arthur Onslow was unanimously elected, or rather
re-elected, to the chair he had filled with so much distinction in the
former Parliament. The speech from the throne was not delivered until
January 23. The speech was almost all taken up with foreign affairs,
with the war on the Continent, and the efforts of the King and his
ministers, in combination with the States General of the United
Provinces, to extinguish it. "I have the satisfaction to acquaint
you," the King said, "that things are now brought to so great a
forwardness that I hope in a short time a plan will be offered to the
consideration of all the parties engaged in the present war, as a basis
for a general negotiation of peace, in which the honor and the interest
of all parties have been consulted as far as the circumstances of time
and the present posture of affairs would admit." The Royal speech did
not contain one single word which had to do with the internal condition
of England, with the daily lives of the English people. No legislation
was promised, or even hinted at, which concerned the domestic interests
of these islands. The House of Lords set to work at once in the
preparation of an address in reply to the speech from the throne; and
they, too, debated only of foreign affairs, and took no more account of
their own fellow-countrymen than of the dwellers in Jupiter or Saturn.
{23}
The war to which the Royal speech referred had been dragging along for
some time. No quarrel could have less direct interest for the English
people than that about which the Emperor Charles the Sixth and the King
of France, Louis the Fifteenth, were fighting. On the death of
Augustus the Second of Poland, in February, 1733, Louis thought it a
good opportunity for putting his own father-in-law, Stanislaus
Leszczynski, back on the throne of Poland, from which he had twice been
driven. Poland was a republic with an elective king, and a very
peculiar form of constitution, by virtue of which any one of the
estates or electoral colleges of the realm was in a position to stop
the action of all the others at any crisis when decision was especially
needed. The result of this was that the elected king was always a
nominee of one or another of the great Continental Powers who took it
on themselves to intervene in the affairs of Poland. The election of a
King of Poland was always a mere struggle between these Powers: the
strongest at the moment carried its man. Stanislaus, the father of
Louis the Fifteenth's wife, had been a _protégé_ of Charles the Twelfth
of Sweden. He was a man of illustrious family and of great and varied
abilities, a scholar and a writer. Charles drove Augustus the Second,
Augustus, Elector of Saxony, from the throne of Poland, and set up
Stanislaus in his place. Stanislaus, however, was driven out of the
country by Augustus and his friends, who rallied and became strong in
the temporary difficulties of Charles. When Charles found time to turn
his attention to Poland he soon overthrew Augustus and set up
Stanislaus once again. But "hide, blushing glory, hide Pultowa's day";
the fall of the great Charles came, and brought with it the fall of
Stanislaus. Augustus re-entered Poland at the head of a Saxon army,
and Stanislaus was compelled to abdicate. Now that Augustus was dead,
Louis the Fifteenth determined to bring Stanislaus out from his
retirement of many years and set him for the third time on the Polish
throne. On the other hand, the Emperor and Russia alike favored the
son of {24} the late king, another Augustus, Elector of Saxony. The
French party carried Stanislaus, although at the time of his
abdication, three or four and twenty years before, he had been declared
incapable of ever again being elected King of Poland. The Saxon party,
secretly backed up by Russia, resisted Stanislaus, attacked his
partisans, drove him once more from Warsaw, and proclaimed Augustus the
Third. Louis of France declared war, not on Russia, but on the
Emperor, alleging that the Emperor had been the inspiration and support
of the Saxon movement. A French army under Marshal Berwick, son of
James the Second of England, crossed the Rhine and took the fort of
Kehl--the scene of a memorable crossing of the Rhine, to be recrossed
very rapidly after, in days nearer to our own. Spain and Sardinia were
in alliance with Louis, and the Emperor's army, although led by the
great Eugene, "Der edle Ritter," was not able to make head against the
French. The Emperor sent frequent urgent and impassioned appeals to
England for assistance. George was anxious to lend him a helping hand,
clamored to be allowed to take the field himself and win glory in
battle; camps and battle-fields were what he loved most, he kept
dinning into Walpole's unappreciative ear. Even the Queen was not
disinclined to draw the sword in defence of an imperilled and harassed
ally.
[Sidenote: 1735--The Emperor's denunciation of Walpole]
Walpole stuck to his policy of masterly inactivity. He would have
wished to exclude Stanislaus from the Polish throne, but he was not
willing to go to war with France. He could not bring himself to
believe that the interests of England were concerned in the struggle to
such a degree as to warrant the waste of English money and the pouring
out of English blood. But he did not take his stand on such a broad
and clear position; indeed at that time it would not have been a firm
or a tenable position. Walpole did not venture to say that the
question whether this man or that was to sit on the throne of Poland
was not worth the life of one British grenadier. The time had not come
when even a great minister might venture {25} to look at an
international quarrel from such a point of view. Walpole temporized,
delayed, endeavored to bring about a reconciliation of claims;
endeavored to get at something like a mediation; carried on prolonged
negotiations with the Government of the Netherlands to induce the
States General to join with England in an offer of mediation. The
Emperor was all the time sending despatches to England, in which he
bitterly complained that he had been deceived and deserted. He laid
all the blame on Walpole's head. Pages of denunciation of Walpole and
all Walpole's family are to be found in these imperial despatches.
Walpole remained firm to his purpose. He would not go to war, but it
did not suit him to proclaim his determination. He kept up his
appearance of active negotiation, and he trusted to time to settle the
question one way or the other before King George should get too
restive, and should insist on plunging into the war. He had many an
uneasy hour, but his policy succeeded in the end.
The controversy out of which the war began was complicated by other
questions and made formidable by the rival pursuit of other ends than
those to be acknowledged in public treaty. It would be unjust and even
absurd to suppose that Walpole's opponents believed England had a
direct interest in the question of the Polish succession, or that they
would have shed the blood of English grenadiers merely in order that
this candidate and not that should be on the throne of Poland. What
the Opposition contended was that the alliance of France and Spain was
in reality directed quite as much against England as against the
Emperor. In this they were perfectly right. It was directed as much
against England as against the Emperor. Little more than forty years
ago a collection of treaties and engagements entered into by the
Spanish branch of the Bourbon family found its way to the light of day
in Madrid. The publication was the means of pouring a very flood of
light on some events which perplexed and distracted the outer world in
the days at {26} which, in the course of this history, we have now
arrived. We speak especially of the Polish war of succession and the
policy pursued with regard to it by France and Spain. The collection
of documents contained a copy of a treaty or arrangement entered into
between the King of France and the King of Spain in 1733. This was, in
fact, the first family compact, the first of a series of family
compacts, entered into between the Bourbons in Versailles and the
Bourbons in Madrid. The engagement, which in modern European history
is conventionally known as "the family compact" between the Bourbon
Houses, the compact of 1761, the compact which Burke described as "the
most odious and formidable of all the conspiracies against the
liberties of Europe that ever have been framed," was really only the
third of a series. The second compact was in 1743. The object of
these successive agreements was one and the same: to maintain and
extend the possessions of the Bourbons in Europe and outside Europe,
and to weaken and divide the supposed enemies of Bourbon supremacy.
England was directly aimed at as one of the foremost of those enemies.
In the compact of 1733 the King of France and the King of Spain pledged
themselves to the interests of "the most serene infant Don Carlos,"
afterwards for a time King of the Sicilies, and then finally King of
Spain. The compact defined the alliance as "a mutual guarantee of all
the possessions and the honor, interests, and glory" of the two Houses.
It was described as an alliance to protect Don Carlos, and the family
generally, against the Emperor and against England. France bound
herself to aid Spain with all her forces by land or sea if Spain should
see fit to suspend "England's enjoyment of commerce," and England
should retaliate by hostilities on the dominions of Spain, within or
outside of Europe. The French King also pledged himself to employ
without interruption his most pressing instances to induce the King of
Great Britain to restore Gibraltar to Spain; pledged himself even to
use force for this purpose if necessary. There were full and precise
{27} stipulations about the disposition of armies and naval squadrons
under various conditions. One article in the treaty bluntly declared
that the foreign policy of both States, France and Spain, was to be
"guided exclusively by the interests of the House." The engagement was
to be kept secret, and was to be regarded "from that day as an eternal
and irrevocable family compact." No conspiracy ever could have been
more flagrant, more selfish, and more cruel. The deeper we get into
the secrets of European history, the more we come to learn the truth
that the crowned conspirators were always the worst.
[Sidenote: 1735--Compact between the Houses of Bourbon]
This first family compact is the key to all the subsequent history of
European wars down to the days of the French Revolution. The object of
one set of men was to maintain and add to the advantages secured to
them by the Treaty of Utrecht; the object of another set of men was to
shake themselves free from the disadvantages and disqualifications
which that treaty imposed on them. The Bourbon family were possessed
with the determination to maintain the position in Spain which the will
of Charles the Second had bequeathed to them, and which after so many
years of war and blood had been ratified by the Treaty of Utrecht.
They wanted to maintain their position in Spain; but they wanted not
that alone. They wanted much more. They wanted to plant a firm foot
in Italy; they wanted to annex border provinces to France; they saw
that their great enemy was England, and they wanted to weaken and to
damage her. No reasonable Englishman can find fault with the Kings of
Spain for their desire to recover Gibraltar. An English sovereign
would have conspired with any foreign State for the recovery of Dover
Castle and rock if these were held by a Spanish invader too strong to
be driven out by England single-handed. Many Englishmen were of
opinion then, some are of opinion now, that it would be an act of wise
and generous policy to give Gibraltar back to the Spanish people. But
no Englishman could possibly doubt that if England were determined to
keep Gibraltar she must {28} hold it her duty to watch with the keenest
attention every movement which indicated an alliance between France and
Spain.
Spain had at one time sought security for her interests, and a new
chance for her ambitions, by alliance with the Emperor. Of late she
had found that the Emperor generally got all the subsidies and all the
other advantages of the alliance, and that Spain was left rather worse
off after each successive settlement than she was before it. The
family compact between the two Houses of Bourbon was one result of her
experience in this way. Of course, when we talk of France and Spain,
we are talking merely of the Courts and the families. The people of
France and Spain were never consulted, and, indeed, were never thought
of, in these imperial and regal engagements. Nor at this particular
juncture had the King of Spain much more to do with the matter than the
humblest of his people. King Philip the Fifth was a hypochondriac, a
half-demented creature, almost a madman. He was now the tame and
willing subject of the most absolute petticoat government. His second
wife, Elizabeth of Parma, ruled him with firm, unswerving hand. Her
son, Don Carlos, was heir in her right to the Duchies of Parma and
Placentia, but she was ambitious of a brighter crown for him, and went
into the war with an eye to the throne of Naples. The Emperor soon
found that he could not hold out against the alliance, and consented to
accept the mediation of England and the United Provinces.
The negotiations were long and dragging. Many times it became apparent
that Louis on his part was only pretending a willingness to compromise
and make peace in order to strengthen himself the more for the complete
prosecution of a successful war. At last a plan of pacification was
agreed upon between England and Holland and at the same time the King
of England entered into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the
King of Denmark, this latter treaty, as George significantly described
it in the speech from the throne, "of great importance in {29} the
present conjuncture." These engagements did not pass without severe
criticism in Parliament. It was pointed out with effect that the
nation had for some time back been engaged in making treaty after
treaty, each new engagement being described as essential to the safety
of the empire, but each proving in turn to be utterly inefficacious.
In the House of Lords a dissatisfied peer described the situation very
well. "The last treaty," he said, "always wanted a new one in order to
carry it into execution, and thus, my Lords, we have been a-botching
and piecing up one treaty with another for several years." The
botching and piecing up did not in this instance prevent the outbreak
of the war. The opposing forces, after long delays, at length rushed
at each other, and, as was said in the speech from the throne at the
opening of the session of 1736, "the war was carried on in some parts
in such a manner as to give very just apprehensions that it would
unavoidably become general, from an absolute necessity of preserving
that balance of power on which the safety and commerce of the maritime
powers so much depend." With any other minister than Walpole to manage
affairs, England would unquestionably have been drawn into the war.
Walpole's strong determination and ingenious delays carried his policy
through.
[Sidenote: 1735--"Bonnie Prince Charlie"]
The war has one point of peculiar and romantic interest for Englishmen.
Charles Edward Stuart, the "bonnie Prince Charlie" of a later date, the
hero and darling of so much devotion, poetry, and romance, received his
baptism of fire in the Italian campaign under Don Carlos. Charles
Edward was then a mere boy. He was born in the later days of 1720, and
was now about the age to serve some picturesque princess as her page.
He was sent as a volunteer to the siege of Gaeta, and was received with
every mark of honor by Don Carlos. The English Court heard rumors that
Don Carlos had gone out of his way to pay homage to the Stuart prince,
and had even acted in a manner to give the impression that he
identified himself with the cause of the exiled family. There were
demands {30} for explanation made by the English minister at the
Spanish Court, and explanations were given and excuses offered. It was
all merely because of a request made by the Duke of Berwick's son, the
Spanish prime-minister said. The Duke of Berwick's son asked
permission to bring his cousin Charles Edward to serve as a volunteer,
and the Court of Spain consented, not seeing the slightest objection to
such a request; but there was not the faintest idea of receiving the
boy as a king's son. King George and Queen Caroline were both very
angry, but Walpole wisely told them that they must either resent the
offence thoroughly, and by war, or accept the explanations and pretend
to be satisfied with them. Walpole's advice prevailed, and the boy
prince fleshed his maiden sword without giving occasion to George the
Second to seek the ensanguined laurels for which he told Walpole he had
long been thirsting. The Hanoverian kings were, to do them justice,
generally rather magnanimous in their way of treating the pretensions
of the exiled family. We may fairly assume that the conduct of the
Spanish prince in this instance did somewhat exceed legitimate bounds.
George was wise, however, in consenting to accept the explanations, and
to make as little of the incident as the Court of Spain professed to do.
[Sidenote: 1735--Success of Walpole's policy]
Incidents such as this, and the interchange of explanations which had
to follow them, naturally tended to stretch out the negotiations for
peace which England was still carrying on. Again and again it seemed
as if the attempts to bring about a settlement of the controversy must
all be doomed to failure. At last, however, terms of arrangement were
concluded. Augustus was acknowledged King of Poland. Stanislaus was
allowed to retain the royal title, and was put in immediate possession
of the Duchy of Lorraine, which after his death was to become a
province of France. The Spanish prince obtained the throne of the Two
Sicilies. France was thought to have done a great thing for herself by
the annexation of Lorraine; in later times it seemed to have been an
ill-omened acquisition. {31} The terms of peace were, on the whole,
about as satisfactory as any one could have expected. Walpole
certainly had got all he wanted. He wanted to keep England out of the
war, and he wanted at the same time to maintain and to reassert her
influence over the politics of the Continent. He accomplished both
these objects. Bolingbroke said it was only Walpole's luck. History
more truly says it was Walpole's patience and genius.
Did Walpole know all this time that there was a distinct and deliberate
family compact, a secret treaty of alliance, a formal, circumstantial,
binding agreement, consigned to written words, between France and
Spain, for the promotion of their common desires and for the crippling
of England's power? Mr. J. R. Green appears to be convinced that
"neither England nor Walpole" knew of it. The English people certainly
did not know of it; and it is commonly taken for granted by historians
that while Walpole was pursuing his policy of peace he was not aware of
the existence of this family compact. It has even been pleaded, in
defence of him and his policy, that he did not know that the war, in
which he believed England to have little or no interest, was only one
outcome of a secret plot, having for its object, among other objects,
the humiliation and the detriment of England. There are writers who
seem to assume it as a matter of certainty that if Walpole had known of
this family compact he would have adopted a very different course. But
does it by any means follow that, even if he had been all the time in
possession of a correct copy of the secret agreement, he would have
acted otherwise than as he did act? Does it follow that if Walpole did
know all about it, he was wrong in adhering to his policy of
non-intervention? A very interesting and instructive essay by
Professor Seely on the House of Bourbon, published in the first number
of the _English Historical Review_, makes clear as light the place of
this first family compact in the history of the wars that succeeded it.
Professor Seely puts it beyond dispute that in every subsequent
movement of France and Spain the {32} working of this compact was made
apparent. He shows that it was fraught with the most formidable danger
to England. Inferentially he seems to convey the idea that Walpole was
wrong when he clung to his policy of masterly inactivity, and that he
ought to have intervened in the interests of England. We admit all his
premises and reject his conclusion.
Walpole might well have thought that the best way to mar the object of
the conspirators against England was to keep England as much as
possible out of continental wars. He might well have thought that so
long as England was prosperous and strong she could afford to smile at
the machinations of any foreign kings and statesmen. We may be sure
that he would not have allowed himself to be drawn away from the path
of policy he thought it expedient to follow by any mere feelings of
anger at the enmity of the foreign kings and statesmen. He might have
felt as a composed and strong-minded man would feel who, quite
determined not to sit down to the gaming-table, is amused by the
signals which he sees passing between the cheating confederates who are
making preparations to win his money. Besides, even if he knew nothing
of the family compact, he certainly was not ignorant of the general
scope of the policy of France and of Spain. He was not a man likely at
any time to put too much trust in princes or in any other persons, and
we need not doubt that in making his calculations he took into full
account the possibility of France and Spain packing cards for the
injury of England. The existence of the family compact is a very
interesting fact in history, and enables us now to understand with
perfect clearness many things that must have perplexed and astonished
the readers of an earlier day. But, so far as the policy of Walpole
regarding the war of the Polish Succession was concerned, we do not
believe that it would have been modified to any considerable extent,
even if he had been in full possession of all the secret papers in the
cabinet of the King of France and the Queen of Spain.
{33}
[Sidenote: 1735--Professor Seely and the secret treaty]
But is it certain that Walpole did not know of the existence of this
secret treaty? It is certain now that if he did not know of it he
might have known. Other English statesmen of the day did know of
it--at least, had heard that such a thing was in existence, and were or
might have been forewarned against it. Professor Seely puts it beyond
doubt that the family compact was talked of and written of by English
diplomatists at the time, was believed in by some, treated sceptically
by others. The Duke of Newcastle actually called it by the very name
which history formally gives to the arrangement made many years after
and denounced by Burke. He speaks of "the offensive and defensive
alliance between France and Spain, called the _pacte de famille_." Is
it likely, is it credible, that Walpole had never heard of the
existence of a compact which was known to the Duke of Newcastle?
Archdeacon Coxe, in his "Life of Walpole," contends that Newcastle was
not by any means the merely absurd sort of person whom most historians
and biographers delight to paint him. "He had a quick comprehension
and was a ready debater," Coxe says, although without grace or style.
"He wrote with uncommon facility and great variety of expression, and
in his most confidential letters, written so quickly as to be almost
illegible, there is scarcely a single alteration or erasure." But
certainly Newcastle was not a man likely to keep to himself the
knowledge of such a fact as the family compact, or even the knowledge
that some people believed in the existence of such an arrangement. For
ourselves, we are quite prepared to assume that Walpole had heard of
the family compact, but that it did not disturb his calculations or
disarrange his policy. From some of his own letters written at the
time it is evident that he did not put any faith in the abiding nature
of family compacts between sovereigns. More than once he takes
occasion to point out that where political interests interfered family
arrangements went to the wall. As to the general rule Walpole was
quite right. We have seen the fact illustrated over and over again
even in our {34} own days. But Walpole appears to have overlooked the
important peculiarity of this family compact; it was an engagement in
which the political interests and the domestic interests of the
families were at last inextricably intertwined; it was a reciprocal
agreement for the protection of common interests and the attainment of
common objects. Such a compact might be trusted to hold good even
among Bourbon princes. On the whole, we are inclined to come to the
conclusion that if Walpole knew anything about the compact--and we
think he did know something about it--he was quite right in not
allowing it to disturb his policy of non-intervention, but that he was
not quite sound in his judgment if he held his peaceful course only
because he did not believe that such a family bond between members of
such a family would hold good. "Tenez, prince," the Duc d'Aumale wrote
to Prince Napoleon-Jérôme in a pamphlet which was once famous, "there
is one promise of a Bonaparte which we can always believe--the promise
that he will kill somebody." One pledge of a Bourbon with another
Bourbon the world could always rely upon--the pledge to maintain a
common interest and gratify a common ambition.
[Sidenote: 1735--Death of Berwick]
The war cost one illustrious life, that of the brave and noble Duke of
Berwick, whom Montesquieu likened to the best of the heroes of
Plutarch, or rather in whom Montesquieu declared that he saw the best
of Plutarch's heroes in the life. When Bolingbroke was denouncing the
set of men who surrounded James Stuart at St. Germains he specially
exempted Berwick from reproach. He spoke of Berwick as one "who has a
hundred times more capacity and credit than all the rest put together,"
but added significantly that he "is not to be reckoned of the Court,
though he has lodgings in the house." Berwick was the natural son of
James the Second and Arabella Churchill, sister to the Duke of
Marlborough. When the day of James's destiny as King of England was
over, Berwick gave his bright sword to the service of France. He
became a naturalized Frenchman and rose to the command {35} of the
French army. He won the splendid victory of Almanza over the combined
forces of England and her various allies. "A Roman by a Roman
valiantly o'ercome," defeated Englishmen might have exclaimed. He was
killed by a cannon-ball on ground not far from that whereon the great
Turenne had fallen--killed by the cannon-ball which, according to
Madame de Sevigne, was charged from all eternity for the hero's death.
Berwick was well deserving of a death in some nobler struggle than the
trumpery quarrel got up by ignoble ambitions and selfish, grasping
policies. He ought to have died in some really great cause; it was an
age of gallant soldiers--an age, however, that brought out none more
gallant than Berwick. Of him it might fairly be said that "his
mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes." This unmeaning little
war--unmeaning in the higher sense--was also the last campaign of the
illustrious Prince Eugene. Eugene did all that a general could do to
hold up against overwhelming odds, and but for him the victory of the
French would have been complete. The short remainder of his life was
passed in peace.
Walpole gave satisfaction to some of those who disliked his peace
policy by the energy with which he entered into the settlement of a
petty quarrel between Spain and Portugal. The dispute turned on a
merely personal question concerning the arrest and imprisonment of some
servants of the Portuguese minister at Madrid. Walpole was eagerly
appealed to by Portugal, and he took up her cause promptly. He went so
far as to make a formidable "naval demonstration," as we should now
call it, in her favor. But he was reasonable, and he was determined
that Portugal too should be reasonable. He recommended her to show a
willingness to come to terms, while at the same time he brought so much
pressure to bear on Spain that Spain at last consented to refer the
whole dispute to the arbitrament of England and France. The quarrel
was settled, and a convention was signed at Madrid in July, 1736. It
was a small matter, but it might at such a time have led {36} to
serious and increasing complications if it had been allowed to go too
far. Walpole unquestionably showed great judgment and firmness in his
conduct, and he bore himself with entire impartiality. Spain was in
the wrong, he thought, but not so absolutely or wilfully in the wrong
as to justify Portugal in standing out for too stringent terms of
reparation. At one time it seemed almost probable that the English
minister would have to employ force to coerce his own client into terms
as well as the other party to the suit. But Walpole "put his foot
down," as the modern phrase goes, and the danger was averted. Even
Cardinal Fleury, who co-operated with Walpole in bringing about the
settlement, thought at one time that Walpole was too strenuous and was
likely to overshoot the mark.
[Sidenote: 1736--Walpole's peace policy]
England had troubles enough of her own and at home about this time to
occupy and absorb the attention of the most devoted minister. To do
Walpole justice, it was no fault of his if the activity of English
statesmanship was compelled to engage itself rather in the composing of
petty quarrels between Spain and Portugal than in any continuous effort
to improve the condition of the population of these islands. He had at
least a full comprehension of the fact that domestic prosperity has a
good deal to do with sound finance, and that sound finance depends very
much upon a sound foreign policy. But the utter defeat of his excise
scheme had put Walpole out of the mood for making experiments which
might prove to be in advance of the age. He had no ambition to be in
advance of his age. He was not dispirited or disheartened; he was not
a man to be dispirited or disheartened, but he was made cautious. He
had got into a frame of mind with regard to financial reform something
like that into which the younger Pitt grew in his later years with
regard to Catholic emancipation: he knew what ought to be done, but
felt that he was not able to do it, and therefore shrugged his
shoulders and let the world go its way. Walpole was honestly proud of
his peace policy; more {37} than once he declared with exultation that
while there were fifty thousand men killed in Europe during the
struggle just ended, the field of dead did not contain the body of a
single Englishman. Seldom in the history of England has English
statesmanship had such a tale to tell.
{38}