第76章 LETTER 8(18)

After the year one thousand seven hundred and ten,it will not be said,I presume,that the war could be supported in Spain with any prospect of advantage on our side.We had sufficiently experienced how little dependence could be had on the vigor of the Portuguese;and how firmly the Spanish nation in general,the Castilians in particular,were attached to Philip.Our armies had been twice at Madrid,this prince had been twice driven from his capital,his rival had been there,none stirred in favor of the victorious,all wished and acted for the vanquished.In short,the falsehood of all those lures,by which we had been enticed to make war in Spain,had appeared sufficiently in one thousand seven hundred and six;but was so grossly evident in one thousand seven hundred and ten,that Mr Craggs,who was sent towards the end of that year by Mr Stanhope into England,on commissions which he executed with much good sense and much address,owned to me,that in Mr Stanhope's opinion,and he was not apt to despond of success,especially in the execution of his own projects,nothing could be done more in Spain,the general attachment of the people to Philip,and their aversion to Charles considered:that armies of twenty or thirty thousand men might walk about that country till dooms day,so he expressed himself,without effect:that wherever they came,the people would submit to Charles the Third out of terror,and as soon as they were gone,proclaim Philip the Fifth again out of affection:that to conquer Spain required a great army;and to keep it,a greater.Was it possible,after this,to think in good earnest of conquering Spain,and could they be in good earnest who continued to hold the same language,and to insist on the same measures?Could they be so in the following year,when the emperor Joseph died?Charles was become then the sole surviving male of the house of Austria,and succeeded to the empire as well as to all the hereditary dominions of that family.Could they be in earnest who maintained,even in this conjuncture,that "no peace could be safe,honorable,or lasting,so long as the kingdom of Spain and the West Indies remained in the possession of any branch of the house of Bourbon?"Did they mean that Charles should be emperor and king of Spain?In this project they would have had the allies against them.Did they mean to call the Duke of Savoy to the crown of Spain,or to bestow it on some other prince?In this project they would have had his imperial majesty against them.In either case the confederacy would have been broken:and how then would they have continued the war?Did they mean nothing,or did they mean something more than they owned,something more than to reduce the exorbitant power of France,and to force the whole Spanish monarchy out of the house of Bourbon?

Both these ends might have been obtained at Gertruydenberg.Why were they not obtained?Read the preliminaries of one thousand seven hundred and nine,which were made the foundation of this treaty.Inform yourself of what passed there,and observe what followed.Your lordship will remain astonished.Iremain so every time I reflect upon them,though I saw these things at no very great distance,even whilst they were in transaction;and though I know most certainly that France lost,two years before,by the little skill and address of her principal minister,in answering overtures made during the siege of Lisle by a principal person among the allies,such an opportunity,and such a correspondence,as would have removed some of the obstacles that lay now in her way,have prevented others,and have procured her peace.An equivalent for the thirty-seventh article of the preliminaries,that is,for the cession of Spain and the West Indies,was the point to be discussed at Gertruydenberg.Naples and Sicily,or even Naples and Sardinia would have contented the French,at least they would have accepted them as the equivalent.

Buys and Vanderdussen,who treated with them,reported this to the ministers of the allies:and it was upon this occasion that the Duke of Marlborough,as Buys himself told me,took immediately the lead,and congratulated the assembly on the near approach of a peace;said,that since the French were in this disposition,it was time to consider what further demands should be made upon them,according to the liberty reserved in the preliminaries;and exhorted all the ministers of the allies to adjust their several ulterior pretensions,and to prepare their demands.

This proceeding,and what followed,put me in mind of that of the Romans with the Carthaginians.The former were resolved to consent to no peace till Carthage was laid in ruins.They set a treaty however on foot,at the request of their old enemy,imposed some terms,and referred them to their generals for the rest.Their generals pursued the same method,and,by reserving still a right of making ulterior demands,they reduced the Carthaginians at last to the necessity of abandoning their city,or of continuing the war after they had given up their arms,their machines,and their fleet,in hopes of peace.