Louis XIV. was no longer in a position to delude himself, and to celebrate a defeat, even a glorious one, as a victory. Negotiations recommenced. Heinsius had held to his last proposals. It was on this sorry basis that Marshal d’Huxelles and Abbe de Polignac began the parleys, at Gertruydenberg, a small fortress of Mardyk. They lasted from March 9 to July 25, 1710; the king consented to give some fortresses as guarantee, and promised to recommend his grandson to abdicate; in case of refusal, he engaged not only to support him no longer, but to furnish the allies, into the bargain, with a monthly subsidy of a million, whilst granting a passage through French territory; he accepted the cession of Elsass to Lothringen, the return of the three bishoprics to the empire; the, Hollanders, commissioned to negotiate in the name of the coalition, were not yet satisfied. “The desire of the allies,” they said, “is, that the king should undertake, himself alone and by his own forces, either to persuade or to oblige the King of Spain to give up all his monarchy. Neither money nor the co-operation of the French troops suit their purpose; if the preliminary articles be not complied with in the space of two months, the truce is broken off, war will recommence, even though on the part of the king the other conditions should have been wholly fulfilled. The sole means of obtaining peace is to receive from the king’s hands Spain and the Indies.”
The French plenipotentiaries had been recommended to have patience. Marshal d’Huxelles was a courtier as smooth as he was clever; Abbe de Polignac was shrewd and supple, yet he could not contain his indignation. “It is evident that you have not been accustomed to conquer!” said he haughtily to the Dutch delegates. When the allies’ ultimatum reached the king, the pride of the sovereign and the affection of the father rose up at last in revolt. “Since war there must be,” said he, “I would rather wage it against my enemies than against my grandson;” and he withdrew all the concessions which had reduced Philip V. to despair. The allies had already invaded Artois; at the end of the campaign they were masters of Douai, St. Venant, Bethune, and Aire; France was threatened everywhere, the king could no longer protect the King of Spain; he confined himself to sending him Vendome. Philip V., sustained by the indomitable courage of his young wife, refused absolutely to abdicate. “Whatever misfortunes may await me,” he wrote to the king, “I still prefer the course of submission to whatever it may please God to decide for me by fighting to that of deciding for myself by consenting to an arrangement which would force me to abandon the people on whom my reverses have hitherto produced no other effect than to increase their zeal and affection for me.”
It was, therefore, with none but the forces of Spain that Philip V., at the outset of the campaign of 1710, found himself confronting the English and Portuguese armies. The Emperor Joseph, brother of Archduke Charles, had sent him a body of troops commanded by a distinguished general, Count von Stahrenberg. Going from defeat to defeat, the young king found himself forced, as in 1706, to abandon his capital; he removed the seat of government to Valladolid, and departed, accompanied by more than thirty thousand persons of every rank, resolved to share his fortunes. The archduke entered Madrid. “I have orders from Queen Anne and the allies to escort King Charles to Madrid,” said the English general, Lord Stanhope; “when he is once there, God or the devil keep him in or turn him out; it matters little to me; that is no affair of mine.”
Stanhope was in the right not to pledge himself; the hostility of the population of Madrid did not permit the archduke to reside there long; after running the risk of being carried off in his palace on the Prado, he removed to Toledo; Vendome blocked the road against the Portuguese; the archduke left the town, and withdrew into Catalonia; Stahrenberg followed him on the 22d of November, harassed on his march by the Spanish guerrillas rising everywhere upon his route; every straggler, every wounded man, was infallibly murdered by the peasants; Stanhope, who commanded the rearguard, found himself invested by Vendome in the town of Brihuega; the Spaniards scarcely gave the artillery time to open a breach, the town was taken by assault, and the English made prisoners. Stahrenberg retraced his steps; on the 10th of December fighting began near Villaviciosa; the advantage was for a long time undecided and disputed; night came; the Austrian general spiked his guns and retreated by forced marches; the Spaniards bivouacked on the battle-field, the king slept on a bed made of the enemy’s flags; the allies had taken refuge in Catalonia; Spain had won back her independence and her king. There was great joy at Versailles, greater than in the kingdom; the sole aspiration was for peace.
An unexpected assistance was at hand. Queen Anne, wearied with the cupidity and haughtiness of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, had given them notice to quit; the friends of the duke had shared his fall, and the Tories succeeded the Whigs in power. The chancellor of the exchequer, Harley, soon afterwards Earl of Oxford, and the secretary of state, St. John, who became Lord Bolingbroke, were inclined to peace. Advances were made to France. A French priest, Abbe Gautier, living in obscurity in England, arrived in Paris during January, 1711; he went to see M. de Torcy at Versailles. “Do you want peace?” said he. “I have come to bring you the means of treating for it, and concluding independently of the Hollanders, unworthy of the king’s kindnesses and of the honor he has so often done them of applying to them to pacificate Europe.” “To ask just then one of his Majesty’s ministers if he desired peace,” says Torcy, “was to ask a sick man suffering from a long and dangerous disease if he wants to be cured.” Negotiations were secretly opened with the English cabinet. The Emperor Joseph had just died (April 17, 1711). He left none but daughters. From that moment Archduke Charles inherited the domains of the house of Austria, and aspired to the imperial crown; by giving him Spain, Europe re-established the monarchy of Charles V.; she saw the dangers into which she was being drawn by the resentments or short-sighted ambition of the triumvirate; she fell back upon the wise projects of William III. Holland had abandoned them; to England fell the honor of making them triumphant. She has often made war upon the Continent with indomitable obstinacy and perseverance; but at bottom and by the very force of circumstances England remains, as regards the affairs of Europe, an essentially pacific power. War brings her no advantage; she cannot pretend to any territorial aggrandizement in Europe; it is the equilibrium between the continental powers that makes her strength, and her first interest was always to maintain it.
The campaign of 1711 was everywhere insignificant. Negotiations were still going on with England, secretly and through subordinate agents: Manager, member of the Board of Trade, for France; and, for England, the poet Prior, strongly attached to Harley. On the 29th of January, 1712, the general conferences were opened at Utrecht. The French had been anxious to avoid the Hague, dreading the obstinacy of Heinsius in favor of his former proposals. Preliminary points were already settled with England; enormous advantages were secured in America to English commerce, to which was ceded Newfoundland and all that France still possessed in Acadia; the general proposals had been accepted by Queen Anne and her ministers. In vain had the Hollanders and Prince Eugene made great efforts to modify them; St. John had dryly remarked that England had borne the greatest part in the burden of the war, and it was but just that she should direct the negotiations for peace. For five years past the United Provinces, exhausted by the length of hostilities, had constantly been defaulters in their engagements; it was proved to Prince Eugene that the imperial army had not been increased by two regiments in consequence of the war the emperor’s ambassador, M. de Galas, displayed impertinence: he was forbidden to come to the court; in spite of the reserve imposed upon the English ministers by the strife of parties in a free country, their desire for peace was evident. The queen had just ordered the creation of new peers in order to secure a majority of the upper house in favor of a pacific policy.
The bolts of Heaven were falling one after another upon the royal family of France. On the 14th of April, 1711, Louis XIV. had lost by small-pox his son, the grand dauphin, a mediocre and submissive creature, ever the most humble subject of the king, at just fifty years of age. His eldest son, the Duke of Burgundy, devout, austere, and capable, the hope of good men and the terror of intriguers, had taken the rank of dauphin, and was seriously commencing his apprenticeship in government, when he was carried off on the 18th of February, 1712, by spotted fever (rougeole pourpree), six days after his wife, the charming Mary Adelaide of Savoy, the idol of the whole court, supremely beloved by the king, and by Madame de Maintenon, who had brought her up; their son, the Duke of Brittany, four years old, died on the 8th of March; a child in the cradle, weakly and ill, the little Duke of Anjou, remained the only shoot of the elder branch of the Bourbons. Dismay seized upon all France; poison was spoken of; the Duke of Orleans was accused; it was necessary to have a post mortem examination; only the hand of God had left its traces. Europe in its turn was excited. If the little Duke of Anjou were to die, the crown of France reverted to Philip V. The Hollanders and the ambassadors of the Emperor Charles VI. recently crowned at Frankfurt, insisted on the necessity of a formal renunciation. In accord with the English ministers, Louis XIV. wrote to his grandson,—