Rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm.
The great Eugene had done well, as he always did. The Englishman had risen in a single day to the foremost rank of generals. And England rose with him. There had not been such a defeat for sixty years, since Conde, at Rocroy, established the military reputation of France. The French retreated to the Rhine, and on that side Austria was safe.
In Spain the issue was very different. Philip was thoroughly safe during three years of reign, and the archduke would have been glad to content himself with what could be secured in Italy. But the English felt that their trade interests would be safer in Spain and the Indies under a Habsburg than under a Bourbon. They brought the archduke to Lisbon in 1703, having concluded with the Portuguese that treaty which made them commercial dependants on England, and which has been the cause of much port wine and so much gout. It was a disastrous change of policy. The English destroyed the French fleet at Vigo, with many tons of American silver. They took Gibraltar and Minorca, without understanding their importance. They failed to defend the one; and they six times offered the other for an exchange. But on land they were utterly defeated, at Almanza and Brihuega, and the archduke never actually reigned over much more than Catalonia. There, having restored the Aragonese Constitution, he succeeded in inspiring a sentiment of loyalty, and repulsed his rival. He was never able to maintain himself at Madrid. On that seat of war the French had much the best of it. They lost Germany at Blenheim in 1704, and Italy at Turin in 1706.
The deciding campaigns were in Belgium, where there were many fortresses, and progress was necessarily slow. After Marlborough's victory at Ramillies in 1706 the French lost ground, and when the princes, as they were called, took the field together, no French marshal had a chance. For Marlborough was now a prince of the empire; and Eugene, having driven the enemy out of Germany and Italy, was again by his side, thirsting for something to do. At Oudenarde, where he was present, with no troops of his own, at a critical moment he led a successful charge. Together they conquered Lille; and together they defeated Villars at Malplaquet. There, in the summer of 1709, the five years of constant victory which began at Blenheim came to an end.
After Turin and Ramillies Lewis had been willing to treat. He was profoundly discouraged; and when Torcy came to The Hague in 1709 to meet the Triumvirate, Heinsius, Eugene, and Marlborough, he gave up almost every point. He even agreed that France should furnish men and money to drive Philip V out of Spain, where he felt quite safe and refused every summons. Lewis, in return, asked for Naples, and Naples only, without Sicily. The allies could have everything else, and could have compelled him to restore all the ill-gotten acquisitions of his reign. They were unwilling to be at the trouble of one more campaign in the Peninsula, where they had met with so much misfortune. They required that Lewis should undo his own offending deed, and himself compel his grandson to resign the Spanish throne. Marlborough, holding a position such as no Englishman had ever enjoyed, was preponderant in their councils. He aspired to be captain-general for life, and rejected an enormous sum with which France offered to repay his advocacy of peace. The attempt to prolong war for his own private advantage is the deadliest of his crimes. Lewis, in despair, made an appeal to his people, and a thrill of genuine indignation ran through the unhappy country. The tide began to turn. At Malplaquet, the greatest battle fought in modern Europe before Napoleon, the allies lost 23,000 out of less than 100,000; and the French not half so many.
A much graver change was coming over the spirit of the English nation. As the Whigs offered nothing better than the continuation of war, Toryism gained ground; and with Toryism, the Church. The Duchess of Marlborough was supplanted in the queen's favour; the Whigs went out of office; and the new ministers dismissed Marlborough and appointed Ormonde to command in his stead. With the aid of an obscure French priest, who acted as chaplain to the Imperial ambassador, they began a secret negotiation with Torcy. They stipulated that the Dutch should be kept out of it, and should not be listened to, if they made proposals of their own; also that their conditions should be understood to come from the initiative of France. Torcy responded heartily. His first letter is dated five days after the death of the Emperor Joseph. By that event, the Archduke Charles succeeded to his throne. Joseph died 17th April. Four months earlier, 23rd December, Harley, by his intermediary, Gautier, informed Torcy that England would give up Spain and the Indies to the Bourbon king, and would desert the allies as soon as trade interests were provided for. The surrender of that which the English had claimed from 1703 to 1710, the return, in spite of success and glory, to the moderate policy laid down by William in 1701, was not caused by the prospect of the union of the crowns on the head of Charles. Harley was afraid that the archduke would make those terms himself. For it was known that the Austrians regarded Spain and its colonies as more burdensome than profitable. When Harley was stabbed by Guiscard, and was laid up with his wound, the secret of the negotiations passed into St. John's hands. His treatment of the allies was perfidious; but they obtained almost as much as they really wanted.
Eugene, deserted by the English forces under Ormonde, was beaten by Villars at Denain, and afterwards, by no fault of the English, at Friedlingen. Then the emperor made his own peace at Rastadt. At Utrecht, the Dutch secured a favourable tariff, the right of garrison in a line of fortified towns, from Ghent to Namur, and the daring Torcy had so thoroughly penetrated the weakness of England, in consequence of party divisions, that he concluded a disastrous war by negotiation. France retained her own territory, practically undiminished, recovering Lille, and acquiring, for the younger branch of the royal house, Spain and the Spanish colonies. It gained infinitely more than either Holland or England. Marshal La Feuillade asked Bolingbroke why he had let them off so easily. The answer was: Because we were no longer afraid of you. Philip V retained all that was legitimately Spanish, in Europe and America, excepting the two fortresses conquered by England, Gibraltar and Port Mahon. He refused to give up Corunna. But he renounced his claim in the succession to his grandfathers crown. Bolingbroke betrayed the allies, and he disgraced his country by the monopoly of the slave trade; but the distribution was not unfair to the contracting parties, and the share of England was not excessive. We acquired Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay territory, and, in addition to the asiento, the right of trading in the possessions of the House of Bourbon—in fact, the commerce of the world. And our revolutionary system, the permanent exclusion of the Stuarts, received the sanction of Europe. It was the condemnation of the principle of non-resistance, which had carried the Tories to power, and the perpetuation of Whiggism.
Bolingbroke did not intend that the great achievement of his life should serve the purpose of his enemies, and he gravitated towards the Stuarts, the true representatives of the cause to which Sacheverell had given renewed vitality. Harley had opened, through Berwick, negotiations with St. Germains, and had thereby secured the help of the Jacobite organisation. Bolingbroke went further. He believed that the Elector of Hanover could not be prevented from coming in, but that he would soon be driven out again. He said that he was too unintelligent to understand and manage parties, too much accustomed to have his own way to submit to govern under constitutional control. He promised that King James would be restored. And the French concluded peace at Utrecht in the belief that they were dealing with a Jacobite, that their concession in regard to the crown of England amounted to nothing, that, by yielding now, they would secure hereafter the elevation of a dependent dynasty. Under that illusion they combined with Bolingbroke to overreach themselves and to institute party government, under the supremacy of the Whigs.