together with all her descendants, male and female, even should she will or be able to say and pretend that in their persons the said reasons of the common weal, or others on which the said exclusion might be founded, do not continue and cannot and ought not to be had in consideration, because in no case, nor in no time, nor in no manner which may happen, neither she nor they, their heirs and successors, have to succeed," &c.

A pitiful argument of the palace, which was replied to by the treaty of Utrecht!

Finally, the manifesto makes a long deduction, that the safety of the Spanish monarchy and nation had never been in greater danger since the invasion of the Saracens; that the greatest misfortunes are to be expected from a Bourbon king; that the French will import into Spain French manners and morals, which are detestable; that it will be necessary one day to end the matter by a revival of the Sicilian vespers ; that the French are only half Catholics; that atheism walks there with unabashed countenance and is going to be introduced into Spain; and, finally, to submit to the French domination, is to open the door to dissoluteness and libertinism.

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We shall return to the examination of some objections stated in this manifesto, in the following paragraphs. It is nevertheless essential to state that the doctrine relative to the extent of the renunciation, to the exclusion of all the princes of France from the throne of Spain, a doctrine until that time personal and peculiar to the house of Hapsburg, now governed the counsels of the coalition, until the moment when we shall see it condemned by the treaty of Utrecht.

By what means had the aim of the grand alliance been changed? What revolution had overthrown the order of the political ideas of the cabinets? is what we will now explain still more clearly.

V. NEGOCIATIONS OF THE HAGUE AND GERTRUY

DENBERG.

The language of the archduke was commanded by his situation. He was a claimant, and member of the house of Hapsburg, which was threatened with

the loss of half its possessions. It had been constant in his system and pursuit for forty years. But England and Holland, having entirely different interests, had desired and accepted the dismemberment of this succession of Spain, which Austria laid claim to in entire. In appearance, it was the cession of the emperor Leopold to the archduke Charles which changed the face of things. Nevertheless, the concert of three men, eminent by their abilities, and all three secretly animated by one and the same sentiment of profound hostility against Louis XIV and France, had a decisive influence on the new spirit of the coalition. were prince Eugene, Marlborough, and the grand pensionary Heinsius. The first had been deeply offended by Louis XIV; the second was one of the chiefs of the whig party in England: the interest of his party urged him to war, and a special hatred to France carried him naturally the same way. Heinsius sought amends for the humiliation to which the Dutch had been reduced in a preceding war. This triumvi

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rate was the coalition itself; for Eugene and Marlborough were statesmen as well as warriors; they had the absolute confidence and full powers of the sovereigns whose armies and policy they directed.

The fortune of France and of the grand reign was supported during two years; but reverses began towards the end of the year 1704. The attack and defence had taken the character of a sanguinary struggle. Everybody knows the episodes of this great war of the succession, and I will not retrace them. The fortune of combats, which had so long been favourable to France, seemed to abandon us on a sudden. In 1705, happened the disaster of Hochstett, the consequence of which was the evacuation of Germany. The defeat of Ramilies, in 1706, expelled us from the Low Countries, and the overthrow at Turin drove us out of Italy. Then the war was carried to the frontiers of old France. Toulon was besieged, Lille was taken, and we lost again the battle of Oudenarde. The exhaustion of the country was extreme,

and, dearth adding further to our calamities, the honour and grandeur of the reign of Louis XIV seemed to be compromised.

Dejected at the misfortunes of France, the king nobly demanded peace of enemies to whom he had dictated it during half a century. The coalition, dazzled by prosperity, abused their victory. M. de Torcy and the president Rouillé went to the Hague, in 1709, and received the notification of a project in forty articles, containing the conditions which the allies expected to impose upon France, under the title of Preliminaries. These propositions were signed by Heinsius, Marlborough, and prince Eugene; if France accepted them, they agreed to a suspension of arms; but if peace was not made in two months, hostilities were to recommence. In this space of two months, France was to recognize the archduke Charles in the quality of king of Spain, the Indies, Naples, and Sicily, and generally of all the states comprehended under the name of the Spanish monarchy: and the duke of Anjou, Philip V, was immediately to leave Spain, evacuate Sicily, &c. France was to restore to the emperor Strasburgh, Brisach, Landau, and Alsace, which she would thenceforth possess in the literal sense of the treaty of Westphalia; that is to say, she would be satisfied with the right of prefecture over the ten imperial towns: she was to cede to the United Provinces Cassel, Lille, Tournai, Condé, and other places in Flanders.*

Article 6 of these famous Preliminaries was worded thus:

"The monarchy of Spain shall remain entire in the house of Austria, and no one of its parts shall ever be dismembered, nor shall the said monarchy, in totality or in part, be united to that of France, nor shall one and the same king, nor a prince of the house of France, become the sovereign, in what manner soever it be, by will, acts, succession, matrimonial conventions, grants, sales, contracts, and other ways, whatever they may be, nor shall the prince who shall reign in France, nor a prince of the house of France, be ever capable of reigning in Spain, nor of acquiring, within the space of the said

* See the entire text, in Dumont, loc. cit. p. 234.

monarchy, any fortified towns, places, or countries, in any part of it, especially in the Low Countries, in virtue of any grants, sales, exchanges, matrimonial conventions, heredities, appeals, succession by will or ab intestat, in whatever sort and manner it may be, as well for him as for the princes his children and brothers, their heirs and descendants."

The object and policy of the coalition was thus no longer what it was in 1701; then it only required, for the emperor of Austria, satisfactionem æquam et rationi convenientem, the maintenance of the separation of the two monarchies of France and Spain, and ne regna Galliæ et Hispaniæ unquam sub idem imperium venirent; on the 28th of May 1709, at the Hague, it demanded the totality of the Spanish monarchy for Austria, and the exclusion of all the princes of the house of France from the crown of Spain, if they were not even called to it by succession, but by marriage. This last case was a remarkable and unforeseen novelty, a singular refinement, in the exclusion. It was a caution which had not yet appeared, neither in the Spanish marriages of the kings of France, nor in the wills of the kings of Spain, nor in the renunciations of the queens Anne and Maria Theresa. In these last acts, the princes of France were excluded by the title of heirs, but not by title of husbands of an infanta, heiress of the throne; it had not been intended that a direct successible of the crown of France could ever lay claim to the crown of Spain, in quality of successible of the two queens; this is the sense and letter of the acts. But they had not included in the incapacity the case where this prince should come to the throne by another title to that of heir of the two infantas; the case, for instance, where he might marry a Spanish princess, and claim to sit by her side, on the throne, in renouncing his own country. The words matrimonial conventions are not found in the renunciation, although so exuberant, of Maria Theresa. It was a particular case, to which the clause could not be applicable, if we consider the thought and aim of the renunciation; it was an excepted case, nearly similar to that for which Charles II had disposed, in

his will, in choosing a younger son of France, not heir to the throne, and called to make a separate branch in Spain.

To exclude a Bourbon mounting the throne of Spain, in quality, not of heir of two queens, but in quality of husband of an infanta, it was necessary to prohibit another thing than the heaping together of crowns; it was necessary to exclude the entire race, without any other political reason but a ridiculous distrust, and, to say the truth, a hatred of the blood and name.

It was represented that the only object of the exclusion of the family was to avoid the very possibility of the union, by the most decisive and peremptory means; by the means which should cut, at its root, the thread of any possible junction, and hinder the case of a reunion from ever presenting itself, even imaginatively, by thus removing from the Spanish throne every prince whom the most unforeseen and distant chance might call one day, mero jure, to the crown of France.

At no time, and in no civilized country, have the relations of states been governed by laws mathematically absurd. Rules are made for the present and the probable, and not for an imaginary future contingent. The exclusion of the presumptive and probable heirs was certainly a sufficient guarantee; it was folly to go further. This was not the meaning of the treaty of partition of the 25th March 1700, which was limited to excluding the king of the Romans and the dauphin of France; this was not the understanding with the elder branch of Austria; nor had it been formerly the intention of the kings of Spain, and especially of Charles II, when they prescribed an option for these eventual cases.

The true motive of the propositions of the Hague was not prudence, which is always moderate,-but hatred, which is often overbearing and ridiculous.

The old renunciations, applied literally, only excluded the reigning branch of Bourbon and the branch

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