Volume V Part 20 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Heinsius----461]
William had said, when he left Holland, ”The republic must lead off the dance.” The moment had come when England was going to take her part in it.
In the month of January, 1691, William III. arrived in Holland. ”I am languis.h.i.+ng for that moment,” he wrote six months before to Heinsius.
All the allies had sent their amba.s.sadors thither. ”It is no longer the time for deliberation, but for action,” said the King of England to the congress ”the King of France has made himself master of all the fortresses which bordered on his kingdom; if he be not opposed, he will take all the rest. The interest of each is bound up in the general interest of all. It is with the sword that we must wrest from his grasp the liberties of Europe, which he aims at stifling, or we must submit forever to the yoke of servitude. As for me, I will spare for that purpose neither my influence, nor my forces, nor my person, and in the spring I will come, at the head of my troops, to conquer or die with my allies.”
The spring had not yet come, and already (March 15) Mons was invested by the French army. The secret had been carefully kept. On the 21st, the king arrived in person with the dauphin; William of Orange collected his troops in all haste, but he did not come up in time: Mons capitulated on the 8th of April; five days later, Nice, besieged by Catinat, surrendered like Mons; Louis XIV. returned to Versailles, according to his custom after a brilliant stroke. Louvois was pus.h.i.+ng on the war furiously; the naturally fierce temper of the minister was soured by excess of work and by his decline in the king's favor; he felt his position towards the king shaken by the influence of Madame de Maintenon; venting his wrath on the enemy, he was giving orders everywhere for conflagration and bombardment, when on the 17th of July, 1691, after working with the king, Louvois complained of pain; Louis XIV. sent him to his rooms; on reaching his chamber he fell down fainting; the people ran to fetch his third son, M.
de Barbezieux; Madame do Louvois was not at Versailles, and his two elder sons were in the field; he arrived too late; his father was dead.
”So he is dead, this great minister, this man of such importance, whose egotism (_le moi_), as M. Nicole says, was so extensive, who was the centre of so many things! What business, what designs, what projects, what secrets, what interests to unfold, what wars begun, what intrigues, what beautiful moves-in-check to make and to superintend! Ah! my G.o.d, grant me a little while; I would fain give check to the Duke of Savoy and mate to the Prince of Orange! No, no, thou shalt not have one, one single moment!” Thus wrote Madame do Sevigne to her daughter Madame de Grignan. Louis XIV., in whose service Louvois had spent his life, was less troubled at his death. ”Tell the King of England that I have lost a good minister,” was the answer he sent to the complimentary condolence of King James, ”but that his affairs and mine will go on none the worse.”
In his secret heart, and beneath the veil of his majestic observance of the proprieties, the king thought that his business, as well as the agreeableness of his life, would probably gain from being no longer subject to the tempers and the roughnesses of Louvois. The Grand Monarque considered that he had trained (_instruit_) his minister, but he felt that the pupil had got away from him. He appointed Barbezieux secretary for war. ”I will form you,” said he. No human hand had formed Louvois, not even that of his father, the able and prudent Michael le Tellier; he had received straight from G.o.d the strong qualities, resolution, indomitable will, ardor for work, the instinct of organization and command, which had made of him a minister without equal for the warlike and ambitious purposes of his master. Power had spoiled him, his faults had prevailed over his other qualities without destroying them; violent, fierce, without principle and without scruple in the execution of his designs, he had egged the king on to incessant wars, treating with disdain the internal miseries of the kingdom as well as any idea of pity for the vanquished; he had desired to do everything, order everything, grasp everything, and he died at fifty-three, dreaded by all, hated by a great many, and leaving in the government of the country a void which the king felt, all the time that he was angrily seeking to fill it up.
Louvois was no more; negotiations were beginning to be whispered about, but the war continued by land and sea; the campaign of 1691 had completely destroyed the hopes of James II. in Ireland; it was decided to attempt a descent upon England; a plot was being hatched to support the invasion. Tourville was commissioned to cover the landing. He received orders to fight, whatever might be the numbers of the enemy. The wind prevented his departure from Brest; the Dutch fleet had found time to join the English. Tourville wanted to wait for the squadrons of Estrees and Rochefort; Pontchartrain had been minister of finance and marine since the death of Seignelay, Colbert's son, in 1690; he replied from Versailles to the experienced sailor, familiar with battle from the age of fourteen, ”It is not for you to discuss the king's orders; it is for you to execute them and enter the Channel; if you are not ready to do it, the king will put in your place somebody more obedient and less discreet than you.” Tourville went out and encountered the enemy's squadrons between the headlands of La Hogue and Barfleur; he had forty-four vessels against ninety-nine, the number of English and Dutch together. Tourville a.s.sembled his council of war, and all the officers were for withdrawing; but the king's orders were peremptory, and the admiral joined battle.
After three days' desperate resistance, backed up by the most skilful manoeuvres, Tourville was obliged to withdraw beneath the forts of La Hogue in hopes of running his s.h.i.+ps ash.o.r.e; but in this King James and Marshal Bellefonds opposed him.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Battle of St. Vincent 465a]
Tourville remained at sea, and lost a dozen vessels. The consternation in France was profound; the nation had grown accustomed to victory; on the 20th of June the capture of Namur raised their hopes again; this time again William III. had been unable to succor his allies; he determined to--revenge himself on Luxembourg, whom he surprised on the 31st of August, between Enghaep and Steinkirk; the ground was narrow and uneven, and the King of England counted upon thus paralyzing the brilliant French cavalry. M. de Luxembourg, ill of fever as he was, would fain have dismounted to lead to the charge the brigades of the French guards and of the Swiss, but he was prevented; the Duke of Bourbon, the Prince of Conti, the Duke of Chartres, and the Duke of Vendome, placed themselves at the head of the infantry, and, sword in hand, led it against the enemy; a fortunate movement on the part of Marshal Boufflers resulted in rendering the victory decisive. Next year at Neerwinden (29th of July, 1693) the success of the day was likewise due to the infantry. On that day the French guards had exhausted their ammunition; putting the bayonet at the end of their pieces they broke the enemy's battalions; this was the first charge of the kind in the French armies. The king's household troops had remained motionless for four hours under the fire of the allies: William III. thought for a moment that his gunners made bad practice; he ran up to the batteries; the French squadrons did not move except to close up the ranks as the files were carried off; the King of England could not help an exclamation of anger and admiration. ”Insolent nation!” he cried.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Battle of Neerwinden----465]
The victory of Neerwinden ended in nothing but the capture of Charleroi; the successes of Catinat at Marsaglia, in Piedmont, had washed out the shame of the Duke of Savoy's incursion into Dauphiny in 1692. Tourville had remained with the advantage in several maritime engagements off Cape St. Vincent, and burned the English vessels in the very roads of Cadiz.
On every sea the corsairs of St. Malo and Dunkerque, John Bart and Duguay-Trouin, now enrolled in the king's navy, towed at their sterns numerous prizes; the king and France, for a long time carried away by a common pa.s.sion, had arrived at that point at which victories no longer suffice in the place of solid and definitive success. The nation was at last tiring of its glory. ”People were dying of want to the sound of the Te Deum,” says Voltaire in the Siecle de Louis XIV.; everywhere there was weariness equal to the suffering. Madame de Maintenon and some of her friends at that time, sincerely devoted to the public good, rather Christians than warriors, Fenelon, the Dukes of Beauvilliers and Chevreuse, were laboring to bring, the king over to pacific views; he saw generals as well as ministers falling one after another; Marshal Luxembourg, exhausted by the fatigues of war and the pleasures of the court, died on the 4th of January, 1695, at sixty-seven years of age. An able general, a worthy pupil of the great Conde, a courtier of much wits and no shame, he was more corrupt than his age, and his private life was injurious to his fame; he died, however, as people did die in his time, turning to G.o.d at the last day. ”I haven't lived like M. de Luxembourg,”
said Bourdaloue, ”but I should like to die like him.” History has forgotten Marshal Luxembourg's death and remembered his life.
Louis XIV. had lost Conde and Turenne, Luxembourg, Colbert, Louvois, and Seignelay; with the exception of Vauban, he had exhausted the first rank; Catinat alone remained in the second; the king was about to be reduced to the third: sad fruits of a long reign, of an incessant and devouring activity, which had speedily used up men and was beginning to tire out fortune; grievous result of mistakes long hidden by glory, but glaring out at last before the eyes most blinded by prejudice! ”The whole of France is no longer anything but one vast hospital,” wrote Fenelon to the king under the veil of the anonymous. ”The people who so loved you are beginning to lose affection, confidence, and even respect; the allies prefer carrying on war with loss to concluding a peace which would not be observed. Even those who have not dared to declare openly against you are nevertheless impatiently desiring your enfeeblement and your humiliation as the only resource for liberty and for the repose of all Christian nations. Everybody knows it, and none dares tell you so.
Whilst you in some fierce conflict are taking the battle-field and the cannon of the enemy, whilst you are storming strong places, you do not reflect that you are fighting on ground which is sinking beneath your feet, and that you are about to have a fall in spite of your victories.
It is time to humble yourself beneath the mighty hand of G.o.d; you must ask peace, and by that shame expiate all the glory of which you have made your idol; finally you must give up, the soonest possible, to your enemies, in order to save the state, conquests that you cannot retain without injustice. For a long time past G.o.d has had His arm raised over you; but He is slow to smite you because He has pity upon a prince who has all his life been beset by flatterers.” n.o.ble and strong language, the cruel truth of which the king did not as yet comprehend, misled as he was by his pride, by the splendor of his successes, and by the concert of praises which his people as well as his court had so long made to reverberate in his ears.
Louis XIV. had led France on to the brink of a precipice, and he had in his turn been led on by her; king and people had given themselves up unreservedly to the pa.s.sion for glory and to the intoxication of success; the day of awakening was at hand.
Louis XIV. was not so blind as Fenelon supposed; he saw the danger at the very moment when his kingly pride refused to admit it. The King of England had just retaken Namur, without Villeroi, who had succeeded Marshal Luxembourg, having been able to relieve the place. Louis XIV.
had already let out that he ”should not pretend to avail himself of any special conventions until the Prince of Orange was satisfied as regarded his person and the crown of England.” This was a great step towards that humiliation recommended by Fenelon.
The secret negotiations with the Duke of Savoy were not less significant.
After William III., Victor-Amadeo was the most active and most devoted as well as the most able and most stubborn of the allied princes. In the month of June, 1696, the treaty was officially declared. Victor-Amadeo would recover Savoy, Suza, the counts.h.i.+p of Nice and Pignerol dismantled; his eldest daughter, Princess Mary Adelaide, was to marry the Duke of Burgundy, eldest son of the dauphin, and the amba.s.sadors of Piedmont henceforth took rank with those of crowned heads. In return for so many concessions, Victor-Amadeo guaranteed to the king the neutrality of Italy, and promised to close the entry of his dominions against the Protestants of Dauphiny who came thither for refuge. If Italy refused her neutrality, the Duke of Savoy was to unite his forces to those of the king and command the combined army.
Victory would not have been more advantageous for Victor-Amadeo than his constant defeats were; but, by detaching him from the coalition, Louis XIV. had struck a fatal blow at the great alliance: the campaign of 1696 in Germany and in Flanders had resolved itself into mere observations and insignificant engagements; Holland and England were exhausted, and their commerce was ruined; in vain did Parliament vote fresh and enormous supplies. ”I should want ready money,” wrote William III. to Heinsius, ”and my poverty is really incredible.”
There was no less cruel want in France. ”I calculate that in these latter days more than a tenth part of the people,” said Vauban, ”are reduced to beggary, and in fact beg.” Sweden had for a long time been proffering mediation: conferences began on the 9th of May, 1697, at Nieuburg, a castle belonging to William III., near the village of Ryswick. These great halls opened one into another; the French and the plenipotentiaries of the coalition of princes occupied the two wings, the mediators sat in the centre. Before arriving at Ryswick, the most important points of the treaty between France and William III. were already settled.
Louis XIV. had at last consented to recognize the king that England had adopted; William demanded the expulsion of James II. from France; Louis XIV. formally refused his consent. ”I will engage not to support the enemies of King William directly or indirectly,” said he: ”it would not comport with my honor to have the name of King James mentioned in the treaty.” William contented himself with the concession, and merely desired that it should be reciprocal. ”All Europe has sufficient confidence in the obedience and submission of my people,” said Louis XIV., ”and, when it is my pleasure to prevent my subjects from a.s.sisting the King of England, there are no grounds for fearing lest he should find any a.s.sistance in my kingdom. There can be no occasion for reciprocity; I have neither sedition nor faction to fear.” Language too haughty for a king who had pa.s.sed his infancy in the midst of the troubles of the Fronde, but language explained by the patience and fidelity of the nation towards the sovereign who had so long lavished upon it the intoxicating pleasures of success.
France offered rest.i.tution of Strasburg, Luxembourg, Mons, Charleroi, and Dinant, restoration of the house of Lorraine, with the conditions proposed at Nimeguen, and recognition of the King of England. ”We have no equivalent to claim,” said the French plenipotentiaries haughtily; ”your masters have never taken anything from ours.”
On the 27th of July a preliminary deed was signed between Marshal Boufflers and Bentinck, Earl of Portland, the intimate friend of King William; the latter left the army and retired to his castle of Loo; there it was that he heard of the capture of Barcelona by the Duke of Vendime; Spain, which had hitherto refused to take part in the negotiations, lost all courage, and loudly demanded peace; but France withdrew her concessions on the subject of Strasburg, and proposed to give as equivalent Friburg in Brisgau and Brisach. William III. did not hesitate. Heinsius signed the peace in the name of the States General on the 20th of September at midnight; the English and Spanish plenipotentiaries did the same; the emperor and the empire were alone in still holding out: the Emperor Leopold made pretensions to regulate in advance the Spanish succession, and the Protestant princes refused to accept the maintenance of the Catholic wors.h.i.+p in all the places in which Louis XIV. had restored it.
Here again the will of William III. prevailed over the irresolution of his allies. ”The Prince of Orange is sole arbiter of Europe,” Pope Innocent XII. had said to Lord Perth, who had a commission to him from James II; ”peoples and kings are his slaves; they will do nothing which might displease him.”
”I ask,” said William, ”where anybody can see a probability of making France give up a succession for which she would maintain, at need, a twenty years' war; and G.o.d knows if we are in a position to dictate laws to France.” The emperor yielded, despite the ill humor of the Protestant princes. For the ease of their consciences they joined England and Holland in making a move on behalf of the French Reformers. Louis XIV.