CHAP. III.] CHARLES II. SELLS HIMSELF TO LOUIS.

99

the gallant De Ruyter might be considered equivalent to a victory. A cannon-ball carried away the left foot and shattered the right leg of the veteran admiral, as he was giving his orders on the quarterdeck. He died of his wounds a few days after at Syracuse.54 In a third naval action off Palermo, June 2nd, the French gained a complete victory; they now remained masters of the seas, and the allied fleet was compelled to take refuge at Naples.

The campaigns of 1676 and the following year present but little that is remarkable, and we shall therefore forbear to detail them. They were conducted on the part of the French by the Duke of Luxembourg, Marshals Créqui, Schomberg and D'Estrades, besides Louis XIV. himself, and were on the whole in favour of that monarch. Valenciennes, Cambrai, St. Omer, and Freiburg in the Breisgau were taken. The Stadtholder, while hastening to the relief of St. Omer, sustained a complete defeat at the hands of the Duke of Orléans and Luxembourg, April 11th 1677. By these conquests the Spanish Netherlands had been deprived of nearly all their frontier fortresses. Nothing of this kind remained to them but Mons and Namur on the land side, and Ostend and Nieuport on the sea; the rest of the towns were incapable of defence. These events could not but have a considerable influence on the negociations at Nimeguen, where a congress had been assembled under the mediation of the English King. Charles had again become the pensioner of France. Unable to procure any money from his Parliament, he had at length listened to the temptations of Ruvigni, the French ambassador; and in February 1676 had signed a secret treaty, by which, as the price of his neutrality, he consented to accept from Louis a yearly subsidy.55 This bargain presented a serious obstacle to the scheme of the Prince of Orange to draw Charles into an offensive alliance against France. Although the Dutch, alarmed by the conquests of the French, were very desirous of peace, the fall of Cambrai, the defeat of the Stadtholder, and the surrender of St. Omer had a precisely reverse effect in England, and roused a cry for war which Charles had some difficulty to resist. Spain and the Emperor on one side, France on the other, competed with one another to buy the votes of members of Parliament.56 The Commons were capricious as well as venal. They pressed the King to declare war against France, yet withheld the means to carry it on. Charles, on his side, got rid of their importunities by repeated adjournments, in consideration of which he

54 Brandt, De Ruyter, p. 688 sqq. 55 Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. i. p. 57 and

p. 140 sqq.

56 See Lingard's Hist. of England, vol. ix. ch. 5. The price of a patriot seems then to have been from 3007. to 500/

100

WILLIAM OF ORANGE MARRIES MARY.

[Book V. obtained from Louis an addition of 200,000l. to his pension. Meanwhile the French King was endeavouring to detach the Dutch from their allies, and to effect with them a separate peace; but though the States-General and the Dutch people were inclined to such a course, William was for carrying on the war and adhering to his engagements with the Emperor and Spain; and with this view he resolved to make a closer alliance with England, and, if possible, to draw that Power into the war. He now made proposals for the hand of the Princess Mary, eldest daughter of the Duke of York, which he had declined three years before. His advances were at first received with coldness, but were ultimately accepted, and he was invited into England, though on condition that he should leave the country before the Parliament met. The marriage was arranged at Newmarket and solemnised in November 1677. The careless Charles let slip the opportunity of compelling the Prince to accede to his views respecting a peace; but in the conferences which ensued, the basis of a treaty was agreed upon. The territory of France was to remain in statu quo with regard to Spain, and she would thus retain possession of Franche Comté besides the places which she had conquered in the Spanish Netherlands, with the exception of Ath, Charleroi, Oudenarde, Courtrai, Tournai, Condé, and Valenciennes; which places were to be restored to Spain in order that they might form a barrier between France and the Dutch Republic. The Duke of Lorraine was to be reinstated in his dominions, and the Dutch and French were mutually to restore their conquests. Thus Holland was to be saved at the expense of Spain.

Charles II. had thus exchanged the character of a mediator for that of an arbiter, and taken upon himself to dictate terms to the monarch whose pay he was receiving. Louis endeavoured to soften these demands, but meanwhile prepared for a winter campaign and took St. Ghislain. The pride of Charles was offended by these proceedings, and he resorted to some vigorous steps, which surprised the Prince of Orange as well as Louis. He broke his secret compact with France by summoning the Parliament to meet in January, though he had agreed to adjourn it till April; and he followed up this measure by proposing to his nephew an offensive alliance against France. The Stadtholder joyfully accepted so unlooked-for a proposal, and on January 10th 1678 a treaty was signed at the Hague between England and the States-General, with a view to compel France to a peace nearly on the conditions already mentioned.57 Louis in alarm immediately recalled his Dumont, t. vii. pt. i. p 341.

CHAP. III.] CHARLES AGAIN TREATS WITH LOUIS.

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ships and troops from Sicily, which were now exposed to the risk of being cut off by the English and Dutch fleets; abandoning without remorse the Messinese, whose rebellion he had encouraged, to the fate they might expect at the hands of their Spanish tyrants. He also suspended Charles's pension, though he endeavoured to bribe the English monarch, but without effect, to abandon the demand for Condé, Valenciennes, and Tournai. Encouraged by the exhortations of his brother and his minister Danby, who were for war, Charles displayed for some time an unwonted firmness. recalled the English regiments in the service of France, made vigorous preparations for war, and with the permission of the Spaniards occupied Ostend with a garrison of 3000 men. The French King

He

on his side had not been idle. In the midst of winter he threatened the whole frontier of the Netherlands, from Luxembourg to Ypres, (February 1678); then suddenly concentrating his forces, he appeared unexpectedly before Ghent, and compelled that town to surrender (March 11th); thus opening up a road into the Dutch territories. Ypres soon after also surrendered to the French. Louis had tampered with the opposition party in the English Parliament; supplies were refused, and Charles found himself drifting into a war with France without the means to carry it on. In these circumstances, he again threw himself into the arms of Louis, and concluded with that monarch, May 27th, another secret treaty, by which, in consideration of receiving six million livres, he agreed to withdraw his forces from the continent, except the garrison in Ostend, unless the States-General accepted within two months the ultimatum which Louis had recently offered at Nimeguen, as the basis of a general peace. The terms were: the satisfaction of Sweden and her ally the Duke of Holstein Gottorp; the release of Prince Fürstenberg, and his restoration in his estates and dignities; the entire re-establishment of the Peace of Westphalia, the Emperor either restoring Philipsburg, which he had taken, or ceding Freiburg; the restitution to Spain of Charleroi, Limburg, Binch, Ath, Oudenarde, Courtrai, Ghent, and St. Ghislain, in order to form the barrier desired by the Dutch; Spain' in her turn ceding Franche Comté, Valenciennes, Bouchain Condé, Cambrai, Aire, St. Omer, Ypres, Cassel, and other places in what was afterwards called French Flanders; Maestricht and its dependencies to be restored to the Dutch, who were, however, to make it over to Spain; and lastly, the restoration of the Duchy of Lorraine.58

A peace was on the point of being concluded on these conditions,

58 Mignet, Succ. d'Espagne, t. iv. p. 550.

102

PEACE OF NIMEGUEN.

[BOOK V. when the negociations were again interrupted, by Louis signifying that he should not restore to Spain the towns in the Netherlands till his ally the King of Sweden had been reinstated in his possessions in Germany which he had lost during the war. This demand produced an immediate reaction in England and Holland. Charles again prepared for war; the English army in Flanders was reinforced, and on the 26th of July a fresh treaty was signed between England and the States, by which they engaged to declare war against France, unless Louis should agree to restore to Spain the towns in question, without any reference to the affairs of Sweden, before the 11th of August, on which day the truce between France and the Republic would expire. Louis was extricated from this embarrassment by the Swedes themselves, who declared they should be satisfied if the States-General engaged no longer to assist their enemies; and on the night of August 10th, the PEACE OF NIMEGUEN was signed.59 All that Holland lost in a war that had threatened to annihilate her, were her settlements in Senegal and Guiana, which had been taken by the French.

The delay of the French ministers in not signing the treaty till the very last hour, produced a collision between the Stadtholder and the Duke of Luxembourg, by which much blood was needlessly spilt. The Prince of Orange had advanced with his army and his English reinforcements to the relief of Mons, which place had been blockaded by the French since the winter, and was in a state of great distress. On the 14th of August he attacked Luxembourg's army, when a furious and sanguinary battle ensued, which was put an end to only by the night. William protested that he had received no intelligence of the signature of the treaty till the following day; but though it may be true that it was not officially notified to him till the 15th, he could hardly have been ignorant of it; and at all events he was bound to wait for certain intelligence that the treaty had not been concluded. It may be suspected that he was not unwilling to frustrate the peace; but as the treaty was favourable to France, no notice was taken of the occurrence.60

Spain acceded to the peace September 17th, by a treaty signed at Nimeguen, on the conditions, with little variation, proposed by Louis in the ultimatum already mentioned. The Cabinet of

59 The treaty is in Dumont, t. vii. pt. i. p. 350. It was in French, which language was now almost generally substituted for Latin in diplomatic transactions. Hence from courts it passed into society, and became naturalised in all countries.

See

Garden, Hist. des Traités, t. ii.

60 On this affair see Basnage, t. ii. p. 941; Temple's Memoirs (Works, vol. ii. p. 456); Mémoires de Gourville (Coll. Michaud, 3d Sér. t. v. p. 575).

61 Dumont, t. vii. pt. i. p. 365.

CHAP. III.] PEACE BETWEEN LOUIS AND LEOPOLD.

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Madrid wished to delay the ratification till the Emperor should also have made his. peace; but were compelled by the threats of Louis, who put his troops in motion and menaced Brussels, to ratify the treaty, December 15th. Louis was now in a condition. to dictate to the Emperor and his allies almost what terms he pleased, especially as the campaign of 1678 had been unfavourable to the Austrian arms. On the 5th of February 1679, a treaty was signed between France and the Emperor on the basis of that of Münster. The Duke of Lorraine, now Charles V., was restored to his dominions, but on the most onerous conditions. He was obliged to exchange Nanci and Longwi against Toul, and Louis reserved four military roads, each half a league broad, through his dominions. The Duke of Lorraine protested against the articles, and rather than accept them became a voluntary exile. The Emperor consented that the King of France should compel the princes of North Germany to make satisfaction to Sweden, and should retain for that purpose a chain of posts in the Rhenish provinces to assure the march of his armies. But the pacification of Northern Europe belongs to another branch of our subject, and we shall return to it in a future chapter.

The Peace of Nimeguen is the culminating point of Louis XIV.'s glory. But France now became the object of a jealousy excited by the pride of Louis, the pernicious counsels of Louvois, and the natural restlessness of the French people; which after some time produced misfortunes that embittered the last days of the French monarch with repentance and regret.