450

The Emperor and the Peace of Utrecht

[1713 in 1714 France definitively absorbed Orange; while the neighbouring papal dominions were retained by the Holy See, till in 1791 they too were overtaken by their destiny, and became part of the one and indivisible Republic.

It remains to note that, by a clause which, had Frederick I of Prussia survived till the actual signature of the Franco-Prussian Treaty, would in his eyes have surpassed all the rest of it in importance, the King of France, in his own name and in that of the King of Spain, promised to acknowledge the royal dignity of his Prussian brother.

Viewing the Peace of Utrecht as a whole (though it was actually completed by certain additional treaties signed in 1714 after the conclusion of the Peace of Baden), we are of course confronted by the conspicuous gap caused in its settlements by the missing consent and co-operation of the Emperor, on whose behalf the great struggle had for twelve eventful years been carried on. Perhaps, had the campaign conducted by Prince Eugene in 1712, after his British allies had sheathed their swords, ended more successfully, the Emperor Charles VI might have played an important part in peace negotiations conducted on an altered basis; but by the autumn of the year the hopes of such an issue had grown small; and though the interests of the Emperor and the Empire were not altogether left out of sight at Utrecht, they were more or less neglected, as opposed, in different ways, to the interests both of France and of the United Provinces, and a matter of indifference, if not of aversion, to Bolingbroke and his colleagues. On the evening of the day on which the Anglo-French and some of the other pacifications noted above had been signed, the British plenipotentiaries handed to Count Sinzendorf the ultimatum of Louis XIV consisting of conditions very different not only from those which France would have held herself fortunate in obtaining at various stages of the War, but even from offers transmitted by Louis to the Emperor in the course of the Utrecht negotiations themselves. France now declared herself prepared to accept the settlement, not of the Peace of Westphalia, but of the Peace of Ryswyk, based on a uti possidetis far more favourable to France. The Rhine was to form the frontier between France and the Empire - which of course involved the severance from the latter of Strassburg, though not of Kehl, of which, however, as in all cases of fortified places included in the arrangement, the works were to be rased. The offer of Louis XIV to recognise Charles VI as Emperor, and George Lewis of Hanover as Elector, was very coolly received by them. On the other hand, Louis XIV demanded the full and entire restoration to their rights of his allies the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne--though the Upper Palatinate was to be left in the possession of the Elector Palatine. The Elector of Bavaria was to be indemnified for his renunciation of the Spanish Netherlands by the transfer to him of the island of Sardinia with the title of King; while, until his restoration to all his hereditary dominions (except the Upper Palatinate), he was to remain in absolute sovereign possession of Luxemburg Namur, and Charleroi. France consented to the assignment to the Emperor of Naples, Milan, and the "Spanish" Netherlands,

1713]

The Emperor's persistence

451

demanding only that Italian territories not dependent on either Naples or Milan (in other words, those of her allies the Dukof Mantua and Mirandola) should be restored to their lawful owners. These terms Louis XIV declared himself ready to keep open till June 1; but, as he refused to assent to a cessation of arms even up to that date, it is quite clear that he looked to a further continuance of French successes in the field for a modification of his proposals in his own favour. In April and May, the first and second Imperial plenipotentiaries respectively quitted Utrecht, the latter having for the present failed to gain over Bavaria by the offer of the hand of an Austrian archduchess for the young Electoral Prince Charles Albert, who might thus become heir of the whole Habsburg dominions. Bavaria, in the existing condition of things, had to thank Austria "for nothing."

The Imperial Government after the fashion of what not in England alone was a pre-eminently pamphleteering age and, in the particular instance of the Peace of Utrecht, a pre-eminently pamphleteering occasion-issued a German pamphlet designed for popular consumption; together with a more temperately written apologia, elaborated, in accordance with Sinzendorf's instructions, by the learned Jean Dumont, both in Latin and French, under the title of A Letter to an Englishman. But even the French-born Imperialist historiographer ventured to reproach the British nation with its servile submissiveness to the authority of the Crown, and to warn Queen Anne of the risk she ran of incurring the fate of her father. Thus, though abandoned by his Allies, and labouring under the lack of resources chronic to his dynasty, the Emperor Charles VI showed himself immovable in his resolution to carry on the War. When he turned to the Diet at Ratisbon, he obtained without much difficulty a vote for the continuation of the War on the part of the Empire and for a contribution of four million dollars. But the money came in at a snail's pace; the proclamation issued, or rather caused to be issued at second-hand, by the Emperor, fell flat; and the prospects of a war carried on without British or Dutch subsidies revealed themselves in all their nakedness. The Imperial Government remained blind to the fact that Great Britain's commercial interests would not suffer from a breach with the Empire, which must follow upon a political rupture between the two Powers; and that it would therefore be practically ignored in the settlement which the British and French Governments were at one in hastening to a conclusion.

The events of the campaign on the Rhine in 1713 showed that no choice was left to Prince Eugene but the adoption of a purely cunctatory strategy; while the Emperor was on all sides surrounded by misfortune. The French had once more crossed the Rhine; Catalonia was lost, or virtually so; and at Vienna there was an outbreak of the plague. As in the course of the War, when, after holding his entry into "his capital," Charles had seen province after province slip from his

452

The Peace of Rastatt

[1713-4

peace

grasp so now, when his arms were carrying on the struggle alone and to no purpose, nothing could disturb the grandiose self-control-or the im movable phlegm of the Emperor. But gradually he began to recognise the futility of the efforts which were being continued on his behalf; and he allowed communications to be opened through British mediation between Prince Eugene and Marshal Villars. Full powers were granted to them by the Emperor and the King of France; and formal negotiations accordingly began between these two sovereigns on November 27, 1713, at Rastatt-a castle near the right bank of the Rhine, belonging to the widow of Margrave Lewis William of Baden. Great secrecy was observed in the negotiations, Prince Eugene conferring with nobody but Villars in person. The King of France had, on the strength of the successful campaign just ended, by no means lowered his conditions, though he finally desisted from the demand that Philip V should be included in the Treaty. Villars had asked that not only should Landau be left in the possession of France, but that the costs of the prolongation of the War should be made good by the Emperor — a proposal logical in a sense, but in the circumstances quite unreasonable. On the other hand he would not listen to the Imperial demand for the restoration to the Catalans of all their privileges. In addition, there was the perennial difficulty concerning the Elector of Bavaria, whom France desired to see restored to his rights as well as compensated for his losses. The upshot was that Prince Eugene declared the French propositions inadmissible, and early in February, 1714, quitted Rastatt for Stuttgart, Villars taking his departure for Strassburg. Hereupon Louis showed a more yielding disposition, especially after the vote of the Diet already mentioned; and negotiations were resumed.

After all, it was the safety of the Germanic Empire rather than, except in an outlying part of them, that of the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria, which was endangered by the French demands; and the sensitiveness of that House has not always been as keen for the former as for the latter. The Peace as to which negotiations were in progress could not in any case be actually concluded without the consent of the Diet; although to wait for the actual participation of its representatives might delay ad infinitum the prospect of reaching a settlement. Both at Gertruydenberg and at Utrecht the Diet had intended to be represented by a Deputation which should watch over the interests of the Empire; but the necessary formalities, and the usual difficulty of balancing the representation of the Catholic and the Protestant Estates respectively, occupied a long time, and nothing was ultimately done. Thus at Rastatt, where he concluded peace with France on March 7, 1714, the Emperor took upon himself to agree to a series of provisions in the name of the Empire without having been authorised to do so by the Diet; the entire agreement being treated as if it only formed preliminaries, although it actually constituted the Treaty itself and was ratified by the Emperor "in the undoubted confidence, that the

1687-1714]

The Ryswyk Clause

453

Electors, Princes, and other Estates would not hesitate" to follow suit. He excused himself for these high-handed proceedings towards the Empire by a "Decree of Commission," in which he sought to throw the responsibility of his action upon Villars, and offered the Diet the choice between at last naming its Deputation, or empowering him to conclude peace in the Empire's name. The Catholic Estates were prepared to grant him these powers; but not so the Protestant-and for a very significant reason, into which it is necessary to enter rather more fully.

The hesitation of the Protestant Estates at this point arose out of an article in the Rastatt preliminaries, affirming that the Treaties of Westphalia and of Ryswyk should form the bases of the intended Peace. Now, Article IV of the Treaty concluded by France with the Emperor and the Empire at Ryswyk had contained a clause, against which the Protestants had persistently protested and which they regarded as having been rendered invalid by the outbreak of the European War that had put an end to the Treaty containing it. The Article itself had provided for the restoration to the Empire of all the districts occupied by France outside Alsace a loose designation which, however, need not be further criticised in the present connexion; for it is the clause added by France to the Article which is in question, and which plays an unhappily prominent part in the diplomatic history of the first quarter of the eighteenth century. During the French occupation of the Palatinate in the iniquitous "Orleans War" (1688-90) it had seemed good to the French Government, the standard-bearer of intolerance at home, to espouse the interests of the Catholics in those districts where no Catholic worship had been established, by introducing there the exercise of it side by side with that of the Protestants, forcing the latter either to share the use of their churches with the Catholics or to give up to them the chancels. These proceedings amounted to a palpable violation of the settlement made in the Peace of Westphalia, according to which the established Church (representing any one of the three recognised Confessions) in any given district was to be that which had been the established Church there in the year 1624. In the Peace of Ryswyk, however, France sought to force her new provision upon the frontier-districts restored by her to the Empire under Article IV, by means of the clause declaring that in the territories so restored the Roman Catholic religion should remain in the condition in which it was at the present time-in other words, where a simultaneous Catholic worship had been established by the French, it was to be maintained for ever. The insertion of this clause in the Peace not having been opposed by the Imperial plenipotentiary at Ryswyk, it was accepted by the Catholic Estates of the Empire, on the plea of the imperative necessity of concluding the Peace; but of the Protestant Estates only a few attested their signatures to the Treaty; and soon afterwards the entire Corpus Evangelicorum entered their solemn protest against the manifest violation of the Peace of

454

The Peace of Baden

[1714

Westphalia. Finally, though to the resolution of the Diet approving of the ratification of the Peace of Ryswyk (November, 1697), there was added a postscript intended to safeguard the Protestants against any application of the clause to their disadvantage, this postscript was ignored by the Emperor in accepting the resolution; and the result was a protracted quarrel between the Protestant and Catholic Estates at the Diet which led to a stagnation of all business in that assembly and recalls, in its complications, the evil days of the Reservatum Ecclesiasticum. Nor can it be said that in the later instance the whole dispute was a tempest about nothing; for the number of places whose religious condition was involved in it amounted to little short of 2000 (1922). When in 1714 the matter came up again at the Diet in connexion with the Emperor's proposal that he should be empowered by it to conclude peace in its name, the Protestants used all the forms at their disposal to obtain the insertion in the decree of their demand that the obnoxious clause should be held to have been abrogated for ever. Charles VI refused to accept powers thus restricted; and the Protestant Estates had to content themselves with a fresh protest, which when the terms of peace were actually settled at Baden was, as will be seen, coolly passed over.

When, therefore, on June 10, 1714, a peace congress opened at Baden (in Switzerland), there was really very little for it to accomplish. It was attended by plenipotentiaries of the Emperor and of France, of Duke Leopold Joseph Charles of Lorraine and of several Princes of the Empire and of Italy, and of the Pope. No warmer friend of France, it may be observed, has ever worn the tiara than Clement XI (1700-21); but he had at an early date in his pontificate found it necessary to come to an understanding with the Emperor Joseph. Yet the Peace of Utrecht had deprived him of certain portions of his temporal dominions; and Clement, who regarded this unprecedented act as a personal affront, was neither able to obtain redress nor to suffer in dignified silence. The Peace between France and the Empire was concluded at Baden on September 7, 1714.

No essential difference is accordingly to be noticed between the Treaties of Rastatt and Baden, unless it be that the earlier of the two was drawn up in French, and the later in Latin. The Treaty of Ryswyk was, together with those of Westphalia and Nymegen, taken as a basis of the Peace of Baden; and the protestation mentioned above was passed over after an unctuous French declaration as to the King's devotion to the Catholic faith, which had been fortified by two hortatory briefs from the Pope. The provisions of the Peace, which was signed on September 7, were entirely concerned with the relations between the Empire and France, and mainly with the regulation of their frontier. Hence the mediation offered by Great Britain, and the participation in the negotiations desired by Spain, had been alike declined. AltBreisach and Freiburg, with the fort of Kehl-all on the right bank of the Rhine were restored to the Empire; while Landau, further to the north on the left bank of the river, was, with its dependencies, ceded