THE REIGN OF LOUIS XV.

[Dec.

and forthwith a howl arose from the whole | sweeping reforms arrayed against him the
peasant population, against "the gods of
Baron Goertz!"

On his accession to office he found the whole of Northern Europe, Russia, Poland, Prussia, and Denmark, combined against Sweden. Upon the refusal of Charles XII. to agree to proposals known in diplomatic history as "the Concerts of the Hague,' for the neutrality of the German territory, George I. of England, as Elector of Hanover, also joined the league against him. This assistance was to be rewarded by the cession of Bremen and Verden, of which a late campaign had put Denmark in possession; in return for which, it may be observed, that the latter crown ultimately received the English guarantee for Sleswig, though only against the claims of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. Goertz was bent on breaking up the coalition, and on gratifying his master's exasperation against George I. By ceding to Russia the provinces she had already conquered, he intended to purchase the help of his most formidable enemy; and then, by rousing the Catholic courts, in their favorite scheme of subverting the Protestant Succession in England, to divert the stream of Russian conquest to the South and West. In the meantime, Russia was ready for the change. Her German allies had begun to dread the presence of her armies; and the English government, true to the principle which makes it the interest of a maritime Power to prevent the total depression of any continental state, had refused to guarantee to the Czar those very Swedish conquests which Goertz now volunteered to cede. But, for the success of this scheme, it was necessary that France should separate from England, by the voluntary act, either of the Regent, or of the party whose success would follow his overthrow. We have seen how Peter the Great failed in accomplishing the former alternative. The hopes of the northern Allies were now turned to the younger branch of the Bourbons, at that time pining in reluctant submission to the Articles of Utrecht; which decreed their exclusion from Italy, and from the reversionary prospect of the French suc

cession.

While Goertz was thus occupied in the North, the young King of Spain and his wife, Elizabeth of Parma, had reposed their absolute confidence in Alberoni. He was perhaps the last statesman whom the discipline of the Roman Church has trained for a political career, and whose claims to the very highest rank are undeniable. His

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most inveterate prejudices of the native of his downfall has attached to him a most Spanish party; and the marvelous celerity undeserved reputation for temerity and shallowness. It is not too much to say, that the scale of the comprehensive improvements which he projected, and the practical paralleled, except in the year of Cæsar's character of their details, can nowhere be Dictatorship, or in the reorganization of the French Republic by Napoleon, which M. Thiers so strikingly depicts in the opening chapters of the Histoire du Consulat. at Rome and at Paris the shock of an organic revolution had already cleared a free space for the exertions of statesmen; while the slow decay, which for a century had crippled the Spanish government, had only additionally cumbered the ground with the fragments of condemned institutions. Alberoni was hampered at every turn by the parasites of the abuses he attacked. All the sacrosanct etiquette of that formal Court, the rigid machinery of the Councils, the endless multiplication of subordinate officials, the privileges of exclusive access to the Royal person, were all of them available points of ed, one after another, the promise of disdefence against such a reformer; and renewheartening and exhausting him. beroni had marked the vulnerable point of But Althe Spanish government. Without waiting to take each stronghold in detail, or to corrupt their garrisons, he struck boldly at the heart of the official empire. The Throne stitution strong enough to maintain itself was then, as it is now, the only Spanish inamid the whirl of parties and the shipwreck of reputations. Till that support failed Alberoni, he could safely launch his edicts arsenals of Cadiz and Barcelona, to the manfrom the bedchamber of the Escurial, to the ufactories of Guadalaxara, to the rich and almost virgin treasuries of Mexico and Havannah.

have been rashness but for its success, he With an audacity which would risked everything to maintain the Sovereign in individual and exclusive subjection to himself. He actually turned the Marquis de Spain, out of the King's apartment. He not Villena, one of the haughtiest grandees in only refused to receive M. de Louville, who was charged by the Regent with a private message to the King, but forbad his appearing in the streets of Madrid. He crushed confessor, and absolutely prohibited his ever even Father Daubenton, the King's Jesuit meddling with the negotiations pending be

1849.]

THE REIGN OF LOUIS XV.

tween his master and the Roman court. But
his position had, of course, the weakness, as
well as the strength of favoritism. In all
Spain there was no one, except perhaps Rip-
perda, the Dutch ambassador, to whom he
trusted for co-operation; and he complained
that, with all the weight of the empire on
his shoulders, he was often reduced to do
"Give me
the work of a common clerk.
five years of peace," he is said to have ex-
claimed, "and I will make Philip V. the
But
most formidable King in Europe."
he dared not slight Elizabeth of Parma; her
ambition forced him prematurely into a war;
and at last, after defying the French and
English courts, the grandees of Spain, and
all the terrors of the Vatican, he fell before
the vulgar craft of the Queen's nurse, Laura
Pescatori !

The

|liance, by which Savoy was compelled to
exchange Sicily for the barren island of Sar-
The great Powers were determined,
dinia.
at any risk, to prevent a general war.
English government was ready to support
Austria; and the fleet which Alberoni had
dispatched to conquer Sicily, was destroyed
off Palermo by Admiral Byng. But Albe-
roni still held the threads that were to move
the extensive organization projected between
himself and Goertz. Faithful to his task of
continuing the work of Louis XIV., he threw
himself into the Russian and Turkish policy,
which the Regent had not dared to adopt.
He paralyzed the Austrian and Roman diplo-
matists by the ostentation of a high Catholic
design; and actively co-operated with the
existing cabals of the Duchesse du Maine
and the French Royalists.

"Before you take your leave," he wrote to the Prince of Cellamara, his representative in Paris, "recollect to spring your mines."

And the mines exploded in the most fantastic intrigue that even France has ever seen.

Still the work that he actually accomplished was immense. It is no small praise for an Italian priest to have anticipated Chatham and Turgot in two of their most characteristic measures. As the former, The Fronde has been called the when the Highlands were on the point of revolt, and the English armies were exhaust- Comedy-Cellamara's conspiracy is the bured, "looked for merit and found it in the lesque, of civil war. The Duchesse du Maine, mountains of the North," so Alberoni had searching for precedents through a pile of the noble courage to attach for the first time folios under the guidance of Boivin the antithe disaffected Catalonian Miguelets, by en- quary, "qui ne connaissait d'autre cour que rolling them in the royal forces: And sixty celle de Semiramis,"-Count Laval, in a years before Turgot's ministry, Alberoni coachman's livery, driving her to midnight gave the first impulse to the languid pro-interviews with the Spanish Ambassador,duction of Spain, by removing the custom- Malezieu composing addresses from the King of Spain to the Parliament of Paris, and at houses that checked the communication beAbruptly as his wit's end for terror at having mislaid the tween the inland provinces. his reign was terminated, he had already copy,-Mademoiselle de Launay holding a created a navy, recruited the army, and pro- levee of any fortune-tellers and adventuresses who chose to profess themselves in posvided for its regular payment. He had centralized all the branches of official adminis- session of secret information,-all form a tration, and organized, for the first time picture which resembles nothing but one of since the reign of Philip II., the vast prov- Scribe's involved and perplexing dramas. inces of Spanish America. Reversing the The musical conspiracies of Gustave or Lesfatal policy which had enriched the Protest- tocq are not more inexhaustible in the imant North with the expelled French and broglio, more varied in incident, more sucSpanish artisans, he invited Dutch and Eng- cessful in scenic attitude. The punishment lish families to establish woclen and linen of the detected criminals was in keeping with manufactures in Spain. But the King and the gay make-believe of the plot. It is a Queen of Spain, additionally displeased at bright silken thread shot across the gloomy the confirmation of the renunciations by the web of the Chronicles of the Bastille. Waittreaty of 1715, insisted on pressing their ing-maids, peers of France, gardes-du-corps, were all hurried under the frowning portals grievances against Austria to an armed decision, and Alberoni only saved himself by of Charles V. But when once there, they yielding. He answered the Triple Alliance, flirted, and amused themselves with jeux-dehowever, by a descent on Sardinia, at that société; Mademoiselle de Launay sang airs at the window from the opera of Iphigénie, time Austrian. He attempted, and with some success, to ally himself with the House of and the Duc de Richelieu answered her from Savoy. But this double manoeuvre only ex- his neighboring dungeon, as Oreste! While pedited the conclusion of the Quadruple Al- Alberoni's support thus crumbled away in

France, and his hopes in the North were | Pragmatic Sanction, which gave the undiruined by the fall of Charles XII. in the vided succession of the whole Austrian dotrenches before Friederichshamm, the minis- minions to Maria Theresa, the emperor's eldters of France and England continued inflex- est daughter. On these terms a general ible in their measures for restoring peace. peace was at last signed; and thus ended Alberoni's dismissal was sternly exacted; the long controversy of the Spanish Succesand at that price the King of Spain was to sion, which for seventy years ever since the have the terms originally offered him by the marriage of Louis XIV. with Maria Theresa Quadruple Alliance. Alberoni was accord- of Spain in 1660-had agitated Europe. ingly sacrificed; with the same odious disregard of humanity and justice which the Spanish Court had shown to Madame d'Orsini, his predecessor in the royal favor. The reversion of Tuscany and Parma, on the approaching extinction of the Houses of Medici and Farnese, was assured to Don Carlos, the eldest son of Philip V. by Elizabeth of Parma: And on this the King of Spain at last consented to renounce his claims to those portions of the old Spanish empire of which Austria was then in possession. A few minor points were reserved, preparatory to the conclusion of a general peace, for the Congress of Cambray.

Dubois died, three years afterward; vomiting blasphemies at his physicians, for their ignorance of the ceremonial which should have accompanied the administration of the last Sacraments to a Roman cardinal! The Duke of Orleans soon followed him; stricken with apoplexy in the very arms of the beautiful Duchesse de Phalaris. But the negotiations for a final pacification, commenced at Cambray, were not concluded till what is known as the Second Treaty of Vienna, in 1731. They had been interrupted in 1725, under the influence of Alberoni's vain and loquacious imitator, Ripperda, by an intrigue, which is still one of the darkest and most singular in the annals of diplomacy. For a moment, Europe seemed on the brink of a general war. Catholic and Protestant powers were again opposed to each other, with a novel distribution of the parts. The League of Hanover (or, as it is sometimes termed, of Herrenhausen) combined England, France, and Prussia, with the addition afterward of Sweden and Denmark, in opposition to Spain and Austria. It was surmised that the latter Powers contemplated a still closer union, which might have resulted in reconstructing the empire of Charles V. But compliance with the family affections either of Elizabeth of Parma, or of the Emperor Charles VI., was at that time an unfailing talisman for charming to repose the most alarming tempest. Don Carlos was confirmed in the inheritance of the Italian duchies; while England and the States-General guaranteed the

In spite of M. de Tocqueville's lamentation over the decline of French influence at this period, he has furnished in his narrative of Alberoni's fall, the best justification of the Regency: "Il échoua, parce qu'il n'apprécia pas la tendance de son époque, toute dirigée vers le repos.' Distasteful as the Treaty of Utrecht was to both France and England, it was simply impossible for either nation to renew the struggle to which it put an end. It was eminently impossible for France; drawn to the very verge of bankruptcy by the extravagant reign of Louis XIV., and additionally distressed by the famine which followed the War of the Succession, by the great Plague of Marseilles in 1720, the burning of Châlons and Rennes, and the gigantic swindling of Law and his System. But though France is represented as at this period habitually and criminally subservient to England, the English cabinet had, at the same time, to defend itself against similar imputations.

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The popular idea of Walpole, as a Foreign Minister (and we repeat, that we use his name in speaking of this epoch because, though for a time in opposition, he so zealously espoused the policy of his predecessors on his return as to make it fairly his own), is, we believe, very nearly this: that he deliberately, and on principle, sacrificed our foreign relations to his party or personal interests. Many people may think that there was no great harm, if he did so. it would be difficult to say which half of this opinion, combining, as it does, the cant of the craftsman with the recent cant of the representatives of the Anti-Corn-Law League, is most preposterously false. It is undeniably true that, in the face of an opposition, in which the Tories, smarting under the dread of perpetual exclusion from office, were reinforced by impracticable and disappointed Whigs, the Whig Government, led successively by Stanhope and by Walpole, did preserve us for five-and-twenty years from a European war. But it is also true that they succeeded in doing so, mainly by the proofs, everywhere presented, of their diplomatic ability; by the profound policy of

1849.]

THE REIGN OF LOUIS XV.

their combinations, and the readiness with | ground of jealousy. It was represented as which, when it was necessary to strike, they an attempt to balance the House of Austria struck boldly and at once. For it is well by the creation of a second great Protestant observed by Professor Heeren, that the great power in the north of Germany: and the domerit of the English Government at this mestic enemies of the Hanoverian dynasty time, consisted not, indeed, in evading war, pounced at once on the bargain about those but in employing every means which nego- provinces, as a first instance in which Engtiation or demonstrations could supply for land was sacrificed to the Electorate. We know avoiding it.* War, indeed, is, for the most that the elder Horace Walpole disapproved part, but the vulgar resource of inexperienced of the Triple Alliance; and shortly afterward workmen; and real statesmanship is best his party in the Cabinet resigned on the shown by neither abdicating a diplomatic cognate question of a subsidy against Sweden. position, nor yet breaking through it by force; but in making the voice of our country heard whenever European interests are in discussion, and by our just appreciation of new situations as they arise-presenting her, in her unbroken power, either as a mediator or an example. And it behoves the modern despisers of diplomacy to recollect that this is a part doubly suitable to a maritime and commercial nation; which cannot repair the inaction of one year by a successful campaign or the acquisition of a new province. In most cases, indeed, we can make ourselves felt only diplomatically, if we are to be felt at all; and must either so interpose as to appear to give law to the Continent, or be isolated from it. Such was the policy of our great Elizabeth; who never fired a single gun for thirty years; and yet it is from her reign that our continental influence is dated. Such, too, is the consummate policy which has guided us clear of the war which the most skillful observers pronounced inevitable in 1830; and such also was that of the English Government from 1715 to 1740.