The queen was very charitable and yet was left on a stinted allowance irregularly paid. Her reputation suffered slander—as what queen’s has not?—and Hume[j] calls her a pagan; but Dunlop says that her character was untainted. She found congenial friends naturally among the people of her own country, but these were eventually forbidden her presence. Sunny as her nature was, it is small wonder that she pined and did not make headway against the thick plots against her. She died in February, 1689—of cholera morbus it was claimed, though poison was of course alleged.
Dunlop[k] well says, “Of all political queens, the fate of Louise d’Orléans is perhaps the most to be pitied.” Her life had been vain; she had not satisfied her uncle Louis XIV by fastening French influence on the court; she had not satisfied Spanish hopes by bearing an heir to the monstrosity she had been forced to wed; and she had not even been happy.[a]
LAST YEARS OF CHARLES II
[1691-1700 A.D.]
Omitting the detail of obscure wars—obscure at least to the Spaniards—which almost uniformly turned to their prejudice, on the death of Marie Louise, in 1689, the French monarch again poured the storm of war over the frontier of Catalonia. What most heightened his resentment was the immediate marriage of the widowed Charles with a princess of the house of Austria; to that house he had always been a mortal enemy, and he feared lest the king, who was hitherto childless, should at length have an heir. For some time, indeed, the efforts of the invaders, owing to their insignificant numbers, were often repulsed, or neutralised by subsequent reverses; but, in 1691, Urgel was taken by the duke of Noailles; Barcelona and Alicante were severely bombarded by sea. Two years afterwards Palemos and Rosas capitulated; the following year the Spaniards were defeated in a considerable battle; the victors took Gerona; Hostalric, and other places, followed the example, and Barcelona itself was threatened. Destitute of money and of troops, the efforts of the cabinet to raise both were but partially successful, and the time which should have been spent in vigorous hostilities was thus wasted in almost useless preparation. After a short suspension of hostilities, Barcelona fell into the power of Vendôme.
Spain trembled to her most distant extremities; and she could scarcely believe in the reality of her good fortune when, at the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, Louis restored all his conquests. She was too much confounded by this display of magnanimity to divine the cause; yet that cause was not insufficient. From his niece, Marie Louise, the French monarch had learned to suspect the impotency of Charles; the sterility of the recent marriage confirmed the suspicion; and as he aspired in consequence to place a prince of his family on the throne of Castile, he did not wish to diminish the value of the inheritance by its dismemberment.
In 1698 the health of Charles, which had always been indifferent, began so visibly to decline that all hope of issue was abandoned. On his demise three chief claimants could aspire to his throne: first, the dauphin of France, as the eldest son of Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip IV; secondly, the emperor Leopold, who not only descended from Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, but whose mother was the daughter of Philip III; thirdly, the electoral prince of Bavaria, whose mother was the only daughter of the infanta Margarita, a young daughter of Philip IV. Of these claims, that of the dauphin was evidently the strongest, since his mother was the eldest sister of Charles. It is true that she had renounced for her issue all claim to the crown of Spain; but this renunciation had been demanded by the Spaniards, from a fear lest the two crowns should fall on the same brow. To such a union Europe would never have consented; and the objection was almost equally strong to the union of Spain with Germany. Hence the hostility to the pretensions both of the dauphin, as heir of the French monarchy, and of the emperor Leopold. Hence, too, the celebrated, and infamous as celebrated, treaty of partition, which, in October, 1698, was signed at the Hague by the plenipotentiaries of England, Holland, and France. By it Naples and Sicily, with Guipuzcoa, San Sebastian, and Fuenterrabia were ceded to the dauphin; Spain and the Indies to the Prince of Bavaria; while, for the third party, Charles, second son of Leopold, and the representative of his rights, Milan only was reserved. The death of the Bavarian prince destroyed this beautiful scheme of spoliation; but its authors did not long delay in framing another, which gave Spain, the Indies, and Netherlands to Charles, and which amplified the original portion of the dauphin.
But Louis XIV had no intention to renounce the splendid inheritance; if he could not procure it for the dauphin, or, which would ultimately be the same, for the eldest son of the dauphin, there was a second son, Philip, duke of Anjou, who would be less the object of jealousy to the European powers. With the same view, Leopold was willing that his own rights, and those of his eldest son, should devolve on the archduke Charles the youngest. Both princes sent their emissaries to the court of Charles II, to besiege his sick-bed, and to procure a testamentary declaration in favour of their respective pretensions. The intrigues which continued for so many months to distract the court and kingdom, to embitter rival animosity, and to disturb the last hours of the king, are too endless to be detailed.
The duke of Anjou’s ablest support was Cardinal Portocarrero, archbishop of Toledo. The cardinal terrified Charles’ conscience by a representation of the civil wars which must inevitably follow the uncertainty of succession, and, above all, by frightening him with the responsibility of the consequent bloodshed. On a mind so religious as the king’s, these representations made a deep effect; he observed that, however near the ties of blood, his salvation was still nearer; and after a long, a bitter struggle, he signed the testament which called the duke d’Anjou to the undivided sovereignty of the Spanish dominions. As he subscribed the momentous instrument, his heart still clung to his family, the tears ran from his eyes, while, with a faltering voice, he sorrowfully exclaimed, “God is the disposer of kingdoms!”