430

The Tories and Peace

[1710-11

carried on as against the preponderance of the power of France, and though the burden of it had become unendurable, neither of these considerations could justify the English Ministry in the methods which they had from the first pursued in negotiating for peace. It was in 1710 that Torcy, who had never ceased in his labours towards this end, found the requisite agent for his purpose in the Abbé Gaultier, who, prescient of his future usefulness, had remained in London ever since he had first been attached to Marshal Tallard's embassy to the Court of William III in 1698. Through the Earl of Jersey, a member of the Privy Council but a Jacobite at heart, Gaultier had been introduced to Shrewsbury and Harley; and in January, 1711, " M. de Lorme " arrived in France on the first of his journeys to the French Court, in the interests―ultimately disentangled-of peace and the Pretender. Torcy was apprised by him of the fact which of course was no secret to the French Minister- that the new English Government was desirous of peace, while the Dutch sincerely regretted the breakdown of the Gertruydenberg Conferences. Gaultier was informed that the King was prepared to enter into negotiations with England, but not with the States General, though it was subsequently understood that French proposals might be communicated to them by the English Ministers. On this footing the business proceeded, being much expedited so soon as St John was in a position to take a direct part in the proceedings. Early in June -Matthew Prior, who, in the spirit of his saying that "Swords conquer some, but words subdue all men," was most desirous of distinction in diplomacy, secretly accompanied Gaultier to Paris, being chosen as a servant of the State who might if necessary be disavowed; and, three months later, Mesnager, of whom and whose abilities mention has already been made, appeared in London, still secretly, as agent of the French Government, with elaborate instructions (dated August 3). They show that a change had come over the spirit of French diplomacy and of the sovereign whom it so admirably served, and who now, as his Ministers stated with engaging frankness, looked for concessions in return for his sacrifices. The English Ministers, for their part, in their eagerness for peace, took little thought of the interests of their Allies, unless perhaps of the House of Savoy. On October 9, St John, whose mind was quite made up, introduced Mesnager at Windsor, by the backstairs, to the presence of Queen Anne, who declared herself no lover of war, and ready to do all in her power to end the present conflict. Thus England was carried along by a variety of impulses among which St John's hatred of the House of Austria, and the old mercantile jealousy of the Dutch, were alike to be reckoned into a separate provisional agreement with France. In the same month the preliminaries of peace were virtually settled between the French and English Governments. They threw over the principle of preserving the Spanish monarchy for the House of Habsburg, giving only general assurances as to the demands of England's

1711]

Marlborough the "non plus ultra"

431

Allies, while assuring to England herself the substance of what she actually secured in the Peace of Utrecht.

Apart from its influence upon the diplomatic situation, the death of Joseph had seriously interfered with the Allied plan of campaign for 1711. Eugene and the greater part of his army were called off to the Rhine, to cover the Imperial election at Frankfort from any possibility of interruption on the part of the French troops in Alsace; and Marlborough found himself at the head of a force nearly 24,000 weaker than the 88,000 with whom Villars was about to defend his celebrated lines. This masterpiece of military engineering ran almost from the coast of Picardy to the Sambre and Meuse, the Canche, the Scarpe and other minor rivers having been dammed in several places to protect tracts of country with inundations. It really appeared as if Villars' boast would be borne out and Marlborough had at last met his "non plus ultra." But Villars had yet to learn the full measure of his great adversary's talent. All endeavours to lure Villars from his position into another pitched battle having proved fruitless, Marlborough, after capturing (July 6) a fort at Arleux which commanded a causeway over the inundations of the Sanzee, moved westward on Arras, as though about to tempt destruction by making a frontal attack on the very strongest portion of the lines (August). Deceived by the feint, Villars, who had just retaken and destroyed Arleux (July 21), hastened to send reinforcements to his left. Marlborough's success was assured. Calling on his men for one of those great efforts he never demanded unnecessarily or in vain, he countermarched his troops from Arras to Arleux, covering forty miles in eighteen hours, pushed across the causeway almost unopposed, and thus pierced the lines on which Villars had so confidently relied (August 5). In vain Villars tried to catch Marlborough at a disadvantage; the Duke covered the bridging of the Scheldt by a demonstration against Cambray, after which he crossed to the right of the Scheldt and proceeded to invest Bouchain (August 8). As before, Villars would not fight a battle for a beleaguered fortress, and Bouchain fell on September 13 after what Archdeacon Hare characterised as "the best conducted siege we have made this war.' The capture of Bouchain brought the Allies into an excellent position for an advance into France; but it was Marlborough's last exploit. The Tories had determined to overthrow him; and on December 31 he was summarily dismissed from all his employments, in order that he might be put on his trial on a charge of misappropriating public moneys which had actually been used for secret service and intelligence work.

The death of Joseph I, though it had thus neither created the desire for peace, nor been the starting-point of the negotiations to that end, justified the indifference of England- and of Holland, if but her "Barrier " were secured to the continuance of the Grand Alliance. Lord Raby (soon afterwards Earl of Strafford), who had superseded

432

A Peace Congress summoned

[1711-2

Townshend as British envoy at the Hague, joined with Heinsius in working for the transfer of the Spanish monarchy to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, whose eldest son, the Prince of Piedmont, should marry an Austrian Archduchess. But the endeavours of Peterborough, who had arrived at Vienna in February to allay the suspicions of the Imperial Government, and now pressed this solution upon it, were only met by Count Wratislaw, the confidential adviser of Leopold I, by the suggestion of an English guarantee of the Habsburg tenure of Hungary. The estrangement between the English and Imperial Governments continued to increase. In July Count Gallas, the Imperial envoy at St James', demanded official information on the subject of the negotiations with France, and, when he was furnished with a copy of the preliminaries agreed upon with Mesnager, treated them with incredulous contempt. Meanwhile, Heinsius and his colleagues had early in May been informed of the French proposals; and an active correspondence soon ensued between the English and the Dutch Government, which revealed the fears of the latter for their "Barrier"; while Lord Strafford took up a high tone, and his Government kept in secret touch with the Dutch peace party through John Drummond, an English merchant at Amsterdam. Though Count Goëss, who had in September arrived at the Hague as Imperial envoy, made one more attempt to keep the Alliance together, he could not prevent the acceptance by the Dutch on November 21, 1711, of a Peace Congress to be held at Utrecht in the following January, with the French proposals as its preliminaries. Early in December the Emperor Charles VI crossed the German frontier on his way from Barcelona, where he had left his young Empress Elizabeth behind him as a pledge of his determination not to abandon Spain; on his journey through northern Italy he had had an interview with Victor Amadeus. At Innsbruck the Emperor, after deliberating the situation with Prince Eugene and Counts Gallas, Wratislaw, and Sinzendorf, resolved to adopt the suggestion of Marlborough that Prince Eugene should be sent to England on a special mission, and that in the meantime no plenipotentiary should be sent to the proposed Congress.

Yet its approaching meeting was announced in the Queen's Speech of December 11, in terms implying the existence of the most perfect harmony of purpose between the members of the Grand Alliance. It has been seen elsewhere how the address of the House of Lords declaring against any peace which should leave Spain and the Indies in the posses sion of the House of Bourbon was answered by the creation of twelve new Peers (December 31). Prince Eugene landed in London January 16, 1712; but he soon began to doubt the probability of success, though he continued his efforts to secure joint action on the part of the Emperor, the States General, Hanover, and the Whigs, and presented memorandum upon memorandum to the English Government. The last of these demanded a change in the Preliminaries of the Congress which-as a

1712]

England and the Armistice.

Denain

433

succession of contrary winds had prevented him from being informed — had already assembled at Utrecht.

It was on January 1, 1712, that the open negotiations between the Allies and France began at Utrecht. The efforts of Count Gallas, the over-impetuous Austrian ambassador, had failed to shake the determination of the Tories and only produced his own recall; and Eugene's two months in London had been spent to no purpose. However, the meeting of the Conferences was not accompanied by an armistice, and in planning his operations for the summer Eugene still counted on the assistance of the English and their auxiliaries, now under the Duke of Ormond. His scheme was to turn the French lines at the head of the Sambre, besiege Quesnoy and Landrecies, and so open up the way to Paris by the valley of the Oise. In May he proceeded to put this plan into operation, and laid siege to Quesnoy, Ormond's corps covering the siege. Quesnoy fell on July 4; but, just as Eugene was about to invest Landrecies, he was informed by Ormond (July 16) that an armistice had been concluded between Great Britain and France, and that in conformity with its terms he was about to withdraw his troops to Dunkirk, which was to be handed over to Great Britain as a pledge of French good faith. But when Ormond gave orders to his corps to quit the Allied camp only the contingents of Holstein, Liége and SaxeCoburg, little more than 3000 men, followed him; the rest of the auxiliaries, some 118 squadrons and 44 battalions, of whom 6200 men were Danes, 10,400 Hanoverians, 4000 Hessians, 8700 Prussians and 5900 Saxons, all refused to leave Eugene and remained with him to the end of the campaign, although, on learning of their refusal to obey Ormond, England at once ceased to pay the subsidies for their support. Thanks to this action on the part of the German auxiliaries, Eugene, who had about 150 squadrons and 80 battalions of Austrians and Dutch, felt himself strong enough to continue his operations, and accordingly invested Landrecies (July18). It was a somewhat hazardous proceeding; for the departure of the English transferred the numerical superiority to Villars, who was able to safely call up troops from other points thus made secure; moreover, the refusal of the Dutch deputies to let the principal depot of the Allies be moved from Marchiennes to Quesnoy compelled Eugene to extend his lines beyond prudent limits. Still, to have remained inactive would have certainly discouraged his men, and it would have equally encouraged the French had he seemed disheartened. Villars was not slow to see his opportunity, and, after drawing off Eugene's attention by feinting at the main position of the Allies on the Escaillon, he hurled strong forces against the Dutch, who were guarding the bridge at Denain (July 24), and thereby covering the great magazine at Marchiennes. Surprised and outnumbered, the Dutch made but a feeble resistance to Villars' vigorous attack, and, long before Eugene could bring up reinforcements, they had given way in disorder and were

C. M. H. V.

28

434 Results of Denain. The Peace of Utrecht signed [1712–3

in full flight. The collapse of a bridge of boats over the Scheldt completed the disaster, and, at a cost to the victors of barely 500 men, the whole Dutch division of 12,000 strong was annihilated and Eugene's position forced. The first fruits of Villars' victory were the destruction of the Allied lines between the Scheldt and the Scarpe (July 25 and 26), the capture of the great magazine at Marchiennes (July 30), and the investment of Douay (July 31). Eugene had to raise the siege of Landrecies (July 29), to retire over the Scheldt at Tournay and to watch in inactivity the reduction (September 8) of Douay. Before the close of the campaign Quesnoy (October 8) and Bouchain (October 19) also passed into the hands of the French, and the year 1712 thus ended with the successes of the Allies checked and the prestige of French arms somewhat restored. Eugene, if perhaps ill-advised in investing Landrecies, was little to blame for the disastrous turn affairs had taken; he had been ill-served by his allies, for the Dutch made a poor resistance at Denain, and the value of the English alliance was never more apparent than in the hour when it was withdrawn.

The change of affairs in the field naturally affected the course of the negotiations at Utrecht. The Dutch were already weary of the war, and intent upon ending it if satisfied as to their "Barrier." The conclusion of a peace was further advanced, when Louis induced his grandson to abandon formally his claims on France, which had recently acquired increased importance through the deaths of the Dauphin (April, 1711) and of the Dukes of Burgundy (February, 1712) and Britanny (March, 1712). With this renunciation Bolingbroke (St John) also had to be content; though he would probably have preferred to see Victor Amadeus at Madrid. But Philip's hold on Spain was too secure to be shaken; and, in August, 1712, a suspension of hostilities in the Peninsula was arranged, though it was not till the following autumn that Starhemberg and his men finally evacuated Catalonia. Long before this the Peace of Utrecht had been signed. The patent divisions in the Allied camp, the knowledge that the English Ministry had made up their minds to conclude peace, and the improvement in his position wrought by Villars' success, allowed Louis to assume a stiffer attitude and to reduce the concessions he had to make; and, though the Emperor Charles had been duly elected in October, 1711-was somewhat unreasonable in refusing to give up his claims on Spain and to content himself with the ample possessions offered him in Italy, it is easier to sympathise with his obstinacy than to condemn it. Finally, on April 11, 1713, the Peace (which is analysed elsewhere) was signed without the Emperor's assent.

On the conclusion of the Peace Eugene removed the Austrian forces, 67 squadrons of cavalry and 14 battalions of infantry, from the Netherlands to the upper Rhine to co-operate with the army of the Empire, which he found very much below its proper strength. Almost the only