Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/136

122 betwixt Germany and Flanders, and both of those countries in the hands of the same person, but Holland lying on the frontiers of a France stretching from the straits of Gibraltar to the very neighbourhood of Amsterdam.

This was the terror which absorbed all that was heroical in the faculties or principles of William. He knew that neither principles, nor oaths, nor treaties could bind Louis. He expressed this conviction freely in his letters to Heinsius:—"The greatest hardship," he says, "that appears to me on this business is, that so little reliance is to be made on engagements with France. Her power," he adds, "will be thereby so much more considerable, that she will be at liberty to pay just as much regard to the treaties as may suit her conveniience, of which we have had but too much experience. On the other hand, I do see a possibility of preventing France from putting herself in possession of the monarchy of Spain, in case the king should happen to die soon." Yet, seeing all this, William was weak enough to enter into Louis's pretended scheme of partition of the territories of Spain, in order to free himself of the bugbear of having France and Spain wholly united. He was weak enough to attempt to bind a man like Louis by a secret treaty, who was bound by no treaty, and was at this moment seeking to violate the recent treaty of Ryswick in the most vital part. And yet, even had Louis carried out this proposed secret treaty of partition faithfully, what would be the situation of Holland? It would still be laid on the edge of a France which would have real possession of Flanders and Italy in the name of the dauphin.

The bait by which this master of finesse, Louis, drew William with his eyes thus open to commit the very worst action that a king can commit—that of conspiring in secret to give away and carve up the possessions of his neighbours—was this:—There was a third claimant to the crown of Spain; this was the electoral prince of Bavaria, the son of the elector of Bavaria. This prince was the son of Maria Antonietta, the niece of the present Spanish king, Charles II., by his sister Margaret, late wife of the emperor Leopold I. Maria Antonietta was dead; but at the time of her marriage to the elector of Bavaria, she had, like her aunt, Maria Theresa, renounced all claims on the Spanish crown. The prince's grandfather Leopold, therefore, justly declared the claim of the prince his grandson wholly groundless; yet it was this young man's empty claim which Louis now brought forward against that of the emperor his grandfather. He proposed that this prince should have Spain itself and the colonies, to the prejudice of the archduke Charles, the emperor's second son, as proposed by the emperor; and William was caught by this specious pretence for separating Spain both from France and Austria. He therefore went into this unprincipled scheme with a man in whom he had no faith, and yet fondly hoped that he was averting a war, whilst he was laying the foundations of one of the longest and most bloody wars which ever desolated Europe.

The negotiations were carried on in England in closest secrecy betwixt William and Tallard, William entering into engagements which most momentously affected England as well as all Europe, without taking a particle of advice from his council, much less seeking the advice of parliament, a proceeding utterly unconstitutional and reprehensible. William's excuse for this proceeding was that he could not assume a martial attitude, and was, therefore, compelled to effect what he could by secret treaty. Writing to Heinsius in March, he said, "The invincible difficulties that appear in the thing itself, the unprepared state the allies are in to begin a war, and the bad situation of Spain, make me shudder when I consider the affair; for certainly France is in a condition to take possession of that monarchy before we shall be able to concert measures to oppose it. The constitution here is such that I shall be able to contribute little towards the land forces, but I will do something towards the marine, for the people here will, I believe, be inclinable to it, though we shall have great want of money." He adds that expert ministers must be sent to Madrid, and the nations must do all they could to remain armed, and he wished he could do so too.

The fact was, that William's English subjects were sick of war, especially continental war, where they had to pay for defending nations too inert to defend themselves, under the pretence of defending England, which was sufficiently defended by her navy. At this moment, whilst William was longing to be at the head of armies again, his lord chancellor Somers was writing that the nation never was less disposed for any new war; that they were tired out with taxes, and to a degree that was not fully discovered till the elections which had been going on, when they would support no candidate that would not pledge himself to peace, economy, and a reduction of taxation. And, in reality, it was not fear for England but for Holland that agitated William. In his earlier interviews with Tallard in England, he gave him to understand, he says in a letter to Heinsius, that he foresaw no accommodation unless at least all the Spanish possessions in Italy should be ceded to the emperor, and the Spanish Netherlands to the elector of Bavaria, not in the condition they then were, but with a stronger and greater barrier. He also threw out a plea for a slice of the property for England, "some ports in the Mediterranean and in the West Indies for the security of our commerce." So soon as William had let Somers into the secret of this negotiation, which was about this time, that statesman had told him how much it would endear him to the English if he could procure some advantages to them in the Spanish colonies, and William seems to have made use of the idea. But he must have soon found that Louis had very different views of arrangement, for he did not listen to anything but to the elector having Spain and the dauphin Italy and Flanders, and William gave way. Historians have asked what, indeed, he could do under such circumstances? There was one thing which he could have done—remained dignifiedly and nobly passive on the occasion. If he was not prepared to fight, he could at least have refused to soil his hands with making over the lands and cities of other nations to the ambitious and unprincipled man whose designs of the kind he had spent so much blood and wealth to withstand. It was the part of a weak man or of a dishonourable politician to stoop to the base office of assisting the robbers of kingdoms to take forcible possession of them, and to break all the rightful claims of his contemporary princes. A great man would have reposed his trust on that supreme arbiter of nations who makes a way for right where profound diplomatists see none, and who leaves those who