Page images
PDF
EPUB

If Lewis XIV. could have contented himself with the acquisitions that were confirmed to him by the treaties of 1678 and 1679, and with the authority and reputation which he then gained, it is plain that he would have prevented the alliances that were afterwards formed against him, and that he might have regained his credit amongst the princes of the empire, where he had one family alliance by the marriage of his brother to the daughter of the Elector Palatine, and another by that of his son to the sister of the Elector of Bavaria, where Sweden was closely attached to him, and where the same principles of private interest would have soon attached others as closely. He might have remained not only the principal, but the directing power of Europe, and have held this rank with all the glory imaginable till the death of the King of Spain, or some other object of great ambition, had determined him to act another part. But instead of this, he continued to vex and provoke all those who were, unhappily for them, his neighbours, and that in many instances for trifles. An example of this kind occurs to me. On the death of the Duke of Deux Ponts, he seized that little inconsiderable duchy, without any regard to the indisputable right of the kings of Sweden, to the services that crown had rendered him, or to the want he might have of that alliance hereafter. The consequence was, that Sweden entered with the emperor, the King of Spain, the Elector of Bavaria, and the States General, into the alliance of guaranty, as it was called, about the year 1683, and into the famous league of Augsburg, in 1686.

Since I have mentioned this league, and since we may date from it a more general and more concerted opposition to France than there had been before, give me leave to recall some of the reflections that have presented themselves to my mind, in considering what I have read, and what I have heard related, concerning the passages of that time. They will be of use to form our judgment concerning later passages. If the King of France became an object of aversion on account of any invasions he made, any deviations from public faith, any barbarities exercised where his arms prevailed, or the persecution of his protestant subjects, the emperor deserved to be such an object, at least as much as he, on the same accounts. The emperor was so too, but with this difference relatively to the political system of the west. The Austrian ambition and bigotry exerted themselves in distant countries, whose interests were not considered as a part of this system; for otherwise there would have been as much reason for assisting the people of Hungary and of Transylvania against the emperor, as there had been formerly for assisting the people of the seven united provinces against Spain, or as there had been lately for assisting them against France; but the ambition and bigotry of Lewis XIV. were exerted in the Low Countries, on the Rhine, in Italy, and in Spain, in the very midst of this system, if I may say so, and with success that could not fail to subvert

82 LEWIS XIV. ACQUIRES LUXEMBURGH AND STRASBURGH.

it in time. The power of the house of Austria, that had been feared too long, was feared no longer; and that of the house of Bourbon, by having been feared too late, was now grown terrible. The emperor was so intent on the establishment of his absolute power in Hungary, that he exposed the empire doubly to desolation and ruin for the sake of it. He left the frontier almost quite defenceless on the side of the Rhine, against the inroads and ravages of France, and by showing no mercy to the Hungarians nor keeping any faith with them, he forced that miserable people into alliances with the Turk, who invaded the empire and besieged Vienna. Even this event had no effect upon them. Your lordship will find that Sobieski, king of Poland, who had forced the Turks to raise the siege, and had fixed the imperial crown that tottered on his head, could not prevail on him to take those measures by which alone it was possible to cover the empire, to secure the King of Spain, and to reduce that power who was probably one day to dispute with him this prince's succession. Tekeli and the malcontents made such demands as none but a tyrant could refuse-the preservation of their ancient privileges, liberty of conscience, the convocation of a free diet or parliament, and others of less importance. All was in vain. The war continued with them and with the Turks, and France was left at liberty to push her enterprises almost without opposition against Germany and the Low Countries. The distress in both was so great that the States General saw no other expedient for stopping the progress of the French arms than a cessation of hostilities, or a truce of twenty years, which they negotiated, and which was accepted by the emperor and the King of Spain, on the terms that Lewis XIV. thought fit to offer. By these terms he was to remain in full and quiet possession of all he had acquired since the years 1678 and 1679; among which acquisitions that of Luxemburg and that of Strasburg was comprehended. The conditions of this truce were so advantageous to France, that all her intrigues were employed to obtain a definitive treaty of peace upon the same conditions. But this was neither the interest nor the intention of the other contracting powers. The imperial arms had been very successful against the Turks. This success, as well as the troubles that followed upon it in the Ottoman armies and at the Porte, gave reasonable expectation of concluding a peace on that side, and, this peace concluded, the emperor and the empire and the King of Spain would have been in a much better posture to treat with France. With these views that were wise and just, the league of Augsburg was made between the emperor, the kings of Spain and Sweden as princes of the empire, and the other circles and princes. This league was purely defensive. An express article declared it to be so, and as it had no other regard, it was not only conformable to the laws and constitutions of the empire and to the practice of all nations, but even to the terms of the act of truce so lately concluded. This pretence there

fore for breaking the truce, seizing the electorate of Cologne, invading the palatinate, besieging Philipsburg, and carrying unexpected and undeclared war into the empire could not be supported, nor is it possible to read the reasons published by France at this time, and drawn from her fears of the imperial power, without laughter. As little pretence was there to complain, that the emperor refused to convert at once the truce into a definitive treaty; since if he had done so, he would have confirmed in a lump, and without any discussion, all the arbitrary decrees of those chambers or courts that France had erected to cover her usurpations, and would have given up almost a sixth part of the provinces of the empire, that France one way or other had possessed herself of. The pretensions of the Duchess of Orleans on the succession of her father and her brother, which were disputed by the then Elector Palatine and were to be determined by the laws and customs of the empire, afforded as little pretence for beginning this war as any of the former allegations. The exclusion of the cardinal of Furstenberg, who had been elected to the archbishopric of Cologne, was capable of being aggravated; but even in this case his most Christian majesty opposed his judgment and his authority against the judgment and authority of that holy father, whose eldest son he was proud to be called. In short, the true reason why Lewis XIV. began that cruel war with the empire, two years after he had concluded a cessation of hostilities for twenty, was this: he resolved to keep what he had got, and therefore he resolved to encourage the Turks to continue the war. He did this effectually by invading Germany at the very instant when the Sultan was sueing for peace. Notwithstanding this, the Turks were in treaty again the following year; and good policy should have obliged the emperor, since he could not hope to carry on this war and that against France at the same time, with vigour and effect, to conclude a peace with the least dangerous enemy of the two. The decision of his disputes with France could not be deferred, his designs against the Hungarians were in part accomplished, for his son was declared king, and the settlement of that crown in his family was made, and the rest of these as well as those that he formed against the Turks might be deferred. But the councils of Vienna judged differently and insisted even at this critical moment on the most exorbitant terms; on some of such a nature that the Turks showed more humanity and a better sense of religion in refusing than they in asking them. Thus the war went on in Hungary, and proved a constant diversion in favour of France during the whole course of that which Lewis XIV. began at this time; for the treaty of Carlowitz was posterior to that of Ryswick. The empire, Spain, England, and Holland engaged in the war with France, and on them the emperor left the burden of it. In the short war of 1667, he was not so much as a party, and instead of assisting the King of Spain, which it must be owned he was in good condition of doing, he

84 SPAIN AND THE INDIES ACQUIRED BY A FRENCH PRINCE.

bargained for dividing that prince's succession, as I have observed above. In the war of 1672, he made some feeble efforts. In this of 1688 he did still less, and in the war which broke out at the beginning of the present century he did nothing, at least after the first campaign in Italy, and after the engagements that England and Holland took by the grand alliance. In a word, from the time that an opposition to France became a common cause in Europe, the house of Austria has been a clog upon it in many instances, and of considerable assistance to it in none. The accession of England to this cause, which was brought about by the revolution of 1688, might have made amends, and more than amends one would think, for this defect, and have thrown superiority of power and of success on the side of the confederates, with whom she took part against France. This I say might be imagined, without overrating the power of England or undervaluing that of France, and it was imagined at that time. How it proved otherwise in the event; how France came triumphant out of the war that ended by the treaty of Ryswick, and though she gave up a great deal, yet preserved the greatest and the best part of her conquests and acquisitions made since the treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees ; how she acquired by the gift of Spain that whole monarchy for one of her princes, though she had no reason to expect the least part of it without a war at one time, nor the great lot of it even by a war at any time; in short, how she wound up advantageously the ambitious system she had been fifty years in weaving; how she concluded a war in which she was defeated on every side and exhausted, with little diminution of the provinces and barriers acquired to France, and with the quiet possession of Spain and the Indies to a prince of the house of Bourbon: all this, my lord, will be the subject of your researches, when you come down to the latter part of the last period of modern history.

LETTER VIII.

The same subject continued from the year one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight.

YOUR lordship will find, that the objects proposed by the alliance of 1689 between the emperor and the states, to which England acceded, and which was the foundation of the whole confederacy then formed, were no less than to restore all things to the terms of the Westphalian and Pyrenean treaties, by the war; and to preserve them in that state after the war, by a defensive alliance and guaranty of the same confederate powers against France. The particular as well as general meaning of this engagement was plain enough: and if it had not been

so, the sense of it would have been sufficiently determined by that separate article, in which England and Holland obliged themselves to 'assist the house of Austria, in taking and keeping possession of the 'Spanish monarchy, whenever the case should happen of the death of Charles II. without lawful heirs.' This engagement was double, and thereby relative to the whole political system of Europe, alike affected by the power and pretensions of France. Hitherto the power of France had been alone regarded, and her pretensions seemed to have been forgot or to what purpose should they have been remembered, whilst Europe was so unhappily constituted, that the States at whose expense she increased her power, and their friends and allies, thought that they did enough upon every occasion if they made some tolerable composition with her? They who were not in circumstances to refuse confirming present, were little likely to take effectual measures against future, usurpations. But now, as the alarm was greater than ever, by the outrages that France had committed, and the intrigues she had carried on, by the little regard she had shown to public faith, and by the airs of authority she had assumed twenty years together: so was the spirit against her raised to a higher pitch, and the means of reducing her power, or at least of checking it, were increased. The princes and states who had neglected or favoured the growth of this power, which all of them had done in their turns, saw their error, saw the necessity of repairing it, and saw that unless they could check the power of France, by uniting a power superior to hers, it would be impossible to hinder her from succeeding in her great designs on the Spanish succession. The court of England had submitted not many years before to abet her usurpations, and the King of England had stooped to be her pensioner. But the crime was not national. On the contrary, the nation had cried out loudly against it, even whilst it was committing; and as soon as ever the abdication of King James, and the elevation of the Prince of Orange to the throne of England happened, the nation engaged with all imaginable zeal in the common cause of Europe, to reduce the exorbitant power of France, to prevent her future and to revenge her past attempts: for even a spirit of revenge prevailed, and the war was a war of anger as well as of interest.

Unhappily this zeal was neither well conducted, nor well seconded. It was zeal without success, in the first of the two wars that followed the year 1688; and zeal without knowledge, in both of them. I enter into no detail concerning the events of these two wars. This only I observe on the first of them, that the treaties of Ryswick were far from answering the ends proposed and the engagements taken by the first grand alliance. The power of France, with respect to extent of dominions and strength of barrier, was not reduced to the terms of the Pyrenean treaty, no not to those of the treaty of Nimeghen. Lorraine was restored indeed with very considerable reserves, and the places

« EelmineJätka »