"THE KING'S CABAL.." language of the time, "the king's cabal," 157 III. consisted CHAP. of the duke of Buckingham, who held no ostensible A.D. 1667. office till he purchased that of master of the horse from Monk; of Sir Henry Bennet, now Lord Arlington, principal secretary of state; of the lord keeper Bridgeman; and of Sir William Coventry, one of the commissioners of the treasury. Of these, Coventry, by his superior information and abilities, excited the jealousy of his colleagues, but unfortunately possessed not the art of pleasing the king, who, from his habit of predicting evil, gave him the name of "the vision"ary." Buckingham and Arlington were bitter enemies at heart, though the necessity of their situation made them apparent friends. Bridgeman was consulted for convenience. Hitherto he had acquired no particular claim to the favour of the monarch or the confidence of the people. The rapid conquests of the French king in Flanders, during the last summer, had drawn the eyes of Europe towards the seat of war in that country. The pope, Clement IX., through pity for the young king of Spain, and the States, alarmed at the approach of the French arms to their frontier, offered their mediation. To September both Louis returned the same answer, that he sought nothing more than to vindicate the rights of his wife; 1 Pepys, iv. 243. The word "cabal" at this period meant a secret council. See the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn, and Whitelock (p. 477), as early as the year 1650. By d'Estrades the present ministers are called "la caballe d'Espagne."-D'Estrades, v. 39. The whole council was divided into three committees; one for foreign affairs, the real cabal ; another for military and naval affairs; a third for trade; and a fourth for the redress of grievances (Jan. 31). 2 Southampton, the lord treasurer, died May 16th, 1667, and June 1st the treasury was put into commission. The commissioners were the duke of Albemarle, Lord Ashley, Sir Thomas Clifford, Sir William Coventry, and Sir John Duncombe. Bennet was made secretary of state on Oct. 2, 1662. CHAP. that he should be content to retain possession of the A.D. 1667. conquests which he had already made, or to exchange III. Jan. I. them either for Luxembourg or Franche-comté, with the addition of Aire, St. Omer, Douai, Cambrai, and Charleroi, to strengthen his northern frontier; and that he was willing to consent to an armistice for three months, that the Spanish government might have leisure to make its election between these alternatives. But Spain was not sufficiently humbled to submit to so flagrant an injustice; the time was sullenly suffered to pass by, and the mediators renewed their instances to obtain from Louis a prolongation of the armistice for the additional space of three months. He consented to abide by his former offer during that term; but, refusing the armistice, overran in the meantime the whole province of Franche-comté, for the sole purpose, as he pretended, of compelling Spain to come to a decision.1 If it was the interest of England, it was still more the interest of the States, to exclude France from the possession of Flanders. Under this persuasion, Sir Dec. 15. William Temple, the resident at Brussels, received instructions to proceed to the Hague, and sound the 1668, disposition of De Witt; and, on his return to London, was despatched back again to Holland with the proposal of a defensive alliance, the object of which should be to compel the French monarch to make peace with Spain on the terms which he had previously offered.* The States were embarrassed. On the one hand, they Jan. 8. considered the interposition of the Spanish Netherlands as the great bulwark of their independence against the superior power of France; on the other, 1 Euvres de Louis XIV. ii. 326, 334, 344-355; V. 419. III. they hesitated to engage in a dangerous war against CHAP. an ancient friend and ally at the advice of a prince A.D. 1668. whom they had hitherto considered their personal enemy. But Temple acted with promptitude and address he appealed to their fears; he represented : the danger of delay; and, contrary to all precedent at Jan. 13. the Hague, in the short space of five days-had the constitutional forms been observed, it would have demanded five weeks-he negotiated three treaties, which promised to put an end to the war, or, if they failed in that point, to oppose at least an effectual barrier to the further progress of the invader. The first was a defensive alliance by which the two nations bound themselves to aid each other against any aggressor with a fleet of forty men-of-war, and an army of six thousand four hundred men, or with assistance in money in proportion to the deficiency in men ; by the second, the contracting powers agreed by every means in their power to dispose France to conclude a peace with Spain on the alternative already offered, to persuade Spain to accept one part of that alternative before the end of May, and, in case of a refusal, to compel her by war, on condition that France should not interfere by force of arms. These treaties were meant for the public eye: the third was secret, and bound both England and the States, in case of the refusal of Louis, to unite with Spain in the war, and not to lay down their arms till the peace of the Pyrenees were confirmed. On the same day the Swedish ambassadors gave a provisional, and afterwards a posi- Apriltive assent to the league, which from that circumstance obtained the name of the triple alliance.1 1 Temple's Works, i. 312-384, 415. Dumont, vii. 66, 68, 91. Much praise has been lavished on this negotiation, as if it had ar CHAP. Louis received the news of this transaction with A.D. 1668. an air of haughty indifference. His favourite commanders, Condé and Turenne, exhorted him to bid defiance to the interference of the three powers; rested Louis in his career of victory, and preserved the independence of Europe; but, in fact, it accomplished nothing more than the French king had offered, and was desirous to effect. The terms which the triple alliance sought to enforce were those which Louis had already offered (D'Estrades, vi. 46), as is admitted by the treaty itself, which, having mentioned the offer, binds the contracting parties to prevail on the sæpius dictas duas coronas ad ineundam pacem legibus et conditionibus supra memoratis.-Dum. vii. 68. Whence the English king, in a letter to his sister, the duchess of Orleans, says, "The effect of the treaty is to bring Spain to consent "to the peace upon the terms the king of France has avowed he "will be content with; so as I have done nothing to prejudice "France in this agreement" (Jan. 23): and in another letter to Louis, "En quoi je ne dois croire vous avoir fait une chose désagréable, puisque nous nous sommes convenus de vous proposer ladite "paix sur des conditions, que vous aviez plusieures fois témoigné de "vouloir accepter, et plus expressément dans votre dernière lettre du 27 (17, O.S.) du mois passé" (Feb. 3).-Dalrymple, ii. 5, 6. In that letter, to which Charles refers-a letter written after the conclusion of the alliance, but before that conclusion could be known to Louis, he says, "Ce seroit un coup pour la paix, qui la rendroit "infallible et prompt, si le roi de la Grand Bretagne entroit dans "le même sentiment des états généraux, d'obliger les Espagnols à "l'acceptation des deux alternatives."-Euvres, v. 421. Mr. Macaulay, in a critique on the foregoing note (Critical and Historical Essays, iii. 39), pronounces it unreasonable and ridiculous to suppose that Louis would have held himself bound by his former offers, if he had not been compelled by the triple alliance. To me, however, there appears good reason to suppose that he would have held himself so bound even if the triple alliance had never existed; because he must otherwise have abandoned all hope of those splendid advantages which he had expected to derive from the eventful treaty, and have looked forward to find in Leopold no longer a most valuable ally, but an injured and formidable foe. When, therefore, the Spanish king had made his election between the two alternatives prescribed by Louis, Louis himself would be reduced to the neces sity of making also his election between two alternatives, the restoration of his recent conquests or the dissolution of his league with the emperor. There can be little doubt that in such case his prepossession in favour of the eventful treaty would induce him to consider the restoration of Franche-comté as the lesser evil of the two, and thus hold him faithful to the promises which he had originally made. TREATY OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE. 161 III. his cabinet ministers to be content with the alterna- CHAP tive which he had himself proposed. He assented to A.D. 1668, the advice of the latter; but for a reason of which they were ignorant. In consequence of the infirm state of Charles II. of Spain, he had secretly concluded with the emperor Leopold an "eventual "treaty;" so called, because it was made to depend on a distant, but not improbable event,-the death of the king of Spain without male issue to succeed him. Its object was to regulate, in that case, the partition between Leopold and Louis of the Spanish monarchy, with its numerous dependencies in the four quarters of 'the globe. Every question concerning their respective portions of this splendid inheritance was satisfactorily adjusted, and the treaty itself signed on the 19th of January, at a time when neither of the contracting parties could have been informed of Temple's proceedings at the Hague. It was, moreover, agreed between them, that Leopold, as head of the house of Austria, should prevail on Charles to make his choice of one of the alternatives already proposed by Louis, and that Louis on his part should abide by his previous offer, and should advance no additional claim in virtue of any conquest which his armies had subsequently made.1 The marquess of Castel-Rodrigo, the Spanish governor of the Netherlands, sought delay, under the vain hope of inducing the Dutch (of England he was secure) to engage at once in the war. But the intervention of the emperor, in consequence of the eventual treaty, put an end to the hesitation of the Spanish 1Œuvres de Louis, ii. 360-372. See the account of the "even"tual treaty," which was kept secret for almost a century, in the works of Louis, vi. 402. |