Page images
PDF
EPUB

furnished by William's belief that France and Austria had a secret understanding, that a new religious war was imminent, and that the Protestants would be no match for their opponents.1 Louis, on the other hand, credited him with the same autocratic control of policy that he himself enjoyed, and surmised that he might seize the Spanish possessions in the Indies, or acquire them by the Emperor's connivance.2 In his sincere endeavours after world-peace, however, William could by no means count upon the English. He was in reality, men declared, king in Holland but no more than stadholder in England. "One would say", he complained to Heinsius, "either that this island is the only thing on the face of the earth, or that it has nothing to do with the rest of the world."4 The facts of his position compelled him to negotiate only for such terms as seemed to his Dutch confidants and to himself likely to please an ungrateful and uninstructed nation.

In these conditions, the record of the bargaining between Louis and William which resulted in the secret Partition Treaties of 1698 and 1700 throws an unwonted light upon colonial and commercial questions. For the first time since 1664, these took a leading share in determining the policy of States. The Indies, the Mediterranean trade, and the mastery of the sea were avowed as prime interests of France and England, whose kings bent all their minds to find a formula which they could defend against the Emperor, Spain and the rest of Europe.

England, speaking through the mouths of Dutchmen for Holland also, naturally placed trade in the forefront, and regarded "places" only as they might give the necessary security for trade. The continuance of her Mediterranean trade and the development of trade with the West Indies called for Ceuta, Oran, Gibraltar, Port Mahon, perhaps all Minorca, and Havana or some equivalent. Louis argued that to share the Indies in any way with the Dutch and English would be to take the whole from Spain, that Port Mahon would make them masters of the Mediterranean, and that a demand for Gibraltar would affront Spain even more. He was, however, plainly warned by his ambassador in London that the English conceived that their commerce would be ruined if the Indies and Cadiz fell to France, and that William would be able to draw the last penny from their pocket for war in such a cause.' War, moreover, would result in the seizure of the chief Spanish ports in America by the Dutch and English. These considerations largely determined the provisions of the treaty of 1698. Spain, the Indies and the Spanish Netherlands were assigned to a Bavarian prince from whom both parties had much to

1 Grimblot, P. (ed.), Letters of William III and Louis XIV, 1697-1700, 1, 131. 2 Ibid. 1, 249 and 274. 3 Ward, A. W., Great Britain and Hanover, p. 3. Ibid. 1, 344. Ibid. 1, 449.

4 Grimblot, Letters, 1, 184.

7 Ibid. 1, 508.

8 Ibid. 11, 55.

THE PARTITION TREATIES

323

hope and little to fear, while Louis counted on acquiring the trade of Spain by annexing Guipuzcoa, and that of all the Mediterranean by annexing Sicily, Naples and the Tuscan ports. William rightly judged that this Partition Treaty, concluded without the knowledge of the English or Spaniards, and with cynical indifference to dynastic titles and to both the pride and the good government of Spain, would an amazing emotion" when it became known. And when, within a few months, the Bavarian died, the opprobrium seemed to have been incurred in vain. "We are in no small labyrinth, and may it please God to help us out of it", was his dry comment.1

66

Despite the protests of Spain, however, Louis and William were soon hatching new treaties for the succession to her two and twenty crowns. Colonial questions, perhaps still more the memory of colonial wrongs done by the Dutch, told against their adoption of the King of Portugal as the Spanish heir. Had the sea power of France become what Colbert and his son designed, Louis would hardly have acquiesced in the assignment of Spain, the Indies and the Netherlands to the Habsburg House. The acquisition of Lorraine as well as Naples, Sicily and the Tuscan ports, all promised by the treaty of March 1700, seemed so profitable to France, however, that when the throne of Spain fell vacant in November, the English ambassador in Paris expected him to hold firm. William likewise entertained little doubt that the Emperor would prefer a treaty which gave him much, to a will which gave him nothing. Within a few days, however, Louis had decided to break his word, and to take the risk of war-the war, as it proved, which was almost to fill the remainder of his days and to prepare and predict the triumph of England overseas.

3

In this momentous decision, commerce and colonies weighed heavily with the French. "There might be some hope", the diplomatic Torcy contended, "that the Indies would be of no small assistance" if it were necessary to defend the will by force. The chancellor dared to argue that extension in Flanders was trivial by comparison with the union of two great monarchies-a union which would enrich France by the commerce of the Indies and enable France and Spain to set the pace in Europe.4 The Dauphin, at the council, and Madame de Maintenon, whom the King regarded as the embodiment of tranquil wisdom, were on the same side. The Dutch and English, William declared to Heinsius, were faced with ruin." To save Belgium, indeed, they had consented in the Partition Treaties to yield the Mediterranean to France. Belgium would now turn Bourbon, and there was but a faint hope that Naples and Sicily, by declaring for the Emperor, might save the Mediterranean. It would be but natural if Louis added Portugal to Spain, and set about

1 Grimblot, II, 152, 163, 255.

2 Ibid. п, 283.

3 Ibid. 11, 452, 453; Ranke, L. von, History of England, v, 238.
Grimblot, II, 457, 467.
5 Ibid. II, 477.

3

restoring his Stuart clients to their former thrones. Men who had suffered from the pitiless monopolies of Colbert knew what value to place upon his master's argument that England and France would be secure in the Mediterranean because Naples and Sicily were to pass not to himself but to his grandson. Yet in April 1701 William could only report that the English were highly reluctant to begin a war on their own account, though they would not leave Holland in the lurch.1 At this juncture, politics were complicated by the Darien tragedy, which threw an unique illumination upon the commercial and colonial situation of the time.2 Prompted both by the need and by the ambition of Scotland and by her envy of the English trade, the "Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies" had, in 1695, secured a monopoly in Scotland for trade with Asia, Africa or America for thirty-one years. The Act which William's commissioner was unwary enough to sanction gave the Company the right to take unappropriated territories that were uninhabited or whose inhabitants gave consent, while it bound the King to protect it against any foreign State. Although some saw in this a design to sacrifice English commerce to the Dutch, while the Council of Trade protested that Parliament was usurping its functions, English would-be traders with the East Indies subscribed £300,000 in nine days, and the men of Hamburg were no less eager. Government, however, interfered, and although the Scots, piqued and tempted, promised more than they could easily perform, the result was a pitifully inadequate capital of £400,000. Paterson, the hero of the enterprise, held that a settlement on the Isthmus of Panama would make Scotland supplant Holland as the entrepôt of eastern trade, and thousands were ready to quit their famine-stricken country to cultivate a more generous soil. The whole adventure might have taught a Colbert the value of that dearly bought adaptation and experience which still remained the almost exclusive patent of the Dutch. The French and English had long regarded Panama as a region tempting but forbidden. Now the Scottish pioneers died by sea and still more by land, while their leaders were finding great quantities of thin grey paper and small blue bonnets among their cargoes. The days of the Partition negotiations, moreover, were hardly the season for what both France and Spain must deem rank piracy, while British planters feared that the new pirate station would reduce their supply of labour.5 William's subjects were forbidden intercourse with the intruders, the Governor of Jamaica refused all aid, while the Spaniards and the fever drove them out. Although the Darien failure ultimately helped the Union, its immediate result was to inflame the Scots against the English and their common King.

1 Ranke, VI, 378.

Barbour, J. S., A history of William Paterson and the Darien Company, passim. 3 Burnet, p. 621.

4 Barbour, p. 142.

5 Davenant, 1, 415.

THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION

325

Meanwhile, a grave prediction was finding fulfilment further north. "Should the French settle at the disemboguing of the river Meschasipe", wrote Davenant, "they would not be long before they made themselves masters of that rich province, which would be an addition to their strength very terrible to Europe."1 A chain of forts from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada must enable them to intercept all the interior trade of the British northern Plantations. But the race for control of the lower Mississippi was won by Louis' subjects, and Louisiana threatened to stifle the British on the Atlantic seaboard.

In Europe, by blunders which may not be related here, a monarch who in 1701 seemed in secure control of France and the Spanish Empire found himself two years later confronted by the sea powers, the Emperor, Savoy, Portugal, Denmark, Prussia and Lorraine. "I tell you plainly", ran William's last speech to his Parliament,2 "if you do not lay hold on this occasion, you have no reason to hope for another." The War of the Spanish Succession was in fact destined not merely to rescue Britain but to make her the one great sea power of the world. Within ten years of its outbreak in 1702, she had become "a sea-power in the purest sense of the word, not only in fact, but also in her own consciousness". The story of this evolution, the dominant factor in the history of her colonial rivalry with France, is traced in another chapter; it remains to indicate the part played by oceanic questions during the war and at the peace.

Britain interfered with the succession in Spain because William III manipulated a torrent of public indignation against France into a declaration of war. The ruler of the Dutch and English found his supreme duty in the defence of the balance of power in Europe. After Ryswick he had sincerely endeavoured to accomplish this by agreement with France. Louis' repudiation of the Partition Treaty left him no alternative but to attempt the coercion of France, the task which, as Ryswick proved, had lately been too great for united Europe. Louis' folly, however, drove the Sea Powers into alliance with the Emperor, and in the case of Britain added to the traditional hatred of France an acute care for the Protestant faith, for the right to choose her sovereign, and for her most cherished trades. When Louis seemed unaggressive, their cheerful acceptance of Philip as King of Spain had roused the fury of publicists against the class of moneyed men. Thirty years earlier, Davenant protested, the shops would have been shut up at so near a prospect of universal monarchy as the Bourbon succession implied. But capital was as heedless as Rome when Catiline's conspiracy was brewing. "They say, if we have peace, their stocks will rise in value; if a war comes, they can

1 Davenant, 1, 415.

Oldmixon, J., History of England during the reigns of William and Mary, Anne and George I (London, 1735), p. 254.

Mahan, Influence of sea-power, p. 217.

4 Vide infra, chap. xvii.

again bring money to thirty or forty per cent. interest; so they shall find their account either way."1 When however it became clear that Louis could and would control Spanish policy, that he would do so in the spirit of Colbert, and that he styled a papist pretender King of England, the commercial interest became as bellicose as William could have desired. They were roused in part by what was done and in part by what was expected.

The exclusive right to import negroes from Guinea into Spanish America was conceded by Philip to the French Asiento Company for ten years from September 1702. An equivalent in goods or metal might be brought away, and a fourth share in the enterprise was reserved to the kings of France and Spain. No arrangement could have more ominously violated that principle of equality of opportunity with regard to Spanish America which the Partition Treaties had endeavoured to secure. It was certain that blows would soon be aimed at trade with the Bourbon lands in Europe.

The will to war which had been directed by William it remained for Marlborough to maintain. When his long series of victories had reduced Louis to beg for peace, while the allies had proved impotent to drive Philip from the throne of Spain, the Tories declared that the duke's preference for land warfare and Dutch jealousy of British progress overseas had robbed Britain of maritime conquests. Swift expressed amazement that "while some politicians were showing us the way to Spain by Flanders, others to Savoy or Naples...the West Indies should never come into their heads".2 It is true that as a statesman Marlborough concentrated firmly on the pre-eminent object of securing the balance of power by subduing Louis XIV, and that as a strategist he shared the natural distaste of a commander-inchief on the main front for "side-shows" far away. "I dare not speak against the project of sending troops to the West Indies", he wrote in 1710, "but I will own very freely that I think it can end in nothing but a great expense and the ruining of those regiments." It may be that this attitude enabled the enemy to continue their commerce and thus to support the war. But it would be rash to assert that Marlborough's strategy was at fault, and false to suggest that British interests overseas were neglected.

In negotiating the alliance with the Emperor he was careful to guard and extend trading rights with the Spanish dominions. The first strokes of the war were aimed with ill success at Cadiz and with greater profit at the yearly fleet from the West Indies in Vigo Bay. "Nothing can be done without the fleet", wrote Marlborough in 1708, "I conjure you, if possible, to take Port Mahon."5 "If we 1 Davenant, Charles, Works, III, 300 seqq.: "Essay upon the balance of power" (1701). The Conduct of the Allies (Works, ed. W. Scott), v, 28-31.

Coxe, W., Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, 1, 37.

Swift, Works: "History of the Four last Years of the Queen", pp. 275, 278.

5 Mahon, Lord, History of the War of the Succession in Spain, pp. 44-64 and 254.

« PreviousContinue »