CHAPTER XIV.

THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION.

(1) CAMPAIGNS AND NEGOTIATIONS.

IF the action of Louis XIV in accepting the will of Charles II of Spain had proved insufficient to rouse England and the United Provinces to war, at Vienna its effects had been greater. The Emperor had steadily rejected the compromise of a partition, because he had always trusted that a will would leave the whole inheritance to the Archduke, and he was not inclined to swallow this disappointment without a protest or to acquiesce without resistance in the accession of Philip V. Yet the prospects of successfully disputing Philip's claim were not of the brightest. A great war was impending in the Baltic; the Emperor's hereditary dominions were still feeling the strain and exhaustion of the recent wars in east and west ; Hungary, quite recently reconquered from the Turk, was seething with discontent ; and the lukewarmness displayed by the Princes of Germany in the defence of the Empire against Louis promised ill for their support of Leopold's claims on the Spanish inheritance. And as, moreover, the Maritime Powers hung back and compelled the reluctant William III to recognise the new King of Spain, it is not wonderful that a party among the Emperor's advisers, headed by Margrave Lewis of Baden-Baden, should have counselled submission. These counsels were, indeed, so far followed that overtures were made in order to discover if any compensation could be obtained. Moderation and slight concebsions might have avoided war ; but Louis, blinded by the success he had already achieved, adopted an uncompromisingly aggressive attitude, and, by rejecting the idea of providing a " satisfaction" for the unsuccessful claimant to the Spanish inheritance, drove the Emperor over to the war party in his "conference," of whom Prince Eugene of Saxony and Archdukes Charles and Joseph were the leaders.

Lake Garda and there take up his position, in order to bar the advance of the Austrians from Tyrol upon Lombardy. Deficiencies of transport and organisation for the time rendered the Imperial army immobile ; but it appeared most probable that, when Eugene's energy and administrative talents should have overcome these obstacles, his advance would follow the Adige. A more direct advance on Milan by the Engadine or Valtelline would involve the passage of more difficult country and the violation of Swiss neutrality ; a move west of Lake Garda on Brescia meant taking an equally unsatisfactory route; and, though the Venetians, whose territory separated Tyrol from the Milanese, had not absolutely refused a passage to the Imperialists, it was understood that they had forbidden them the use of the country between the Adige and the Adriatic. Catinat, at any rate, trusted Venetian neutrality to protect his right flank, which rested on the Adige, and, relying on this, confidently awaited an attack. This was some time in coming, for Eugene's force was far short of the numbers promised him ; and it was not till the end of May that, under cover of a feint down the right bank of the Adige against Chiuse, he carried the bulk of his 6000 horse and 16,000 foot over Monte Baldo by difficult and little-known mountain-paths, and, moving by Verona (May 28) and thence down the left of the Adige, established himself on Catinat's flank.

Villeroi's superior numbers, inflicting on them a sharp repulse. This success allowed Eugene to retain his position unmolested; and, when with November both sides went into winter-quarters, the Imperialists were left in possession of the greater part of the duchy of Mantua, though a closely blockaded French garrison held out in the capital. The winter was made memorable by Eugene's celebrated raid on Cremona and capture of Marshal Villeroi (February 1, 1702)-an exploit which, though the town was finally recovered, compelled the French to fall back behind the Adda, leaving their magazines to Eugene, who also occupied the territory of Parma. The Dukes of Modena and Guastalla now declared for the Imperialists; and the outbreak of an insurrection in the Emperor's favour in Naples compelled the Spanish contingent with the French army to withdraw thither.

Meanwhile the diplomats had not been idle, and, when the campaign of 1702 opened, hostilities were no longer confined to Italy, but had assumed the dimensions of a general European war. The arrogance and aggressions of Louis had effected what the warnings of William III and Heinsius had failed to do. By securing for French traders the Âslento, or monopoly of the supply of slaves to Spanish America (August), Louis so roused England, that William felt able to conclude with the Emperor the Treaty of the Hague (September 7), which pledged the Emperor and the Maritime Powers to secure Europe against the union of France and Spain, and to obtain territorial compensation for the Habsburgs and commercial concessions for the Maritime Powers. The recently recognised kingdom of Prussia was already bound by the " Crown Treaty " to support the Emperor, and during the winter of 1701-2 the majority of the German Princes were enlisted on the side of the Grand Alliance-among them the Electors of Mainz and Trier, the Landgraves of Hesse-Cassel and Hesse-Darmstadt, and the Electors John William of the Palatinate and George Lewis of Hanover, with his uncle, Duke George William of Celle. The Franconian and Swabian Circles at first contemplated declaring themselves neutral, but they were soon won over to unite with the two Rhenish Circles, the Austrian, and the Westphalian; and a conference of these Circles held at Nördlingen in March, 1702, promised to put into the field a joint force of 54,000 men. The Baltic Powers held aloof from the Coalition ; but, thanks to the intervention of England and Holland in the conflict between Denmark and Sweden in 1700, the troops both of Denmark and of Holstein-Gottorp were available for hire by the Maritime Powers.

Wolfenbüttel troops to be taken into the Emperor's service. More useful to Louis were the two Wittelsbach brothers, Electors Maximilian Emanuel of Bavaria and Joseph Clement of Cologne. Maximilian, hitherto one of the most consistent opponents of Louis, had been acting as Governor of the Spanish Netherlands since 1695; but he had not opposed the occupation of that country by French troops, and, after carrying on simultaneous negotiations with Louis and the Coalition, decided, in March, 1701, to throw in his lot with France, though he was not to commit any overt act of hostility until a suitable opportunity.

In addition to his Wittelsbach followers, Louis could also reckon among his allies two States whose adhesion to his cause was dictated by fear rather than by enthusiasm. Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, true to the family policy of balancing dangerous neighbours against each other, had been suspected of supplying information to Eugene as to the movements of Catinat's army with which the Savoyard troops were serving, while Portugal had thrown in her lot with Louis, mainly to avert attack from Spain. In that kingdom Philip V had been readily acknowledged, save only in Catalonia, and the resources of Spain's Indian possessions were thus placed at the disposal of Louis.

With the spring of 1703, the French prepared to utilise the path to Vienna thrown open to them by Bavaria's action. In March Villars secured Kehl, and, pushing across the Black Forest by Villingen, joined the Bavarian Elector near Ulm (May 9), unimpeded by Lewis of Baden, who lay inactive in his celebrated lines of Stolhofen, watched by another French corps under Marshal Tallard. The Elector would not have been there for Villars to join, had but Styrum, who commanded the troops of the Franconian Circle, cooperated with the 19,000 Austrians under Schlick on the Inn. Their failure to unite had allowed the Elector to capture Ratisbon, and to inflict on Schlick's isolated corps a sharp reverse at Scharding (March 11).

Styrum had let slip the chance of combining their forces against Villars, who, profiting by their separation, parried the Margrave's attack on Augsburg by falling on Styrum's weaker force at Höchstädt (September 20) and completely defeating him. This checked Lewis, who had to abandon Augsburg and retire into winter-quarters, just north of the Lake of Constance. Even at this late point in the campaigning season Villars was anxious to try a dash at Vienna, now seriously menaced by the Hungarian insurgents ; but the Elector's refusal to contemplate the project led to violent quarrels between him and Villars, and to the recall of the latter before the next campaign.

Meanwhile, on the Rhine things had fared ill for the Allies. Thüngen, whom Lewis of Baden had left at Stolhofen, failed to prevent Tallard from taking Breisach (September 8) and besieging Landau. Reinforced by a corps from the Netherlands under the Hereditary Prince Frederick of Hesse-Cassel, he attempted the relief of Landau, only to suffer a disastrous defeat at Speyerbach (November 13), on which Landau surrendered (November 21). Thus, with 40,000 French wintering in Bavaria, their communications with Alsace greatly improved by Tallard's successes and the forces of the Maritime Powers apparently committed to operations in the Netherlands, the prospects for the Emperor looked bad indeed. The only gleam of satisfaction was that the Duke of Savoy, always distrustful of the sincerity of his French ally's promises, had been in secret communication with the Emperor for some time, and now, urged to the step by Vendôme's demand that he should hand over Turin and Susa to the French and suffer the disarming of his troops, definitively threw in his lot with the Allies and signed a treaty with the Emperor (October 25). On this, Starhemberg, who had maintained Eugene's old position on the lower Po during the summer, hastened with his 15,000 men across the Parmesan and joined Victor Amadeus on the Tanaro (January, 170é)-a move which Vendôme, who had evacuated southern Tyrol after his fruitless advance to Trent (September), completely failed to prevent. Savoy's defection meant that Austria was secure from attack on the side of Italy, at any rate until the French had secured their communications with France, which this change of sides had menaced.

Thus in the year 1704 the situation was completely reversed in Germany; Vienna was delivered; the French invaders were expelled; the Elector of Bavaria was a fugitive, his dominions being placed under Austrian control by the Convention of Ilbersheim (November 7) ; and French prestige destroyed by a blow without a parallel since Condé had destroyed the Spanish reputation at Rocroi. Nor could Louis XIV balance this disaster with any success elsewhere. In Italy, Victor Amadeus, though sore beset and isolated, still maintained his ground in Piedmont; in the Netherlands nothing had been done since Villeroi's departure; and in the new theatre of operations in the Pyrenean Peninsula and the Mediterranean the advantage had remained with the Allies.

One important result of Portugal's change of sides was that, when the Emperor decided to transfer his rights over Spain to his second son, Archduke Charles, and to despatch him to the Peninsula to prosecute his claim, a good base was secured for the operations of the troops which England and Holland sent out to assist him (February, 1704). Philip V was, however, prepared for the attack ; and by land little was accomplished. It was .at sea, not ashore, that took place the principal operations of the Allies in southern Europe in 1704. Seeing clearly that the capture of Toulon would be the most damaging blow that could be inflicted on France, Marlborough had planned that, after Rooke had escorted Archduke Charles to the Tagus, he should carry his fleet to the Riviera and there gain touch with the Duke of Savoy, who was to furnish the land forces needed to cooperate with the British navy in this great enterprise. Unfortunately for the Allies, it was at this time wholly out of the power of the Duke of Savoy to spare any troops for an attack on Toulon. Accordingly, Rooke had to fall back on his alternative task of assisting the operations of the Archduke, and returned to the Straits. On the way home, he unluckily just failed to intercept the French squadron from Brest, which the Count of Toulouse was bringing

to the assistance of the Toulon squadron, sighting them without being-able to overtake them (May 27). At the Straits, Rooke found reinforcements awaiting him from the Channel Fleet, sent southward as soon as the destination of Toulouse was known, which brought his fleet up to over 50 sail of the line. Thus reinforced, he decided to carry out an enterprise which English strategists had been contemplating for some time past. The capture of Gibraltar (August 4) was, like the destruction of the Plate fleet at Vigo, a useful rather than a brilliant achievement, for both garrison and defences were weak ; but, if Rooke's merits in this matter are sometimes overstated, he has not generally received proper credit for the action which he fought three weeks later-the only encounter of the main battle fleets during the War. Believing that Rooke was going to attack Barcelona, Toulouse had put to sea with about 50 sail of the line (July 29) ; and, on hearing of the loss of Gibraltar, he hastened to the Straits to see if he could do anything to retrieve the situation. Ilooke was cruising to the eastward of Gibraltar, to cover his prize from any attempt to recover it; and on August 24< he fell in with the French oft' Velez Malaga. The odds were approximately equal ; for, if the Allies had a slight superiority in ships, they were very short-handed, and were also seriously handicapped by the great expenditure of ammunition in the capture of Gibraltar. It was a hard-fought encounter-" the sharpest day's service I ever saw," Rooke called it-of which tactically the Allies had by no means the worst, preventing Toulouse's efforts to break their line, and ultimately forcing the French to draw off* so roughly mauled that next day, when he had the wind, Toulouse made no attempt to renew the action but withdrew to Toulon, leaving the Allies in possession of the fortress they had fought for. Strategically, there was no doubt about the victory; and during the rest of the War the French made no serious effort to challenge the Allied control of the Mediterranean, their fleet retiring into the shelter of Toulon whenever the British appeared in any strength. Shortly afterwards, it is true, when the lateness of the season had forced Rooke to depart homeward with the bulk of his fleet, Gibraltar was vigorously assailed by land by the Marquis of Villadarias with a large Franco-Spanish army, supported by a small squadron under de Pointis ; but the siege proved ineffectual, and in March, 1705, Leake finally raised it by destroying the blockading squadron off* Marbella Point (March 21).

Emperor (May 5) caused the recall home of the Austrian contingent, Marl-borough, not relishing the prospect of a campaign with a colleague so unsympathetic to him as Lewis of Baden, decided to transfer himself and his army to the Netherlands. Here Villeroi had already taken the offensive by capturing Huy (May 24) ; but Marlborough's return sent him back to his lines, out of which the Duke, despite the constant interference of Dutch deputies, proceeded to manœuvre him by a series of adroitly planned and skilfully executed enterprises. Feints against the extremities of the lines diverted Villeroi's attention and allowed the Duke to pierce their centre near Tirlemont (July 18); but the obstruction of the Dutch spoilt more than one fair chance of victory, and the campaign ended with the levelling of the lines between the Méhaigne and the Demer as the only thing accomplished. This, however, caused a strong detachment to be called up from Alsace, so that Villars was reduced to the defensive (August), just as he had taken Weissenburg and seemed likely to recover the line of the Lauter. In Italy, rather more had been accomplished. Eugene, taking the field in April, forced Vendôme's brother, the Grand Prior of France, to abandon the line of the Oglio and retire hastily behind the Adda by appearing on his flank and rear at Brescia (June 23). However, at Cassano (August 16) Vendôme checked Eugene's advance somewhat sharply ; and the Austrians had finally to retire towards Tyrol for the winter. Still, Eugene's activity had greatly relieved the pressure on Piedmont, enabled Turin to hold out, and kept the half-hearted Duke of Savoy true to his new alliance.

The next campaign opened badly for the Imperialists in Italy. In April, 1706, Vendôme made a sudden attack on their cantonments round Brescia, driving them back into Tyrol in confusion, just as Eugene returned from his labours at Vienna, whither he had gone to obtain reinforcements and a supply of money for the army in Italy.

(July 18). Once on that bank, he pushed on at great speed, outpacing as well as outflanking the French, who moved parallel up the left bank. Not even at Stradella was any resistance offered ; and, on August 31, the junction with the Duke of Savoy was effected at Villastellona. It was promptly followed up by an advance on Turin, and by the complete defeat of the investing army after a stubbornly-fought battle (September 7), in which the superior numbers of the French were neutralised by Eugene's skilful handling of his troops and prompt improvement of his tactical opportunities. So far as Italy was concerned, the victory was decisive. The French at once evacuated Piedmont, withdrawing to France by Pinerolo and leaving to their own resources their garrisons at Mantua, Alessandria, and in the Milanese. These resisted stoutly, but vainly; and by the end of the year hardly a fortress still held out. The completeness of the French defeat may be judged from the conclusion of the Convention of Milan (March, 1707), by which Louis abandoned northern Italy and withdrew all his troops to France, thereby obtaining a reinforcement which was greatly needed elsewhere, for the French disasters of 1706 had not been confined to Italy.

In some respects Marlborough's most brilliant victory, Ramillies was remarkable for the relentless vigour of the pursuit, which did not allow the French to rally behind the Scheldt, but forced them to retire hastily up the Lys to Courtray, to avoid being cut off from France. Within a fortnight of the battle, all Brabant and most of Flanders was in Marlborough's hands : Antwerp (May 26), Ghent, Bruges, and Oudenarde were among the towns which capitulated at the first summons, and the capture of Ostend (July 6) gave him a more direct line of communications with England, which he subsequently secured by the successive reduction of Menin (August 22), Dendermonde (September 5), and Ath (October 2). Moreover, his victory paralysed the French in other quarters. Villars lost his chance of following up the retreat of Lewis of Baden from Alsace, because he had to detach 30,000 men to the Netherlands and was reduced to the defensive : Eugene's task was made easier, when the recall of Vendôme to replace Villeroi left him with only Marsin to face.

France ; for several of the north-German Princes, dreading this unwelcome neighbour, had failed to produce the contingents that should have served with Marlborough in the Netherlands ; so that his force fell short of what was required, and the campaign of 1707 proved disappointingly barren of results. The strength of the French frontiers, all " covered by very strong towns and well fortified," while those of the Allies were open, made it essential that the Allies should outnumber the French by about 25,000 men, in order to provide a besieging force and escorts for convoys and trains over and above the field-force needed to cover sieges. The numerical superiority, however, was with the French, and Vendome, adopting a most cautious defensive, would give no opportunity for a battle. Moreover, when at last Eugene's invasion of Provence, described below, caused the French to detach troops thither from Flanders, and so transferred the superiority to Marlborough, the untimely intervention of the Dutch deputies prevented him from bringing Vendôme to action on favourable terms, near Waterloo ; and soon afterwards unusually wet weather brought the campaign to an abortive close.

But these reverses on the Rhine were trifling, compared with the disastrous turn affairs had taken in Spain. Hoping that Galway's army might be utilised to cooperate with Eugene in the attack on Toulon, which now seemed at last practicable, Marlborough had despatched reinforcements to the Peninsula. Unfortunately a disagreement between Galway and Archduke Charles led to a separation ; and the Archduke's departure for Catalonia left Galway with only 15,000 men, a bare third of whom were British, while half were Portuguese and the rest Dutch and Huguenots. Endeavouring, with this motley force, to defeat Berwick before the Duke of Orleans could reinforce him, Galway gave battle at Almanza (April 25, 1707), and, largely through the misconduct of the Portuguese, suffered a complete defeat, which lost Aragon, Murcia and Valencia to the Allies, and for the rest of the year reduced them to a mere defensive in Catalonia. Worse than this, no troops could be spared to assist Eugene's invasion of Provence, a task which had to be undertaken with most inadequate forces, inasmuch as the Emperor foolishly insisted on detaching some 13,000 men under Daun on the quite subsidiary errand of the reduction of Naples, when success at the critical spot, Toulon, would have been the surest road to the ultimate acquisition of southern Italy. Daun easily achieved his task ; the Neapolitan population was bitterly hostile to the Bourbons, whose weak garrisons, cut off from all chance of succour by the English command of the sea, merely offered a feeble resistance which came to an end in September. But this success could not compensate for the failure of Eugene's attack on Toulon. Moving by the Col di Tenda, Eugene had crossed the Var on July 11, and, although hampered by the negligence and inefficiency of the Duke of Savoy, had reached Frejus, and was in touch with Shovell and the British fleet, by the 16th. But the Duke's procrastination caused further delays, and gave time for the troops which Berwick was sending home from Spain to reinforce Marshal Tessé at Toulon before the arrival of the Allies (July 26). On August 14, Tessé retook the all-important heights of Santa Catarina, which the Allies had stormed a week earlier ; and Eugene, finding his retreat menaced and little chance of taking Toulon, had to abandon his attempt (August 22), and fall back across the Var, having lost 10,000 men in this ill-fated enterprise. Its only fruit was that, in order to prevent their ships falling into the enemy's hands, the French had sunk their whole squadron of more than 50 sail in the harbour, and thereby put it quite out of their power to contest the English control of the Mediterranean.

Thus, the Preliminaries presented on May 28 to Torcy on behalf of the Allies as an ultimatum, provided for a return to the conditions of 1648, including a greatly improved " Barrier " for the Dutch and the retrocession of Alsace and Franche Comté, the demolition of the works of Dunkirk, the recognition of the Hanoverian Succession in England and the expulsion of the Pretender from France, and added the demand that Louis should, by August 1, obtain the surrender by Philip of the Spanish monarchy, or, in case of this not being effected, take measures, in conjunction with the Allies, for effecting it. The truce between the belligerents was, in the event of the surrender of the Spanish monarchy within the period fixed, to last till the conclusion and ratification of peace -in other words, Louis might eventually find himself obliged, with diminished possessions and reduced resources, to resume the war. Torcy at once pointed out the necessity of the ratification of peace preceding any efforts which Louis might make to bring about the cession of the Spanish monarchy-for how, he asked, could the King use force towards his grandson ? It was, in truth, a concession which not even Oudenarde and Lille, following upon Turin, Ramillies and Blenheim, could wring from Louis ; and, as Madame de Maintenon declared, France would not have been France, had the nation failed to support the King in his refusal. Torcy, though preserving perfect calmness, promptly took his departure from the Hague on May 28, and on the same evening from Brussels intimated to Prince Eugene that the King had rejected the Preliminaries. On June 2 the news reached Villars' headquarters that the war was to proceed ; nine days later Louis issued from Versailles his manifesto to his people, denouncing the Allies as having dishonoured France by their demand, and invoking the Divine protection for himself and his army.

Meanwhile, in the negotiations which still dragged their length along, the question of a Dutch " Barrier " of Belgic fortresses remained as if it were a fixed point. It will, perhaps, be most convenient to review the whole question of this provision for the protection of the Dutch frontier in connexion with the third and final Barrier Treaty of 1715. Here, therefore, it will suffice to say that the first Treaty known by this name with the States General was signed by Townshend on October 29, 1709. It was, so to speak, an open secret. The United Provinces by it acquired the right of garrisoning nine fortified places in the Spanish Netherlands, together with ten others, should they be retaken from the French; and were thus constituted by England the guardians of southern Belgium-and, as it seemed to Prince Eugene, the eventual masters of the whole of the Belgic provinces. The protests of the Emperor were made in vain, for it was quite clear from this time onwards that, if the Maritime Powers held out by each other, the House of Habsburg was reduced to passivity as to this part of any ultimate settlement.

Thus, in the course of the campaigns of 1709 there seemed to he a balance of loss and gain between the adversaries such as might justify renewed attempts at negotiating peace. Spain was practically out of the control of the Allies ; and the Government of the United Provinces, with its own future secured by the Barrier Treaty, was for peace ; though the question of the ultimate definition of the Barrier made it less feasible than ever for the States General to proceed to a settlement without their Maritime Ally. Thus the overtures made by Torcy in November, 1709, as to a resumption of negotiations on the basis of the May Preliminaries, led to a meeting of Dutch and French plenipotentiaries at the Hague (January 18, 1710) and to a declaration by Louis (February) that he was prepared to assent to the proposed basis, subject to a fresh consideration of the question as to the guarantees of the cession. On March 10 conferences were actually opened in nominal secrecy at Gertruydenberg (or rather on a yacht between that place and Mierdyk), and they were continued at intervals till near the end of April. France was represented by Marshal d'Huxelles and the Abbé (afterwards Cardinal) de Polignac, who found more than their match in Buys and van der Dussen. England and the Emperor at first held aloof; though the former Power still controlled the action of her Maritime Ally. It is, however, tolerably clear that from the outset Maryborough and Townshend agreed with the Dutch statesmen in contemplating a partial cession only on the part of Philip, and that even the Whig Government at home was wavering. The Emperor's estrangement from the Maritime Powers increased in proportion as England's attitude altered. Joseph, very unreasonably, objected to a partition of the Spanish monarchy, and the proposal to give Sicily to Philip was vehemently opposed by Savoy- though Godolphin and Marlborough, as well as Heinsius, would have agreed to this. Moreover, the wish, certainly cherished at this time by Louis, that his grandson should yield, met with no response on the part of Philip ; and no result seeming attainable at Gertruydenberg, the conferences were, on the proposal of the Dutch, interrupted for some time. The campaigns of 1710 had already begun, when Louis went so far as to-offer the Allies a monthly subsidy of 150,000 livres, to be eventually doubled, for their coercive operations in the Pyrenean Peninsula. The proposal was rejected by the Dutch plenipotentiaries on their return to Gertruydenberg. It was more clear than ever that the result depended on the decision of England, whether in return for liberal trade concessions by Spain and the transfer of Newfoundland by France, she would assent to a partition of the Spanish monarchy which would leave Spain alone to Philip. The Dutch would in the end be content with a good Barrier ; and the Emperor would have to be content with what he could get. Savoy, who vehemently opposed the cession of Sicily to Philip, could not turn the balance.

Thus, in July, 1710, the inflexible attitude of Buys and vau der Dussen rendered a continuation of the Gertruydenberg Conferences hopeless ; and the French plenipotentiaries withdrew with an angry protest, to which the States General replied by an elaborate argument representing the King of France as alone responsible for the continuance of the struggle. But a memorandum handed in by the French was not without its effect upon the peace party in the United Provinces ; and both there and in England the feeling grew that the real reason for the breakdown of the negotiations had been the excessive demands of the Mari lime Powers.

Even before the Conferences were over, in July, 1710, Starhemberg, whose strength reinforcements from Italy had raised to a total of 25,000, took the offensive, invaded Aragon, beat Philip's army at Almenara (July 27), and more decisively at Saragossa (August 19), after which he pushed on to Madrid, which for the second time in the war was occupied (September 23) by the Habsburg claimant. But, as in 1706, Castile rallied to Philip ; no help was forthcoming from Portugal, for Vendôme, sent by Louis to command his grandson's armies, had moved into the Tagus valley by Valladolid, Salamanca (October 6) and Talavera (October 19), interposing between the Allies in Madrid and their friends in Portugal. As in 1706, Madrid soon proved untenable. During the retreat of the Allies to the coast one of their divisions was defeated and forced to capitulate at Brilmega (December 8), the other securing a safe withdrawal by the battle, tactically indecisive, of Villa Viciosa (December 10). Thus once again the Habsburgs were confined to Catalonia, and even this was hardly secure, for in Januarv, 1711, Gerona surrendered to de Noailles.

Before, however, the operations of 1711 could be opened, the best chance of a decisive campaign had vanished with the sudden death (April 17) of the Emperor Joseph. This event completely altered the European situation, as it left Archduke Charles the head of the Habsburg family and the obvious successor on the Imperial throne. It was hardly possible that the Grand Alliance, which had been formed in order to prevent a cadet of the Bourbon family from ascending the Spanish throne, should continue the war to reunite the dominions of Charles V under the head of the Austrian Habsburgs. Joseph's death thus provided the Tory Ministry with an additional justification for their determination to bring the war to an end, and to meet the growing feeling that an annual expenditure which had steadily risen in the course of ten years from nearly four to nearly seven millions sterling had become intolerable. According to William Ill's settlement England had bound herself to furnish two parts out of every five of the land forces required of the war, and five parts out of every eight of the sea forces ; and yet it was estimated that above these quotas, England from first to last expended twenty millions sterling to cover the military and naval deficiencies of her Allies.

Allies, while assuring to England herself the substance of what she actually secured in the Peace of Utrecht.

Apart from its influence upon the diplomatic situation, the death of Joseph had seriously interfered with the Allied plan of campaign for 1711. Eugene and the greater part of his army were called off to the Rhine, to cover the Imperial election at Frankfort from any possibility of interruption on the part of the French troops in Alsace ; and Marlborough found himself at the head of a force nearly 24<,000 weaker than the 88,000 with whom Villars was about to defend his celebrated lines. This masterpiece of military engineering ran almost from the coast of Picardy to the Sambre and Meuse, the Canche, the Scarpe and other minor rivers having been dammed in several places to protect tracts of country with inundations. It really appeared as if Villars' boast would be borne out and Marlborough had at last met his "iion plus ultra.'1'' But Villars had yet to learn the full measure of his great adversary's talent. All endeavours to lure Villars from his position into another pitched battle having proved fruitless, Marlborough, after capturing (July 6) a fort at Arleux which commanded a causeway over the inundations of the Sanzee, mo\ ed westward on Arras, as though about to tempt destruction by making a frontal attack on the very strongest portion of the lines (August). Deceived by the feint, Villars, who had just retaken and destroyed Arleux (July 21), hastened to send reinforcements to his left. Marlborough's success was assured. Calling on his men for one of those great efforts he never demanded unnecessarily or in vain, he countermarched his troops from Arras to Arleux, covering forty miles in eighteen hours, pushed across the causeway almost unopposed, and thus pierced the lines on which Villars had so confidently relied (August 5). In vain Villars tried to catch Marlborough at a disadvantage ; the Duke covered the bridging of the Scheldt by a demonstration against Cambray, after which he crossed to the right of the Scheldt and proceeded to invest Bouchain (August 8). As before, Villars would not fight a battle for a beleaguered fortress, and Bouchain fell on September 13 after what Archdeacon Hare characterised as " the best conducted siege we have made this war." The capture of Bouchain brought the Allies into an excellent position for an advance into France ; but it was Marlborough's last exploit. The Tories had determined to overthrow him ; and on December 31 he was summarily dismissed from all his employments, in order that he might be put on his trial on a charge of misappropriating public moneys which had actually been used for secret service and intelligence work.

Townshend as British envoy at the Hague, joined with Hcinsius in working for the transfer of the Spanish monarchy to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, whose eldest son, the Prince of Piedmont, should marry an Austrian Archduchess. But the endeavours of Peterborough, who had arrived at Vienna in February to allay the suspicions of the Imperial Government, and now pressed this solution upon it, were only met by Count Wratislaw, the confidential adviser of Leopold I, by the suggestion of an English guarantee of the Habsburg tenure of Hungary. The estrangement between the English and Imperial Governments continued to increase. In July Count Gallas, the Imperial envoy at St James', demanded official information on the subject of the negotiations with France, and, when he was furnished with a copy of the preliminaries agreed upon with Mesnager, treated them with incredulous contempt. Meanwhile, Heinsius and his colleagues had early in May been informed of the French proposals ; and an active correspondence soon ensued between the English and the Dutch Government, which revealed the fears of the latter for their " Barrier " ; while Lord Sir afford took up a high tone, and his Government kept in secret touch with the Dutch peace party through John Drummond, an English merchant at Amsterdam. Though Count Goëss, who had in September arrived at the Hague as Imperial envoy, made one more attempt to keep the Alliance together, he could not prevent the acceptance by the Dutch on November 21, 1711, of a Peace Congress to be held at Utrecht in the following January, with the French proposals as its preliminaries. Early in December the Emperor Charles VI crossed the German frontier on his way from Barcelona, where he had left his young Empress Elizabeth behind him as a pledge of his determination not to abandon Spain ; on his journey through northern Italy he had had an interview with Victor Amadeus. At Innsbruck the Emperor, after deliberating the situation with Prince Eugene and Counts Gallas, Wratislaw, and Sinzendorf, resolved to adopt the suggestion of Marlborough that Prince Eugene should be sent to England on a special mission, and that in the meantime no plenipotentiary should be sent to the proposed Congress.

The change of affairs in the field naturally affected the course of the negotiations at Utrecht. The Dutch were already weary of the war, and intent upon ending it if satisfied as to their " Barrier." The conclusion of a peace was further advanced, when Louis induced his grandson to abandon formally his claims on France, which had recently acquired increased importance through the deaths of the Dauphin (April, 1711) and of the Dukes of Burgundy (February, 1712) and Britanny (March, 1712). With this renunciation Bolingbroke (St John) also had to be content ; though he would probably have preferred to see Victor Amadeus at Madrid. But Philip's hold on Spain was too secure to be shaken; and, in August, 1712, a suspension of hostilities in the Peninsula was arranged, though it was not till the following autumn that Starhemberg and his men finally evacuated Catalonia. Long before this the Peace of Utrecht had been signed. The patent divisions in the Allied camp, the knowledge that the English Ministry had made up their minds to conclude peace, and the improvement in his position wrought by Villars' success, allowed Louis to assume a suffer attitude and to reduce the concessions he had to make ; and, though the Emperor-Charles had been duly elected in October, 1711-was somewhat unreasonable in refusing to give up his claims on Spain and to content himself with the ample possessions offered him in Italy, it is easier to sympathise with his obstinacy than to condemn it. Finally, on April 11, 1713, the Peace (which is analysed elsewhere) was signed without the Emperor's assent.

In June French detachments pushed over the Rhine, occupying Speier and Mannheim, and so covering the siege of Landau, which Villars began on June 24. It proved a protracted affair ; for, despite Eugene's inaction, the fortress held out till August 26 before surrendering. Villars then crossed the river at Strassburg, stormed the lines constructed to cover the Freiburg Pass over the Black Forest (September 20), and, pressing hard on the heels of the fugitives, invested the town. Again Eugene, too weak to risk a battle, had to be a passive spectator of a gallant but unavailing defence. Freiburg resisted till well into October ; the castle held out till November 17. To blame Eugene for his inactivity would be absurd ; like Wellington on the Portuguese frontier in 1810, he could not risk a fight because for political reasons he could not afford to be beaten ; and the slackness of the German Princes, which left him in so hopeless a numerical inferiority, condemned him without appeal to the defensive.

Rhine, of the treatment of the Emperor's faithful Catalan partisans, and of the reinstatement of the two Wittelsbach Electors, on which Louis insisted, although Maximilian Emanuel of Bavaria seems to have been not disinclined to accept the Spanish Netherlands in lieu of his hereditary possessions. However, the Dutch would not hear of having an adherent of France on their frontier, and in the end his restoration to Bavaria was agreed upon, while Charles had reluctantly to abandon Catalonia to the tender mercies of Philip. On the Rhine, Louis kept Landau and Strassburg, but gave up Alt-Breisach, Freiburg, and Kehl. And so at last an agreement was reached, and on March 7, 1714, the plenipotentiaries signed the Peace of Rastatt, the provisions of which will be detailed below. One step yet remained before peace could be completely restored, the ratification of its terms by the Diet of the Empire-a more or less formal step which was finally taken at Baden in October, 1714.

(2) THE PEACE OF UTRECHT AND THE SUPPLEMENTARY PACIFICATIONS.

The United Provinces gained a strong Barrier, firmly planted in allied territory, against any renewal of the aggression of France. But though they contrived to secure, in addition, some commercial advantages from the Peace, their political position as a Great Power had gone from them for ever, passing, without any real resistance on their part, to the Power which had been their rival on the sea during many generations in times of war and in times of peace ; and their mercantile supremacy was likewise at an end. The territorial gains of Great Britain herself consisted in Europe of a couple of Mediterranean ports ; and though she extended and strengthened her power in the New World by her gains from France, the significance of this expansion was imperfectly realised at home, and the great European duel in the New World was still to come. On the other hand, England established the security of her Protestant throne ; she obtained commercial advantages of the greatest importance by her treaties with France and Spain ; and to the proofs which the War had given of her ascendancy in Europe, was added this last proof-that the Peace which ended it had been largely the work of her statesmen, and had, beyond all doubt, been made possible by her will alone.

In the following a brief summary of the provisions of the Peace of Utrecht will be attempted, without any detailed statement as to the course of the actual negotiations of which it was the result ; and a brief account will be added of the pacifications by which it was supplemented.

March, 1712) had brought so much nearer the danger, still not removed, of a union between the French and Spanish Crowns.

For the rest, it may be said that the Government of Philip V had no voice at the Congress distinct from that of France, and that the Bourbon King of Spain's personal action was of importance only at the particular point of the negotiations when he made up his mind to prefer the retention of a diminished Spanish to the expectancy of an enlarged French monarchy (May, 1712). Portugal was absolutely tied to England, and, instead of deriving any advantage from the entire course of negotiations, had to console herself with the heavy subsidies paid to her during the course of the War. Promises had been made and prospects held out which gained Savoy over to the side of peace. The States General had to concentrate their energies, as it had been all along intended by the English Government that they should, upon the question of their Barrier ; on December 29, 1712, they finally agreed to accept the Anglo-French preliminaries. Thus, in the progress of the negotiations everything depended on the maintenance of the understanding between France and England ; and for this purpose the conclusion of a truce between them was of the utmost importance. The cession of Dunkirk by the French before the conclusion of the peace enabled Ormond to proclaim this truce on July 16,1712. An Anglo-French pacification was henceforth a virtual certainty; Bolingbroke's journey to France (August 7) and subsequent interviews with Torcy removed all remaining doubts ; and, Savoy being more or less satisfied, the remainder of the negotiations chiefly turned on the satisfaction of the Dutch and of the Emperor. On February 2,1713, the conferences were formally resumed. The Dutch were, as will be seen, not really contented till the conclusion of the Third Barrier Treaty, nearly eighteen months later ; nor was the satisfaction of the Emperor at present accomplished. His demands remained unsupported by England ; and, though on March 14, 1713, Sinzendorf had signed a truce at Utrecht by which the Emperor undertook to withdraw his troops from Catalonia and to concede the neutrality of the whole of Italy, he could not obtain the terms on which he insisted. A last attempt made on his behalf by Shrewsbury at Paris (March, 1713) fell through ; and peace was signed at Utrecht without him (April 11). When the middle of June had been reached, and no message of acceptance had arrived from Vienna, the last of the plenipotentiaries quitted Utrecht ; though the proceedings there were, as will be seen, not yet at an end.

Article IX concerned Dunkirk, whose numerous vicissitudes had not ended with its sale to France by Charles II in 1662. Louis had greatly added to the strength of its fortifications, till it became beyond doubt a very serious menace to Great Britain's maintenance of her power in the Narrow Seas. It had now, as was seen, been evacuated by the French during the peace negotiations ; and it was now stipulated that the King of France should within six months raze the fortifications and fill up the harbour, with an undertaking never to restore them. Louis XIV showed a want of good faith very dishonourable to him, by digging another harbour at Mardyk, a village near Dunkirk, which was intended to be deeper than that which had been filled up, and which was connected with a canal of considerable length. The complaints which at once arose in England obliged him to suspend the operations at Mardyk, on which not less than 12,000 workmen are said to have been employed ; and under the Regency the works were demolished. The Dunkirk clause, to the importance of which English public feeling had shown itself so alive, made its reappearance in a succession of treaties before the Peace of Versailles in 1783, when France at last obtained its abolition.

Peace of Utrecht at last put an end. Article XIII provided in addition for the cession by France of Newfoundland and the adjacent islands ; but Cape Breton Island and the other islands situate at the mouth of the St Lawrence were left in the possession of the French, who were to be still allowed to ply their fishing-trade north of Cape Bonavista, and to occupy the shore of Newfoundland for the purpose of curing their fish. The French fishing-trade in these regions thus continued to flourish, so that at the time of the Peace of Aachen in 1748 it very largely exceeded the English ; nor was there up to the Peace of Paris in 1763- to say nothing of later times-any more constant source of irritation between the two Powers than this sore, which so many generations of diplomatists have exerted themselves to heal.

The Peace between Great Britain and Spain may conveniently be next considered, though it was not actually concluded till July 13, 1713. Obviously, the plenipotentiaries of Philip V could not make their appearance at Utrecht till the Treaties of Peace between France and Great Britain and the other principal negotiating Powers had been signed, and till Philip had been recognised by them as King of Spain. It is pointed out in the work of Koch and Schoell, to which this summary is throughout indebted, that this Treaty between Great Britain and Spain is the first international instrument to make mention of what had been the real question of the War-namely, the imminent danger which had threatened the independence and welfare of Europe through so close a union tis that which had been brought about between the kingdoms of France and Spain ; it was for this reason, as Article II recites, that both the King of France and the King of Spain had consented to the requisite precautions being taken, and that the latter had for himself and his heirs and successors renounced for ever his claims to the French Crown, which renunciation he now solemnly confirmed. In further Articles he expressly approved the succession established in Great Britain by Act of Parliament ; and promised to prevent the transfer of any land or lordship in America by Spain to France or to any other nation.

Among the remaining Articles, that which confirmed the cession by Spain to Great Britain of the town, citadel, and port of Gibraltar is of special interest. Spanish pride and a well-warranted national feeling had to accept this sanction of an acquisition which, after having been made almost gratuitously, had been held with so much pertinacity. It was, however, accompanied by stipulations which guaranteed the free exercise of the Catholic religion in Gibraltar, and prohibited Jews and Moors from settling there, and by an engagement on the part of the British Crown securing the refusal of Gibraltar to the Spanish-should the British ever contemplate selling or otherwise alienating it.

In the same Treaty the King of Spain likewise agreed to a cession of which he had sought to delay as long as possible the formal acknowledgment. " Yielding to the request of his Britannic Majesty," he agreed to abandon to the Duke of Savoy the kingdom of Sicily-his Britannic Majesty promising to use his best endeavours for its restoration to the Spanish Crown, in default of heirs male of the House of Savoy. It was not, however, as will be seen elsewhere, a deficiency of this sort which a few years later (in 1720) obliged Victor Amadeus II to exchange Sicily for Sardinia.

The Anglo-Spanish Treaty contained two other clauses of moment, on which Englishmen cannot look back with the same sense of detachment. By Article XII Spain accorded to Great Britain and the British South Sea Company, whose history is summarised elsewhere, for a term of thirty years the sole right of importing negroes into Spanish America. England and her privileged Company were thus to enjoy the rights of the Asiento (or legal compact) under the conditions which in 1701 had been granted for the enjoyment of the same right for ten years by Philip V to the French Guinea Company ; in other words, she undertook to furnish an annual supply of 4800 negroes to the Spanish colonies in America, paying certain dues on each imported slave and a sum in advance of 200,000 livres, to be repaid within the last ten years of the duration of the Treaty. But during its first five and twenty years as many negroes above the stipulated number of 4800 might be imported as was thought expedient, only half the dues fixed for those within that total being payable on account of those in excess of it. Certain other provisions favourable to the trading Company were reintroduced, besides the assignment of a share in the profits of the slave-trade to the sovereign; and a new provision was added (which was to prove of great political importance) granting British merchants the right of sending each year one vessel of five hundred tons' burden to trade with the Spanish colonies in America. The " ingenuity of British merchants " was thus enabled to evade the narrow bounds within which they were confined, and to secure for themselves (as the South Sea Company effectually did till the outbreak of the War with Spain in 174-0) the greater part of the general commerce with these regions.

Great Britain had made her own ; it was among them that he had sojourned even after he had become Emperor, and to their care that on his departure he had confided his young wife. Yet at Utrecht they were, under cover of the hypocritical verbiage cited above, left to the mercy of Philip V, who barely took the trouble of concealing his- very explicable-hatred of them. The privileges of which they were "guaranteed" the enjoyment were those of the Castilians, not their own ; and their " obstinacy," as Bolingbroke chose to call it, was requited by their being left out in the cold. The cynical indifference with which the rights of the Catalans were thus ignored was all the more impolitic as contrasting with the consideration shown to them by France in the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659). The result was that which had been foreseen, and concludes the one shameful episode connected with the Peace of Utrecht. In July, 1713, after the Catalans had refused unconditional submission and set up a provisional Government of their own, Philip Vs troops invested Barcelona, whence after the departure of his consort the Emperor had, in accordance with a separate agreement concluded by him at Utrecht on March 14, 1713, in the same month withdrawn his troops under Starhemberg. His proposal of an independent Catalan republic was of course nugatory ; and the real intentions of the British Government were revealed in August, by the despatch into the Mediterranean of an English squadron under the Tory Admiral Sir James Wishart, with instructions to put an end, if necessary, to the "confusion1" existing at Barcelona. He was also instructed to reduce the inhabitants of Majorca by force, should they refuse the terms offered them ; and it is quite clear that the two designs were to be carried out on parallel lines. So late as March, 1714, an address to the Queen was proposed in the Lords by Cowper, and, notwithstanding Bolingbroke's sarcastic comment that her Majesty could not be held to be bound by her promises after Charles III had relinquished the Spanish throne, carried with an immaterial modification, urging the continuance of English interposition on behalf of the Catalans. It had at least the effect that Wishart was ordered not to appear off Barcelona for the present. The city gallantly held out against the attacks of its besiegers, who were reinforced by a French army under Berwick and a French fleet. At last on the night of September 11 a general assault began, and the fighting continued all next day in every street-it might almost be said in every house-of Barcelona. The fall of Barcelona, which has been aptly compared to that of Numantia, forms the tragic ending of the story ; the survivors, sick and wounded, were sold into slavery ; and the very standards of the Catalans were by special order of King Philip burnt in the public market by the common hangman.

Article IX of this Treaty revoked Philip V's cession, ominous for the diplomatic history of the eighteenth century, of the Spanish Netherlands to Bavaria (made in pursuance of an agreement, concluded in 1702, between Louis XIV and the Elector Maximilian Ernanuel) ; France undertaking to obtain from Bavaria a cession to the House of Austria of her claims to the Belgic Provinces. In return for the surrender to the States General for ultimate transfer to the House of Austria of certain places in French Flanders (they in fact included some of those forming part of the proposed Dutch "Barrier"), the States General undertook to obtain the restoration to France of Lille, on which she had during the negotiations set the utmost store, and of certain other of her former possessions.

The Peace between France and Savoy, signed April 11,1713, restored to the latter Power Savoy and Nice, and in general any part of the Duke's dominions taken from him by the French arms. By means of a series of reciprocal cessions, the chain of the Alps became the boundary-line between the French and the ducal territory, while the plateau of these mountains was divided between the two Governments. The Duke of Savoy was acknowledged as the legitimate King of Sicily, its possession being guaranteed to him by the King of France, to whom this arrangement had been specially repugnant ; the stipulations as to the succession in Spain of the male line of the House of Savoy, in default of posterity of Philip, either male or female, may be passed by as never having come into operation. On the same day was signed the Treaty between Spain and Savoy, of which only those provisions possess a wider interest which referred to the cession of Sicily by the King of Spain to the Duke of Savoy, and to the confirmation of certain cessions made to the latter in northern Italy by the Emperor Leopold I in the Peace of Turin (1703).

France and Portugal also concluded a Treaty on April 11, having, five months earlier, agreed to a suspension of arms. The historical importance of their agreement is colonial. The Portuguese settlements on the banks of the Amazon were now recognised as wholly appertaining to the State by which they had been established; while France renounced any right on the part of her colony of Cayenne to trade in the mouth of the river. As a matter of fact, however, the Brazilian trade had since the middle of the seventeenth century more and more fallen into English hands, the Portuguese acting for the most part as agents or factors only ; so that these so-called Portuguese gains must be counted among the provisions of the Peace most profitable to Great Britain.

At Utrecht the King of Prussia's sovereignty over Neuchâtel and Valengin was likewise acknowledged. Neuchâtel (Neuenburg) was an ancient countship, whose chief civic community had been connected with the Swiss Confederation by a series of treaties of alliance, and had at times been under the actual control of the Confederation itself. By right of inheritance the countship had been held by the ducal House of Longueville (a branch of the Orleans line) till its extinction in 1707, with the death of Marie de Longueville, Duchess of Nemours. Already during her lifetime Louis XIV, whose annexation of Franche Comté had made him the immediate neighbour of Neuchâtel, had put forward the claims of the Prince of Conti upon the inheritance. These claims had been strenuously opposed by the Swiss cantons-Bern, Luzern, Solothurn, and Freiburg-associated by written compact with Neuchâtel, where (whether or not with the intention of spiting France) a movement arose, headed by the former Chancellor, George de Montm ollin, in support of Frederick I of Prussia's claims as representing the House of Nassau-Orange, which had formerly held sway at Neuchâtel. Bern, the most important of the members of the Swiss Confederation, and other cantons strongly supported these claims, which in 1707 were approved by the Estates of Neuchâtel, and in 1713 declared valid at Utrecht. The folly of the attempt to establish an intimate political connexion between two places so remote from each other as Berlin and Neuchâtel, especially at a time when all claims to Orange were renounced, was to avenge itself slowly, but surely. After undergoing the vicissitudes of the Napoleonic wars, Neuchâtel was not finally given up by Prussia to Switzerland, of which it is an organic part, till the precipitous changes of 1848.

It remains to note that, by a clause which, had Frederick I of Prussia survived till the actual signature of the Franco-Prussian Treaty, would in his eyes have surpassed all the rest of it in importance, the King of France, in his own name and in that of the King of Spain, promised to acknowledge the royal dignity of his Prussian brother.

The Imperial Government-after the fashion of what nob in England alone was a preeminently pamphleteering age and, in the particular instance of the Peace of Utrecht, a preeminently pamphleteering occasion-issued a German pamphlet designed for popular consumption ; together with a more temperately written apologia, elaborated, in accordance with Sinzendorf s instructions, by the learned Jean Dumont, both in Latin and French, under the title of A Letter to an Englishman. But even the French-born Imperialist historiographer ventured to reproach the British nation with its servile submissiveness to the authority of the Crown, and to warn Queen Anne of the risk she ran of incurring the fate of her father. Thus, though abandoned by his Allies, and labouring under the lack of resources chronic to his dynasty, the Emperor Charles VI showed himself immovable in his resolution to carry on the War. When he turned to the Diet at Ratisbon, he obtained without much difficulty a vote for the continuation of the War on the part of the Empire and for a contribution of four million dollars. But the money came in at a snail's pace ; the proclamation issued, or rather caused to be issued at second-hand, by the Emperor, fell flat ; and the prospects of a war carried on without British or Dutch subsidies revealed themselves in all their nakedness. The Imperial Government remained blind to the fact that Great Britain's commercial interests would not suffer from a breach with the Empire, which must follow upon a political rupture between the two Powers ; and that it would therefore be practically ignored in the settlement which the British and French Governments were at one in hastening to a conclusion.

Westphalia. Finally, though to the resolution of the Diet approving of the ratification of the Peace of Byswyk (November, 1697), there was added a postscript intended to safeguard the Protestants against any application of the clause to their disadvantage, this postscript was ignored by the Emperor in accepting the resolution; and the result was a protracted quarrel between the Protestant and Catholic Estates at the Diet which led to a stagnation of all business in that assembly and recalls, in its complications, the evil days of the Reservatum Ecclesiasticum. Nor can it be said that in the later instance the whole dispute was a tempest about nothing; for the number of places whose religious condition was involved in it amounted to little short of 2000 (1922). When in 1714 the matter came up again at the Diet in connexion with the Emperor's proposal that he should be empowered by it to conclude peace in its name, the Protestants used all the forms at their disposal to obtain the insertion in the decree of their demand that the obnoxious clause should be held to have been abrogated for ever. Charles VI refused to accept powers thus restricted; and the Protestant Estates had to content themselves with a fresh protest, which when the terms of peace were actually settled at Baden was, as will be seen, coolly passed over.

When, therefore, on June 10,1714, a peace congress opened at Baden (in Switzerland), there was really very little for it to accomplish. It was attended by plenipotentiaries of the Emperor and of France, of Duke Leopold Joseph Charles of Lorraine and of several Princes of the Empire and of Italy, and of the Pope. No warmer friend of France, it may be observed, has ever worn the tiara than Clement XI (1700-21); but he had at an early date in his pontificate found it necessary to come to an understanding with the Emperor Joseph. Yet the Peace of Utrecht had deprived him of certain portions of his temporal dominions ; and Clement, who regarded this unprecedented act as a personal affront, was neither able to obtain redress nor to suffer in dignified silence. The Peace between France and the Empire was concluded at Baden on September 7, 1714.

The Peace of Baden was, however, by no means a mere repetition of the Peace of Utrecht ; for at Baden the Emperor did not acknowledge the rule of Philip V in Spain, and Philip in his turn gave no consent to the dismemberment of the Spanish monarchy in favour of the Austrian Habsburgs. There are other points of difference-notably as to the treatment of the Elector of Bavaria, who at Baden profited greatly from the late successes of his French ally, and from the magnanimity with which on this, as on other occasions, Louis XIV supported the interests of his friends. The Peace of Baden was ratified by the Diet of the Empire, but not till after many difficulties had been raised and surmounted; for while the Protestant Estates recorded a protest against the maintenance of the notorious clause of the Fourth Article of the Peace of Ryswyk, other protests were recorded by several Italian princes, and by the Pope himself, against other sections of the present treaty.

Portugal and Spain likewise concluded peace at a date so late as February 6, 1715. The lasting hatred between the two neighbour peoples goes a long way to account for the delay ; but it must also be allowed that Portugal, who, as has been seen, had faithfully adhered to the Grand Alliance since British diplomacy had induced her to join it in 1703-notwithstanding the dangers and damages to which her colonial empire had been exposed in consequence-might justly have expected a fuller consideration of her claims in the Peace than she had succeeded in obtaining. She was left very much to make her own terms with Spain ; and, though in the end she reduced her demands to the single city of Badajoz and the abandonment of the Spanish claims (upheld by the valour of Indians trained by Jesuits) in the colony of St Sacrament in Uruguay, to whose strange history reference is made elsewhere, the Government of Philip V was provided with further counter-claims of its own. When, however, it became apparent that the Emperor had resolved to conclude no peace with Spain at present, the Spanish negotiations with Portugal were resumed ; and, under pressure from her ungenerous British ally, Portugal was brought to sign the Peace-both the contracting Powers making it very evident through the behaviour of their plenipotentiaries, that they and their peoples were affectionately disposed towards each other. On the whole, the conditions of this treaty were necessarily favourable to Portugal. The home frontier was regulated in accordance with the status quo ante helium; and Spain gave up the disputed colony of St Sacrament to Portugal, unless she should within eighteen months have found and accepted a suitable equivalent. The later changes in the history of the colony were as numerous as the earlier, but cannot occupy us here.

This account may fitly be concluded by a few words concerning the "Barrier Treaties," of which the third and last finishes the series of transactions calling for notice here. Article IX of the Treaty of 1701, in which the lines of the Grand Alliance were laid down, had contained an assurance to the United Provinces of a barrier against France. The importance of such a protection to the Provinces was of course patent. Nature had done little or nothing for the Low Countries in the way of barrier or boundary ; and the repulse of the French invasion of 1672-one of those great crises in the history of a nation which must end either in the destruction or in the preservation of a nation's existence as such-had so far only proved that, but for an extraordinary effort of national patriotism under a great national leader, the Dutch Republic might have sunk under the waters, instead of emerging from them.

This Barrier Treaty, which in fact amounted to a renewal, by way of reassurance, of the defensive and offensive alliance between Great Britain and the United Provinces, in terms favourable beyond precedent to the latter, was decried in Parliament as unfavourable to England as well as to France ; and this complaint was echoed in the country at large. A strong popular feeling against the Dutch had survived from the ignoble factiousness of the reign of William III, and it was probably augmented by some genuine fears as to the consequences of strengthening the position of England's chief mercantile rival. Thus, notwithstanding the Barrier Treaty, or partly in consequence of it, considerable soreness ensued between the two peoples and Governments ; and, when, in December, 1711, Marlborough was dismissed from his public employments, the States General made over the command of their troops, not to his successor, the Duke of Ormond, but to the Imperial Commander, Prince Eugene. Party feeling took advantage of these relations to undermine the Grand Alliance by such semi-official manifestos as Swift's Remarks on the Burner Treaty (1712).

Thus, during the progress of the peace negotiations of 1711 and 1712 between the British and French Governments, the former were found quite ready to meet the wishes of France as to a revision of the Barrier Treaty, of which it is certainly not too much to say that it seriously impaired the force of the compact. Several of the Barrier places on which the Treaty had insisted being now promised to France, it became necessary for Great Britain, if her present policy was to be carried out, to conclude a Second Barrier Treaty with the States General, and this was accomplished at Utrecht on January SO, 1713. In this Treaty, by which the First was formally revoked, it was settled that the States General should have the right of keeping garrisons in Knoque, Ypres, Menin, Tournay, Mons, Charleroi, Namur, and Ghent ; but Lille, Condé, Valenciennes and Maubeuge, which were included as Barrier places in the First Treaty, were not so included in the Second. Great Britain was to furnish 10,000 and the States General 6000 men, and each of the two Powers the same number of vessels, for the maintenance of the Treaty. Upper Gelders, which the First Treaty had assured to the United Provinces, was passed over in the Second, it being, as has been seen, intended to dispose of it otherwise (in favour of Prussia).

On the whole, therefore, the Dutch had by their tenacity, and by taking advantage of the favourable opportunity which had at last come to them, obtained a guaranteed agreement which not only effected their main object, the establishment of a well-protected frontier as towards France, but even (in the words of a Dutch historian) placed what were now the Austrian Netherlands in a relation which was in some degree a relation of dependence as towards the Free. For by the Third Barrier Treaty the States General at once gave up to the Emperor all those portions of the Netherlands which had been in the possession of King Charles II of Spain ; but they retained under certain pretexts those districts which France had restored to the House of Austria in the Treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt, and Baden. These were likewise delivered up to the Emperor by virtue of a supplementary convention signed at the Hague on December 22, 1718. The unity of the monarchy of the Spanish Habsburgs, which the will of Charles II had sought to preserve, had received its final blow; and under the guarantee of Great Britain the head of the House of Austria had reentered into the possession of one of the fairest of the jewels in the crown of his great namesake.