Great were the surprise and wrath in Europe; William III. felt himself personally affronted. “I have no doubt,” he wrote to Heinsius, “that this unheard-of proceeding on the part of France has caused you as much surprise as it has me; I never had much confidence in engagements contracted with France, but I confess I never could have supposed that that court would have gone so far as to break, in the face of Europe, so solemn a treaty before it had even received the finishing stroke. Granted that we have been dupes; but when, beforehand, you are resolved to hold your word of no account, it is not very difficult to overreach your mail. I shall be blamed perhaps for having relied upon France, I who ought to have known by the experience of the past that no treaty has ever bound her! Would to God I might be quit for the blame, but I have only too many grounds for fearing that the fatal consequences of it will make themselves felt shortly. I groan in the very depths of my spirit to see that in this country the majority rejoice to find the will preferred by France to the maintenance of the treaty of partition, and that too on the ground that the will is more advantageous for England and Europe. This opinion is founded partly on the youth of the Duke of Anjou. ‘He is a child,’ they say; ‘he will be brought up in Spain; he will be indoctrinated with the principles of that monarchy, and he will be governed by the council of Spain;’ but these are surmises which it is impossible for me to entertain, and I fear that we shall before long find out how erroneous they are. Would it not seem as if this profound indifference with which, in this country, they look upon everything that takes place outside of this island, were a punishment from Heaven? Meanwhile, are not our causes for apprehension and our interests the same as those of the peoples of the continent?”
William III. was a more far-sighted politician than his subjects either in England or Holland. The States General took the same view as the English. “Public funds and shares have undergone a rise at Amsterdam,” wrote Heinsius to the King of England; “and although this rests on nothing solid, your Majesty is aware how much influence such a fact has.”
Louis XIV. had lost no time in explaining to the powers the grounds of his acceptance. “The King of Spain’s will,” he said in his manifesto, “establishes the peace of Europe on solid bases.” “Tallard did not utter a single word on handing me his sovereign’s letter, the contents of which are the same as of that which the states have received,” wrote William to Heinsius. “I said to him that perhaps I had testified too eager a desire for the preservation of peace, but that, nevertheless, my inclination in that respect had not changed. Whereupon he replied, ‘The king my master, by accepting the will, considers that he gives a similar proof of his desire to maintain peace.’ Thereupon he made me a bow and withdrew.”
William of Orange had not deceived himself in thinking that Louis XIV. would govern Spain in his grandson’s name. Nowhere are the old king’s experience and judgment more strikingly displayed than in his letters to Philip V. “I very much wish,” he wrote to him, “that you were as sure of your own subjects as you ought to be of mine in the posts in which they may be employed; but do not be astounded at the disorder you find amongst your troops, and at the little confidence you are able to place in them; it needs a long reign and great pains to restore order and secure the fidelity of different peoples accustomed to obey a house hostile to yours. If you thought it would be very easy and very pleasant to be a king, you were very much mistaken.” A sad confession for that powerful monarch, who in his youth found “the vocation of king beautiful, noble, and delightful.”
“The eighteenth century opened with a fulness of glory and unheard-of prosperity;” but Louis XIV. did not suffer himself to be lulled to sleep by the apparent indifference with which Europe, the empire excepted, received the elevation of Philip V. to the throne of Spain. On the 6th of February, 1701, the seven barrier towns of the Spanish Low Countries, which were occupied by Dutch garrisons in virtue of the peace of Ryswick, opened their gates to the French on an order from the King of Spain. “The instructions which the Elector of Bavaria, governor of the Low Countries, had given to the various governors of the places, were so well executed,” says M. de Vault in his account of the campaign in Flanders, “that we entered without any hinderance. Some of the officers of the Dutch troops grumbled, and would have complained, but the French general officers who had led the troops pacified them, declaring that they did not come as enemies, and that all they wanted was to live in good understanding with them.”
The twenty-two Dutch battalions took the road back before long to their own country, and became the nucleus of the army which William of Orange was quietly getting ready in Holland as well as in England; his peoples were beginning to open their eyes; the States General, deprived of the barrier towns, had opened the dikes; the meadows were flooded. On the 7th of September, 1701, England and Holland signed for the second time with the emperor a Grand Alliance, engaging not to lay down arms until they had reduced the possessions of King Philip V. to Spain and the Indies, restored the barrier of Holland, and secured an indemnity to Austria, and the definitive severance of the two crowns of France and Spain. In the month of June the Austrian army had entered Italy under the orders of Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignano, son of the Count of Soissons and Olympia Mancini, conqueror of the Turks and revolted Hungarians, and passionately hostile to Louis XIV., who, in his youth, had refused to employ him. He had already crossed the Adige and the Mincio, driving the French back behind the Oglio. Marshal Catinat, a man of prudence and far-sightedness, but discouraged by the bad condition of his troops, coldly looked upon at court, and disquieted by the aspect of things in Italy, was acting supinely; the king sent Marshal Villeroi to supersede him; Catinat, as modest as he was warmly devoted to the glory of his country, finished the campaign as a simple volunteer.
The King of France and the emperor were looking up allies. The princes of the north were absorbed by the war which was being waged against his neighbors of Russia and Poland by the young King of Sweden, Charles XII., a hero of eighteen, as irresistible as Gustavus Adolphus in his impetuous bravery, without possessing the rare qualities of authority and judgment which had distinguished the Lion of the North. He joined the Grand Alliance, as did Denmark and Poland, whose new king, the Elector of Saxony, had been supported by the emperor in his candidature and in his abjuration of Protestantism. The Elector of Brandenburg, recently recognized as King of Prussia under the name of Frederic I., and the new Elector of Hanover were eager to serve Leopold, who had aided them in their elevation. In Germany, only Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria, governor of the Low Countries, and his brother, the Elector of Cologne, embraced the side of France. The Duke of Savoy, generalissimo of the king’s forces in Italy, had taken the command of the army. “But in that country,” wrote the Count of Tesse, “there is no reliance to be placed on places, or troops, or officers, or people. I have had another interview with this incomprehensible prince, who received me with every manifestation of kindness, of outward sincerity, and, if he were capable of it, I would say of friendship for him of whom his Majesty made use but lately in the work of peace in Italy. ‘The king is master of my person, of my dominions,’ he said to me, ‘he has only to give his commands; but I suppose that he still desires my welfare and my aggrandizement.’ ‘As for your aggrandizement, Monseigneur,’ said I, ‘in truth I do not see much material for it just at present; as for your welfare, we must be allowed to see your intentions a little more clearly first, and take the liberty of repeating to you that my prescience does not extend so far. I do him the justice to believe that he really feels the greater part of all that he expresses for your Majesty; but that horrid habit of indecision and putting off till to-morrow what he might do to-day is not eradicated, and never will be.’”
The Duke of Savoy was not so undecided as M. de Tess supposed; he managed to turn to good account the mystery which hung habitually over all his resolutions. A year had not rolled by, and he was openly engaged in the Grand Alliance, pursuing, against France, the cause of that aggrandizement which he had but lately hoped to obtain from her, and which, by the treaty of Utrecht, was worth the title of king to him.
Pending the time to declare himself he had married his second daughter, Princess Marie Louise Gabrielle, to the young King of Spain, Philip V.
“Never had the tranquillity of Europe been so unstable as it was at the commencement of 1702,” says the correspondence of Chamillard, published by General Pelet; “it was but a phantom of peace that was enjoyed, and it was clear, from whatever side matters were regarded, that we were on the eve of a war which could not but be of long duration, unless, by some unforeseen accident, the houses of Bourbon and Austria should come to an arrangement which would allow them to set themselves in accord touching the Spanish succession; but there was no appearance of conciliation.”