XI. 1714. promises made at the Château d'Eu is a matter of CHAP. comparatively little importance, concerning which the statesmen of the two countries are at variance. There is no prohibition in the Treaty of Utrecht of the marriage of French princes with Spanish princesses, or vice versa; there is not a word said about such marriages at all. It was as unnecessary as it would have been ungracious; for when the succession to the crown of Madrid was strictly entailed on heirs male, no prince of the French blood, by marrying an Infanta of Spain, could endanger the peace of Europe by succeeding, through her, to the throne. Accordingly, numerous instances have since occurred of such marriages, without their having excited any attention, or been ever deemed infringements of the Treaty of Utrecht.* But when England joined with France, in 1834, to alter the order of succession in Spain, and to force a dynasty of queens, surrounded by republican institutions, on an unwilling people, the case was entirely altered. The marriage of a prince of France with an Such marriages between French princes and Spanish princesses took place on the 21st January 1721, and the 25th August 1739; and on the 23d January 1745, the Dauphin of France married the princess who, but for the Treaty of Utrecht excluding the female line, would have been heiress of the crown of Spain. But on none of these occasions was it ever supposed any infringement of the Treaty of Utrecht had taken place, or any danger to the balance of power in Europe had occurred. Nay, Louis XV. was publicly, and with the knowledge of the whole of Europe, affianced, early in life, to the Infanta of Spain. The Spanish princess was brought and lived long at Versailles, in order to be initiated into the duties of French royalty; and the match was at length broken off, not from any remonstrance on the part of the English ambassador or the diplomatic body in Europe, but because the princess being six years younger than the French king, who was nineteen years of age, his subjects were too impatient for his marriage-were too impatient to wait till it could with propriety be solemnised; and he married, in consequence, Maria Leckzinski, daughter of the King of Poland.-See DE TOCQUEVILLE'S Hist. de Louis XV., vol. i. p. 172. XI. 1714. 48. Great change which the substitution male line in Spain the interests of other powers. CHAP. infanta of Spain became then a matter of the very highest importance; it threatened the precise danger which the War of the Succession was undertaken to avert, which the Treaty of Utrecht was concluded to prevent, though it did so only imperfectly. There is, of the fe- indeed, in that treaty the most express prohibition for the male against the crowns of France and Spain being united on made in this the same head; but that is neither the real danger to respect on be dreaded, nor has England left herself any means of preventing it. It is the "Family Alliance" now concluded which is the real evil; and if the succession to the Spanish crown should open to any future King of the French, in consequence of it, how could we, who, in defiance of the Treaty of Utrecht, have opened to the Infanta the succession to the throne, object to his ascending it? We have fallen into the pit which we ourselves dug; we have been punished by the work of our own hands-another among the numerous proofs which contemporary as well as past history affords, that there is a moral superintendence of the affairs of men, and that great violations of national duty work out, in the national consequences to which they lead, a just retribution upon the third and fourth generations. 49. The subsequent change which has taken place in the The danger government of France has neither removed nor alleviated ish alliance these dangers. The Orleans dynasty may be disposby the Re sessed from the throne; a Republic may succeed; a of the Span is unchanged volution of 1848. consul, a president, or an emperor, may wield its power instead of a king-it is the same: the evil has been done, and cannot be undone. A family compact may subsist equally between affiliated republics or elective empires as between connected sovereigns; a revolutionary dynasty will never fail on a crisis to look for XI. 1714. support in governments having the same origin, and CHAP. actuated by the same interests. They will never cease to regard England with envy and jealousy, the greater, because she has achieved a combination of general freedom with stability of government, which they have been unable to effect. When a war of opinion arises-as arise it will and must in Europe-the revolutionary governments will adhere to each other, and their hostility will be mainly directed against this country. By establishing a revolutionary government on the thrones of the Peninsula, we secured a cordial and steady ally to France in every contest that may arise with the legitimate powers; the family compact between France and Spain, which Harley and Bolingbroke bequeathed, by the peace of Utrecht, to these powers in the eighteenth, will be succeeded by a national compact, from the policy of Grey and Palmerston in forming the Quadruple Alliance, in the nineteenth century. When England next faces her Continental foes, and contends for her existence on the waves, whether her enemies are directed by an emperor, a king, a president, or a consul, the fleets by which she will be menaced will issue not only from Brest and Cherbourg, but from Antwerp and Ostend, from Ferrol and Cadiz; and her faithful allies, in her greatest and most glorious struggle, will, by her own act, be converted into her bitterest and most formidable enemies. CHAPTER XII. MARLBOROUGH EUGENE-FREDERICK-NAPOLEON-WELLINGTON. CHAP. XII. 1714. 1. the system of war in Marlborough's time. THE extraordinary merit of Marlborough's military talents will not be duly appreciated, unless the peculiar nature of the contest he was called on to direct, and Change in the character which it assumed in his time, is taken into consideration. The era of feudalism had ceased-at least so far as the raising of a military force by its machinery was concerned. Louis XIV., indeed, when pressed for men, more than once summoned the ban and the arrière ban of France to his standards, and he always had a gallant array of feudal nobility in his antechambers, or around his headquarters. But war, both on his part and on that of his antagonists, was carried on, generally speaking, with standing armies, and supported by the belligerent state. The vast, though generally tumultuary, array which the Plantagenet or Valois sovereigns summoned to their support, but which, bound only to serve for forty days, generally disappeared before a few months of hostilities were over, could no longer be relied on. The modern system, invented by Revolutionary France, of making war maintain war, and sending forth starving multitudes with arms in their hands, to subsist by the plunder of the adjoining states, was unknown. The national passions had not been roused, which alone could bring it into operation. The decline of the feudal system forbade the hope that contests could be maintained by the chivalrous attachment of a faithful nobility: the democratic spirit had not been so aroused as to supply its place by popular fervour. Religious passions, indeed, had been strongly excited; but they had prompted men rather to suffer than to act: the disputations of the pulpit were their natural arena; in the last extremity, they were more allied to the resignation of the martyr than the heroism of the soldier. Between the feudal and the democratic eras there extended a long period of above a century and a half, during which governments had acquired the force, and mainly relied on the power, of standing armies; but the resources at their disposal for the support of these were so limited that the greatest economy in the husbanding both of men and money was indispensable. СНАР. XII. 1714. 2. the feudal wars. Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Edward III., and Henry V., were the models of feudal leaders, and their wars were a Nature of faithful mirror of the feudal contests. Setting forth at the head of a force, which, if not formidable in point of numbers, was generally extremely so from equipment and the use of arms, the nobles around them were generally too proud and high-spirited to decline a combat, even on any possible terms of disadvantage. They took the field, as the knights went to a champ clos, to engage their adversaries in single conflict; and it was deemed equally dishonourable to retire without fighting from the one as the other. But they had no permanent force at their disposal to secure a lasting result, even from the greatest victories. The conquest of a petty province, a diminutive fortress, was often their only result. Hence the |