For the first time since Cardinal Richelieu, France moved back her frontiers by the signature of a treaty. She had gained the important place of Strasburg, but she lost nearly all she had won by the treaty of Nimeguen in the Low Countries and in Germany; she kept Franche-Comte, but she gave up Lothringen. Louis XIV. had wanted to aggrandize himself at any price and at any risk; he was now obliged to precipitately break up the grand alliance, for King Charles II. was slowly dying at Madrid, and the Spanish Succession was about to open. Ignorant of the supreme evils and sorrows which awaited him on this fatal path, the King of France began to forget, in this distant prospect of fresh aggrandizement and war, the checks that his glory and his policy had just met with.
CHAPTER XLV.
LOUIS XIV., HIS WARS AND HIS REVERSES. (1697-1713.)
France was breathing again after nine years of a desperate war, but she was breathing uneasily, and as it were in expectation of fresh efforts. Everywhere the memorials of the superintendents repeated the same complaints. “War, the mortality of 1693, the, constant quarterings and movements of soldiery, military service, the heavy dues, and the withdrawal of the Huguenots have ruined the country.” “The people,” said the superintendent of Rouen, “are reduced to a state of want which moves compassion. Out of seven hundred and fifty thousand souls of which the public is composed, if this number remain, it may be taken for certain that there are not fifty thousand who have bread to eat when they want it, and anything to lie upon but straw.” Agriculture suffered for lack of money and hands; commerce was ruined; the manufactures established by Colbert no longer existed; the population had diminished more than a quarter since the palmy days of the king’s reign; Pontchartrain, secretary of finance, was reduced to all sorts of expedients for raising money; he was anxious to rid himself of this heavy burden, and became chancellor in 1699; the king took for his substitute Chamillard, already comptroller of finance, honest and hard-working, incapable and docile; Louis XIV. counted upon the inexhaustible resources of France, and closed his ears to the grievances of the financiers. “What is not spoken of is supposed to be put an end to,” said Madame de Maintenon. The camp at Compiegne, in 1698, surpassed in splendor all that had till then been seen; the enemies of Louis XIV. in Europe called him “the king of reviews.”
Meanwhile the King of Spain, Charles II., dying as he was, was regularly besieged at Madrid by the queen, his second wife, Mary Anne of Neuburg, sister of the empress, as well as by his minister, Cardinal Porto-Carrero. The competitors for the succession were numerous; the King of France and the emperor claimed their rights in the name of their mothers and wives, daughters of Philip III. and Philip IV.; the Elector of Bavaria put up the claims of his son by right of his mother, Mary Antoinette of Austria, daughter of the emperor; for a short time Charles II. had adopted this young prince; the child died suddenly at Madrid in 1699. For a long time past King Louis XIV. had been secretly negotiating for the partition of the King of Spain’s dominions, not—with the emperor, who still hoped to obtain from Charles II. a will in favor of his second son, the Archduke Charles, but with England and Holland, deeply interested as they were in maintaining the equilibrium between the two kingly houses which divided Europe. William III. considered himself certain to obtain the acceptance by the emperor of the conditions subscribed by his allies. On the 13th and 15th of May, 1700, after long hesitation and a stubborn resistance on the part of the city of Amsterdam, the treaty of partition was signed in London and at the Hague. “King William is honorable in all this business,” said a letter to the king from his ambassador, Count de Tallard; “his conduct is sincere; he is proud—none can be more so than he; but he has a modest manner, though none can be more jealous in all that concerns his rank.”
The treaty of partition secured to the dauphin all the possessions of Spain in Italy, save Milaness, which was to indemnify the Duke of Lorraine, whose duchy passed to France; Spain, the Indies, and the Low Countries were to belong to Archduke Charles. Great was the wrath at Vienna when it was known that the treaty was signed. “Happily,” said the minister, Von Kaunitz, to the Marquis of Villars, ambassador of France, “there is One on high who will work for us in these partitions.” “That One,” replied M. de Villars, “will approve of their justice.” “It is something new, however, for the King of England and for Holland to partition the monarchy of Spain,” continued the count. “Allow me,” replied M. de Villars, “to excuse them in your eyes; those two powers have quite recently come out of a war which cost them a great deal, and the emperor nothing; for, in fact, you have been at no expense but against the Turks. You had some troops in Italy, and in the empire two regiments only of hussars which were not on its pay-list; England and Holland alone bore all the burden.” William III. was still negotiating with the emperor and the German princes to make them accept the treaty of partition, when it all at once became known in Europe that Charles II. had breathed his last at Madrid on the 1st of November, 1700, and that, by a will dated October 2, he disposed of the Spanish monarchy in favor of the Duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV.
This will was the work of the council of Spain, at the head of which sat Cardinal Porto-Carrero. “The national party,” says M. Mignet in his Introduction aux Documents relatifs de la Succession d’Espagne, “detested the Austrians because they had been so long in Spain; it liked the French because they were no longer there. The former had been there time enough to weary by their dominion, whilst the latter were served by the mere fact of their removal.” Singlehanded, Louis XIV. appeared powerful enough to maintain the integrity of the Spanish monarchy before the face and in the teeth of all the competitors. “The King of Spain was beginning to see the, things of this world by the light alone of that awful torch which is lighted to lighten the dying.” [Memoires de St. Simon, t. iii. p. 16]; wavering, irresolute, distracted within himself, he asked the advice of Pope Innocent XII., who was favorable to France. The hopes of Louis XIV. had not soared so high; on the 9th of November, 1700, he heard at one and the same time of Charles II.‘s death and the contents of his will.
It was a solemn situation. The acceptance by France of the King of Spain’s will meant war; the refusal did not make peace certain; in default of a French prince the crown was to go to Archduke Charles; neither Spain nor Austria would hear of dismemberment; could they be forced to accept the treaty of partition which they had hitherto rejected angrily? The king’s council was divided; Louis XIV. listened in silence to the arguments of the dauphin and of the ministers; for a moment the resolution was taken of holding by the treaty of partition; next day the king again assembled his council without as yet making known his decision; on Tuesday, November 16, the whole court thronged into the galleries of Versailles; it was known that several couriers had arrived from Madrid; the king sent for the Spanish ambassador into his closet. “The Duke of Anjou had repaired thither by the back way,” says the Duke of St. Simon in his Memoires; the king, introducing him to him, told him he might salute him as his king. The instant afterwards the king, contrary to all custom, had the folding-doors thrown open, and ordered everybody who was there—and there was a crowd—to come in; then, casting his eyes majestically over the numerous company, “Gentlemen,” he said, introducing the Duke of Anjou, “here is the King of Spain. His birth called him to that crown; the last king gave it him by his will; the grandees desired him, and have demanded him of me urgently; it is the will of Heaven, and I have yielded with pleasure.” And, turning to his grandson, “Be a good Spaniard,” he said; “that is from this moment your first duty; but remember that you are French born in order to keep up the union between the two nations; that is the way to render them happy and to preserve the peace of Europe.” Three weeks later the young king was on the road to Spain. “There are no longer any Pyrenees,” said Louis XIV., as he embraced his grandson. The rights of Philip V. to the crown of France had been carefully reserved by a formal act of the king’s.
