Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/619

 THE SUCCESSION WAR.] FRANCE 583 14 concessions to the allies in 1710; the triumvirate, however, were not content to make peace, and still demanded what they knew he would not consent to his personal interfer ence against Philip V. The campaign of 1710, which fol lowed, was intended to strengthen the allies, with a view to their penetrating the next year into the heart of France. Douai, Bethune, and some lesser places were taken ; Vil- lars covered Cambrai and Arras ; in Spain Charles III. again entered Madrid, though he was unable to hold his ground there, and before the year s end Philip V. was again triumphant. In this gloomiest state of French affairs, when all was in confusion and despair, the old king at bay and too infirm to head the remnants of his armies, the allies firmly planted in northern France, it was believed that, if they could but hold together, they would in one more campaign succeed in entirely breaking the power of their great rival. In England, however, that change of opinion had begun which saved Louis from this last humiliation. The Tory party, vehemently opposed to Marlborough and the war, were gathering strength; the elections of 1710 went in their favour, and early in 1711 the fall of the duchess of Marl- borough at court told every one that the reign of the Whigs was over. The death of Joseph I., the emperor, by placing Charles III. on the imperial throne as Charles VI. (Decem ber 1711), changed the whole position of affairs, and made men still more unwilling to carry on the war. It was felt that Europe could no longer sacrifice herself to place him on the throne of Spain as well as that of the empire, and to create a power which might endanger the stability of Europe, and overthrow the balance at which men were aim ing. The warfare of 1711 was languid; Prince Eugene was called away to the imperial election ; Marlborough and Yillars long watched each other on the northern frontier of France. The only result was the capture by the allies of Bouchain, and the arrangement by Marlborough of &quot;a grand project,&quot; a plan for the invasion of France in the next campaign, when he hoped to have Eugene by his side. In the winter, however, the duke was overthrown at St James s, and his plans came to nothing. Negotiations for peace were far more to the taste of the Tories than a vigor ous foreign policy; and it was announced, late in 1711, that Utrecht had been chosen as a place of conference ; the bases of an agreement were easily arrived at. In 1712 the duke of Ormond replaced Marlborough in the Low Countries ; his business was to neutralize the Dutch and Germans, who were still eager for war ; and in May Eng land signed a separate truce, abandoning her allies. They continued the war a while, but after being sharply defeated by Villars at Denain (24th July 1712) they accomplished nothing more ; the French retook Douai, Le Quesnoy, and Bouchain. Then the Dutch gave up all thoughts of further war, and came in to the English truce ; war ceased on all hands, and negotiations went on merrily at Utrecht. At last, in April 1713, peace was signed by all the powers ex cept the empire on the basis of the treaty of Eyswick. The Germans, thus once more abandoned by their allies, found it impossible to continue long. Villars outgeneraled Prince Eugene, and by defeating him before Freiburg in the Bxugau, and taking that town, showed to the emperor that he also would do well to come to terms. In 1714 two more treaties were signed by the princes of the empire and the Austrians, and the Succession War at last came to an end. England was the chief gainer : she secured her succession through the house of Hanover, which now became a ninth electorate ; the Pretender was to be compelled to leave i ranee ; the crowns of France and Spain were never to rest on one head ; Dunkirk was dismantled ; .Newfoundland, Acadia^, and the Hudson s Bay Territory were transferred from France to her ; a friendly commercial treaty followed. Holland got a strong barrier on the side of France ; the Span- 1714-15. ish Netherlands were handed over to the United Provinces, which undertook to transfer them to Austria on the final con clusion of peace. She, too, made a favourable commercial treaty with France. The duke of Savoy was made a king and got Sicily, while Austria received Naples and Sardinia. Prussia received part of Geldeiland, and gave up to Franco all her claims on the Orange principality. England was re cognized as mistress of Gibraltar and Minorca. France re covered Lille, and retained Strasburg and the whole of Alsace. Freiburg in the Brisgau, Breisach and Kehl, she had to restore to Germany ; the rights of Philip V. to the throne of Spain remained unshaken; the resistance of Barcelona, which obstinately refused to recognize him, was overcome by Berwick in 1714. Far lighter were the terms of peace than those which the triumvirate had tried to force on Louis XIV. ; yet the aged monarch must have deeply felt the permanent retrogression which they involved. His splendid ambitions were shown to be unattainable, after they had well-nigh ruined France in the pursuit ; she had paid already a terrible price for the glories of a grand monarch and a great age. It would require the awakening of the Revolution to restore her to her right place in Europe. Her old antagonists, Austria and Spain, were also losers by the war ; north Germany, under the guidance of the new kingdom of Prussia, was destined gradually to reduce the supremacy of the south, and at last to take its place; England was fitted for the great destinies she was to fulfil in the course of the century ; Holland, secure from all dis turbance, withdrew from the political arena. A short time before the conclusion of the peace, when The cala- things were almost at their darkest for France, domestic mities of losses in appalling succession had stricken down the king. France. In April 1711 the dauphin died; early in 1712 the duke and duchess of Burgundy and their eldest boy were carried off by fever; in 1714 the duke of Berry also died. And now of the direct line of the Bourbons remained only Louis XIV. and his great-grandson, the duke of Anjou, the future Louis XV. If the arrangements as to the Spanish crown held good, the dissolute duke of Orleans, whom Louis XIV. disliked and shunned, was the next heir after the little Louis. The country was famine-stricken and most miserable, finance in hopeless confusion, the debt grown to vast size; an annual deficit had long been going on. The whole of the institutions of the country seemed to have fallen into ruin. The nobles had become needy hangers-on at court ; they filled the army, and by making it impossible for merit to rise had contributed largely to the disasters of the Succession War. The brief remainder of this long reign was of little im portance. The ignoble persecution, which had overthrown Port Royal in 1710, continued against the Jansenists to the end; and in 1714 Louis tried to strengthen Madame de Maintenon s party against that of the duke of Orleans by decreeing the legit imization of his bastard sons by Madame de Montespan the duke of Maine and the count of Tou louse, and by making a will to secure the regency to the duke of Maine and Le Tellier, his Jesuit confessor. Then on the 1st of September 1715 he died, leaving the crown Death of of France to his great-grandson Louis, a child five years old. Louis Madame de Maintenon, who had at last shown how weari- v&amp;gt; some was the task she had borne for thirty -two years, and how thankful she was in her old age to be relieved from it, abandoned the king just before his death, and withdrew to St Cyr. And so passed away a monarch who had cer tainly been great, though not in the highest sense of that word, whose soul had been beneath the level of his circum stances. It was with an instinctive movement of relief and pleasure that France heard the tidings of his death. The load of misery he had laid on the shoulders of his people