Bargained for dividing the grine's session as I tre served abcre In the var of 16mm he made some feeble es bis & 1629 he did sladite ve bike of the present century he did nothing, at least after the first campaign in Italy, and after the engagements the England and Holland took by the grand allance In a word, from the time that an opposition to France became a common cause in Europe, the house of Austria bas been a dog spon it in many instances, and of considerable assistance to it in none The accession of England to this case, wid n 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, withon 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 desi, yet preserved the greatest and the best part of her conquests and aoquisitions made tinge the treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees ; how she aspired by the gift of Spain that whole monarchy for one of her princes, though the had no reason to expect the least part of it without a war 2 one time, nor the great lot of it even by a war at any time; in short, Low the wound up advantageously the ambitious system the 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

6

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

86 CONTINENTAL POLITICS.

WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION.

taken or usurped on the other side of the Rhine; but then Strasbourg was yielded up absolutely to France by the emperor, and by the empire. The concessions to Spain were great, but so were the conquests and the encroachments made upon her by France, since the treaty of Nimeghen; and she got little at Ryswick, I believe nothing more than she had saved at Nimeghen before. All these concessions however, as well as the acknowledgment of King William, and others made by Lewis XIV. after he had taken Ath and Barcelona, even during the course of the negotiations, compared with the losses and repeated defeats of the allies and the ill state of the confederacy, surprised the generality of mankind, who had not been accustomed to so much moderation and generosity on the part of this prince. But the pretensions of the house of Bourbon, on the Spanish succession, remained the same. Nothing had been done to weaken them; nothing was preparing to oppose them; and the opening of this succession was visibly at hand, for Charles II. had been in immediate danger of dying about this time. His death could not be a remote event; and all the good queen's endeavours to be got with child had proved ineffectual. The league dissolved, all the forces of the confederates dispersed, and many disbanded; France continuing armed, her forces by sea and land increased and held in readiness to act on all sides, it was plain that the confederates had failed in the first object of the grand alliance, that of reducing the power of France; by succeeding in which alone they could have been able to keep the second engagement, that of securing the succession of Spain to the house of Austria.

After this peace what remained to be done? In the whole nature of things there remained but three. To abandon all care of the Spanish succession was one; to compound with France upon this succession was another; and to prepare, like her, during the interval of peace, to make an advantageous war whenever Charles II. should die was a third. Now the first of these was to leave Spain, and in leaving Spain to leave all Europe, in some sort at the mercy of France : since whatever disposition the Spaniards should make of their crown, they were quite unable to support it against France: since the emperor could do little without his allies and since Bavaria, the third pretender, could do still less, and might find, in such a case, his account perhaps better in treating with the house of Bourbon than with that of Austria. More needs not be said on this head; but on the other two, which I shall consider together, several facts are proper to be mentioned, and several reflections necessary to be made.

We might have counter-worked, no doubt, in their own methods of policy, the councils of France, who made peace to dissolve the confederacy, and great concessions, with very suspicious generosity, to gain the Spaniards: we might have waited like them, that is in arms, the death of Charles II., and have fortified in the mean time the dis

positions of the king, the court and people of Spain, against the pretensions of France: we might have made the peace, which was made some time after that, between the emperor and the Turks, and have obliged the former at any rate to have secured the peace of Hungary, and to have prepared, by these and other expedients, for the war that would inevitably break out on the death of the King of Spain.

But all such measures were rendered impracticable, by the emperor chiefly. Experience had shown that the powers who engaged in alliance with him must expect to take the whole burden of his cause upon themselves; and that Hungary would maintain a perpetual diversion in favour of France, since he could not resolve to lighten the tyrannical yoke ho had established in that country and in Transylvania, nor his ministers to part with the immense confiscations they had appropriated to themselves. Past experience showed this; and the experience that followed confirmed it very fatally. But further; there was not only little assistance to be expected from him by those who should engage in his quarrel: he did them hurt of another kind, and deprived them of many advantages by false measures of policy and unskilful negotiations. Whilst the death of Charles II. was expected almost daily, the court of Vienna seemed to have forgot the court of Madrid, and all the pretensions on that crown. When the count D'Harrach was sent thither, the imperial councils did something worse. The King of Spain was ready to declare the archduke Charles his successor; he was desirous to have this young prince sent into Spain: the bent of the people was in favour of Austria, or it had been so, and might have been easily turned the same way again. At court no cabal was yet formed in favour of Bourbon, and a very weak intrigue was on foot in favour of the electoral Prince of Bavaria. Not only Charles might have been on the spot ready to reap the succession, but a German army might have been there to defend it; for the court of Madrid insisted on having 12,000 of these troops, and rather than not have them offered to contribute to the payment of them privately ; because it would have been too unpopular among the Spaniards, and too prejudicial to the Austrian interest, to have had it known that the emperor declined the payment of a body of his own troops that were demanded to secure that monarchy to his son. These proposals were half refused, and half evaded; and in return to the offer of the crown of Spain to the archduke, the imperial councils asked the government of Milan for him. They thought it a point of deep policy to secure the Italian provinces, and to leave to England and Holland the care of the Low Countries, of Spain, and the Indies. By declining these proposals the house of Austria renounced in some sort the whole succession; at least she gave England and Holland reasons, whatever engagements these powers had taken, to refuse the harder task of putting her into possession by force; when she might, and would not

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CHANGED POLITICS WHEN WILLIAM WON ENGLAND.

procure, to the English and Dutch and her other allies, the easier task of defending her in this possession.

I said that the measures mentioned above were rendered impracticable by the emperor; chiefly, because they were rendered so likewise by other circumstances at the same conjuncture. A principal one I shall mention, and it shall be drawn from the state of our own country, and the disposition of our people. Let us take this up from King William's accession to our crown. During the whole progress that Lewis XIV. made towards such exorbitant power, as gave him well grounded hopes of acquiring at last to his family the Spanish monarchy, England had been either an idle spectator of all that passed on the continent, or a faint and uncertain ally against France, or a warm and sure ally on her side, or a partial mediator between her and the powers confederated in their common defence. The revolution produced as great a change in our foreign conduct, as in our domestic establishment; and our nation engaged with great spirit in the war of 1688. But then this spirit was rash, presumptuous, and ignorant, ill conducted at home, and ill seconded abroad: all which has been touched already. We had waged no long wars on the continent, nor been very deeply concerned in foreign confederacies, since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The history of Edward III., however, and of the first twelve or fifteen years of Henry VI., might have taught us some general but useful lessons, drawn from remote times, but applicable to the present. So might the example of Henry VIII., who squandered away great sums for the profit of taking a town, or the honour of having an emperor in his pay; and who divided afterwards by treaty the kingdom of France between himself and Charles V., with success so little answerable to such an undertaking, that it is hard to believe his imperial and English majesty were both in earnest. If they were so, they were both the bubbles of their presumption. But it seems more likely that Henry VIII. was bubbled on this occasion by the great hopes that Charles held out to flatter his vanity: as he had been bubbled by his father-in-law, Ferdinand, at the beginning of his reign, in the war of Navarre. But these reflections were not made, nor had we enough considered the example of Elizabeth, the last of our princes who had made any considerable figure abroad, and from whom we might have learned to act with vigour but to engage with caution, and always to proportion our assistance according to our abilities and the real necessities of our allies. The frontiers of France were now so fortified, her commerce and her naval force were so increased, her armies were grown so numerous, her troops were so disciplined, so inured to war, and so animated by a long course of successful campaigns, that they who looked on the situation of Europe could not fail to see how difficult the enterprise of reducing her power was become. Difficult as it was, we were obliged, on every account and by reasons of all kinds, to en