Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/269

A.D. 1709.] once, the same taxes being demanded by different officers, the regular tax collector, or the agents of those to whom they were farmed out. The ministers themselves, Chamillart, Pontchartrain, and others of the proud servants of the proud grand monarque, were compelled to make journeys through the provinces to raise money for the necessities of the state in any way that could be devised. Such was the terrible condition of France: the people starving, ruined, and hopeless, and yet the daily victims of an incessant visitation of tax-gatherers, who, whilst they failed to procure the necessary sums for the war, were actively plundering and embezzling on their own account. Nothing but the immeasurable pride of the haughty but now defeated king could cause him to hold out; and even this chance seemed scarcely left him, for the enemy was already on the frontiers of France, already they had crossed that frontier, and laid the country under contribution in Picardy, and another campaign might see them in full march on Paris.

The duke of Marlborough had not, as usual, visited England at the end of the campaign in 1708, which did not terminate till actual winter. He continued at the Hague, his enemies said, merely to look after his own interests, for, by various modes which we have already mentioned, he was making immense sums by his command. But although we may be quite satisfied that Marlborough would never neglect his own interests, these interests equally, or perhaps more pressingly, demanded his presence in England. Harley and the tories, he knew, were actively though secretly engaged in ruining his credit with the queen, and the conduct of his wife was not of a kind to counteract these efforts. But Marlborough's interests were inseparably linked to his reputation, and that reputation now demanded his most vigilant attention at the Hague. He saw the triumphant position of the allies, and the miserable condition of France. It is asserted, therefore, that he and prince Eugene had planned boldly to march, on the opening of the next campaign, into France, and carry the war to the gates of Paris. There is no more doubt that they could have done that than that the allies did it in 1814, and again in 1815. The whole of the wars against France had been too timidly carried on. With the forces which were at William's command, the war might have been made offensive instead of defensive, and Louis have found his own territories subjected to the ravages which he had committed on those of the States and the German empire. Now there was nothing to prevent the victorious arms of Marlborough penetrating to the French capital, humbling completely the troubler of Europe, and the allies there dictating their own terms of peace. Nothing, indeed, but the subtle acts of Louis, and the timid policy of the Dutch.

And already Marlborough was aware that Louis, compelled to open his eyes to his critical situation, was beginning to tamper with the Dutch for a separate peace. Some of his own nearest kinsmen, and especially his grandson, the duke of Burgundy, had spoken very plainly to Louis. They had asked him whether he meant irretrievably to ruin France in order to establish his grandson on the throne of Spain. They had laid fully before him the wasted condition of France, and the rapidly growing ascendency of the allies. The pride of the old king was forced to stoop, and he consented to sue for peace. He could not, however, bring himself to seek this of the allies all together, but from Holland, whom he hoped by his arts to detach from the confederation. He dispatched Bouillé, the president of the council, to Holland, who met Buys and Vanderdussen, the pensionaries of Amsterdam and Gonda, at Woerden, betwixt Leyden and Utrecht, and Bouillé offered to make terms with the Dutch very advantageous to them. Vanderdussen and Buys replied that he must first of all put into their hands certain fortified towns necessary for the security of their frontier. To this Bouillé would not listen. The Dutch communicated the French proposals to their allies, and told the French minister that they could enter into no negotiations without them. Prince Eugene hastened from Vienna to the Hague, and he and Marlborough consulted on the propositions with Heinsius, Buys, and Vanderdussen; and it was unanimously decided that they could not be accepted.

It was now near the end of April, and the allies saw that it would not do to allow Louis to amuse them with offers which came to nothing, when they should be marching towards his capital. Whilst, therefore, Bouillé dispatched the news of the rejection of his offers to Versailles, Marlborough made a hasty journey to England, to take the opinion of his government as to the terms of the treaty. The receipt of Bouillé's despatch at the French court produced the utmost consternation. The king was fixed in his proud determination to offer no ampler terms; his minister represented that it was impossible to carry on the war. The scene of terror and distress in that formerly haughty and domineering court, which trusted to put all Europe under its feet, was indescribable. The truculent Louis, who had never evinced the slightest compunction for the miseries his ambition had sown all over Europe, now wept like a weak woman, and refused to listen to any proposals likely to be more acceptable. But there was no alternative, and at length Bouillé was instructed to amuse the allies with the proposal to repurchase Lille and to yield up Tournay, till the marquis De Torcy could arrive to his assistance. De Torcy, the minister for foreign affairs, set off for the Hague, not openly as the French plenipotentiary, but merely furnished with a courier's passport, and ran many risks of being discovered and seized on the way. At Brussels he had a very narrow escape; but, by the aid of a Dutch banker there, he was enabled to pursue his journey, and reached the Hague late at night on the 6th of May. He waited immediately on the pensionary Heinsius, and that minister, a plain, unostentatious man, who had been the great friend of William III., and had been consulted on all the great measures and treaties of his time, and since had been equally in the confidence of Marlborough and Eugene, suffered the French minister to wait a good while in his ante-chamber. He did not forget that, when Louis was in the pride of his success, he himself had been sent as envoy to Paris, and that the then insolent minister, Louvois, had treated him with the greatest indignity, and even threatened to throw him into the Bastille. The times were now changed, and he suffered the Frenchman to feel it a little, and then admitted him and treated him with all courtesy.