BOOK III. speculation. Bishop Burnet informs us, that the 1697. earl of Portland himself told him, that it was then and there stipulated, that the king of France should give the late king James no assistance, and the reigning monarch no disturbance upon his account; that James should retire to Avignon or Italy; and that the queen's jointure of 50,000l. per annum should be paid as to a dowager -James being considered as dead in law. This account is corroborated by M. de Torcy, who, on the authority doubtless of M. Boufflers, says, "that, for the farther security of his master, the earl of Portland demanded that this unfortunate prince should be obliged to remove from France, and to follow his unpropitious star to Rome, or whatever other part of the world he chose." This condition not being in the sequel complied with by James, the jointure was of course withheld. On the other hand, M. Boufflers, as M. de Torcy tells us, insisted that a general act of grace should be granted to the English who had followed the fortunes of king James, and that they should be restored to the possession of their estates-also, that none of the subjects of the French king should be allowed to enter, or to settle in, the city of Orange; because his majesty foresaw that the new converts, still attached to their former errors, would flock to the provinces bordering upon Orange, and, if leave was given 1697 them, would settle there*. It farther appears BOOK III. from the Memoirs of King James recently published, that the king of France proposed to the king of England to obtain a parliamentary settlement of the crown after his decease upon the nominal prince of Wales, a child not as yet nine years of age; and that William did not indicate any aversion to restore the prince to that inheritance of which he had been deprived by the extreme, and, in relation to him, unmerited rigor of fortune. The overture made to the English monarch was consonant to the generosity of his nature; and it seemed no less agreeable to the principles of policy than of justice, as it obviated the dangers to be apprehended from a disputed succession and the king owed no obligation to the princess of Denmark, whose personal interests were of little moment in his estimation. But on the communication of this project to James, he opposed it with great vehemence. He said, "he could not support the thoughts of making his own child an accomplice to his unjust dethronement: he could suffer with Christian patience the usurpation of the prince of Orange, but not that of his own son. Should even the prince of Orange," said the abdicated monarch in a letter addressed to the king of France, "induce the parliament of * Torcy, vol. i. p. 25. 1697. BOOK III. England to repeal the act of settlement, it would be always on condition of having the prince of Wales placed in their hands, without their being able to give any security either for his person or his conscience." Most undoubtedly king William could not for a moment entertain the idea of re-instating the prince, but on the condition of his residence in England for the purpose of education;-a concession he could scarcely expect from the known bigotry of James. We have also the authority of the duke of Berwick for this remarkable fact, who, in the Memoirs of his life*, relates, that on the proposition in question being made by the king of France, the queen, being present at the conversation, would not allow her husband time to answer, but passionately declared, "that she should rather see her son dead than in possession of the crown to the prejudice of his father." The idea of his being educated a protestant filled them with horror; and, persuaded that the acquisition of a temporal, must be attended with the loss of a celestial crown, they declined without hesitation an offer which appeared to them so extremely disadvantageous. The campaign on the Rhine, on the banks of which vast armies were every year regularly assembled, passed, like several of the preceding Memoirs of the Duke of Berwick, vol. i. p. 157. 1097. taken by the ones, in almost total inaction. The chief effort of BOOK III. the French this summer was made in Catalonia: for the court of Versailles, being fully aware that the pride of Spain was the grand obstacle in the way of peace, was resolved to convince them how unable they were to carry on the war, unsupported by those allies they now affected to neglect or contemn. Towards the end of May Barcelona the duc de Vendome advanced at the head of a French. powerful army towards Barcelona; and the Spaniards retiring at his approach, the city was invested on the 12th of June; and the coast being no longer defended by an English fleet, the count d'Estrées, with a squadron of men of war and galleys, at the same time blockaded the port. The prince of Hesse Darmstadt, governor of Barcelona, made a most able and heroic defence; but the place, after a siege of nine months, was compelled to capitulate, and the court of Madrid, by a loss so great and irreparable, was thrown into the utmost consternation. Intelligence if possible still more alarming reached them nearly at the same moment. In the beginning of the year the French court had dispatched a squadron from Brest to the West Indies, with a view to seize the Spanish plate fleet. M. de Pointis the commander, finding on his arrival at St. Domingo that the galleons had already reached the Havanna, proceeded to Car 1697. BOOK III. thagena; of which, after a stout resistance, he made himself master, and found in it an immense booty in specie and merchandize, to the amount, as De Pointis says in his account, of eight millions of crowns. The French evacuated the place after demolishing the principal fort, and stood to sea with their plunder. Shortly after he left Carthagena he fell in with the English fleet, cruizing in those seas, near the Straits of Bahama, and much superior in force. But by favor of the winds he had the good fortune to escape, after a long and dangerous chase. Victory over the Zenta. year These events caused the Spanish court exTurks at tremely to lower the loftiness of its tone, and much facilitated the conclusion of the treaty. The reluctance of the emperor still remained to be surmounted. The campaign in Hungary had this been in the highest degree glorious to the imperial arms. Prince Eugene of Savoy, already conspicuously distinguished by his talents and conduct in the Italian war, was, by a happy choice, appointed commander in chief of the imperial armies on the Danube. The grand seignor again took the field in person; and his first motions indicating a design of penetrating into Transylvania and the Upper Hungary, prince Eugene advanced by forced and rapid marches to cover the important fortress of Peterwaradin, apparently menaced by the Turks. The grand |
