Imatges de pàgina
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place, those which relate to Warfare and Negociations. They begin immediately after the great battle of Ramillies. 20th June 1706. The designs of God are impenetrable. Three great and most Christian Kings appear to be abandoned. '-One of these three was the unfortunate son of James II.) Heresy and injustice triumph.'-' Villeroi is full of bitterness and despair.

16th April 1707.- I am overjoyed that eighty Spaniards have beaten five hundred English. I naturally love the Spaniards, and the lowest of the populace cannot at present hate the English more than I do.'

4th March 1708.- The King of England is to set out on the 9th, and to embark at Dunkirk for Scotland on the 10th. The King gives him six thousand men. The Scotch lads have written repeatedly that they will receive him. If God blesses this enterprise, it will make a great division, and perhaps peace. If you have any saints in Spain, let them pray for its success. I went to St Germains yesterday. The Queen is in a wretched state. She has gout, some fever, and a cold in

the head, besides her agitation of mind.

25th March 1708. The expedition to Scotland interests all the world. Every one here was full of consternation at the delay, and are rejoiced at the King of England's sailing.'

4th April 1708.—' We have just had accounts of the failure of the Scotch expedition."

15th April 1708.- I am the only person of the Court who has not been at St Germains to condole with the Queen. You know her courage; but she cannot speak a word without sighing.'

25th April 1708. I have had a fever, which Fagon calls the Scotch fever. No enterprise was so much applauded as that against Scotland, except (I tell you in confidence) by the King, who always had a bad opinion of it, and yielded only to the universal cry. The King of England had the measles, which detained him ten days at Dunkirk. The wind changed an hour after he set sail, which kept him twentyfour hours off Ostend. He mistook the entrance of the Frith of Edinburgh, and nothing but the ability and good fortune of Forbin saved the fleet.

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28th April 1708. An officer of one of our smaller ships of war landed in Scotland, and was told by some Highland gentlemen that they would always be ready to receive the King. Mareschal de Matignon was appointed to command the troops, not for his own merit, but from the objections to others.

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8th June 1708.- Our great want is money.'

September and October 1708.-A deep gloom covers every thing, relieved only by the gallant defence of Lisle by the Mareschal de Boufflers. The Duke of Burgundy was sent to take the nominal command of the army, with instructions to follow the advice of the Duke of Berwick. Vendome was also sent. These two Generals were of opposite character, and jealous of each other's almost equal pretensions. Vendome was one of the boldest, and Berwick was one of the most cautious of able commanders. The inexperience and timidity of the Duke of

Burgundy, and his disgust at the moral character of Vendome, disposed him, as well as his instructions, to prefer the counsel of Berwick, which was in all probability the wisest. Vendome was confident, negligent, and regardless of discipline; but Berwick was sent to command on the Upper Rhine.'

23d November 1708.- The general cry ascribes the failure of the campaign to the Duke of Burgundy. The libertines dislike his severe manners, the Jansenists object to his Jesuit confessor. It is said that those who dread the re-appearance of the Archbishop of Cambray at Court, represent his pupil to be as pacific as Telemachus, and to have been pleased with the surrender of Lisle, both because it would tend to peace, and because it was acquired by an unjust war.'

9th December 1708.- The Duke of Burgundy needs all his spirit to bear the unjust invectives of the world.'

23d December 1708. You are right in considering all as coming from God. Our King was too glorious, and was to be humbled in order to be saved! France had spread too far and perhaps unjustly. She was to be confined within narrow, but perhaps more safe limits. Our nation was insolent and disorderly. God determined to chastise them.'' 'But, she adds, with exemplary modesty, 'I confess I do not see so clearly the cause of your misfortunes in Spain.'

27th January 1709.-' Distress as well as alarm has reached its height at Paris.

17th February 1709.- Our enemies triumph every where. We have only to bow our heads under the hand of God, which seems heavy against us, and to support heresy and injustice against the nations who serve him best. Yet he is just!'

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18th March 1709.- It is now the general opinion at Court that M. de Vendome has nothing but boldness and boasting. M. de Boufflers said the other day, that an army was not to be commanded from a night chair-the usual seat of Vendome. The Abbé Alberoni is his private companion at Anet.'

29th April 1709.- Torcy is gone to Holland to try to make peace." 10th June 1709.- Our greatest enemy is famine. Every thing is to be dreaded from a people dying of hunger, who believe that the King secretly buys up corn in order to sell it with a profit.'

17th June 1709.— You are angry at our concessions. Yet they did not satisfy the enemy; and the negociation is broken off. '

14th July 1709. You condemn us for being willing to submit to the hard terms offered to us. But every Frenchman wishes it. Boufflers, Villeroi, and Harcourt, are of that opinion.'

5th August 1709. You are too good a Frenchman to wish to see France destroyed for the sake of saving Spain. Perhaps we may be obliged to make peace on worse conditions than those which we refused.'

14th September 1709, (three days after the battle of Malplaquet.)— M. de Boufflers calls the battle glorious and unfortunate. We are on the eve of wanting seed. God declares against us so visibly, that it would be resistance to him not to desire peace.'.

29th September 1709.– - I make allowance for your attachment to their Catholic Majesties. But would you ruin France, and see the English at Paris? There are no longer two opinions on the subject. M. de Villars, with all his boldness, thinks about peace as I, with all my fears, do.'

20th October 1709.- Nobody doubts here that the Spaniards will abandon the Archduke, when they see the King abandoned by France.' 3d February 1710.- All Paris are reduced to pray most fervently for any peace however cruel.'

2d March 1710.- I hope you will not blame me for dreading the loss of France more than that of Spain.'

24th March 1710.- The affairs of Spain are thought so desperate, that nobody can be prevailed upon to go there as physician to the Royal family.'

29th June 1710.- God grant that so good a Prince and such affeetionate subjects as those of Spain may not be separated; but it is impossible to see how that work can be accomplished.'

10th November 1710.- God grant their Catholic Majesties may make a peace which will leave them something; but to imagine that the enemy will leave Spain to a French Prince, is an idea that appears here quite chimerical.'

So utterly did the Court of Spain despair of maintaining a Bourbon on the throne of Spain at the moment of the fall of the Whig administration, and the accession of the Tories to power in England! It is evident that, up to that moment, they were ready to consent to conditions of peace which might be agreeable to the original principle of the grand alliance. But, as soon as it was found that the new ministers of England were resolved to make peace without much regard to the terms, in order to smooth the way for a counter revolution, a very different spirit arose at Versailles, which soon manifests itself in the language of Mad. de Maintenon to her correspondent.

12th January 1711. The intrigues in England augment daily. There is really a movement visible there, from which it is thought that we shall profit!'

11th October 1711.—' I can consider no peace as disadvantageous which will establish Philip V. on his Throne. Whatever it may cost to us or to others, it is greatness enough for our King to have got the Spanish monarchy for his family, in spite of all Europe armed against him? Many believe that if peace be made the King of England will be restored. The Princess Anne is threatened with a dropsy. It would be a great disadvantage to us if she were to die now?'

19th November 1711.— Their Catholic Majesties will remain on the throne. I always hoped in the time of my greatest despair, that this might have been effected by a miracle. Pensionary Heinsius will hang himself for having refused the dreadful peace which we should have bably submitted to two years ago. But I have no charity for him. ́All my tenderness is now for Queen Anne,' (for so Madame de Maintenon

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now, for the first time, calls her instead of Princess Anne, the title by which she designs her in the former part of the Correspondence, influenced either by the warmth of her friendship for the Court of St Germains, or by a royal adherence to the diplomatic style of the French government, in which Anne was never treated as Queen till the preliminaries of peace).

22d November 1711. I do not care whether we owe the peace to the death of the Emperor, or to the divisions in England.'

30th November 1711.- Old as I am, I still hope we shall see the King of England return to his kingdom. What a glory for our King to have maintained a war for ten years against all Europe, attended among other misfortunes with a famine and with a plague, which carried away millions of his subjects, if it finishes by a peace which secures Spain to his family, and reestablishes a Catholic King in England, which I can hardly doubt will be the effect of the peace!'

25th January 1712.-The Queen of England' (no longer Princess Anne) has recovered her health.'

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7th February 1712. The news from England are good. Queen Anne has received Prince Eugene coldly.'

30th May 1712. Why do you call the King of England always unfortunate? I see many people who think that he will be restored.'

Every reader is aware that the King of Spain, by the treaty of Utrecht, renounced his claim to the succession of the Crown of France, and that this renunciation was represented by the ministers in England, as a sufficient security against the union of the two kingdoms. That it was treated at Versailles as a solemn farce, requiring only to be well acted, is apparent from the following confidential passages.

18th July 1712.-' I do not speak of the renunciation; for I think nothing more imprudent than to hold the language on it that is used here. I think of it as others do. There are not two opinions on the subject, from the palace to the market-place.'

12th August 1712.- Queen Anne sends Lord Bolingbroke, who brings with him Prior and Gautier. '

27th November 1712.-' I am very impatient to learn that the Duke of Hamilton is here. As for seeing him, I have no thoughts of it. My doors are more than ever shut on all the French. I cannot be expected to receive foreigners.'

12th May 1713.—' I often think of the miracle which God has worked in favour of our Kings, and of the difference of the peace we have just signed from that proposed at Gertruydenberg. '

31st May 1713.- The Chevalier de St George is charmed with his reception at the Court of Lorrain. We must see him reinstated.

14th August 1714.- At length Queen Anne is dead. In an interval between two fits of apoplexy, she had her senses so far as to sign every thing most adverse to her brother. That Prince wished to set out as soon as he had heard the accident, and our Queen of England had the courage to assent to his plan; but as soon as we heard what had passed

about the Duke of Hanover, he was prevented from exposing himself to certain danger.'

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15th November 1714. The Duke of Lorrain is generous enough to redouble his attentions to the King of England, in proportion to that Prince's misfortunes. '

25th December 1712.- - I see with pleasure the discord between the Whigs and Tories, which will secure our peace. It is said that the new. King of England is disgusted with his subjects, and that his subjects are disgusted with him. May God reestablish a better order!'

Madame des Ursins was extremely displeased at the disposition shown at Versailles to purchase peace from the English Whigs and Dutch Republicans, by the sacrifice of Philip V. She agreed also with her correspondent in her hopes of the restoration of the Stuarts, and her disappointment at the failure of the Tories, in their grand purpose of excluding the House of Hanover. A very few extracts from her Letters will be sufficient.

25th October 1711. It is not in France only that the Princess Anne is thought well disposed to the King her brother. What exceeding joy we should feel if the virtuous Queen and the King her son were to return triumphant to London !'

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17th August 1714.- I feel the greatest alarm at the health of Queen Anne. The disunion between Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke may be destructive to both.'

22d September 1714.-' Is it possible that Lord Oxford, so much esteemed for his capacity, should have been wanting in fidelity?'—' I hear nothing but good of Lord Bolingbroke. Whatever may befall him, he has chosen the better part-that of doing what he ought.'

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27th October 1714. I hear that every thing in England is prepar ing to destroy what Queen Anne did, and that the Whigs breathe nothing but war.

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But the tone of the next extract from the Letters of this lady, with which we shall close, is a curious instance of the power a small civility in softening the sternness of a female politi

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8th December 1714. I had the honour of knowing the new King of England at Rome, where he did me the honour to visit me with his father. He has sent me a message of complimentary remembrance.'

A few paragraphs respecting the unfortunate Royal family at St Germains, will be acceptable to those who feel more interest in fallen than in flourishing Courts. • Sweet are the uses ' of adversity;' and among them there are few more observable than the power which it possesses of investing its victims with dignity, even where it does not teach them virtue, and of bestowing a command over our feelings, on persons who, if they VOL. XLIV, No. 88.

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