第55章 LETTER 7(10)

In their great distress in one thousand six hundred and seventy-three,they engaged to restore Maestricht to the Spaniards as soon as it should be retaken:it was not retaken,and they accepted it for themselves as the price of the separate peace they made with France,The Dutch had engaged farther,to make neither peace nor truce with the king of France,till that prince consented to restore to Spain all he had conquered since the Pyrenean treaty.But far from keeping this promise in any tolerable degree,Louis the Fourteenth acquired,by the plan imposed on Spain at Nimeguen,besides the county of Burgundy,so many other countries and towns on the side of the ten Spanish provinces,that these,added to the places he kept of those which had been yielded to him by the treaty of Aix la Chapelle (for some of little consequence he restored)put into his hands the principal strength of that barrier,against which we goaded ourselves almost to death in the last great war;and made good the saying of the Marshal of Schomberg,that to attack this barrier was to take the beast by his horns.I know very well what may be said to excuse the Dutch.The emperor was more intent to tyrannise his subjects on one side,than to defend them on the other.He attempted little against France,and the little he did attempt was ill-ordered,and worse executed.The assistance of the princes of Germany was often uncertain,and always expensive.Spain was already indebted to Holland for great sums;greater still must be advances to her if the war continued:and experience showed that France was able,and would continue,to prevail against her present enemies.The triple league had stopped her progress,and obliged her to abandon the county of Burgundy;but Sweden was now engaged in the war on the side of France,as England had been in the beginning of it:and England was now privately favorable to her interests,as Sweden had been in the beginning of it.The whole ten provinces would have been subdued in the course of a few campaigns more:and it was better for Spain and the Dutch too,that part should be saved by accepting a sort of composition,than the whole be risked by refusing it.This might be alleged to excuse the conduct of the States General,in imposing hard terms on Spain;in making none for their other allies;and in signing alone:by which steps they gave France an opportunity that she improved with great dexterity of management,the opportunity of treating with the confederates one by one,and of beating them by detail in the cabinet,if I may so say,as she had often done in the field.I shall not compare these reasons,which were but too well founded in fact,and must appear plausible at least,with other considerations that might be,and were at the time,insisted upon.

I confine myself to a few observations,which every knowing and impartial man must admit.Your lordship will observe,first,that the fatal principle of compounding with Louis the Fourteenth,from the time that his pretensions,his power,and the use he made of it,began to threaten Europe,prevailed still more at Nimeguen than it had prevailed at Aix:so that although he did not obtain to the full all he attempted,yet the dominions of France were by common consent,on every treaty,more and more extended;her barriers on all sides were more and more strengthened;those of her neighbors were more and more weakened;and that power,which was to assert one day,against the rest of Europe,the pretended rights of the house of Bourbon to the Spanish monarchy,was more and more established,and rendered truly formidable in such hands at least,during the course of the first eighteen years of the period.Your lordship will please to observe,in the second place,that the extreme weakness of one branch of Austria,and the miserable conduct of both;the poverty of some of the princes of the empire,and the disunion,and to speak plainly,the mercenary policy of all of them;in short,the confined views,the false notions,and,to speak as plainly of my own as of other nations,the iniquity of the councils of England,not only hindered the growth of this power from being stopped in time,but nursed it up into strength almost insuperable by any future confederacy.A third observation is this:

If the excuses made for the conduct of the Dutch at Nimeguen are not sufficient,they too must come in for their share in this condemnation,even after the death of the De Wits;as they were to be condemned most justly,during the administration,for abetting and favoring France.If these excuses,grounded on their inability to pursue any longer a war,the principal profit of which was to accrue to their confederates,for that was the case after the year one thousand six hundred and seventy-three,or one thousand six hundred and seventy-four,and the principal burden of which was thrown on them by their confederates;if these are sufficient,they should not have acted,for decency's sake as well as out of good policy,the part they did act in one thousand seven hundred and eleven,and one thousand seven hundred and twelve,towards the late queen,who had complaints of the same kind,in a much higher degree and with circumstances much more aggravating,to make of them,of the emperor,and of all the princes of Germany;and who was far from treating them and their other allies,at that time,as they treated Spain and their other allies in one thousand six hundred and seventy-eight.Immediately after the Dutch had made their peace,that of Spain was signed with France.The emperor's treaty with this crown and that of Sweden was concluded in the following year:and Louis the Fourteenth being now at liberty to assist his ally whilst he had tied up the powers with whom he had treated from assisting theirs,he soon forced the king of Denmark ind the elector of Brandenburg to restore all they had taken from the Swedes,and to conclude the peace of the north.