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the interests and tempers of all the courts of Europe was unrivalled. But there was one important point which must not be left out of consideration, and about which his servants might perhaps be better informed than himself, the temper of their own country. It was, the chancellor wrote, their duty to tell his majesty that the recent elections had indicated the public feeling in a manner which had not been expected, but which could not be mistaken. The spirit which had borne the nation up through nine years of exertions and sacrifices seemed to be dead. The people were sick of taxes: they hated the thought of war. As it would, in such circumstances, be no easy matter to form a coalition capable of resisting the pretensions of France, it was most desirable that she should be induced to withdraw those pretensions; and it was not to be expected that she would withdraw them without securing for herself a large compensation. The principle of the treaty of Loo, therefore, the English ministers cordially approved. But whether the articles of that treaty were or were not too favorable to the house of Bourbon, and whether the house of Bourbon was likely faithfully to observe them, were questions about which Somers delicately hinted that he and his colleagues felt some misgivings. They had their fears that Lewis might be playing false. They had their fears also that, possessed of Sicily, he would be master of the trade of the Levant; and that, possessed of Guipuscoa, he would be able at any moment to push an army into the heart of Castile. But they had been reassured by the thought that their sovereign thoroughly understood this department of politics, that he had fully considered all these things, that he had neglected no precaution, and that the concessions which he had made to France were the smallest which could have averted the calamities impending over Christendom. It was added that the service which his majesty had rendered to the house of Bavaria gave him a right to ask for some return. Would it be too much to expect from the gratitude of the prince who was soon to be a great king, some relaxation of the rigorous system which excluded the English trade from the Spanish colonies? Such a relaxation would greatly endear his majesty to his subjects.

With these suggestions the chancellor sent off the powers which the king wanted. They were drawn up by Vernon

with his own hand, and sealed in such a manner that no subordinate officer was let into the secret. Blanks were

left, as the king had directed, for the names of two commissioners. But Somers gently hinted that it would be proper to fill those blanks with the names of persons who were English by naturalization if not by birth, and who would therefore be responsible to Parliament.

The king now had what he wanted from England. The peculiarity of the Batavian polity threw some difficulties in his way but every difficulty yielded to his authority and to the dexterous management of Heinsius. And, in truth, the treaty could not but be favorably regarded by the States-General; for it had been carefully framed with the especial object of preventing France from obtaining any accession of territory or influence on the side of the Netherlands; and Dutchmen, who remembered the terrible year when the camp of Lewi had been pitched between Utrecht and Amsterdam, were delighted to find that he was not to add to his dominions a single fortress in their neighborhood, and were quite willing to buy him off with whole provinces under the Pyrenees and the Apennines. The sanction both of the federal and the provincial governments was given with ease and expedition; and in the evening of the fourth of September, 1698, the treaty was signed. As to the blanks in the English powers, William had attended to his chancellor's suggestion, and had inserted the names of Sir Joseph Williamson, minister at the Hague, a born Englishman, and of Portland, a naturalized Englishman. The Grand Pensionary and seven other commissioners signed on behalf of the United Provinces. Tallard alone signed for France. He seems to have been extravagantly elated by what seemed to be the happy issue of the negotiation in which he had borne so great a part, and in his next despatch to Lewis boasted of the new treaty as destined to be the most famous that had been made during many centuries.

So.

William, too, was well pleased, and he had reason to be Had the King of Spain died, as all men expected, be fore the end of that year, it is highly probable that France would have kept faith with England and the United Prov inces; and it is almost certain that, if France had kept taith, the treaty would have been carried into effect withou any serious opposition in any quarter. The emperor

might have complained and threatened; but he must have submitted; for what could he do? He had no fleet; and it was therefore impossible for him even to attempt to possess himself of Castile, of Aragon, of Sicily, of the Indies, in opposition to the united navies of the three greatest maritime powers in the world. In fact, the only part of the Spanish empire which he could hope to seize and hold by force against the will of the confederates of Loo was the Milanese; and the Milanese the confederates of Loo had agreed to assign to his family. He would scarcely have been so mad as to disturb the peace of the world wher the only thing which he had any chance of gaining by war was offered him without war. The Castilians would doubtless have resented the dismemberment of the unwieldy body of which they formed the head. But they would have perceived that by resisting they were much more likely to lose the Indies than to preserve Guipuscoa. As to Italy, they could no more make war there than in the moon. Thus the crisis which had seemed likely to produce a European war of ten years would have produced nothing worse than a few angry notes and plaintive manifestoes.

Both the confederate kings wished their compact to remain a secret while their brother Charles lived, and it probably would have remained secret had it been confided only to the English and French ministers. But the institutions of the United Provinces were not well fitted for the purpose of concealment. It had been necessary to trust so many deputies and magistrates that rumors of what had been passing at Loo got abroad. Quiros, the Spanish ambassador at the Hague, followed the trail with such skill and perseverance that he discovered, if not the whole truth, yet enough to furnish materials for a despatch which produced much irritation and alarm at Madrid. A council was summoned, and sat long in deliberation. The grandees of the proudest of courts could hardly fail to perceive that their next sovereign, be he who he might, would find it impossible to avoid sacrificing part of his defenceless and widely scattered empire in order to preserve the rest; they could not bear to think that a single fort, a single islet in any of the four quarters of the world, was about to escape from the sullen domination of Castile. To this sentiment all the passions and prejudices of the haughty race were

subordinate.

"We are ready," such was the phrase then in their mouths, "to go to anybody, to go to the dauphin, to go to the devil, so that we all go together." In the hope of averting the threatened dismemberment, the Spanish ministers advised their master to adopt as his heir the candidate whose pretensions it was understood that France, England, and Holland were inclined to support. The advice was taken; and it was soon everywhere known that his Catholic majesty had solemnly designated as his successor his nephew Francis Joseph, Electoral Prince of Bavaria France protested against this arrangement, not, as far as can now be judged, because she meant to violate the treaty of Loo, but because it would have been difficult for her, if she did not protest, to insist on the full execution of that treaty Had she silently acquiesced in the nomination of the elec toral prince, she would have appeared to admit that the dauphin's pretensions were unfounded; and, if she admitted the dauphin's pretensions to be unfounded, she could not, without flagrant injustice, demand several provinces as the price in consideration of which she would consent to waive those pretensions. Meanwhile the confederates had secured the co-operation of a most important person, the Elector of Bavaria, who was actually Governor of the Netherlands, and was likely to be, in a few months at farthest, regent of the whole Spanish monarchy. He was perfectly sensible that the consent of France, England, and Holland to his son's elevation was worth purchasing at almost any cost, and, with much alacrity, promised that, when the time came, he would do all in his power to facilitate the execution of the treaty of partition. He was indeed bound by the strongest ties to the confederates of Loo. They had, by a secret article added to the treaty, agreed that, if the electoral prince should become King of Spain, and then die without issue, his father should be his heir. The news that young Francis Joseph had been declared heir to the throne of Spain was welcome to all the potentates of Europe, with the single exception of his grandfather the emperor. The vexation and indignation of Leopold were extreme. But there could be no doubt that, graciously or ungraciously, he would submit. It would have been madness. in him to contend against all Western Europe on land, and it was physically impossible for him to wage war on the sea. William was therefore able to indulge, during some weeks,

the pleasing belief that he had by skill and firmness averted from the civilized world a general war which had lately seemed to be imminent, and that he had secured the great community of nations against the undue predominance of one too powerful member.

But the pleasure and the pride with which he contemplated the success of his foreign policy gave place to very different feelings as soon as he again had to deal with our domestic factions. And, indeed, those who most revere his memory must acknowledge that, in dealing with these factions, he did not, at this time, show his wonted statesmanship. For a wise man, he seems never to have been sufficiently aware how much offence is given by discourtesy in small things. His ministers had apprised him that the result of the elections had been unsatisfactory, and that the temper of the new representatives of the people would require much management. Unfortunately, he did not lay this intimation to heart. He had by proclamation fixed the opening of the Parliament for the twenty-ninth of November. This was then considered as a very late day. For the London season began together with Michaelmas term; and, even during the war, the king had scarcely ever failed to receive the compliments of his faithful Lords and Commons on the fifth of November, the anniversary both of his birth and of his memorable landing. The numerous members of the House of Commons who were in town, having their time on their hands, formed cabals, and heated themselves and each other by murmuring at his partiality for the country of his birth. He had been off to Holland, they said, at the earliest possible moment. He was now lingering in Holland to the latest possible moment. This was not the worst. The twenty-ninth of November came: but the king was not come. It was necessary that the lords justices should prorogue the Parliament to the sixth of December. The delay was imputed, and justly, to adverse winds. But the malcontents asked, with some reason, whether his majesty had not known that there were often gales from the west in the German Ocean, and whether, when he had made a solemn appointment with the Estates of his Realm for a particular day, he ought not to have arranged things in such a way that nothing short of a miracle could have prevented him from keeping that appoint

ment.

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