Between the 26th of January and the 20th of March, Eugene handed in five remonstrances and statements, and did not avoid giving them the greatest publicity, in order to bring the ministry into discredit with the people. His attempts to rouse the people proved vain, and the ministers secured to themselves the necessary majority in the upper house by the nomination of twelve new peers all at the same time.

On Eugene's return to the Low Countries, and again assuming the command of the army, he could no longer reckon upon the English, for they were fettered by secret orders, and a public announcement of the preliminaries of the treaty of peace, negotiated at Utrecht by the plenipotentiaries of England, Holland, Savoy and France, was every moment expected. The formal announcement was however delayed, and the English still remained with the army in the Netherlands during April and May (1712): it was however manifest that the duke of Ormond designedly restrained the subordinate commanders from supporting Eugene in any of his undertakings. When at last Eugene, at the end of May, proposed a plan for a grand undertaking, the duke distinctly and publicly declared, that he had received positive commands not to allow the troops which were in English pay to be employed in any attack upon the enemy. He went still further; for on the 17th of July the preliminaries of the suspension of arms with England and Holland were first publicly proclaimed, but the duke had already separated from Eugene on the 15th; the allied troops in English pay however remained for some time longer. Eugene had at that time all his magazines and stores in Marchiennes, and had given the charge of their protection and defence, as well as that of protecting one of his wings, to the division under the earl of Albemarle; Villars and Montesquieu availed themselves of the retirement of the English and the weakening of the division for protecting the magazine, in order to surprise and fall upon Eugene on the 24th of July. The plan succeeded: only one part of the English troops obeyed Eugene's commands; he was obliged to give up his magazines, his lines were passed, the earl of Albemarle and several generals taken prisoners, and at a later period Quesnay, Douay and Bouchain conquered by the French. From this time forward, the war of the succession continued to be carried on in Catalonia and the Upper Rhine alone, because the Germans were proud and foolish enough to despise the conditions

of peace offered them by the congress at Utrecht, without any adequate means of carrying on the war.

§ III.

TREATIES OF PEACE OF UTRECHT, RASTATT, BADEN, AND THE CHANGES IN THE SOUTH-WEST OF EUROPE CONNECTED WITH THEM.

The negotiations for peace were carried on between the allies of England and Louis XIV., who had conducted the war for Spain, and now concluded the peace, because the selfish Philip V., with childish obstinacy, opposed every possible concession to Austria. The preliminaries were brought by Menager from London to Paris, slightly altered in Utrecht, and all prepared before a formal truce was announced. The ill-success of the Catalonians, and Eugene's defeat near Denain, with which the English were chargeable, awakened a violent spirit of dislike in England itself; and the English ministers, like all those who have recourse to intrigues, treachery and cunning, were obliged to invent some new and crooked devices. New difficulties had arisen, which made it necessary to require a pledge from France that Spain and France should never be united under one head.

The negotiations in Utrecht were commenced at the end of January 1712, and in February the duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis XIV. and eldest brother of Philip of Spain, died. This prince, from his character and training, had been the hope and joy of the French nation: his eldest son had died when an infant, and the second a few months after his father, and now the succession in a direct line devolved upon a child of only two years old, afterwards Louis XV. In case of the death of this child, the French crown would fall to Philip V. of Spain, as eldest surviving brother of the deceased duke of Burgundy, and in this event the two crowns would become united in one person. The English ministers saw, that if they did not guard against this casualty in the treaty of peace, they would be accused and condemned as traitors by parliament, and they therefore required Louis to give them a pledge that his grandson would bind himself to cede the Spanish monarchy to his younger brother, the duke of Berry, in case he himself became king of France. These demands of the English created some difficul

ties, and the ministers did not venture, as they had promised to Louis to do, to name the poet Prior, the instrument of all former cabals, as the third commissioner to Utrecht; on the contrary, they sent the chaplain Gaultier anew with secret proposals to Paris. The latter brought over a document, which professed an acquiescence in the demands of the English plenipotentiaries in Utrecht, but in secret he possessed very different proposals. The English ambassadors in Utrecht had refused to agree to a suspension of hostilities in March, if Louis did not consent to evacuate a fortress and put it into their hands as a pledge for the fulfilment of the required promise. The ministers therefore were regarded by the people as traitors, when Ormond, without any suspension of hostilities being proclaimed, refused his assistance to the allies. Louis at length yielded, and gave up Dunkirk to the English as a pledge: other difficulties however soon presented themselves. The English sought to procure Sicily for the duke of Savoy, whom they wished to employ against the emperor, and to compel the emperor and the empire to make some cessions to France: these however insisted upon their protest against all concessions, and the Dutch also continually raised new difficulties. St. John (Bolingbroke) resolved to have recourse to a new piece of diplomatic skill. As an English secretary of state, he ventured to take upon himself the negotiations which were to have been carried on in Utrecht: he himself travelled to Paris in company with Prior and Gaultier, who were known in England as promoters of the union between the two countries, and were hated by all the friends of freedom in Europe. On this occasion the secretary of state drew up those celebrated secret instructions, which, under the following government, Robert Walpole caused to be printed and accompanied by a comment, in which it was proved that they were treasonable, at the time when a prosecution was carried on against the ministers on account of the peace of Utrecht. We shall quote a passage with respect to them in a note borrowed from the Paris MS., already so often mentioned. By the order of the king, Torcy came from Fontainbleau to Paris, in order to meet and have a consultation with St. John respecting the peace, whilst the negotiations were at a complete stand in Utrecht, and to consider the possibility of assisting the brother of queen Anne to gain possession of the crown and government. The French have only taken that part of St. John's instructions which

relates to the former point into their report, and wholly passed over the second, relating to James*.

St. John (Bolingbroke) took up his residence in the house of Torcy's mother, the marchioness of Croissy: here the negotiations were carried on between him and Torcy, and when they had come to a mutual understanding, they travelled together to Fontainbleau, where the English secretary received apartments in the palace. At Fontainbleau all those matters were arranged which queen Anne had so much at heart, and the suspension of hostilities was prolonged till the end of December (1712). Polignac and d'Uxelles retaliated with severity at this time upon the Dutch at the Hague what they had suffered from them in Getruydenberg, often it is true under very miserable pretences, as for example on the occasion of the disreputable quarrel of the count von Rechtern's servants, &c. The conference had, properly speaking, nothing else to do than to protocol the conditions of the Paris peace, to alter them a little, and reduce them to the form of a treaty, after the chief points had been previously agreed upon between St. John and Torcy. Prior travelled backwards and forwards between Paris and Holland, and Louis prevailed upon the English and Dutch to give up their demands with respect to the freedom and national rights of the Catalonians, and the barrier-fortresses which the emperor and the empire sought to gain on the Rhine. The treaty, concluded in Utrecht in April 1713, between England, Holland, Spain, France and Sardinia, embraced at the same time, the emperor, the empire and Prussia, and the electors of Cologne and Bavaria were completely restored to their former rights and dominions. The emperor and the empire hoped to

Mortem. MS. no. 71.-" Le premier point étoit de témoigner au roi le déplaisir que la reine de la Grande Bretagne ressentoit des difficultés et du retardement d'une négociation, qu'elle croyait prête à conclure. 2. Il devoit dire que pleinment instruit des intentions de cette princesse elle avoit jugé à propos de l'autoriser à traiter et régler les conditions capables d'applanir toutes les difficultés apportés à la suspension d'armes. 3. La reine lui préscrivoit d'y ajouter les assurances d'un désir sincère de sa part de rétablir une intelligence partiale entre les deux nations. 4. Il devoit à-peu-près tenir les mêmes discours aux ministres du roi en les assurant du pouvoir qu'il avoit de concilier la suspension d'hostilités par mer et par terre entre la France, l'Espagne et l'Angleterre. Il lui étoit permis d'en fixer la durée à trois ou quatre mois ou l'étendu même jusqu'à la conclusion de la paix. Mais ce pouvoir étoit attaché à la condition fatale d'obtenir le royaume de Sicile demandé pour le duc de Savoie, et de plus la reine d'Angleterre prétendoit qu'autant qu'il seroit possible on réglât les formes des différentes renonciations à faire," &c. &c.

gain better conditions for themselves than those which England had secured for them, and no one pitied them therefore when, by continuing the struggle, they only brought new disgraces upon themselves; but the whole of Europe sympathized in the unhappy fate of the Catalonians, and was filled with sorrow and indignation. The Catalonians were sincerely devoted to Charles III., from attachment to his person and dislike to the Castilians. When he took his departure from Spain to assume the imperial dignity, he left his wife behind him in Barcelona, and the bravest general of the allies, after Eugene, count von Stahremberg, remained along with her (1711). At the same time as Ormond refused his aid in the Low Countries, the English subsidies, which had been hitherto paid to the Catalonians, were withheld, and in September (1712) the English troops also were recalled. The emperor also about this time, with great prudence and wisdom, separated the cause of Austria from that of Germany in general, and agreed to a general suspension of hostilities for his armies in Italy, Spain and the Low Countries, with the exception of the places on the Rhine, where, as head of the empire, he continued to carry on the war. Stahremberg was therefore obliged in May to depart from Barcelona, and the Catalonians were wholly left to their own resources.

The emperor and the English tried in vain to induce the brave Catalonians to do homage to Philip; this they firmly refused, and they would have been able to maintain their independence against Philip and his Castilians had they not been made a sacrifice to the diplomatic arts of the English and French. The English ministers, after having obliged the emperor to refrain from interfering in their cause, afterwards permitted the French to lend their aid to the Castilians. No bravery, no attachment to their traditionary usages and laws which were threatened by Philip, and no perseverance or courage were sufficient to withstand such a superiority in force*.

Vendome was dead; the empress had long inspired the Catalonians with courage, and had remained with them till March (1713); in May the imperial troops under Stahremberg left Barcelona, but, notwithstanding, the people courageously defended the city for a whole year after their departure. Spain

Coxe, in his Memoirs of the Kings of Spain,' has devoted the whole of the twenty-first chapter to the heroic struggles and deeds of the Catalonians. Compare especially vol. ii. pp. 64-74.