France, and the Emperor. There still remained to subdue some hesitation in the mind of the Regent, and great reluctance on the part of his principal ministers; and Stanhope, anxious to overcome all obstacles at this crisis, undertook a journey to Paris, and held several conferences with Philip. The Marshal d'Huxelles, chief of the Council for Foreign Affairs, not only opposed the project with the greatest warmth, but absolutely refused to sign an alliance levelled against a grandson of Louis the Fourteenth. Nevertheless, Stanhope and Stair prevailed. The treaty was concluded early in July, though not finally signed till August; and, from the subsequent accession of the Dutch,' received the name of THE QUADRUPLE ALLIANCE. The basis of this celebrated treaty was declared to be the Peace of Utrecht, and its object the preservation of tranquillity in Europe. It provided, according to the intentions I have already explained, for the mutual renunciations of the King of Spain and the Emperor, for the reversion of Parma and Tuscany to the Infant Don Carlos, and for the exchange of Sicily and Sardinia between. Victor Amadeus and Charles. As a compensation for the unequal value of the two islands, the Emperor acknowledged the claims of the House of Savoy to the succession of Spain in case of the failure of Philip's issue. In twelve separate and secret articles it was stipulated, that the term of three months should be allowed for the accession of Philip and of Victor Amadeus, in default of which the whole force of the contracting parties was to be employed against both or either, and compel them to submit. In hopes, however, of still averting an appeal to arms, Stanhope determined to proceed in person to Madrid, with the secret articles, and to make every exertion to subdue the stubbornness of Alberoni. He relied very much for success on an offer of yielding Gibraltar, in case all other means should fail; an idea, of course, kept profoundly secret, and, in my opinion, quite inconsistent with our national terre," &c. (Mém. vol. xvi. p. 285 and 299.) But it is to be observed that St. Simon had a personal animosity against Dubois, and strives on every occasion to depreciate his exertions. [In the Notes to a book of Travels in Italy a few years later, mention is made of a medal of Hamerani's (the Pope's medalist), struck in 1720, on the difficulties raised by Holland against acceding to the Quadruple Alliance. It represented three persons in a wagon, viz., the Emperor, the King of Great Britain, and the Duke of Orleans, inviting a fourth, the Republic of the United Provinces, to come in. The fourth wheel of the wagon is wanting, and the Republic stands leaning on it. The inscription, Sistit adhuc quartâ deficiente rotâ. On the reverse are the words: Fœdus Quadruplex Cunctante Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Lorraine, by John George Keysler. English Translation, London, 1760. Letter 48, note.] interests, or national glory.* He also relied on some strong instructions from the Regent to M. de Nancré, which he was to carry out with him to Madrid, and which, according to St. Simon, had been dictated by Stanhope himself. With these prospects he set out from Paris, attended by Mr. Schaub (afterwards Sir Luke), a Swiss in the British service, and his confidential secretary. At that time the departure of the Spanish armament was already known, and its destination suspected in France.‡ It had sailed from Barcelona with sealed orders, which the Admiral was not to open till out at sea, and which were found to contain an injunction to steer to Cagliari, and there to open another sealed parcel enclosed. At Cagliari the real object of the expedition was at length revealed, the Admiral being directed to land the troops in Sicily, and the General to make himself master of that island. Accordingly the fleet pursued its voyage, and on the 1st of July the army was set on shore at the beautiful bay of Solanto, § four leagues distant from Palermo. That capital was unprepared for defence; many of the chief men friendly to their former Spanish rulers, or connected in blood with them, and the multitude, as usual, thinking their present grievances the worst, and looking back to the past as to the "good old times." The Marquis Maffei, the Piedmontese Viceroy, after providing for the garrison of the castle, had only at his disposal about fifteen hundred soldiers. He made a precipitate retreat, and the Spaniards a triumphal entrance; the citadel surrendered to them after a short blockade, and they confidently expected the speedy and complete reduction of the island. The motive of Alberoni in directing his arms to this quarter had been principally to avert the threatened interposition of France and England. Both powers were pledged to the neutrality of Italy, and one also to the guarantee of the Emperor's dominions; but neither of them had contracted any such obligation with regard to Sicily, or to the states of Victor Amadeus. Alberoni might therefore not unreasonably hope that they would hesitate before they plunged into a war, where they had no direct pledge to redeem, and no immediate interest to defend. He might hope, at all events, for some months of delay and negotiation, during which he trusted that his intrigues might have matured; that a domestic conspiracy might be bursting forth in France; that a Swedish or Russian army might The blame of this idea of giving up Gibraltar rests mainly with Stanhope; he had suggested it from Paris to his colleagues in England, and obtained their acquiescence. (Secretary Craggs to Earl Stanhope, July 17, 1718. See Appendix.) In another letter of Craggs to Stanhope, of Sept. 16, 1720 (Hardwicke Papers, vol. Ivii.), he alludes to "the opinion you have that Gibraltar is of no great consequence." † Mém. vol. xvi. p. 332, ed. 1829. 46 Le 1 de ce mois, moi Lord Stanhope ai vu M. le Régent. . . . . Il avait appris de très-bonne part que la flotte d'Espagne devait aller en Sicile, que l'idée du Cardinal est de s'emparer de cette isle, et que pendant l'hiver il croit pouvoir bailler assez de besogne au Roi en Angleterre et à M. le Duc d'Orleans en France."-Lord Stanhope and Lord Stair (joint letter) to Secretary Craggs, July 6, 1718. Hardwicke Papers, vol. xxv. § Solanto is close under Cape Zafarana. I remember seeing there a palace and "tonnara," or tunny fishery, of the late King of Naples. be landing in Great Britain; and that he might then, without molestation, pursue his further designs on Naples and the Milanese. Nor was he withheld by the state of his negotiation with Victor Amadeus; that negotiation had indeed proceeded to considerable lengths; but had finally failed, the King of Sicily demanding subsidies which the King of Spain was not inclined to grant. The invasion of Sicily was still further recommended by the large number of Spanish adherents, and the small number of Piedmontese troops, in that island. Flushed with the tidings of the first success in Sicily, Alberoni became less tractable than ever. The first news of the Quadruple Alliance, or rather the very idea of its possibility, excited his fury. "Could I believe," he cried, "that such a treaty was really signed, Nancré should not remain a quarter of an hour longer in Madrid. . . . The King my master will wage eternal war rather than consent to this infamous project, and he will wreak his vengeance on those who presume to threaten him with it. If Stanhope comes here, thinking to lay down the law, he will find himself ill received. I have sent him a passport as he requested, and I will hear the proposals he brings, but it will be impossible to give them the slightest attention unless they totally differ from the project."* Nor was the Cardinal daunted by the close approach and avowed object of the British expedition. On arriving off Cape St. Vincent, Admiral Byng had despatched a messenger with the tidings and with a copy of his instructions to Colonel Stanhope, requesting him to communicate both to the Spanish Government. In an interview which the British envoy consequently had with Alberoni, he found all his remonstrances met only with a burst of vehement invective against France and England; and when he presented a list of the British ships, the Cardinal furiously snatched it, tore it to pieces, and trampled it under his feet. At the close of the conversation, however, he promised to take the King's commands, and to send an answer in writing; but this answer, which was delayed for several days, brought merely a dry intimation that Admiral Byng might execute the orders of the King his master. In this temper of the Spanish Government the arrival of Lord Stanhope at Madrid on the 12th of August (he had been delayed by their remissness in forwarding his passport), could produce little effect. Finding that the Court had gone to the Escurial, he hastened thither, obtained the co-operation of the Marquis de Nancré, and had several conferences both with the King and with the Cardinal; but neither the Royal puppet, nor the minister who pulled the strings, gave him any but very slight hopes of acceding to his propositions. Even these slight hopes were dispelled by the news of the reduction of Messina. "I showed my Lord Stanhope," says the Cardinal himself, "that as long as the Archduke (the Emperor) is master of Sicily, all Italy will be the slave of the Germans, and all the powers St. Simon, Mém. vol. xvi. p. 343 and 349, ed. 1829. of Europe not able to set her at liberty. I also represented to him very clearly that to make war in Lombardy was to make it in a labyrinth, and that it was the destructive burial-place of the French and English. In conclusion, I told him that the proposition of giving Sicily to the Archduke was absolutely fatal, and that of setting bounds afterwards to his vast designs a mere dream and illusion. This is the substance of all the conferences had by my Lord Stanhope."*-From Stanhope's despatches,† however, it appears that Alberoni continued pacific professions to the last, and endeavoured to shift the blame from himself to his master. He declared that he wished for no conquests in Italy, and knew that Spain would be far more powerful by confining itself to its continent and to its Indies, and improving its internal administration, than by spreading itself abroad in Europe as before. At parting with Stanhope he even shed tears, and promised to let slip no occasion that might offer of adjusting matters, and, more than once, he bitterly complained of the King of Spain's obstinacy and personal resentment against the Emperor and the Duke of Orleans. Yet, on the other hand, he could not altogether conceal his hopes of raising disturbances in France and England; he evidently felt no small share of the animosity which he ascribed solely to his master; and he seems to have fluctuated from hot to cold fits, according as the mail from Sicily brought him favourable or unfavourable news. With respect to Gibraltar that affair was so secretly conducted, that it cannot be accurately traced. Whether, as some believe, there were other conditions (especially a large demand of territory in America) annexed to the offer, and that Alberoni would not comply with them, or whether Gibraltar itself appeared to him an inadequate reward for the relinquishment of his ambitious schemes, certain it is that the proposal did not move him from his purpose, and that the English Minister found it necessary to return homewards without succeeding in the object of his journey. But whatever resentment Stanhope might feel at the stubbornness of Alberoni, he did not fail to observe, nor hesitate to own, the eminent talents of that Minister. He who had seen Spain in the evil days of her Charles the Second, when a decrepit sovereign feebly tottered on her sinking throne; when her agriculture, her trade, and her respect among nations were all but annihilated; when famine stalked through her palaces ;§ when her officers, chosen by * Cardinal Alberoni to Marquis Beretti Landi, Aug. 29, 1718. Boyer's Political State, 1718, vol. ii. p. 222. † Stanhope's despatches from Fresneda near the Escurial, and from Bayonne on his return, are inserted in the Appendix, and give a very curious view of Alberoni's cha. racter and policy. "There is reason to believe that the offer of Gibraltar was coupled with some con dition besides the immediate accession of Spain to the peace." (Coxe's Honse of Bourbon, vol. ii. p. 329.) It may be observed that Gibraltar was about this period a source of profuse and ill-regulated expense. Lord Bolingbroke, in a despatch to Lord Portmore of March 29, 1712, complains that “at Gibraltar things have hitherto been in the utmost confusion and under the loosest management." § Lettres de Villars, p. 220. Court favour, brought back nothing from their campaigns but ignorance and promotion; when her soldiers, once the terror of Europe and the scourge of America, were reduced for want of pay to beg in the streets, or to wait at the convent doors for their daily dole of food;*-he who had seen Spain during the war of the succession, torn and bleeding with internal strife, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom-he could scarcely have believed that in the course of a few short years he should see the same country send forth an armada of nearly thirty line-of-battle ships, and of more than thirty thousand well appointed, well paid, and well disciplined troops; that this fleet should be built in the long disused and forsaken harbours of Catalonia and Biscay; that this army should be clothed from new native manufactories; that weavers from England and dyers from Holland should import their industry and ply their trade in Castille; that a great naval college should be established and flourishing at Cadiz; that new citadels should be built at Barcelona and Pamplona, and the old fortifications repaired at Rosas, Gerona, Fuenterabia, and St. Sebastian. Already had workmen begun to construct a new and extensive port at Ferrol; already had a Dutch engineer undertaken to render the river Manzanares navigable, and the capital of Spain open to water-carriage.† America, which, in the words of Alberoni, "had become Terra Incognita even to Spain," again appeared an Eldorado: and a FLOTA arriving from it during Lord Stanhope's embassy, had on board no less than six millions and a half in gold and silver. Nor had Alberoni been wholly engrossed with what is useful; objects of taste and elegance had also a part of his care. A traveller at this time might have seen a stately palace arising in the romantic wilds of Guadarrama,§ and new ornaments embellish the delicious island-garden of Aranjuez.|| Struck with See Labat's Travels, vol. i. p. 252. This was no new case. The Duke of York told Pepys how the Spanish soldiers "will refuse no extraordinary service if commanded; but scorn to be paid for it as in other countries, though at the same time they will beg in the streets. . . . . In the citadel of Antwerp a soldier hath not a liberty of begging till he hath served three years." (Pepys' Diary, December 20, 1668.) † A similar project, to connect Madrid and Lisbon by water carriage, had been formed under Charles the Second; but the Council of Castille, after full deliberation, answered that if God had chosen to make these rivers navigable, he could have done so without the aid of man, and that therefore such a project would be a daring violation of the divine decrees, and an impious attempt to improve the works of Providence! (Letters by the Rev. E. Clarke, 1763, p. 284.) The smallness of the Manzanares, which is almost dry in summer, has been a frequent subject of jest among the Spaniards themselves. That quaint old poet Gongora, however, allows it the rank of Viscount among rivers :'Manzanares, Manzanares, Os que en todo el aguatismo, Es el Duque de Arroyos, Y Vizconde de los Rios!" Boyer's Polit. State, 1718, vol. ii. p. 167. The palace of San Ildefonso, begun during Alberoni's administration, was completed in 1723. (San Phelipe, Coment. vol. ii. p. 303) These gardens seem familiar to us, from Mr. Southey's beautiful description. (Penins. War, vol. iv. p. 60.) They have been embellished by almost every successive sovereign of Spain, since Charles V. Even in the sixteenth century the place was proverbial for its fountains, and the name is humorously applied by Cervantes to issues in the leg! (Don Quixote, part 2, ch. 50, vol. vii. p. 28, ed. Paris, 1814.) |