conquer Spain itself; that they would be justified in attempting to put, not merely the passive Flemings and Italians, but the reluctant Castilians and Asturians, under the dominion of a stranger. The danger against which the Partition Treaty was intended to guard was precisely the same danger which afterwards was made the ground of war. It will be difficult to prove, that a danger which was sufficient to justify the war, was insufficient to justify the provisions of the treaty. If, as Lord Mahon contends, it was better that Spain should be subjugated by main force than that she should be governed by a Bourbon, it was surely better that she should be deprived of Lombardy and the Milanese than that she should be governed by a Bourbon. Whether the treaty was judiciously framed, is quite another question. We disapprove of the stipulations. But we disapprove of them, not because we think them bad, but because we think that there was no chance of their being executed. Louis was the most faithless of politicians. He hated the Dutch. He hated the government which the Revolution had established in England. He had every disposition to quarrel with his new allies. It was quite certain that he would not observe his engagements, if it should be for his interest to violate them. Even if it should be for his interest to observe them, it might well be doubted whether the strongest and clearest interest would induce a man so haughty and self-willed to co-operate heartily with two governments which had always been the objects of his scorn and a version. When intelligence of the second Partition Treaty arrived at Madrid, it roused to momentary energy the languishing ruler of a languishing state. The Spanish ambassador at the court of London was directed to remonstrate with the government of William; and his remonstrances were so insolent that he was commanded to leave England. Charles retaliated by dismissing the English and Dutch ambassadors. The French king, though the chief author of the Partition Treaty, succeeded in turning the whole wrath of Charles and of the Spanish people from himself, and in directing it against the maritime powers. Those powers had now no agent at Madrid. Their perfidious ally was at liberty to carry on his intrigues unchecked: and he fully availed himself of this advantage. A long contest was maintained with varying success by the factions which surrounded the miserable king. On the side of the imperial family was the queen, herself a princess of that family; with her were allied the confessor of the king, and most of the ministers. On the other side, were two of the most dexterous politicians of that age, Cardinal Porto Carrero, Archbishop of Toledo, and Harcourt, the ambassador of Louis. Harcourt was a noble specimen of the French aristocracy in the days of its highest splendour a finished gentleman, a brave soldier, and a skilful diplomatist. His courteous and insinuating manners, his Parisian vivacity tempered with Castilian gravity, made him the favourite of the whole court. He became intimate with 1 the grandees. He caressed the clergy. He dazzled the multitude by his magnificent style of living. The prejudices which the people of Madrid had conceived against the French cha racter, the vindictive feelings generated during centuries of national rivalry, gradually yielded to his arts; while the Austrian ambassador, a surly, pompous, niggardly German, made him. self and his country more and more unpopular every day. Harcourt won over the court and city: Porto Carrero managed the king. Never were knave and dupe better suited to each other. Charles was sick, nervous, and extravagantly superstitious. Porto Carrero had learned in the exercise of his profession the art of exciting and soothing such minds, and he employed that art with the calm and demure cruelty which is the characteristic of wicked and ambitious priests. He first supplanted the confessor. The state of the poor king, during the conflict between his two spiritual advisers, was horrible. At one time he was induced to believe that his malady was the same with that of the wretches described in the New Testament, who dwelt among the tombs; whom no chains could bind, and whom no man dared to approach. At another time, a sorceress who lived in the mountains of the Asturias was consulted about his malady. Several persons were accused of having bewitched him. Porto Carrero recommended the appalling rite of exorcism, which was actually performed. The ceremony made the poor king more nervous and miserable than ever. But it served the turn of the Cardinal, who, after much secret trickery, succeeded in casting out, not the devil, but the confessor. The next object was to get rid of the ministers. Madrid was supplied with provisions by a monopoly. The government looked after this most delicate concern, as it looked after every thing else. The partisans of the house of Bourbon took advantage of the negligence of the administration. On a sudden the supply of food failed. Exorbitant prices were demanded. The people rose. The royal residence was surrounded by an immense multitude. The queen harangued them. The priests exhibited the host. All was in vain. It was necessary to awaken the king from his uneasy sleep, and to carry him to the balcony. There a solemn promise 'was given that the unpopular advisers of the crown should be forthwith dismissed. The mob left the palace, and proceeded to pull down the houses of the ministers. The adherents of the Austrian line were thus driven from power, and the gover.ment was intrusted to the creatures of Porto Carrero. The king left the city in which he had suffered so cruel an ins ilt, for the magnificent retreat of the Escurial. Here his hypochondriac fancy took a new turn. Like his ancestor, Charles the Fifth, he was haunted by a strange curiosity to pry into the secrets of that grave to which he was hastening In the cemetery which Philip the Second had formed beneath the pavement of the church of St. Lawrence, reposed three generations of Castilian princes. Into these dark vaults the unhappy monarch descended by torchlight, and penetrated to that superb and gloomy chamber MACAULAY'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 198 where, round the great black crucifix, are He was and cautioned against the flagrant injustice which he was tempted to commit. assured that the right was with the house of irresolute. Bourbon; and reminded that his own salvation Yet he still continued ought to be dearer to him than the house of Austria. His attachment to his family, his aversion to France, were not to be overcome even by papal authority. At length he thought himself actually dying, when the cardinal redouHe was dying in bled his efforts. Divine after divine, well-tutored for the occasion, was brought to the bed He was bequeathing of the trembling penitent. the commission of known sin. He was defrauding his relatives. civil war to his people. He yielded, and signed "God," that memorable testament, the cause of many calamities to Europe. As he affixed his name to the instrument, he burst into tears. he said, "gives kingdoms and takes them away. I am already as good as dead.” The will was kept secret during the short remainder of his life. On the 3d of November, 1700, he expired. All Madrid crowded to the palace. The gates were thronged. The antechamber was filled with ambassadors and The Duke of grandees, eager to learn what dispositions the deceased sovereign had made. At length folding doors were flung open. Abrantes came forth, and announced that the whole Spanish monarchy was bequeathed to Philip, Duke of Anjou. Charles had directed that, during the interval which might elapse between his death and the arrival of his suc cessor, the government should be administered by a council, of which Porto Carrero was the chief member. He was now beset on every side by the bold and skilful agents of the house of Bourbon. The leading politicians of his court assured him, that Louis, and Louis alone, was sufficiently powerful to preserve the Spanish monarchy undivided; and that Austria would be utterly unable to prevent the Treaty of PartiSome tion from being carried into effect. celebrated lawyers gave it as their opinion, that the act of renunciation executed by the late Queen of France ought to be construed according to the spirit, and not according to the letter. The letter undoubtedly excluded the French prince. The spirit was merely this; that ample security should be taken against the union of the French and Spanish crowns on one head. Louis acted as the English ministers might the show of hesitation, he broke through all have guessed that he would act. With scarcely the obligations of the Partition Treaty, and ac cepted for his grandson the splendid legacy of Charles. The new sovereign hastened to take possession of his dominions. The whole court of France accompanied him to Sceaux. His brothers escorted him to that frontier, which, as they weakly imagined, was to be a frontier no longer. "The Pyrenees," said Louis, "have ceased to exist." Those very Pyrenees, a few years later, were the theatre of a war between the heir of Louis and the prince whom France was now sending to govern Spain. If Charles had ransacked Europe to find a successor whose moral and intellectual character resembled his own, he could not have chosen better. Philip was not so sickly as his predecessor; but he was quite as weak, as indolent, and as superstitious; he very soon be came quite as hypochondriacal and eccentric; and he was even more uxorious. He was indeed a husband of ten thousand. His first object, when he became King of Spain, was to procure a wife. From the day of his marriage to the day of her death, his first object was to have her near him, and to do what she wished. As soon as his wife died, his first object was to procure another. Another was found, as unlike the former as possible. But she was a wife, and Philip was content. Neither by day nor by night, neither in sickness nor in health, neither in time of business nor in time of re In all probability, neither political nor legal cation. axation, did he ever suffer her to be absent from him for half an hour. His mind was naturally feeble; and he had received an enfeebling education. He had been brought up Every thing in England was going on as amidst the dull magnificence of Versailles. His Louis could have wished. The leaders of the grandfather was as imperious and as ostenta- Whig party had retired from power, and were bious in his intercourse with the royal family extremely unpopular on account of the unfor as in public acts. All those who grew up im- tunate issue of the Partition Treaty. The Tomediately under the eye of Louis, had the ries, some of whom still cast a lingering look manners of persons who had never known towards St. Germains, were in office, and had what it was to be at ease. They were all a decided majority in the House of Commons. taciturn, shy, and awkward. In all of them, William was so much embarrassed by the except the Duke of Burgundy, the evil went state of parties in England, that he could not further than the manners. The Dauphin, the venture to make war on the house of Bourbon. Duke of Berri, Philip of Anjou, were men of He was suffering under a complication of seinsignificant characters. They had no energy, vere and incurable diseases. There was every no force of will. They had been so little ac- reason to believe that a few months would customed to judge or to act for themselves, dissolve the fragile tie, which bound up that that implicit dependence had become neces- feeble body with that ardent and unconquera sary to their comfort. The new King of Spain, ble soul. If Louis could succeed in preserving emancipated from control, resembled that peace for a short time, it was probable that wretched German captive, who, when the irons all his vast designs would be securely accomwhich he had worn for years were knocked plished. Just at this crisis, the most importoff, fell prostrate on the floor of his prison.ant crisis of his life, his pride and his passions The restraints which had enfeebled the mind hurried him into an error, which undid all that of the young prince were required to support forty years of victory and intrigue had done; it. Till he had a wife he could do nothing; which produced the dismemberment of the and when he had a wife he did whatever she kingdom of his grandson, and brought inva chose. sion, bankruptcy, and famine on his own. James the second died at St. Germains. Louis paid him a farewell visit, and was so much moved by the solemn parting, and by the grief of the exiled queen, that, losing sight of all considerations of policy, and actuated, While this lounging, moping boy was on his way to Madrid, his grandfather was all activity. Louis had no reason to fear a contest with the empire single-handed. He made vigorous preparations to encounter Leopold. He overawed the States-General by means of a as it should seem, merely by compassion, and great army. He attempted to soothe the Eng-by a not ungenerous vanity, he acknowledged lish government by fair professions. William the Prince of Wales as King of England. was not deceived. He fully returned the hatred The indignation which the Castilians had of Louis; and, if he had been free to act ac-felt when they heard that three foreign powers cording to his own inclinations, he would have had undertaken to regulate the Spanish sucdeclared war as soon as the contents of the cession, was nothing to the rage with which will were known. But he was bound by con- the English learned that their good neighbour stitutional restraints. Both his person and his had taken the trouble to provide them with a measures were unpopular in England. His king. Whigs and Tories joined in condemnsecluded life and his cold manners disgusted a ing the proceedings of the French court. The people accustomed to the graceful affability of cry for war was raised by the city of London, Charles the Second. His foreign accent and and echoed and re-echoed from every corner his foreign attachments were offensive to the of the realm. William saw that his time was national prejudices. His reign had been a come. Though his wasted and suffering body season of distress, following a season of ra- could hardly move without support, his spirit pidly-increasing prosperity. The burdens of was as energetic and resolute as when, at the war, and the expense of restoring the cur- twenty-three, he bade defiance to the combined rency, had been severely felt. Nine clergymen force of England and France. He left the out of ten were Jacobites at heart, and had Hague, where he had been engaged in negosworn allegiance to the new dynasty only in tiating with the states and the emperor a deorder to save their benefices. A large propor- fensive treaty against the ambitious designs tion of the country gentlemen belonged to the of the Bourbons. He flew to London. He resame party. The whole body of agricultural modelled the ministry. He dissolved the Parproprietors was hostile to that interest, which liament. The majority of the new House of the creation of the national debt had brought Commons was with the king, and the most into notice, and which was believed to be pe- vigorous preparations were made for war. culiarly favoured by the court-the moneyed interest. The middle classes were fully determined to keep out James and his family. But they regarded William only as the less of two evils; and, as long as there was no imminent danger of a counter-revolution, were disposed to thwart and mortify the sovereign by whom they were, nevertheless, ready to stand, in case of necessity, with their lives and fortunes. They were sullen and dissatisfied. "There was," as Somers expressed it in a remarkable letter to William, "a deadness and want of spirit in the nation universally." Before the commencement of active hostilities, William was no more. But the Grand Alliance of the European Princes against the Bourbons was already constructed. "The master workman died," says Mr. Burke, "but the work was formed on true mechanical principles, and it was as truly wrought." On the 15th of May, 1702, war was proclaimed by concert at Vienna, at London, and at the Hague. Thus commenced that great struggle by which Europe, from the Vistula to the Atlantic Ocean, was agitated during twelve years. The two hostile coalitions were, in respect of territory, wealth, and population, not unequally matched. On the one side were France, Spain, and Bavaria; on the other, England, Holland, the Empire, and a crowd of inferior powers. That part of the war which Lord Mahon has undertaken to relate, though not the least important, is certainly the least attractive. In Italy, in Germany, and in the Netherlands, great means were at the disposal of great generals. Mighty battles were fought. Fortress after fortress was subdued. The iron chain of the Belgian strongholds was broken. By a regular and connected series of operations extending through several years, the French were driven back from the Danube and the Po into their own provinces. The war in Spain, on the contrary, is made of events which seem to have no dependence on each other. The turns of fortune resemble those which take place in a dream. Victory and defeat are not followed by their usual consequences. Armies spring out of nothing, and melt into nothing. Yet, to judicious readers of history, the Spanish conflict is perhaps more interesting than the campaigns of Marlborough and Eugene. The fate of the Milanese, and of the Low Countries, was decided by military skill. The fate of Spain was decided by the peculiarities of the national cha racter. king sate eating and drinking all night, and lay in bed all day; yawned at the council table, and suffered the most important papers to lie unopened for weeks. At length he was roused by the only excitement of which his sluggish nature was susceptible. His grandfather consented to let him have a wife. The choice was fortunate. Maria Louisa, Princess of Savoy, a beautiful and graceful girl of thir teen, already a woman in person and mind, at an age when the females of colder climates are still children, was the person selected. The king resolved to give her the meeting in Catalonia. He left his capital, of which he was already thoroughly tired. At setting out, he was mobbed by a gang of beggars. He, however, made his way through them, and repaired to Barcelona. Louis was perfectly aware that the queen would govern Philip. He, accordingly, looked about for somebody to govern the queen. He selected the Princess Orsini to be first lady of the bedchamber-no insignificant post in the household of a very young wife and a very uxorious husband. This lady was the daugh ter of a French peer, and the widow of a Spanish grandee. She was, therefore, admirably fitted by her position to be the instrument of the court of Versailles at the court of Madrid. The Duke of Orleans called her, in words too coarse for translation, the Lieutenant of Captain Maintenon; and the appellation was well deserved. She aspired to play in Spain the part which Madame de Maintenon had played in France. But, though at least equal to her model in wit, information, and talents for intrigue, she had not that self-command, that patience, that imperturbable evenness of temper, which had raised the widow of a buffoon to be the consort of the proudest of kings. The princess was more than fifty years old; but was still vain of her fine eyes and her fine shape; she still dressed in the style of a girl; and she still carried her flirtations so far as to give occasion for scandal. She was, however, polite, eloquent, and not deficient in strength of mind. The bitter Saint Simon owns that no person whom she wished to attach, could long resist the graces of her manners and of her conversation. When the war commenced, the young king was in a most deplorable situation. On his arrival at Madrid, he found Porto Carrero at the head of affairs, and he did not think it fit to displace the man to whom he owed his crown. The cardinal was a mere intriguer, and in no sense a statesman. He had acquired in the court and in the confessional, a rare degree of skill in all the tricks by which weak minds are managed. But of the noble science of government, of the sources of national prosperity, of the causes of national decay, he knew no more than his master. It is curious to observe the contrast between the dexterity with which he ruled the conscience of a foolish valetudinarian, and the imbecility which he showed when placed at the head of an empire. On what grounds Lord Mahon represents the cardinal as a man "of splendid genius," "of vast abilities," we are unable to discover. Louis was of a very different opinion, and Louis was very seldom mistaken in his judgment of character. "Everybody," says he, in a letter to his ambassador, "knows how incapable the cardinal is. He is an object of contempt to his countrymen." We have not time to relate how she obtain ed, and how she preserved her empire over the young couple in whose household she was placed; how she became so powerful, that neither minister of Spain nor ambassador from France could stand against her; how Louis himself was compelled to court her; how she received orders from Versailles to retire; how the queen took part with the fa vourite attendant; how the king took part with the queen; and how, after much squabbling, A few miserable savings were made, which lying, shuffling, bullying, and coaxing, the disruined individuals, without producing any per-pute was adjusted. We turn to the events of ceptible benefit to the state. The police became the war. more and more inefficient. The disorders of he capital were increased by the arrival of French adventurers-the refuse of Parisian brothels and gaming-houses. These wretches considered the Spaniards as a subjugated race, hom the countrymen of the new sovereign hr cheat and insult with impunity. The When hostilities were proclaimed at Lon don, Vienna, and the Hague, Philip was at Naples. He had been with great difficulty prevailed upon, by the most urgent representations from Versailles, to separate himself from his wife, and to repair without her to his Ita lian dominions, which were then menaced by escaped to the shore. The conquerors shared some millions of dollars; some millions more were sunk. When all the galleons had been captured or destroyed, there came an order in due form allowing them to unload. the emperor. The queen acted as regent, and, child as she was, seems to have been quite as competent to govern the kingdom as her husband, or any of his ministers. In August, 1702, an armament, under the command of the Duke of Ormond, appeared off Calais. The Spanish authorities had no guards and no regular troops. The national spirit, however, supplied in some degree what was wanting. The nobles and peasantry advanced money. The peasantry were formed into what the Spanish writers call bands of heroic patriots, and what General Stanhope calls a "rascally foot militia." If the invaders had acted with vigour and judgment, Cadiz would probably have fallen. But the chiefs of the expedition were divided by national and professional feelings-Dutch against English, and lard against sea. Sparre, the Dutch ge-ance of his grandson an army of 12,000 men, neral, was sulky and perverse; according to commanded by the Duke of Berwick. BerLord Mahon, because he was a citizen of a wick was the son of James the Second and republic. Bellasys, the English general, em- Arabella Churchill. He had been brought up bezzled the stores; we suppose, because he to expect the highest honours which an Engwas the subject of a monarchy. The Duke lish subject could enjoy; but the whole course of Ormond, who had the command of the of his life was changed by the revolution whole expedition, proved on this occasion, as which overthrew his infatuated father. Beron every other, destitute of the qualities which wick became an exile, a man without a coungreat emergencies require. No discipline try; and from that time forward his camp was was kept; the soldiers were suffered to rob to him in the place of a country, and profesand insult those whom it was most desirable sional honour was his patriotism. He ento conciliate. Churches were robbed, images nobled his wretched calling. There was a were pulled down, nuns were violated. The stern, cold, Brutus-like virtue, in the manner officers shared the spoil, instead of punishing in which he discharged the duties of a soldier the spoilers; and at last the armament, loaded, of fortune. His military fidelity was tried by to use the words of Stanhope, “with a great the strongest temptations, and was found indeal of plunder and infamy," quitted the scene vincible. At one time he fought against his of Essex's glory, leaving the only Spaniard of uncle; at another time he fought against the note who had declared for them to be hanged cause of his brother; yet he was never susby his countrymen. pected of treachery, or even of slackness. | The fleet was off the coast of Portugal, on the way back to England, when the Duke of Ormond received intelligence that the treasureships from America had just arrived in Europe, and had, in order to avoid his armament, repaired to the harbour of Vigo. The cargo consisted, it was said, of more than three millions sterling in gold and silver, besides much valuable merchandise. The prospect of plunder reconciled all disputes. Dutch and English, admirals and generals, were equally eager for action. The Spaniards might, with the greatest ease, have secured the treasure, by simply landing it; but it was a fundamental law of Spanish trade that the galleons should unload at Cadiz, and at Cadiz only. The Chamber of Commerce at Cadiz, in the true spirit of monopoly, refused, even at this conjuncture, to bate one jot of its privilege. The matter was referred to the Council of the Indies: that body deliberated and hesitated just a day too long. Some feeble preparations for detence were made. Two ruined towers at the mouth of the bay were garrisoned by a few ill-armed and untrained rustics; a boom was thrown across the entrance of the bay; and some French ships of war, which had convoyed the galleons from America, were moored in the basin within. But all was to no purpose. The English ships broke the boom; Ormond and his soldiers scaled the forts; the French burned their ships, and VOL. II.-2 When Philip returned to Madrid in the beginning of 1703, he found the finances more embarrassed, the people more discontented, and the hostile coalition more formidable than ever. The loss of the gallcons had occasioned a great deficiency in the revenue. The Al miral of Castile, one of the greatest subject3 in Europe, had fied to Lisbon, and sworn allegiance to the archduke. The King of Portugal soon after acknowledged Charles as King of Spain, and prepared to support the title of the house of Austria by arms. On the other side, Louis sent to the assist Early in 1704, an army, composed of English, Dutch, and Portuguese, was assembled on the western frontier of Spain. The Archduke Charles had arrived at Lisbon, and appeared in person at the head of his troops. The military skill of Berwick held the allies in check through the whole campaign. On the south, however, a great blow was struck. An English fleet, under Sir George Rooke, having on board several regiments, commanded by the Prince of Hesse Darmstadt, appeared before the rock of Gibraltar. That celebrated stronghold, which nature has made all but impregnable, and against which all the resources of the military art have been employed in vain, was taken as easily as if it had been an open village in a plain. The garrison went to say their prayers instead of standing on their guard. A few English sailors climbed the rock. The Spaniards capitulated; and the British flag was placed on those ramparts, from which the combined armies and navies of France and Spain have never been able to pull it down. Rooke proceeded to Malaga, gave battle in the neighbourhood of that port to a French squadron, and after a doubtful action returned to England. But greater events were at hand. The Eng lish government had determined to send an expedition to Spain, under the command of Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough. Tais man was, if not the greatest, yet assuredly 'h |