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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.

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2 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. xvIII.

again bring money to thirty or forty per cent. interest; so they shall find their account either way." 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). 2 The Conduct of the Allies (Works, ed. W. Scott), v, 28-31.

3 Coxe, W., Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, m, 37.

4 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.

THE SPANISH SUCCESSION AND COLONIES

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327 look for the hand that held the helm of British naval policy steady for the Mediterranean, we find almost always that it is Marlborough's", and the Mediterranean formed the pivot of the continental balance of power. The flagrant failure of Jack Hill's Tory expedition against Canada justified his misgivings. The dismal record of mutual and profitless destruction in the intercolonial struggle goes far to condemn a form of warfare which must threaten the very existence of the conquests, while a Power beaten in Europe would readily save itself by surrendering these distant possessions intact. Marlborough was in fact, even if unconsciously, the protagonist of British sea power. After Blenheim the coasts of Britain were secure, and as one hard campaign followed another, Louis could sustain his armies only by pillaging his fleet. France continued to produce great seamen and by raids and commerce-destroying to embarrass the allies. But rivalry with Britain by sea, still more the ambition of Colbert and Seignelay, ceased to be possible. As the sea power of France diminished and her need of respite grew, as Holland became less and less capable of supporting both war by land and sea and her accustomed commerce, as England found the means to carry all her burdens and at the same time to expand her trade, inevitably she became more insistent to demand and Louis less disinclined to grant terms of peace which should perpetuate her favoured position. The rise of the barometer is clearly recorded in her diplomatic history. The treaties of alliance had provided that whatever the Dutch and English might capture in Spanish America they should retain. In 1707, by a secret arrangement made at Barcelona with the Habsburg King of Spain, England stipulated that the French should be for ever excluded from the commerce of the Indies, that an Anglo-Spanish Company should be formed for its exploitation, and that, failing this, Englishmen should be ranked with Spaniards for purposes of trade. Two years later, when the terrible winter of 1708-9 had brought Louis to the verge of despair, Torcy secured written peace terms from Heinsius, Marlborough and Eugène. These laid special stress on the total renunciation by France of the Spanish Indies and their commerce, and to this, as well as to the cession of French posts and claims in Newfoundland, Louis gave consent. The pride and greed of the allies, however, and their deep distrust of France, caused this and subsequent similar negotiations to break down. Not until October 1711 did the secret and separate negotiations of Harley and St John issue in an agreement for a more rational termination of the war. "Was there no way", Swift had pertinently demanded, "to provide for the safety of Britain...but by the French king turning his arms to beat his grandson out of Spain?" Now, in return for that peace which the Emperor was still bent on denying, and, as its

2

1 Corbett, J. S., England in the Mediterranean, II, 199.

2 Stanhope, Earl, History of England...1701-1713, 1, 56, 57.

foundation, the acceptance of his grandson's claim to Spain and her dominions, Louis consented to recognise Queen Anne and the Hanoverian succession, to conclude with England a new treaty of commerce, and to raze the fortifications of Dunkirk, the Zeebrugge of an age of privateers. England was further to retain Gibraltar and Port Mahon, those keys of the Mediterranean, to receive the Asiento for thirty years, and to annex all St Christopher, French Newfoundland and Hudson Bay and Straits, frustrating thus in North America many of Colbert's plans.

After more than a year of open congress at Utrecht, and further secret negotiations between France and England, this salutary bargain was confirmed. France renounced for ever any special advantage in commerce or navigation with Spain or Spanish America. In addition to the territorial concessions already named, Nova Scotia (Acadia) became British once again, and Port Royal, an American Dunkirk, was thus rendered harmless. Unhappily for future peace, however, Cape Breton Island and the other islands in the St Lawrence remained French, and the French retained "the right to catch and dry fish" upon part of the Newfoundland coast. England and France further concluded a most-favoured-nation treaty of commerce and navigation. Louis might thus be said to have abandoned vast fields of enterprise overseas to the English. He was no less lavish towards their new dependents, the Portuguese. The clauses by which he agreed to limit French Guiana renounced all pretensions to the Amazon and sacrificed "a commercial itinerary of fifteen hundred leagues".1

Secure of Spain, Philip V could be induced to pay by unbounded deference his debt to France. He therefore abjured for ever the right to sell or pledge to her or any other nation any land or lordship in America. With due safeguards against Jews and Moors, he yielded Gibraltar and Minorca to Great Britain. The Asiento concession was rounded off by the grant of a depôt for human livestock on the Rio de la Plata, and by certain limited rights of trade with Spanish America in other goods. These were to form the sole exceptions to the time-honoured law which prohibited all foreigners from engaging in commerce with the colonies of Spain.

In the complex of international agreements that compose the Utrecht settlement, nothing is more significant than the difference between the stress laid on overseas affairs in those concluded with the English and Dutch and the silence in those concluded with other non-Latin Powers. If a king had made the war but merchants the peace, it was in no small degree because during the war England had become mercantile as never in her former history. The Spectator in 1711 bears witness to an assured cosmopolitanism of expenditure which would have seemed strange to Pepys less than half a century 1 Leroy-Beaulieu, P., De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes, 1, 172.

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