Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/421

A.D. 1727 London, through bribery to the duchess of Kendal and the king's Hanoverian ministers, Bothmar, and the rest, who were averse to the treaty of Hanover, as in their estimation too exclusively calculated for English interests. They even produced a strong feeling of this kind in the mind of George, and they managed to detach the king of Prussia from the English alliance. On the other hand, Sweden was won over, by English gold and diplomacy, from Russian interests. The Dutch, also, with their usual slowness, came into the Hanover treaty. Several English fleets were at sea during the summer, watching the different points of possible attack. One under admiral Wager sailed to the Baltic to overawe the Russians, which it did effectually. Admiral Jennings, with another squadron, having on board some land troops, scoured the coasts of Spain, kept the Spaniards in constant alarm, and returned home safe before winter. A third fleet, under admiral Hosier, was not so fortunate. He was ordered to sail to the West Indies, and the shores of the Spanish main, to obstruct or capture the galloons; but he was attacked off Porto Bello by the yellow fever, and lost a great number of his men.

Parliament met on the 17th of January, 1727. The royal speech breathed a decidedly warlike tone. The king informed parliament that he had received information, on which he could rely, that a secret article of the treaty betwixt Spain and the emperor bound those parties to place the pretender on the throne of Great Britain, and that the surrender of Gibraltar and Port Mahon were the price to be paid for this service. He asked whether the public would not regard with indignation the imposition of a popish pretender on the nation at such a cost. He added that the king of Spain had ordered his ambassador to quit the kingdom, leaving behind him a formal demand for the surrender of the above-named places. There was a great ferment in the house. The "patriots," Wyndham, Pulteney, Shippen, and the rest, ridiculed the imagined dangers. Mr. Hungerford asked whether the pretender was going to embark on the floating island of "Gulliver," as he knew no other means that he had of crossing the sea. Sir Thomas Hanmer boldly attributed the only dangers to complications in which we were involved by our connection with Hanover. Yet it was resolved to raise the army to twenty-six thousand men, being an increase of eight thousand, and to vote twenty thousand seamen.

Palm, the emperor's envoy, wrote to his imperial master, advising him to disavow any such secret agreement in the treaty at Vienna, and thus allay the excitement in England. But Charles, who owed his throne to the victories of Marlborough, and whose claims on Spain had been prosecuted by this country at serious cost of men and money, performed this disavowal with as much arrogance as stupidity. He was not contented to say that the king of England was mistaken, but he declared that his speech was false. This gross insult to the head of the nation roused the indignation of all parties, even of the opposition, and Wyndham, Pulteney, and Shippen denounced it as loudly as any, and supported a motion of Walpole, declaring it an insolent affront. Palm was ordered to quit the kingdom immediately.

With Spain the prospect of war became every day more imminent. Stanhope quitted that country, and the Spanish government ordered the seizure of the "Prince Frederick," a ship belonging to the South Sea Company. Twenty thousand men were assembled and sent against Gibraltar under the command of Spain's best general, the marquis de Villadarius. Villadarius defended Ceuta in 1698, Cadiz in 1702, and besieged Gibraltar, in conjunction with marshal Tessé, in 1704. Convinced by the failure of that attempt that no success could attend any attack on that fortress unless accompanied by a fleet at sea, he demanded such an adjunct. Philip, unfortunately, had no fleet which could hope to repel an English one coming to the relief of the place, and he persisted in ordering Villadarius to proceed without it. That prudent general, declaring that such proceeding could only be attended by defeat and the sacrifice of the lives of many brave men in vain, chose, therefore, rather to resign all his employments and retire to an honest poverty with a good conscience and with an untarnished reputation.

His place was filled up, but not supplied, by the Conde de las Torres, who had formerly fled nimbly before the earl of Peterborough, but who now boasted that in six weeks he would plant the standard of Spain on the rock of Gibraltar, and drive the heretics into the sea. The "heretics," however, had taken care to strengthen the garrison, raising it to six thousand men, throwing in abundance of provisions from Tangier and Tetuan; and the governor, the earl of Portmore, though nearly eighty years of age, defended the place with the spirit of a man in his prime. All attempts on the great fortress were as useless as former ones had been. The English regarded the attack with even an air of indifference, whilst their guns, sickness, and desertion were fast reducing the besiegers. In four months the investing army, being reduced to half its number, drew off with the empty but destructive result which Villadarius had predicted.

This and other events at length convinced the stupid and ungrateful emperor that the war was hopeless. Russia had as good as deserted him; Prussia, so lately won over, was again wavering; Sweden and Holland had joined the allies; and Spain, so far from helping her, could not drive the enemy from a corner of its own territory. He therefore listened to terms of peace which were offered by the allies through the pacific medium of Fleury, and the preliminaries were signed at Paris by the Austrian ambassador on the 31st of May with England, France, and Holland. The emperor agreed to suspend for seven years the charter of the Ostend Company; to confirm all treaties previous to 1725; and to refer any other objects of dispute to a general congress. Several articles were introduced regarding Spain. The English consented to withdraw the fleet of admiral Hosier from blockading Porto Bello, so that the galleons could return home; that the siege of Gibraltar should be discontinued, and the "Prince Frederick" be restored. These articles were signed by the Spanish ambassador at Paris, but Philip himself never ratified them, and England and Spain continued in a dubious state of neither peace nor war.

Whilst Walpole was thus labouring to secure the peace of Europe, Bolingbroke was as industriously at work to undermine him. He had cultivated his intimacy with the duchess of Kendal still more diligently, and by liberal bribes, and more liberal promises if he succeeded in once more regaining power, he had brought her to exert her influence with the