164

EFFECTS OF THE WAR.

[Book V. At the last moment before the treaty was signed, the French ministers, under threats of renewing the war, effected the insertion of the following clause into the fourth article: "That the Roman Catholic religion should remain, in the places restored, on the same footing as it then was." In the numerous Protestant towns and villages which the French had reunited, they had introduced the Roman Catholic service, and had compelled the Protestants to lend their churches for that purpose. The clause was introduced for political purposes, and laid the foundation for new dissensions between the Catholics and Protestants of Germany, which remained long in operation.47

Thus a war which had lasted nine years, and which had been carried on with such mighty efforts on both sides, produced not consequences so important as might have been expected. For the first time since the ministry of Richelieu France had lost ground, and, with the exception of Strasburg, had abandoned the acquisitions of 1684 for the limits prescribed by the Peace of Nimeguen in 1678. For Europe in general the most important result was that the Stuarts were for ever deprived of the throne of England; and that country, liberated from French influence, became the counterpoise of France in the European system. From this period the continental relations of England became permanent; and she adopted, for the most part, the policy of allying herself with those countries which had reason to dread the ambition of France.

"See Menzel, Neuere Gesch. der Deutschen, B. iv. Kap. 50.

CHAP. VI.]

CHARLES II. OF SPAIN.

165

CHAPTER VI.

THE question of the Spanish Succession, which had been the chief motive with Louis XIV. for concluding the somewhat disadvantageous Peace of Ryswick, engrossed, towards the close of the seventeenth century, the attention of European statesmen. An attack of tertian fever, in 1697, had still further shattered the feeble constitution of Charles II.; and though he survived three or four years a disorder which had threatened to be fatal, the effects of it at length brought him to the tomb. Feeble both in body and mind, his life had been nothing but a protracted malady, in which the last descendant of the Emperor Charles V. seemed to typify the declining kingdom over which he reigned.

The majority of Charles II. had been fixed at the age of fifteen, and the first act of his accession had been a kind of revolution. After the expulsion of Niethard, the Queen Dowager's confessor, as already related, Mary Anna had bestowed her confidence and favour on Don Fernando de Valenzuelo, a gentleman of Grenada, who was made a marquis and grandee of the first class, and at length declared prime minister; while Don John of Austria was condemned to a sort of banishment in his governments of Aragon and Catalonia. But in 1677, when Charles II. attained his majority, he recalled Don John to court; the Queen was shut up in a convent at Toledo, and Valenzuelo banished to the Philippine Islands. Don John's administration, however, did not answer to the opinion which had been formed of his abilities. He found Spain involved in a ruinous war with France, which he was forced to terminate by acceding to the humiliating Peace of Nimeguen; and he further alienated the affections of the Spaniards, who detested the French, by negociating a marriage between Charles II. and Maria Louisa of Orléans, niece of Louis XIV. This union, which was celebrated at Quintanapulla in October 1679, he did not live to see. He died in the preceding month, in his fiftieth year, worn out, it is said, by chagrin at his unpopularity and by the anxiety occasioned by the machinations of the Queen's friends. The Queen Dowager was now recalled; but, having grown cautious from her late misfortunes,

166

QUESTION OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION.

[BOOK V. took but little part in the conduct of affairs. The young king, who was himself incapable of business, successively intrusted the administration to a secretary named Eguia, to the Duke of Medina Celi, the Counts of Oropesa and Melgar, the Dukes of Sessa and Infantado, and the Count of Monterey; but these ministers, though differing in talent, all proved unequal to the task of raising Spain from the misery into which she was sunk, and which was aggravated, not only by bad fiscal measures, but also by the natural calamities of earthquakes, hurricanes, inundations, and famines.

The death of Charles II.'s consort, Maria Louisa, in 1689, and his marriage the following year with Eleonora of Neuburg, a sister of the Empress, naturally tended to draw him under the influence of the Austrian Court; especially as Eleonora, after the death of the Queen Dowager in 1696, obtained more undivided sway over her husband. This circumstance was in favour of the imperial claims to the Spanish succession; but in order to understand that question, and the politics of the different parties concerned in it, we must here give an account of the origin of their claims.

1

The three principal claimants were, first, the Dauphin of France, as son of the elder sister of Charles II.; second, Joseph Ferdinand, the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, as grandson of his second sister; and third, the Emperor Leopold. The Emperor at first claimed as male representative of the younger branch of the House of Austria, being descended from Ferdinand, second son of Philip and Joanna of Castile; and he alleged, in support of his claim, the family conventions entered into by the House of Austria; by which, if the males of one branch became extinct, the succession was to devolve to the males of the next branch, to the exclusion of females, who could not succeed except in default of heirs male of all the branches. But as it was replied, that particular arrangements among members of the House of Austria could not derogate from the fundamental laws of Spain, by which direct female heirs were preferred to collateral male heirs, Leopold withdrew this argument and substituted another claim in right of his mother, Mary Ann, daughter of Philip III. of Spain, who had done no act to invalidate her succession to the Spanish crown.

In preferring this claim, Leopold became the rival of his own

There were two or three other claimants, whom it is scarcely necessary to mention, viz. Victor Amadeus of Savoy, as descended from Catherine, second daughter of Philip II.; and the Duke of Orléans,

as son of Anne of Austria, eldest daughter of Philip III. and wife of Louis XIII. The latter claim would evidently vest in Louis XIV. Also, Don Pedro II. of Portugal.

CHAP. VI.]

VARIOUS CLAIMANTS.

167

grandson, the Electoral Prince of Bavaria. Leopold had married for his first wife Margaret Theresa, second daughter of Philip IV. of Spain, and younger sister of Maria Theresa, queen of Louis XIV.; and as Margaret had made no renunciation of the Spanish crown, and had been named among his heirs by Philip IV., she seemed to have a preferable title to her elder sister. Leopold had had by her an only daughter, Mary Antoinette, now dead, who had married Max Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, and had had by him Joseph Ferdinand, the Electoral Prince in question, who, if the rights of his mother were admitted, was entitled to the Spanish throne. But Leopold opposed a claim which would have diverted the Spanish succession from the House of Austria to that of Bavaria, by pleading an act of renunciation executed by his daughter at the time of her marriage with the Elector, though it had never been ratified either by the King of Spain or by the Cortès.

It was plain, however, that a question of such vast European importance would not be decided by the strict rules of hereditary succession, but must become a subject of negociation, and even of war. The European Powers would hardly stand quietly by and see the vast dominions of Spain annexed to the already overgrown power of the Emperor; and Leopold, to evade this objection, transferred his claim to the Archduke Charles, his second son by his marriage with Eleanor Magdalene, Princess Palatine of Neuburg: his eldest son Joseph, by the same marriage, having been elected King of the Romans in 1690, and thus destined to succeed him on the Imperial throne. In like manner, to obviate any objection to the union of France and Spain, Louis ultimately destined the crown of the latter country to Philip, Duke of Anjou, second son of the Dauphin.

The King of Spain's second consort, Mary Anne of Neuburg, being a sister of the Empress, naturally promoted the views of Leopold; in which, however, she was opposed by the Queen-Mother, Mary Ann of Austria, who was in favour of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria; while the imbecile and unfortunate Charles, incapable of forming a judgment, or maintaining an opinion of his own, was drawn to either side alternately.

* Louis XIV., in his Instruction to the Marquis d'Harcourt, gives the following description of Charles II. :-" Ce prince a passé sa vie dans une profonde ignorance; jamais ses propres intérêts ne lui ont été expliqués. et l'extrême aversion qu'on avait pris soin de lui inspirer pour la France, est la seule maxime dont on ait prétendu l'instruire. Sa propre incli

The Austrian influence began,

nation l'a éloigné des affaires, sa timidité lui a fait haïr le monde; son tempérament est prompt, colère, et le porte à une extrême mélancolie," &c. Ap. Garden, Hist. des Traités, t. ii. p. 187. Charles's ignorance was such that, when Louis XIV. took Mons, he thought that the place had been captured from William III. instead of himself.

168

FIRST TREATY OF PARTITION.

[Book V. indeed, to predominate after the death of the Queen-Mother in 1696; but her representations had made so lively an impression on Charles, that he is said to have made a will in favour of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria. It was to efface these impressions that Leopold sent as his ambassador to Spain Count Harrach, a veteran diplomatist, who was charged to obtain the substitution of the Archduke Charles for the Bavarian Prince. Charles consented to this arrangement, provided the Emperor would send that prince into Spain, together with a force of 10,000 men, to assist in expelling the French from Catalonia; but Leopold, embarrassed at that time by the Turkish war, declined a proposal which suited neither his means nor his inclination. The negociations lingered, and France, meanwhile, concluded the Peace of Ryswick, which put an end to the hopes which Leopold had founded on the Grand Alliance. England and Holland, in spite of their engagements with Leopold, inclined towards the Bavarian party, as best calculated to maintain the balance of power; and thus they abandoned the Emperor in the negociations at Ryswick, in which not a word was said about the Spanish Succession.

To counteract the Austrian influence, Louis XIV. despatched the Count d'Harcourt to Madrid early in 1698. The Germans were not popular in Spain; the Queen, by her maladroitness, had alienated several of the ministers and grandees, whom D'Harcourt, by his popular manners and winning address, and partly, also, it is said, by bribery, succeeded in conciliating to the French cause; and among them in particular the Cardinal Portocarrero, Archbishop of Toledo, one of the most influential men in Spain. The French ambassador also worked on the timid mind of Charles by menaces, and plainly intimated a resort to force if the rights of the children of France should be superseded. By these means he induced the King of Spain at least to postpone any declaration in favour of the Archduke Charles, though without pressing the nomination of the Duke of Anjou, on which Louis himself had not yet determined. The French King felt the impossibility of securing the entire Spanish succession without kindling afresh a general war in Europe, for which he was but ill prepared; and he was therefore inclined to listen to the overtures made to him by William III., through the Earl of Portland, for a partition. As the Emperor now claimed the undivided succession for his second son, it was useless to think of renewing with him the eventual treaty of 1688; the better plan, therefore, seemed to be to come to an understanding with the King of England, and to force the Emperor to accept the settlement which they should agree upon. After long