CHAP. III.]

PEACE OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.

79

century with France, lies in the circumstance that the latter Power had withdrawn the subsidies which she formerly paid to Sweden, and that the Dutch had undertaken to furnish them.

About the same time a peace was concluded between Spain and Portugal. After the War of Devolution had broken out, Spain became inclined to listen to English offers of mediation, and the negociations for a peace were conducted during the revolution in Portugal already described. Don Pedro, the new Regent of Portugal, though secretly inclined to France, whose interest it was that the war should be prolonged, was compelled by the Cortès to sign the Treaty of Lisbon, February 13th 1668. The independence of Portugal was acknowledged, and all conquests were restored on both sides, except Ceuta, which was ceded to the Spaniards.20 Thus was at length concluded a war that had lasted more than a quarter of a century.

The peace between Spain and Portugal had the effect of facilitating in some degree the negociations between France and the allies. Louis did not learn the conclusion of the Triple Alliance till he had completed the conquest of Franche Comté. The question of pushing the war with vigour, or submitting to the arbitrament of the allies, was discussed with great warmth and much difference of opinion among Louis's generals and ministers; but the King himself was inclined to abide by the alternatives which he had offered. Louis consented to a fresh truce till the end of May, and a Congress was opened at Aix-la-Chapelle; but the negociations were really conducted at St. Germain. The Marquis of Castel Rodrigo accepted, as Spanish plenipotentiary, the first of the two alternatives already specified, and a preliminary treaty was signed at St. Germain, April 15th 1668.21 This injudicious choice, which placed in the hands of France the keys of the Netherlands, is said to have been made by Spain in order to compel the allies, from the desperate nature of her situation, and the danger with which it threatened the Dutch provinces, to aid her in case of further attack.22 After the Treaty of St. Germain, the definitive treaty signed at Aix-la-Chapelle May 2nd was little more than a form. France retained all her conquests in the North, and restored Franche Comté to Spain,23 the integrity of whose other possessions was guaranteed. England proposed to make the Triple Alliance permanent, and to obtain the accession of Spain;

20 Dumont, t. vii. pt. i. p. 70. Cf. Mémoires d'Ablancourt, the French envoy in Portugal, p. 253.

21 Dumont, t. vii. pt. i. p. 88.

22 See for these negociations Sir William Temple's Letters.

23 Dumont, t. vii. pt. i. p. 89.

80

HAUGHTINESS OF THE DUTCH.

[Book V. but De Witt either feared to offend France too far, or distrusted the security of the British Cabinet.

The conduct of the Dutch, as might have been foreseen, had inflicted on the pride of Louis a wound too deep to be easily forgiven. His heart was bent on revenge, and his whole policy was directed to obtain it. His anger was further inflamed by the boasting of the Dutch. That little republic had now reached the summit of her good fortune, and had begun to grow somewhat dizzy with her eminence. She had not only achieved her own independence against the colossal power of Spain, but had also vindicated the rights of other nations, including those of Spain. herself. She had saved Denmark from the grasp of Sweden; she had fought at least a drawn battle with England for the dominion. of the seas; and now she had prescribed bounds to the haughty and powerful monarch of France. There was nothing therefore but what was strictly true in the inscription on the medal which the Council of State caused to be struck in commemoration of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in which credit was taken for having assisted, defended, and conciliated kings, for having vindicated the liberty of the seas, conquered by arms an advantageous peace, and established the tranquillity of Europe.24 The assertion of having done all this was, however, far from being the less offensive because it was true. Matters were rendered worse by the loud and offensive boasting of the Dutch journals, and even by the personal bearing of Van Beuningen, the ambassador of the States at the French Court, whose republican frankness, not to say rudeness, was offensive to Louis and his ministers.

It was not, however, merely from personal feeling that Louis wished to humble or destroy the Dutch Republic. He had political motives also. He hated the United Netherlands because they were the asylum of civil and religious liberty, and the centre of those ideas which were directly opposed to his own principles and institutions. Another cause of complaint was that the importation of French goods and manufactures, except wine, into the United Provinces had been prohibited, or at all events allowed only under very exorbitant duties; though this, indeed, was only a retaliation for the policy of Colbert. Add that the Dutch were the chief obstacle that prevented Louis from seizing the whole of the Spanish

24 The medal represented the Maid of the Netherlands, the image of the Dutch Republic, treading chains under her feet, having the cap of liberty on a spear, and resting on a trophy, with ships in the distance. On the reverse was the following

inscription: "Assertis legibus, emendatis sacris, adjutis, defensis, conciliatis regibus, vindicata marium libertate, pace egregia virtute armorum parta, stabilita Orbis Europæi quiete." See Van Loon, Hist. métallique des Pays Bas, t. iii. p. 22.

CHAP. III.]

LOUIS XIV.'S ANGER AT THEM.

81

provinces, and we need not be surprised at his determination to ruin them. As a preliminary step, however, the Triple Alliance must be dissolved. Louis first attempted to effect this by means of the Dutch themselves; but De Witt resisted all Pomponne's endeavours for that purpose.25 After this failure, which embittered Louis all the more against the Dutch, he turned his views to England and Sweden. De Witt, who saw the danger to which he had exposed his country, endeavoured, when it was too late, to disarm the French King by advances and propositions of various kinds; but Louis had made up his mind, though he kept up an appearance of negociation in order to amuse the Dutch. His kingly pride was deeply offended by the idea that a few republican traders should attempt to arbitrate between two of the greatest monarchs of Europe.26

The chief aim of Louis was to cement a firm alliance with England, in which Charles II. was disposed to meet him half way. After the disgrace of Clarendon, Charles fell more and more into the hands of Buckingham, Arlington, and the other members of the Cabal cabinet. The few religious ideas that ever entered the head of Charles were in favour of the Roman Catholic Church. He harboured, as is well known, a sort of waking dream of re-establishing some day or other, with the aid of the French King, that worship in his dominions; a project which, however chimerical, contributed to form a bond of union between the two monarchs. Want of money, however, was the chief motive with Charles to form the French alliance. While his exchequer was always empty, that of Louis was always overflowing, and the surplus at the disposal of such princes or ministers as were willing to be bought. In December 1669, Charles offered his services to Louis on terms which show that if he and his advisers were ready to barter away the civil and religious liberties of England, they were at the same time anxious to promote her foreign interests, at least as they were then understood. They claimed, besides large money payments, a considerable eventual share in the Spanish succession ;27 and from the spoils of the Dutch Republic, Sluys and the Isles of Walcheren and Cadsand. These claims were afterwards modified. Charles consented to postpone the question of the Spanish succession, and to reduce his pecuniary demands; and on May 22nd 1670, a secret

82

TREATY BETWEEN LOUIS XIV. AND CHARLES II. [Book V.

treaty was arranged at Dover between Charles and his sister, Henrietta of Orléans, who had come thither on pretence of a friendly visit. Charles engaged to declare himself a Roman Catholic, on condition of Louis giving him two million livres, and supporting him with 6000 foot against the consequences which might ensue. Charles was to declare his conversion at what time he pleased, and after his declaration had been made, to join Louis in a war against the Dutch whenever the latter monarch should think proper. He was to assist Louis with 6000 foot and the English fleet, to which were to be added thirty French ships of at least forty guns; and Charles was to receive a subsidy of three million livres a year during the war. The treaty was signed by Colbert de Croissi, the French ambassador, and on the part of Charles by four commissioners, all Catholics.28 Louis ratified it by an autograph letter to Charles, June 10th. Charles gave his sister to understand that he would permit the French King to attack Holland before he had declared his own conversion, notwithstanding the article to the contrary in the treaty. The good will of Charles had been conciliated by ministering to one of his foibles. Henrietta had brought in her suite a beautiful young lady, Mademoiselle de Kerhouël, with whom Charles was immediately captivated. She departed with the Duchess of Orléans, but was persuaded without much difficulty to return to England, where she became the noted Duchess of Portsmouth; and as Charles's mistress contributed to keep alive the good understanding between him and the French Court.

Charles was probably never sincere in the design of publicly changing his religion; but the treaty seems to have encouraged his brother, the Duke of York, openly to profess his adherence to the Catholic faith, and may thus be considered as having prepared the fall of the Stuart dynasty. A second treaty, intended to be made public when the war should break out, and relating therefore only to the affairs of Holland, was signed on the 31st of the following December by Colbert de Croissi and those of Charles's ministers who were not in the secret of his contemplated apostasy.29

28 The Lords Arlington and Arundel, Sir Thomas Clifford, and R. Bellings. This secret treaty, which was in the possession of the Clifford family, was first published by Dr. Lingard, by permission of Lord Clifford, in 1830. It will be found in his Hist. of England, vol. ix. App. note B. (ed. 1849). By subsequent agreements the English share of the Dutch conquests was to be augmented by the Isles of

Voorne and Goree, thus giving England the command of the Scheldt and the Maes.

29 By this treaty Charles was to receive five million livres instead of three; but in a secret article, unknown to Buckingham, it was acknowledged that two of these were the price of his conversion. Lingard, vol. ix. p. 185.

CHAP. III.] TREATY BETWEEN LOUIS AND LEOPOLD I.

83

Louis was in hopes to have begun the war in the spring of 1671, but the state of his negociations in Germany and elsewhere induced him to put it off till the following year. In order to facilitate his attack on the United Netherlands he had seized the duchy of Lorraine (September 1670). The restless Duke Charles IV. had afforded the French King a pretext for this aggression by having, in contravention of the treaty of the Pyrenees, revoked his engagement that his dominions should fall to France after his death; as well as by levying troops, fortifying several places, and contracting alliances without the knowledge of the King.30 The occupation of Lorraine caused a great sensation in Europe, and especially among the Dutch, to whom it presaged the coming storm. The acquisition was of great importance to France not only from its magnitude, but also strategically, as the communication between the Netherlands and Franche Comté was thus intercepted. Charles IV., who was closely connected with the imperial family, fled to Vienna, and afterwards served against Louis in the Dutch war. Leopold addressed to the French Court some remonstrances in his favour; but though this occurrence produced for some time a coldness between the Emperor and Louis, it did not eventually put an end to the good understanding which we have already mentioned as subsisting between them at this period, the origin of which we must now relate.

Leopold had married Margaret Theresa, a younger daughter of Philip IV. of Spain, who, like her sister, Maria Theresa, the Queen of France, had been compelled to renounce all claims to the Spanish succession. Leopold, therefore, was much in the same condition with respect to this inheritance as Louis; who, on the strength of this circumstance, had, early in 1667, made proposals to the Emperor for dividing between them the dominions of Spain in the event of the death, without issue, of the sickly young monarch Don Carlos II. Another object of Louis in these negociations was to prevent the Emperor from interfering in his designs upon the Spanish Netherlands. Leopold could not consistently dispute the asserted invalidity of the renunciation made by the Queen of France and at the same time maintain the nullity of that of his own consort; and as he was at that time governed by his minister, Auersberg, who was in the pay of Louis, he was easily induced to enter into the views of the French monarch. In January 1668, a secret treaty was accordingly concluded at Vienna with Gremonville, the French ambassador; by which it was agreed that in the event already specified, the Emperor should 30 Theatrum Europ., t. x. pt. ii. p. 347.