numerous and the expectations of general strife so keen that within five years of the peace Europe seems to be in a state of "universal combustion". A quarter of a century of struggling against Louis XIV had indeed brought some questions nearer to solution. Whatever the power of France might be or might become, the peculiar claim of her King to general dictatorship had been refuted. The European equilibrium, though dear to Chauvelin and others "as being subject to so many different interpretations as may...prevent any action at all",2 embodies none the less an idea which was indispensable to the progress of States. A mechanical balance of power, it was true, helped rather to adjust the terms on which wars ended than to prevent them from breaking out, and the wars against Louis XIV had produced no panacea against a repetition. But they had removed the probability though not the apprehension of a new general war about religion, always since Luther the most fertile source of strife. "God can protect his own cause in the middle of a thousand errors, and variety of heresies will but give our churchmen a more ample field"3-this was a doctrine convenient to the cynical deists who came to rule in many lands. In many lands besides France, however, "the church was the society", and policy could not remain unaffected by religion. If their expectations were less precise than those, based on Daniel and Revelation, which led the Bishop of Worcester to stake his bishopric in 1712 on Armageddon in 1716,5 statesmen had none the less to reckon with the force of religious antipathies when they framed alliances and contemplated wars. The equilibrium of Europe tottered because Prussia would take vengeance on her own Catholics for wrongs done to Protestants elsewhere, because Protestant princes aimed at choosing a Protestant emperor or at forming a Protestant fleet, because the Catholic emperor had qualms about supporting the Guelphs against the Stuarts or even, on occasion, against the Bourbons, his co-religionists although of old his foes. Even the deist Frederick used his official Protestantism to veil his robbery of a Catholic Queen (1740), and, fifteen years later, she won the alliance of his French accomplice largely on religious grounds. Religion, while it did not prevent the Most Christian King from association with the Turks, the Russians, the Prussians or the Barbary States, always imported into mixed alliances an unstable strain and complicated an already complex Europe.

The peculiar and striking complexity of European politics after Utrecht may be ascribed to many causes other than the waning factor of religion and exhaustion after a quarter of a century of war. 1 The history of Cardinal Alberoni from his birth to the year 1719 (London, 1719), p. 82. 2 Horace Walpole the elder, cit. Williams, B., E.H.R. xvi, 443.

3 Davenant, C., Political and commercial works, 1, 75.

Morley, J., Voltaire (edition 1872), p. 332.

Swift, J., Journal to Stella, 1 July 1712.

EUROPEAN COMPLEXITIES AND DANGERS

353

It chanced that in an age when princes governed, often through ministers who were not even their subjects, an extraordinary number of States owed obedience to rulers of foreign birth or imbued with foreign ideas. Others were the tools of powerful allies. Prussia and the dominions of Savoy form almost the sole exceptions to a condition which, while it lasted, rendered Europe more than ever subject to the whims of a few high-placed men and women. Spain under Alberoni was governed in part by a Bourbon King, in greater part by a Parmesan Queen, most of all by the son of an Italian gardener who remained the envoy of the Duke of Parma, while each of the three strove for ends which were not those of the Spanish nation. Princes and even ministers have often found nothing so interesting or exciting as war,1 and war was rendered fatally easy by the code which then controlled it. All Europe, Germany most of all, lay open to the recruiting sergeant of every prince. Troops levied by one might pass by treaty on the outbreak of war to the control of another without valid complaint by the third against whom they took the field. The spirit of the best of such levies may have been that of the Scotch recruit who was questioned as to his reasons for venturing his life for the Pragmatic Sanction. "They tell me... to fight, and egad! I'll down with them an' I can." "But for whom do you fight?" "Nay, nay, that I can't tell, but 'tis for some damned queen or another."2 Others went of their own motion "to fight the foreign loons in their ain countree", and the departure of some of these was accounted a useful vent for dangerous elements of the population. Some princes were forced to make war to find employment for their armies, while others thought it cheaper to support them abroad than at home. To win a victory was not seldom to secure the willing enlistment of hundreds from the ranks of the defeated, while a difficult retreat might cost a leader half his mercenary force. A hundred motives impelled selfish princes to make war, and few beyond empty war-chests told on the side of peace.

To this explosive atmosphere was applied spark after spark arising from disputed questions of succession. The Spanish Succession had by no means received its final settlement at Utrecht. The rulers of Madrid and the rulers of Vienna would find many fresh disputes concerning title, in Italy above all else. The accession of the child Louis XV (1715) raised a question of the French Succession which swayed the politics of Europe for no less than fourteen years. Until 1748 at least, the British Succession could hardly be regarded as secure. The Polish Succession convulsed Europe in 1733; the Austrian, in 1740. These questions and many more had to be decided by a Europe which was changing fast, and which looked in vain to its familiar

1 E.g. the King of the Belgians to Queen Victoria, 4 Feb. 1853, in Letters of Queen Victoria.

2 Cf. Charteris, Cumberland, p. 119.

CHBE I

23

3

guides. For many years the Paris of Louis XIV and the Hague of his opponents had formed confronting capitals, and Britain had cemented the coalition. Now a novel uncertainty prevailed in France: the Whigs, save when they spoke with the accent of Hanover, had turned from war to peace; the Dutch computed that with another league and another war their trade would shrink to their meadows.1 Sweden was tottering; Spain, showing an unwonted vigour; Prussia, under the strange guidance of a new King, was multiplying armaments; above all, Russia under Peter was thrusting herself into Europe. Estimates not only of what was wise but of what was possible differed almost beyond belief. Some wiseacres saw in Russia a northern star which, rightly used, might preserve the liberties of Europe. Horace Walpole reckoned France as the equal of the Sea Powers and Austria combined, while a French statesman held that Spain and the Emperor were great Powers but England no more than second-rate.1 Among his British contemporaries some were ready to share his estimate of their country, while Pitt could rally the nation to an overweening self-regard and to an energy which made it invincible. A cynic surveying Europe, indeed, might declare that the only constant forces were the hereditary hatreds between State and State. Gulliver proudly proclaimed our noble country the scourge of France. Danes and Swedes preferred the advent of the Muscovite to union. Portugal, regardless of the future, welcomed an opportunity to injure Spain. The Italians hated all foreigners, the Germans above the rest. Prussia and Hanover, Prussia and Saxony, Prussia and Austria were normally at bitter feud. The French submitted in most matters to their King, but they would not endorse an alliance with the Habsburgs. So deeply did such antipathies enter into the European system that hints at a rapprochement between two traditional enemies sounded like blasphemy and anarchy in the ears of other Powers.

66

In such a Europe, Britain, with Hanover bound round her neck, must strive for wealth and safety. Her position in the world now far surpassed what her acreage or her numbers seemed to warrant. Posterity", thought Voltaire in the 'twenties, "will very possibly be surprised to hear that an island whose only produce is a little lead, tin, fuller's earth and coarse wool should become so powerful by its commerce as to...send...three fleets at the same time to three different...parts of the globe." The last war had produced a favourable trade-balance of nearly £3,000,000 yearly, and had enabled Britain to wrest more industries and markets from the French. But

1 Wiesener, L., Le Régent, p. 215.

2 Walpole, H., Memoirs of the reign of King George II, п, 134.

3 Cf. Wiesener, p. 93.

4 Vaucher, P., Robert Walpole et la politique de Fleury, 1731-1742, p. 149.

Swift, J., Works (London, 1801), vi, 115.

6 Letters concerning the English nation, p. 69.

" Anderson, III, 49, 56.

INTERNATIONAL POSITION OF GREAT BRITAIN 355

in the long run, commerce must depend upon international good-will, and this necessity, as well as the Stuart threat, spoke strongly for a policy of peace. Even if peace could be preserved, a Power which had so recently deserted its allies and passed its rivals would find it difficult enough to secure their good-will, in an age in which Colbert's truculent temper still prevailed. In any event elementary prudence dictated that Britain should keep up her fleet. To build ships was not difficult, but sources of naval stores must be kept open, and Baltic questions therefore assumed a large importance.1 If war threatened, the problem of naval man-power would become acute. It might be solved for a time by impressing the crews of merchantmen, but inevitably commerce would thereby be partially suspended. Since the profit from a British stoppage must fall to the Dutch, it became a canon of British policy to embark on no adventure from which the Dutch refrained. Timid as were the Dutch, however, they realised that no Power could harm them more than Britain, and that none had a greater interest in defending the Austrian Netherlands, the bulwark of both nations against France. These considerations made the decision of a sluggish, suspicious and divided federation fall usually in favour of the British cause, and gave some countenance to the comparison of Holland to a cockboat in the wake of Britain. But the Dutch were nothing less than warlike, and the peril of Britain demanded readiness for war. To avert it, and to gain her other ends, she needed the alliance of some great continental Power.

The Power that could help her most directly was beyond all question Spain, for Spain owned the lands with which Britain most desired to trade. By sea Spain could be a useful auxiliary; her strategic position was important; her army had ceased to be contemptible; the precious metals were in her gift; she stood committed to no alliance. "I could have war with France in twenty-four hours," said Stanhope, "but a war with Spain would cost me my head."2 From Spain, moreover, came voices breathing an unwonted liberality. "God", it was said, "has committed the Indies to the trust of the Spaniards that all nations might partake of the riches of that new world; it is even necessary that all Europe should contribute towards supplying...that vast empire with their manufactures and their merchandizes."3 Frank alliance with Spain, however, was impossible so long as Gibraltar and Minorca remained in British hands. The pride, the slowness and the fanaticism of the Spaniards, moreover, had survived their change of dynasty. Even their Bourbon King was heard to assure his Queen that one of his first acts as King of France would be to drive the Jansenists out of the country. Above all, in

1 Cf. Albion, R. G., Forests and Sea Power, pp. viii seqq.

Cf. Robertson, C. G., England under the Hanoverians, p. 11.

* Monteleone to Craggs, cit. History of Alberoni (1719), p. 174.

Williams, B., "The foreign policy of Walpole", E.H.R. xvi, 324, citing Keene's despatch.

defiance of compacts, for many years after the death of Louis XIV (1 September 1715), this same Philip V was a potential pretender to the throne of France, while the Emperor regarded him as an actual pretender to the throne of Spain. The Spanish alliance could, therefore, offer no guarantee of international good-will, nor could it furnish a sure shield against the Stuart threat to Britain.

The Emperor, now the slow, proud, obstinate, orthodox Habsburg Charles VI, with Eugène as his right-hand man, represented our traditional counterweight to France. His commercial interests nowhere clashed with ours, unless, as some experiments already hinted,1 his new domain in the Netherlands might tempt him towards commerce overseas. Apart from such plans, his dominion over Italy might be expected to further our Mediterranean trade, while our security depended in no small degree upon that of Antwerp and the Belgian coast. Of soldiers he had only too many, and his difficulty in maintaining them British gold could solve. "The old system", leaguing the Sea Powers, the Emperor and their clients, therefore, still had much to recommend it, provided that Britain and not Britain-Hanover determined its policy, and provided that the latent enemy of all its members continued to be found in France. In 1716 by the Treaty of Westminster, therefore, we covenanted with the Emperor for mutual defence.

3

But must France remain our enemy? "I will always traverse the views of France," ran Carteret's creed, "for France will ruin this nation if it can."2 The words of a less literate peer, "I hate the French, and I hope as we shall beat the French", like Pitt's computation that our gains were multiplied fourfold by their injury to France, breathed the feeling which, regardless of the close FrancoBritish intellectual co-operation, pervaded Britain during the whole of the eighteenth century and was warmly reciprocated across the Channel. In a monarchic age, however, a union of hearts might be dispensed with as the concomitant of a political alliance. Even granting that the permanent interests of France and Britain-prestige, industry, commerce, colonies, the lordship of the Low Countries, the ascendancy in Spain and Italy-even if all these clashed, might not a temporary entente be to their mutual advantage? The answer depended upon the view taken by the French ruler. To Britain, provided that the balance of power were not permanently overthrown, the advantages of working for a time with France were clear. France alone could cripple the Pretender, as perhaps she alone could make him really dangerous. This by itself was enough to outweigh all adverse considerations. But France was a great customer of Britain, 1 About 1714, with interloping ships from England and Holland. Cf. Anderson, III, 62.

2 Williams, B., Life of Pitt, p. 99.

3 Hervey, Memoirs, 1, 42.

Hotblack, K, Chatham's Colonial Policy, p. 68.