WE COME now to the last and greatest transaction in Lewis XIV's
reign--the acquisition of the Spanish crown.
The idea of a predominant Power in Europe was part of absolutism. It
proceeded from the same love of authority, the same pride of
greatness, the same disregard for the equal rights of men, the same
pretensions to superiority and prerogative, international as well as
national. The position of the king in Europe was security for his
position in France itself. Subjects were more willing to submit to
one to whom foreigners submitted. In three successive wars Lewis had
striven for this advantage, and had made himself felt as the public
enemy and the vigilant disturber of the peace of Europe. If he added
Spain to his dominions by legal and pacific means, by negotiated
treaty or testamentary bequest, it would be more legitimate than his
former attempts at mastery. His mother was a Spanish princess. His
wife was a Spanish princess. The emperor was in the same position,
but in each case the Queen of France was the elder sister. Both of
the French queens had resigned their claims; but Lewis had not
confirmed his wife's renunciation, as her dowry was left unpaid; and
it was not confirmed by the national authorities in Spain.
In 1668, in spite of the will of Philip IV giving the succession to
Austria, Leopold, who at that time had no children, had been ready for
an equitable partition. But in 1689, when the Maritime Powers, that
is, when William III had urgent need of Austria in the coalition
against France, they promised the undivided monarchy of Spain to
Leopold's second son. That agreement was superseded by the peace of
Ryswick. And in the interval a new claimant was born, with evidently
better right than the young archduke. For the archduke was the son of
a second marriage. The emperor had only a daughter by his Spanish
wife, who married the elector Max Emmanuel of Bavaria, and gave birth
to a son in 1692. Under the will of Philip IV, the late King of
Spain, that prince was the lawful heir. He was not the imperial
candidate; for Leopold had required his own daughter to surrender her
claim, that his crowns might not pass from Habsburg to Wittelsbachs.
For the very reason that he was neither a Habsburg nor a Bourbon, the
electoral Prince of Bavaria became the candidate of William, and he
agreed with Lewis that he should inherit Spain and the Indies, Italy
and the Low Countries to be divided. By this, which is known as the
First Partition Treaty, though in reality it was the second, England
obtained nothing, except the prospect of peace through a friendly
understanding with France, and it alienated the emperor and outraged
Spain. That foreigners should dispose at their own convenience of the
empire which had been built up by Spanish hands was an intolerable
offence to Spaniards. They refused to be dismembered without even
having been consulted. With all her dominions, with the united crowns
of twenty-two kingdoms, Spain was unprosperous and insecure. Her
vitality was kept up by her foreign possessions. Brabant, the
Milanese, Campania, Apulia, were the richest portions of Europe, and
neither France, nor the empire, nor England possessed the like.
Deprived of these, the monarchy would decline quickly; for with all
her pride, and her fame, and her unsetting sun, Spain was visibly
going down. It was their policy and their resolution that the crown,
though it must pass away to strangers, should pass undiminished. That
it was about to pass away, all men knew.
On 19th September, three weeks before Lewis and William concluded
their treaty, the primate assured the French ambassador that they must
proceed as if the king was a dead man. The king himself knew his
danger. His wife was a sister of the empress, and they were in the
Austrian interest. So much so, that having made a will in favour of
the Bavarian prince, Charles revoked it; the ambassador Harrach, the
Prince of Hesse, who commanded in Catalonia, the queen, when her
confidant was not bribed on the other side, were active for the
archduke. But when the Partition Treaty became known, in November
1698, the king made another will, and publicly announced that his heir
was the young prince of Bavaria. He thus took the candidate of France
and England, assigning to him the whole, not a part. It was an
attempt to preserve unity and avert partition by adopting the chosen
claimant of the partitioning Powers. The English parliament, intent
on peace, and suspicious of William's foreign policy, which was
directed by him personally, with Dutch advisers, to the exclusion of
ministers, reduced the army to 7000 men. William carried his distrust
of Englishmen so far that he requested the imperial ambassador
Wratislaw, an important man in his own country, to consult nobody but
the Dutchman Albemarle. The public men of this country, he said,
revealed every secret to their friends.
Six months later, both the will and the treaty were void and annulled
by the death of the Bavarian prince, by small-pox, at Brussels, where
his father was governor. The work had to be begun over again. The
feeling of all Spanish statesmen in favour of maintaining the
integrity of the monarchy was unchanged. That could be done only by
choosing a Bourbon or a Habsburg. No other person could compete. The
court was divided simply into an Austrian and a French party. The
king's choice reverted to his nephew, the archduke. But those who had
preferred the electoral prince were opposed to the Austrian, and
became the partisans of France. They were a majority, and
preponderant. If it could be made her interest to keep up the Spanish
empire France was better able to do it than Austria. Especially now
that England was detached from her ally the emperor. For William
concluded with Lewis a second Treaty of Partition, giving Spain, the
Indies, and the Netherlands to the archduke, the Italian possessions
to France. Austria was no party to this agreement, and openly
preferred Italy to all the rest. In England it was received with
extreme coldness, and in Spain with indignation. In the summer of the
year 1700 the king's illness became alarming. The skill of his
physicians being exhausted, spiritual remedies were sought, and he was
exorcised. The devil declared that the king was possessed.
Subsequently he admitted that this was a falsehood, which surprised
nobody.
The great question, whether the Spanish monarchy should remain united
or should go to pieces, reached a preliminary conclusion on 3rd
October, 1700. Charles appeared to be sinking, when he signed the
last will which Portocarrero and the friends of the French had drawn
up, with some marks of haste. He lived on four weeks longer, but
never had the strength to revoke the act which disinherited his
family. He left Spain, with all dependencies, to the Duke of Anjou,
second son of the Dauphin, and if Anjou ever came to the throne in
France, then he should be succeeded in Spain by his younger brother,
so that the two crowns could never be united. Failing the French
line, the succession was to pass to the archduke; and if the archduke
came to the throne of Austria, then to the Duke of Savoy. There also
the union of the crowns was provided against. The policy of all this
was obvious. The artifice consisted in the omission of the House of
Orleans. For the Duke of Orleans, descending from Anne of Austria,
was nearer than the archduke Charles. At the same time he was farther
removed from the throne of France than the Duke of Anjou, less likely,
therefore, to alarm the Powers. It might be hoped that he would be
near enough to Lewis to secure the preservation of the Spanish empire,
and not near enough to threaten European independence. A time came
when the allies thought of him as a possible substitute, and offered
him a principality between France and Spain. That is, he suggested
himself as a better alternative to Anjou, and they thought of giving
him Navarre and Languedoc. Put forward at a time when the Maritime
Powers were not committed to the archduke, he might have been
accepted. But he was not the candidate of Lewis. The object of the
Spaniards was to make sure that Lewis would break his engagement with
William III, that he would give up the partition and accept the
succession, preferring the risk of war for so great a prize to the
chance of a pacific division of the spoil. This they ensured by the
provision that Spain, if it did not belong to the French line, should
pass to the Austrian; that, failing Anjou and his brother, the
Austrian should take his place.
The will of Charles II shows a distinct animosity against the Maritime
and Protestant Powers; and a rumour spread that it had been written
under the influence of the pope, who dreaded the presence of Dutch and
English sailors and factors in South America. A letter was produced
purporting to contain the advice of Innocent XII in the matter; and
the following pontiff, Clement XI, was obliged to disavow it.
Before the death of Charles II the nature of the will he had made was
known at Versailles. Tallard, who had negotiated the Partition Treaty,
was beside himself with anger. He convinced Torcy, he convinced Lewis
himself, that they must not accept the succession. On 4th November the
king sent word to William that he remained true to the scheme of
Partition to which he had pledged himself. "I shall fulfil my
engagements," he said, "in spite of any offers that may be made to
me." He assured Leopold that he would never accept the whole
succession. It was safer to be content with a share, under the
auspicious sanction of the Maritime Powers. But Torcy having shaken
off the too eager Marshal Tallard, changed his mind. He urged that
neither the whole succession nor a part of it could be had without
fighting, as Austria was as much opposed to the partition, as to the
acceptance of the will by France. Torcy was not yet the great man he
became during his long administration. But his argument carried
conviction, and Lewis argued that his grandson should accept the
proffered throne, and that Bourbons should reign where the Habsburgs
had reigned for a century and a half. He was not bound by any
engagement to the emperor, who was no party to the Partition
Treaty. He was bound by that treaty to King William; but it was
uncertain whether William had the support of his two nations. The
funds rose at Amsterdam; and in England the king observed that
everybody preferred the will to the treaty. For the Partition Treaty
had stipulated nothing for English interests, nothing, therefore,
worth fighting for. And England had no territorial advantage to claim.
The commercial, economical, and pacific spirit was evident, both in
England and Holland. On the other side, there was the strong will and
infinite dexterity of William. In the last Partition Treaty he had
betrayed this weakness of his position, and had given way to the
skilled diplomacy of France. Lewis did not believe that he would
prevail over the public opinion of his country. And if he did
prevail, his position would be less formidable than before. Lewis now
had Spain on his side, and all the dependencies of Spain. He also had
Bavaria and Savoy. In the last war he had been unsuccessful at sea,
and in the Irish expedition, which was carried on beyond the sea by
his naval, not his military administration. In the coming war he
would trust less to his fleet than to his troops, which had never been
unsuccessful in a general action. He resolved to defy the Dutch and
the English, and to seize every attainable advantage. The Spanish
ambassador had exclaimed, "The Pyrenees have melted away." Lewis now
announced that his grandson was not to renounce his right to the
throne of France. In the Barrier Fortresses the Dutch held garrisons.
Lewis sent them home and occupied the places himself. "Dutchmen were
not wanted," he said, "to protect one Bourbon against the other." In
August 1701 he obtained for French traders the asiento, the profitable
and coveted monopoly in negro slaves. In September he prohibited
English imports. Then, on the 16th, he did one thing more, one thing
too much even for a nation of economists and calculators.
The acceptance of the Spanish succession by France was the frustration
of William's efforts during thirty years. He had striven and made war
for peace and civilisation against wilful attack and the reign of
force. That good cause was defeated now, and the security of national
rights and international conventions was at an end. The craving for
empire and the hegemony of Europe had prevailed. The temper of England
compelled him, in April 1701, to acknowledge Philip of Anjou. The
country, he said, could not understand the refusal to acknowledge a
king welcomed by the whole of Spain. He advised the Emperor to have
the German princes with him, and to begin the attack. He himself would
arm meanwhile, and his own people, before long, would drive him into
war. He relied on the arrogance of the French, and this calculation,
the measures by which he brought public opinion on to his side, are
the greatest achievement of his career.
As it became apparent that England was to lose, not, like Austria, a
visionary prospect, but its commercial existence, during the summer of
1701 the spirit of parliament began to be roused. William, watching
the flow of the patriotic tide, concluded with Austria and Holland the
treaty of The Hague, which divided Europe, for the first time, into a
Latin and a German half. Austria was to obtain that which it desired
above all things, dominion over Italy. The Maritime Powers were to
retain their commercial privileges in Spain, and everything they could
make their own in America. France was to be excluded from
transatlantic markets; but nothing was said as to Spain. Implicitly,
Philip V was acknowledged. The Maritime Powers aimed much more at
prosperity than at power. Their objects were not territorial, but
commercial. The date of this treaty, which was to cost so much blood,
was 7th September.
William was moving more rapidly than public opinion, but public
opinion was not far behind. The country was committed to war with
France at the very beginning of that fatal September. The treaty had
been signed nine days, when James II died at St. Germains. Lewis
acknowledged the son as he had acknowledged the father--the one as the
other, a king in partibus. It was a platonic engagement, involving no
necessary political consequences. Since the treaty of Ryswick, Lewis
treated William as king, though there was a James II. He did not
cease so to treat him because there was a James III. To a prince who,
the week before, had contrived a warlike coalition against him, a
coalition which soon proved more formidable than all those which had
preceded it, he owed no more than the letter of their agreements. The
decisive step towards open hostilities was taken by the King of
England, not by the King of France. Parliament had just passed the
Act of Succession. Lewis's declaration in favour of the Stuarts
appeared to be in defiance of the law in favour of the Guelphs.
England had not dared to question the right of the Spaniards to
regulate the succession. England could not permit interference with
her own.
This declaration of Lewis XIV, imprudent but not unprovoked, gave to
William what he wanted. It supplied a strong current of national
feeling. The nation was ardent on his side. He had succeeded at
last. The war with France, for the partition of the Spanish monarchy,
would be carried on with determination under the coming reign. For
William knew that Anne would soon be queen. It was also known at
Paris, for William had consulted the French king's physician, and
there were no illusions. The strange impolicy of Lewis's action may
be explained by the belief that another than William of Orange would
appear at the head of the allied armies in the next campaign. That
the change of commander would be the greatest calamity that had
befallen France since Agincourt was not foreseen.
In November 1701 Parliament was dissolved, and a majority was returned
prepared for war, prepared to support the policy of the Grand
Alliance. What made it formidable was that the Tories themselves were
warlike. The Whigs were warlike because it was their nature, since
France had declared itself for the Stuarts; also because they and
their friends were interested in pushing trade with the oceanic world,
which was mainly Spanish. But it was not, at first, a Whig war. On
9th March, 1702 they obtained the majority. They were 235 to 221.
William III was dying. He had borne the accident well by which he
broke his collar-bone. He sat at dinner that evening, and was
expected to recover in a few weeks. But he fell asleep one day near
an open window. Nobody had the courage to shut it, and he caught a
chill, of which, in five days, he died. His prestige was lost to the
cause of the allies. At the same time, William was a Dutch king,
working with Dutchmen only, Heinsius, Bentinck, Keppel, for Dutch as
much as for English objects. While he lived there was no danger that
the interests of his own countrymen would be made subordinate to those
of England. There was no sign of Holland taking the second place, of
Holland being sacrificed to England. That security was now over. The
leadership passed to England. In the field, the Dutch were far ahead.
The understanding was that the English were to be 40,000, the
Austrians 90,000, and the Dutch 102,000. But whereas the Dutch
ultimately put 160,000 men into line, the English, in the greatest
battle of the war, at Malplaquet, were under 8000, or less than
one-twelfth of the whole force engaged.
What gave to this country the advantage in the war of the Spanish
Succession was the genius and the overwhelming personal ascendency of
Marlborough. One of the Dutch deputies, who did not love him, who was
not even quite convinced as to his qualities as a soldier, describes
him as perfectly irresistible, not so much by energy and visible
power, as by his dexterity and charm. And this in spite of defects
that were notorious and grotesque. Everybody knows, and perhaps
nobody believes, the story of his blowing out the candle when he found
that his visitor had no papers to read. Many years later the story
was told, when an officer present stated that he was the visitor whom
the duke had treated so parsimoniously. It is due to him that England
became one of the great Powers of the world, and, next to France, the
first of the Powers. And it was not his doing, but the doing of his
rivals, that the allies were sacrificed. The Dutch had no such
splendid personality, and though they had their full share in the war,
they lost by the result. The character of the struggle changed by the
death of William and the substitution of Marlborough, who depended,
more and more, on the support of the Whigs. In one of his last
conversations William had said: "We seek nothing but the security
which comes from the balance of power." Our policy was not maintained
throughout on that exalted level.
The War of Succession began in Italy, by the attempt of Eugene to
recover Milan, which reverted to the empire on the death of Charles
II. It was, as it were, a private affair, involving no declaration of
war, no formal breach with France. But the French were in Lombardy,
and, with the support of the Duke of Savoy, they were able to check
the Austrian advance. Eugene went home to Vienna to organise and
direct and urge the exertions of his government. On his return, after
a very memorable absence, Victor Amadeus had deserted his French
alliance, and had attached himself to the Austrians. A French army
laid siege to Turin, and Eugene, coming up the right bank of the Po to
his rescue, defeated the French, raised the siege, and established for
the first time the domination of Austria over Italy. He was repulsed
in his attempt on Toulon; but the Italian war was at an end, and the
emperor triumphant. In Germany the valley of the Danube, which is the
road to Vienna, was open to the French, because the elector of Bavaria
was their ally against his father-in-law, the emperor. The
Imperialists were in danger, and the Dutch, more solicitous of the
Belgian frontier before them than of what went on hundreds of miles
away, on the long line from Strasburg to the distant centre of
Austria, refused to let Marlborough take their troops away to another
seat of war in Southern Germany.
Marlborough, sheltered by the complicity of Heinsius, politely
disregarded their orders and started on his famous march, by
Ehrenbreitstein and Heilbronn, meeting Eugene on his way. Eugene, at
that moment, was the most renowned commander in Europe. Marlborough
was better known as a corrupt intriguer, who owed his elevation to the
influence of his wife at court, who would disgrace himself for money,
who had sought favour at St. Germains by betraying the expedition to
Brest. Blenheim altered the relative position of the two men in the
eyes of the world. It was known that the day had been won, not by the
persistent slaughter of brave soldiers, but by an inspiration of
genius executed under heavy fire with all the perfection of art. In
the midst of the struggle Marlborough had suddenly changed his order
of battle, gathered his squadrons on a new line, and sent them against
the French centre, with infantry supports. He did what Napoleon was
vainly entreated to do in his last engagement. That is what suggested
the simile of the angel, and what Addison meant by the words:--
Rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm.
The great Eugene had done well, as he always did. The Englishman had
risen in a single day to the foremost rank of generals. And England
rose with him. There had not been such a defeat for sixty years,
since Conde, at Rocroy, established the military reputation of France.
The French retreated to the Rhine, and on that side Austria was safe.
In Spain the issue was very different. Philip was thoroughly safe
during three years of reign, and the archduke would have been glad to
content himself with what could be secured in Italy. But the English
felt that their trade interests would be safer in Spain and the Indies
under a Habsburg than under a Bourbon. They brought the archduke to
Lisbon in 1703, having concluded with the Portuguese that treaty which
made them commercial dependants on England, and which has been the
cause of much port wine and so much gout. It was a disastrous change
of policy. The English destroyed the French fleet at Vigo, with many
tons of American silver. They took Gibraltar and Minorca, without
understanding their importance. They failed to defend the one; and
they six times offered the other for an exchange. But on land they
were utterly defeated, at Almanza and Brihuega, and the archduke never
actually reigned over much more than Catalonia. There, having
restored the Aragonese Constitution, he succeeded in inspiring a
sentiment of loyalty, and repulsed his rival. He was never able to
maintain himself at Madrid. On that seat of war the French had much
the best of it. They lost Germany at Blenheim in 1704, and Italy at
Turin in 1706.
The deciding campaigns were in Belgium, where there were many
fortresses, and progress was necessarily slow. After Marlborough's
victory at Ramillies in 1706 the French lost ground, and when the
princes, as they were called, took the field together, no French
marshal had a chance. For Marlborough was now a prince of the empire;
and Eugene, having driven the enemy out of Germany and Italy, was
again by his side, thirsting for something to do. At Oudenarde, where
he was present, with no troops of his own, at a critical moment he led
a successful charge. Together they conquered Lille; and together they
defeated Villars at Malplaquet. There, in the summer of 1709, the
five years of constant victory which began at Blenheim came to an end.
After Turin and Ramillies Lewis had been willing to treat. He was
profoundly discouraged; and when Torcy came to The Hague in 1709 to
meet the Triumvirate, Heinsius, Eugene, and Marlborough, he gave up
almost every point. He even agreed that France should furnish men and
money to drive Philip V out of Spain, where he felt quite safe and
refused every summons. Lewis, in return, asked for Naples, and Naples
only, without Sicily. The allies could have everything else, and
could have compelled him to restore all the ill-gotten acquisitions of
his reign. They were unwilling to be at the trouble of one more
campaign in the Peninsula, where they had met with so much misfortune.
They required that Lewis should undo his own offending deed, and
himself compel his grandson to resign the Spanish throne.
Marlborough, holding a position such as no Englishman had ever
enjoyed, was preponderant in their councils. He aspired to be
captain-general for life, and rejected an enormous sum with which
France offered to repay his advocacy of peace. The attempt to prolong
war for his own private advantage is the deadliest of his crimes.
Lewis, in despair, made an appeal to his people, and a thrill of
genuine indignation ran through the unhappy country. The tide began
to turn. At Malplaquet, the greatest battle fought in modern Europe
before Napoleon, the allies lost 23,000 out of less than 100,000; and
the French not half so many.
A much graver change was coming over the spirit of the English
nation. As the Whigs offered nothing better than the continuation of
war, Toryism gained ground; and with Toryism, the Church. The
Duchess of Marlborough was supplanted in the queen's favour; the Whigs
went out of office; and the new ministers dismissed Marlborough and
appointed Ormonde to command in his stead. With the aid of an obscure
French priest, who acted as chaplain to the Imperial ambassador, they
began a secret negotiation with Torcy. They stipulated that the Dutch
should be kept out of it, and should not be listened to, if they made
proposals of their own; also that their conditions should be
understood to come from the initiative of France. Torcy responded
heartily. His first letter is dated five days after the death of the
Emperor Joseph. By that event, the Archduke Charles succeeded to his
throne. Joseph died 17th April. Four months earlier, 23rd December,
Harley, by his intermediary, Gautier, informed Torcy that England
would give up Spain and the Indies to the Bourbon king, and would
desert the allies as soon as trade interests were provided for. The
surrender of that which the English had claimed from 1703 to 1710, the
return, in spite of success and glory, to the moderate policy laid
down by William in 1701, was not caused by the prospect of the union
of the crowns on the head of Charles. Harley was afraid that the
archduke would make those terms himself. For it was known that the
Austrians regarded Spain and its colonies as more burdensome than
profitable. When Harley was stabbed by Guiscard, and was laid up with
his wound, the secret of the negotiations passed into St. John's
hands. His treatment of the allies was perfidious; but they obtained
almost as much as they really wanted.
Eugene, deserted by the English forces under Ormonde, was beaten by
Villars at Denain, and afterwards, by no fault of the English, at
Friedlingen. Then the emperor made his own peace at Rastadt. At
Utrecht, the Dutch secured a favourable tariff, the right of garrison
in a line of fortified towns, from Ghent to Namur, and the daring
Torcy had so thoroughly penetrated the weakness of England, in
consequence of party divisions, that he concluded a disastrous war by
negotiation. France retained her own territory, practically
undiminished, recovering Lille, and acquiring, for the younger branch
of the royal house, Spain and the Spanish colonies. It gained
infinitely more than either Holland or England. Marshal La Feuillade
asked Bolingbroke why he had let them off so easily. The answer was:
Because we were no longer afraid of you. Philip V retained all that
was legitimately Spanish, in Europe and America, excepting the two
fortresses conquered by England, Gibraltar and Port Mahon. He refused
to give up Corunna. But he renounced his claim in the succession to
his grandfathers crown. Bolingbroke betrayed the allies, and he
disgraced his country by the monopoly of the slave trade; but the
distribution was not unfair to the contracting parties, and the share
of England was not excessive. We acquired Newfoundland, Nova Scotia,
and the Hudson Bay territory, and, in addition to the asiento, the
right of trading in the possessions of the House of Bourbon--in fact,
the commerce of the world. And our revolutionary system, the
permanent exclusion of the Stuarts, received the sanction of Europe.
It was the condemnation of the principle of non-resistance, which had
carried the Tories to power, and the perpetuation of Whiggism.
Bolingbroke did not intend that the great achievement of his life
should serve the purpose of his enemies, and he gravitated towards the
Stuarts, the true representatives of the cause to which Sacheverell
had given renewed vitality. Harley had opened, through Berwick,
negotiations with St. Germains, and had thereby secured the help of
the Jacobite organisation. Bolingbroke went further. He believed
that the Elector of Hanover could not be prevented from coming in, but
that he would soon be driven out again. He said that he was too
unintelligent to understand and manage parties, too much accustomed to
have his own way to submit to govern under constitutional control. He
promised that King James would be restored. And the French concluded
peace at Utrecht in the belief that they were dealing with a Jacobite,
that their concession in regard to the crown of England amounted to
nothing, that, by yielding now, they would secure hereafter the
elevation of a dependent dynasty. Under that illusion they combined
with Bolingbroke to overreach themselves and to institute party
government, under the supremacy of the Whigs.