CHAP. in its integrity and power of the Catholic monarchy
XXXIII. of Spain.

A secret council of grandees was also held at Madrid.
The most aged of these, the Marquis of Manzera, gave
very sensible advice. He said that, had the Cortes
been assembled at the first prospect of the failure of
the royal line, and had a national and wise adminis-
tration governed the country since, it would have found
resources within itself, an army, a navy, a treasury, with
able ministers and generals to make the choice of the
king effectual, whatever prince might have been selected
for his successor. But then Spain was powerless, with-
out troops or money, the monarchy unsupported by
any of its old institutions. The only mode left for
preserving the integrity of the country was to call to
it a prince who could bring all that Spain wanted.
And the house of Bourbon could alone do that.* The
declining king could not resist this decision of Rome
and of his own grandees. And he consented to exe-
cute, without the knowledge of the queen, a testament
in favour of a grandson of Louis the Fourteenth.
That king was sounded on the subject. And when
the testament was actually drawn up and signed early
in November, Louis was not long ignorant of its con-
tents. †

The French king had indeed ample time between his knowledge of the testament and the death of Charles the Second of Spain to make up his mind as to the course he should pursue. He communed with those most in his confidence, with Madame de Maintenon, with Torcy, and with Pontchartrain. All were opposed to his acceptance of the testament, especially Madame de

* Manzera's speech is given in the Memoirs of the Marquis of Louvelle.

† Dangeau, Louvelle, and even William's letters in Grimblot, show

how fully and universally was known
the nature of the King of Spain's
testament, leaving the monarchy to
the Duke of Anjou.

Maintenon, who had seen what both Louis and the country had suffered towards the end of the last war, and who dreaded a renewal of such struggles. The arguments, however, both in policy and in justice, for the acceptance of the testament, were many and forcible.

When France in the last treaty of partition consented to give Spain to the archduke, it looked, of course, to the emperor's acceptance of such an arrangement. His doing so would have secured to the French peaceable possession of the portion allotted to them in Italy. But since the emperor rejected and denounced this treaty, and was prepared to oppose its provisions, what security or probability was there for either the Duke of Lorraine getting possession of Milan, or the French being acknowledged masters of Sicily and Naples? William himself seemed to acknowledge the difficulty, which he hoped to surmount by giving Savoy and Piedmont to France in lieu of Naples, the Duke of Savoy being transferred thither. The French would thus have been more easily installed in their allotted territories, and public opinion in England, indifferent to the annexation of Savoy and Piedmont to France, would have been gratified, whilst it had the strongest repugnance to the ports and countries of Sicily or of Southern and Central Italy being in their possession.† The Duke of Savoy's refusal defeated that scheme. And thus France, by adhering to the treaty of partition, would have found itself at war with Germany and the States, which supported Austria, whilst there was little aid to be hoped from the maritime powers, England being disarmed, and Holland most reluctant to re-assume the burden of war expenses. Louis, too.

"It must be owned," writes the Duke of Manchester, William's envoy in Paris, "that the emperor's not signing the treaty of partition gives them a plausible pretext for

breaking it."
Manchester to Hali-
fax. Court and Society.
+ See the correspondence in Grim-

blot.

СНАР.

XXXIII.

XXXIII.

CHAP. could not forget that William, in his past negotiations, had admitted the contingency of the dauphin's son succeeding to the Spanish crown, so that he might consider his future acquiescence not impossible. Nor could the French king be expected to foresee the energy of the English people, so augmented by its conquest of constitutional liberty, as to be able to send forth heroic armies, and produce a general to lead them of first-rate ability, before whom the once invincible monarchy of France shrunk in decrepitude, the fruit of its utter negation and dereliction of freedom.

On the 9th of November arrived at Versailles news of the death of the King of Spain, and an extract from his testament which nominated the Duke of Anjou, second son of the dauphin, king of the great inheritance. In case of his refusal that empire was to pass forthwith to the archduke, and in his default to the Duke of Savoy. Louis, therefore, had before him the alternative of either possessing the Spanish territory entire, or seeing it at once pass to the great rival country and rival house. A council was immediately summoned and followed by others, in which Torcy and Pontchartrain, who had once opposed the acceptance of the testament, showed themselves converted as well as Madame de Maintenon to the opinion of the king. The Duke of Beauvilliers alone opposed. The dauphin declared he would never assent to his son and family waiving the rights accruing from their birth and confirmed by the testament.

In a week after the receipt of the testament, Louis the Fourteenth called the Spanish envoy into his closet, and bade him do homage to the Duke of Anjou as his sovereign. The folding doors were then thrown open, and the court invited to perform the same ceremony. Louis declared his decision to be the will of

*Torcy was for at once sending the Duke of Anjou privately to Harcourt. Louvelle.

God and of his people. He bade his grandson be at once a good Spaniard and a good Frenchman. The political union of the two kingdoms would confer upon both happiness and upon Europe peace. It was difficult to have uttered aught either as a wish or a prediction that should turn out so egregiously false. Europe turned its back upon peace; whilst France and Spain under the Bourbon dynasties experienced, little save misery and decadence.

The reader may be spared the pomps and ceremonies of the occasion, the latter more strictly registered and chronicled than matters of policy and administration. Young Anjou, a stripling weak of body as of mind, was instructed in the manners and habits of dignity upon state occasions. From such solemn etiquette, which he nevertheless enjoyed, Philip was wont to escape to rabbit shooting and boyish amusements. His chief prospect of happiness as king was that it liberated him from the magisterial tyranny of his grandfather's court. Louis and Philip shed mutual tears as they parted at Sceaux. However grave the future consequences to both, the first results of their bold decision gave them no cause of regret. Philip was received in Spain with all the loyalty and submission that a son of Charles might have commanded.* Not only Spain, but the Italian provinces, both people and governors, showed equal submission. The emperor indeed was irate, and prepared to claim the heritage of his house by arms. Yet though freed from the Turkish war, which the intervention of England had chiefly terminated, † and assured of the support of the North German powers by the erection of Prussia into a kingdom, and Hanover into an electorate, still the motions of the emperor were slow, and his hopes unpromising. Nor was William himself prepared for vindicating

* Mémoires de Noailles.

VOL. IV.

G

In the peace of Carlowitz,

CHAP.

XXXIII.

CHAP. XXXIII.

the independence of Europe. The inveterate favoritism shown by the English monarch to his Dutch friends and followers had made formidable enemies of the most eminent of the English political leaders, who so hampered his administration as altogether to neutralise

his power. * The second treaty of partition, giving

Naples and Savoy to France, was the object of severe disapprobation by the united parties. So much so that Matthew Prior congratulates the English ambassador in Paris on Louis preferring the testament to the treaty, "all the English being so peevishly opposed to the latter." The English king, therefore, as well as the Dutch, would gladly have compounded with the French grasping Spain for their young prince, had Italy been transferred to the archduke, advantages secured to the trade in the Mediterranean and the West Indies, ‡ and the barrier of fortified towns erected in Flanders against French aggression, been respected, and left under even nominal Spanish rule. But Louis was too much elated by the universal burst of success to adopt even the tone of conciliation. And he evaded the demands of the Dutch, for the preservation of a barrier in Flanders, by saying that he was merely ready to abide by the Treaty of Ryswick.§ The Dutch, in consequence, began to raise money and to arm troops. They had garrisons in the Spanish towns of Luxemburg, Namur, Mons, Charleroi, and Venloo, as security for six millions lent to Spain. Louis lost no time in informing the Dutch that he would repay them. By the connivance of the Elector of Bavaria, who commanded in the Netherlands, but whom Spain did not pay, the French surprised the towns and

* Vernon Correspondence, passim. † Prior to Manchester, Dec. 1700. Duke of Manchester's Court and Society from Elizabeth to James.

+ Marlborough's letter to Godolphin, in Coxe.

§ William's speech to Parlia

ment.

son.

Lamberti, tom. ii.

Middleton's letters, in Macpher