Ireland, France had maintained her wonted superiority; but had not the scale of victory turned as soon as the Irish wars were finished, and the English troops sent into Flanders? "It is, therefore, evident," says the scheme, "that, of all the expedients that can be proposed to re-establish the affairs of France, the most effectual would be to make a powerful diversion in Great Britain." The writers of this scheme assured the French court that Highlanders and Lowlanders, that nearly every man and woman in Scotland longed for the return of their legitimate prince; that the Irish were all ready to take up arms, if they could have them, and that nothing was wanting bat arms, ammunition, some French troops, and French gold. But as King Louis could not afford the money and the other means required of him, this new scheme fell to the ground like so many old ones. The parliament this session was not less liberal than heretofore. Six millions and a half were voted as supplies; £220,000 of which was appropriated to the augmentation of the army in Flanders. It was found necessary to contract with the Bank of England for a loan of £400,000; and the Bank was compensated by the renewal of its charter for twenty-one years, with permission to double its capital by subscription. People complained of poverty, and timid minds were palsied at the spectacle of the fast increasing national debt; but nevertheless both money and confidence were so plentiful in the city of London, that the subscription book of the bank was filled up in one morning. The session closed on the 21st of April. The queen appointed a third secretary of state, whose province was to be the kingdom of Scotland; and his Grace of Queensberry, who had done so much for the union, received the appoint ment. The Duke of Marlborough had not returned to England, as usual, in the autumn. After his great successes at Lille and Ghent, he was seriously occupied by some bold movements of the Elector of Bavaria, who besieged and well nigh took the city of Brussels. But when all the troops had gone into quarters, Marlborough still lin gered in the Low Countries, where, indeed, he spent all the winter. As his presence seemed highly necessary in England, as all were aware that he was fully informed of the disgrace of his wife, and of the dangerous ascendency of Mrs. Masham, his absence seemed strange and unaccountable. It has since been accounted for by ascribing to him very disreputable motives: it has been said that ever since the victory at Ramillies, his conquest in Flanders had yielded him a considerable revenue; and that he stayed 1 Hooke's Negotiations. to get his money together, and to make the most of his market while it lasted. It is fair, however, to observe that Marlborough had other strong motives for remaining on the Continent: from the Hague he could keep a better eye upon France, whose condition seemed every day growing more desperate; and, besides, he was aware of overtures and negotiations, private as well as public, that were going on between French agents and Dutch deputies, two classes of men whom he disliked and distrusted for many reasons. His confederate, Prince Eugene, was at Vienna; and there is some probability that it had been arranged between them that Marlborough should remain at the Hague, to counterwork the manœuvres of the French diplomatists. On all hands the condition of France is represented as most calamitous. The government was in the hands of a set of mean, jealous, and incapable intriguers; the people were in the talons of disease and famine. Many thousands died of hunger; and everywhere the peasantry were reduced to scanty supplies of bad food. Money had made itself invisible. Louis's treasury was empty, his debt great and increasing. M. Bernard, the principal of his bankers, with many more of his brethren, broke, and a vast number of persons, before in flourishing circumstances, who had lodged money in their hands, were reduced to a state of beggary. The system of finance, always defective, had been rendered worse than ever under the pressure of difficulties, and the sudden exigencies of the state, caused by the defeat and destruction of successive armies. Nearly all the resources of the state were farmed out to those notorious precursors of the greatest of modern revolutions, les fermiers généraux. It was time to ask what had been the fruits of the "Grand Monarque's" insatiable ambition? One of his grandchildren, the Duke of Burgundy, the pupil of Fenelon, is said to have put the question to the old king himself, and to have asked why the Spanish succession should be preferred to the welfare of France-why his brother (King Philip) should be preferred to himself, to all his family and countrymen? The proud old man at last became a supplicant for peace; and he began with the Dutch, whom in his early days he had treated with so much contempt. He despatched M. de Rouillé, president of the council, to pray for a truce in Flanders. At the Hague this agent was met by Buys and Vanderdussen, who remarked, that, as the allies were stronger in Flanders, as were the French stronger in Spain, that if Louis would consent to a cessation of arms in Spain, they would also agree to a cessation in Flanders, provided the French king would first of all put some cautionary towns into their hands. Rouillé 2 Hamilton, Transactions. could not consent to this demand; the Dutch would not yield; and the afflicted president of the council informed Louis that no truce could be hoped for upon his conditions. When his despatch was read in the French council, it carried despair to every heart. "A scene so sad," says a person principally concerned, "would be difficult to describe, even were it permitted to reveal the secret of what was most touching in it. The king then felt that the condition of a monarch, the absolute master of a great kingdom, is not always the happiest or the most to be desired." This Frenchman of the old régime adds, in courtly guise, that Louis bore his reverses with the firmness of a hero and the submission of a Christian; that he acquiesced in the dispensations of Providence, and that, consenting new sacrifices, he instructed Rouillé to recommence the conferences at the to 1 Hague with larger promises on his part. But it appears from better authority, that the "Grand Monarque" wept like a whipped school-boy, and yet was unwilling, in his pride, to concede anything. An offer, however, was made to purchase back Lille, the last conquest of Marlborough, by yielding up Tournai, or by demolishing the fortifications which Louis had erected at Dunkirk. Louis was willing to leave Sicily to the allies, but he still claimed the kingdom of Naples, which had now been for two years in the undisputed possession of Austria, in lieu of the whole of Spain and the Indies, which his grandson Philip was to resign; he was willing to submit to a congress the interest of his faithful allies, the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne, who had been ruined by their fidelity to him; and, continuing this species of vicarious sacrifice, Louis engaged to send the pretender out of France, upon conMémoires de M. de Torcy, pour servir à l'Histoire des Négo tiations depuis le Traité de Riswick jusqu'à la Paix d'Utrecht. dition that his security and subsistence should be provided for and secured by treaty. But time pressed it was the end of the month of April before this despatch was ready, and the opening of the campaign was delayed only by the unusual severity of the season. If there was the slightest delay the war would begin on the French frontier GENERAL VIEW OF THE HAGUE AT THE PERIOD.-From a print by P. Schenck. before the negotiations at the Hague could come to anything-nay, if any diffi culty occurred, there would scarcely be time for Rouillé to send a courier from Paris. In short, every moment was of value; and at this crisis the Marquis de Torcy, secretary of state and minister for foreign affairs, volunteered to go to the Hague in person, and take the entire negotiation into his own hands. Louis, after some hesitation, consented to send him; and De Torcy, with a courier's passport, not without fear of being seized by the enemy's troops, or denied access by the Dutch ministers, travelled with speed to the Hague with a despatch signed by the king himself. He was near being discovered and arrested at Brussels; but aided and guided by a Dutch banker, who had connections with France, he reached the quiet door of the Pensionary Heinsius, at the Hague, on the 6th of May, late in the evening. After the minister of the proudest monarch in Europe had waited some time in an ante-chamber, the pensionary appeared and admitted him to a close conference. A few years before, when Heinsius went to Versailles on a mission from William III., Louvois, the insolent prime minister there, had threatened to throw him into the Bastille; now the court of France was at his feet. The Dutch statesman, however, was too high-minded to show any triumph. De Torey attempted to demonstrate that Holland and England, and all the nations in the confederacy, had blindly engaged themselves to bear the weight of a war which must be useless, or useful only to the house of Austria. Heinsius reminded | good inclination, his great age, and the situation him of the treaty to which the grand alliance of his affairs, were in themselves a sufficient seowed its existence, and assured him that it would curity for all that was promised. During these be impossible to consent to the dismemberment discourses the eyes of the French minister were of the Spanish monarchy, or to the cession of frequently flooded with tears. These may have the kingdom of Naples or even of the island been forced from him by the miseries of his of Sicily. The Frenchman hereupon said that country; but they they were certainly not calcuhe had nothing to do but to return to Paris.lated to make the allies cede any of their resoluHeinsius told him that the states-general, with- tions. The ambassadors of every court repreout whom he could engage for nothing, would sented there had heard, in the days of his prosmeet in a day or two. To this De Torcy re- perity, little else than insult and bravado from plied that to submit the question to the states Louis at Versailles; and the inference now to would only produce a long-spun negotiation, for be drawn was, that his fortunes must be low which he had no time, his post as secretary of indeed, and his spirit gone, when one of his state not permitting him to engage formally in cabinet ministers could weep before an assembly the trade of a negotiator that the king, his of Dutchmen, Englishmen, and Austrians. At master, had commanded him to address himself the end of May the confederates gave De Torcy directly and solely to him (the pensionary) in their ultimatum in forty preliminary articles. order either to finish the work of peace, or to Their chief demands were-1. That the French inform himself clearly of the intentions of the king should acknowledge the succession of King states-general. Heinsius then proposed calling Charles III. to all the rights and dominions of in Buys and Vanderdussen, who had been au- the crown of Spain. 2. That the Duke of Anjou thorized by the states to treat with Rouillé. (King Philip), then in possession of the greater This De Torcy also declined, repeating the order part of Spain, should, within the term of two he had received from his master to address him- months, depart out of that kingdom with his self only to the pensionary. After some diplo- whole family; that the French king, within that matic ruses, the Frenchman consented to confer time, should cause Sicily to be delivered to King on the morrow with Buys and Vanderdussen. Charles; and that, if the Duke of Anjou should He found them quite as high in their pretensions not assent, then the French king should unite as Heinsius. "But," says De Torcy, in writing with the confederates in reducing him to obeto Louis, "I believe, after all, that they are dience, "so that all Europe might enjoy a perfect really interested only about their own barrier." tranquillity." De Torcy, instructed by a special Notwithstanding his haste, the French minister despatch from Louis, attempted to procure better was detained nearly a month at the Hague. Find- conditions by bribing the Duke of Marlborough, ing he could do nothing separately with Holland, whose love of money, increasing with his years, he agreed to meet the Duke of Marlborough and was notorious to all Europe. When De Torcy Prince Eugene. Marlborough, who had made a made these tempting offers, Marlborough blushed, lasty journey to England, returned accompanied and changed the conversation. It is stated, on by Lord Townshend, an experienced negotiator, the authority of manuscript letters and of a conand who was believed to be well disposed to a versation of Rouillé, that Harley had his spies peace: the Prince Eugene came accompanied by upon the duke; and that the offer of the bribe the imperial minister Zinzendorf. De Torcy, on was discovered and communicated through Mrs. his side, was assisted by Rouillé, who had begun Masham to the queen. De Torcy, upon the rethe negotiation by demanding a truce in Flanders. jection of the millions of livres, intimated to the As soon as Marlborough arrived, De Torcy saw duke that he was in the secret of his old intrigues that the negotiation would end in words; but he with the court of St. Germain: and here he says thought that an immense moral advantage would that Marlborough blushed again, yet still refused be obtained if he could make the world believe to become a mediator for King Louis. The —and his own suffering countrymen in particular Frenchman then pretended that his master would -that the heart of Louis was bleeding for suffer- make a virtue of necessity, and submit to these ing humanity; that the great king was ready to hard conditions in order to prevent further purchase peace at any sacrifice short of the inde- misery and bloodshed; and he set off for Paris pendence and honour of his country. And in with the preliminaries in his portfolio. He had France he succeeded in producing this impres-kept off hostilities till the 1st of June, and he sion, although at the Hague he absolutely refused any security for the accomplishment of the evacuation of Spain, and for the other sacrifices that were offered.' De Torcy said that his king's 'The security demanded by the allies was, that some cautionary hoped, at least, to gain a few more weeks. When De Torcy reached Paris, Rouillé was recalled towns should be put into their hands till Philip had delivered Hamilton, Transactions. Villars vainly from the Hague; Prince Eugene was informed | but insufficiently garrisoned. that his most Christian majesty could never ac- attempted to throw into it a reinforcement of cept the terms proposed by the allies. The con- 7000 men; the besiegers broke ground before it federates, on their part, declared that, unless he on the 7th of July; but Tournai did not suraccepted the articles as now proposed by the render to Prince Eugene until the 30th, and then 15th of June, they would never again offer him it was only the town that capitulated, the citade such good terms. By the advice of De Torcy, not being reduced until the 3d of September. On the "Grand Monarque" condescended to write cir- the same day, leaving a force under the Earl of cular letters to the local authorities throughout Albemarle to level the works, Marlborough and all the provinces of France, declaring that he Eugene marched into Hainault to lay siege to had tried all methods in order to restore peace; Mons. Villars, having quitted his entrenched that he had spared himself no sacrifice; but that camp, manoeuvred with the view of guarding the he had been opposed and disappointed by the approaches to Mons, and cutting off the confede insatiableness of his enemies, by men who de- rates' van, which was commanded by the Prince lighted in war for the sake of their own private of Hesse. Marshal Boufflers joined him at this interests. He also declared in his council, that, critical moment, and shared the command with if he must make war, he would rather make it him. On the 9th of September the outposts against his enemies than his own family. That of the two armies were slightly engaged; but susceptible people were warmed and excited, the French fell back to an encampment near the and, half-starving as they were, they applauded town of Malplaquet, and passed the night in forthe patriotism of their aged king, and exerted tifying their front. Marlborough and Eugene themselves to their utmost to support him. His were waiting for their rearguard; and for the letters and speeches, and the representations of two following days the hostile forces stood oppohis skilful emissaries, produced an impression in site to each other. On the evening of the 11th, other countries, until it became an article of when the forces they expected had come up, belief with many, even at London and Vienna, Marlborough and Eugene, in spite of the objec that the allies had exacted far too much, and tions of the Dutch field-deputies, resolved to give that they might and ought to grant peace upon battle on the morrow. And accordingly, on the milder conditions. The article in the prelimi- 12th of September, they fought and won the naries most generally criticized was that wherein battle of Malplaquet - a battle more terrible the confederates would have bound Louis to than either Ramillies or Blenheim. After fightmake war upon his own grandson King Philip. ing from eight in the morning till three in the But it was as positively affirmed by others that afternoon, the French retreated upon Maubeuge, the French king had procured the conference at Valenciennes, and Condé; leaving the field of the Hague, and proposed the treaty of peace, battle strewed with 30,000 dead. The forest of only with a design to avoid the pressing danger Ardennes served to protect the French from and to gain time-that he never for a single mo- pursuit, and to enable them to carry off most of ment seriously intended to give up Spain, or to their artillery and standards. A vast number agree to any other important sacrifice. Prince of officers were killed and wounded, but MarlEugene declared that the only proper place to borough escaped unhurt. The conquerors protreat with the French was a field of battle; and ceeded to Mons; but that place detained them by the 21st of June he and Marlborough took till the 23d of October, when it was deemed too the field, crossed the frontiers of France, and late a season to undertake anything else. The drew up in a large plain not far from Lille. bloody tragedy of Malplaquet, however, reduced Villars occupied a well entrenched camp in their Louis to sue again for peace. But we pass to a front, covered on each side by impassable mo- new species of warThe confederates, not daring either to attack him there or to march upon Paris and leave him where he was, struck off by night, on the 27th of June, for Tournai, a strong place, rasses. "For Sacheverell of Southwark a sermon has preach'd, For which he must stand by the commons impeached."! Whig and Tory; or, Wit on Both Sides. London, 1712. CHAPTER X.-CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY.-A.D. 1709-1712. ANNE. Vote of supplies for the war-Cry of "the church in danger" raised by Dr. Sacheverell-His sermon for that purpose-Its publication-He is impeached for it before parliament―His cause adopted by the high-church party -The commotion raised throughout the kingdom-The queen favourable to the cause of the preacher-Trial of Sacheverell in Westminster Hall-Popular excitement during the trial-Meeting-houses of the Dissenters plundered and destroyed by the mob-The military called out-Sacheverell on trial found guilty-His mild sentence regarded by his party as a victory-The doctor's triumphal progress through the country-The commotion subsides—The queen turns to the Tories-Dismission of Whig ministers-They are replaced by a Tory ministry-Overtures of Louis XIV. for peace-He refuses the principal condition of the allies-Marlborough and Eugene resume their military operations-Marlborough's wonted success forsakes him-Victories of the Anglo-Spanish army in Spain-Reverses succeed-Meeting of a new parliament-Cold reception of Marlborough at his return-Bill for qualifying members for the House of Commons-Attempt to assassinate Harley at the council-The assassin mortally wounded- Popularity of Harley through this attempt-He is made Earl of Oxford-Marlborough repairs for the last time to the war-Discouragements raised against his progress His masterly conduct in surmounting them-Private negotiations for peace-Their progress-Prior sent to France as negotiator-His proceedings as a diplomatist-Unfortunate campaign of the British in Quebec -Opening of parliament-The queen's speech in favour of peace-Marlborough's defence against her reflections -He is accused of peculation-He is dismissed from all his employments-New peers created to swamp the Whig interest-Proceedings of parliament against Marlborough and Walpole-Walpole sentenced to dismission and imprisonment-Prince Eugene's arrival in England-His fruitless attempts to have Marlborough replaced and the war continued-The treaty for peace continues-Congress appointed at Utrecht for its settlementThe French armies rally-Their successes-The English commander receives secret instructions to remain on the defensive Discussions in parliament in consequence of these instructions-The Whig party protests against them-Concessions of Louis XIV. to obtain peace-The promised peace welcomed in the House of Commons and condemned by the lords-The English troops withdrawn from Prince Eugene-The English commander circumvented in the treaty of peace-Eugene unsuccessfully attempts to continue the war. N the 15th of November Anne had opened the session of parliament in person. She declared that the common enemy of Europe had been using all his artifices to amuse with false appearances and deceitful insinuations of a desire for peace, in the hope of creating divisions or jealousies among the allies. The lords, in their address, fully approved of her majesty's rejecting the proposals of Louis. The commons soon proceeded to vote an increase of the army, and £6,200,000 as supplies. They also waited upon the Duke of Marlborough, on his return to England, to thank him for his eminent services: but on the side of the court Marlborough saw nothing but clouds. For some time past the Tory leaders had been at work with the more combustible portion of the high-church preachers, and the pulpits of the kingdom had been resounding with new cries of the church in danger. There was one Dr. Henry Sacheverell, an obscure divine of little moral character and still less ability-a fellow that had been a furious Whig, but, getting no promotion, had suddenly turned Tory, heaped abuse upon the party he deserted, and talked his way to the living of St. Saviour's, Southwark. His impudence was measureless; and he had a very loud voice. There was nothing original in VOL. III. his proceedings, for there were several models 223 |