Chapter 2

THE "FAMILY COMPACT."

[Sidenote: 1735--The Polish throne]

The new Parliament met on January 14, 1735. The Royal intimation was given to the House of Commons by the Lord Chancellor that it was his Majesty's pleasure that they should return to their own House and choose a Speaker. Arthur Onslow was unanimously elected, or rather re-elected, to the chair he had filled with so much distinction in the former Parliament. The speech from the throne was not delivered until January 23. The speech was almost all taken up with foreign affairs, with the war on the Continent, and the efforts of the King and his ministers, in combination with the States General of the United Provinces, to extinguish it. "I have the satisfaction to acquaint you," the King said, "that things are now brought to so great a forwardness that I hope in a short time a plan will be offered to the consideration of all the parties engaged in the present war, as a basis for a general negotiation of peace, in which the honor and the interest of all parties have been consulted as far as the circumstances of time and the present posture of affairs would admit." The Royal speech did not contain one single word which had to do with the internal condition of England, with the daily lives of the English people. No legislation was promised, or even hinted at, which concerned the domestic interests of these islands. The House of Lords set to work at once in the preparation of an address in reply to the speech from the throne; and they, too, debated only of foreign affairs, and took no more account of their own fellow-countrymen than of the dwellers in Jupiter or Saturn.

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The war to which the Royal speech referred had been dragging along for some time. No quarrel could have less direct interest for the English people than that about which the Emperor Charles the Sixth and the King of France, Louis the Fifteenth, were fighting. On the death of Augustus the Second of Poland, in February, 1733, Louis thought it a good opportunity for putting his own father-in-law, Stanislaus Leszczynski, back on the throne of Poland, from which he had twice been driven. Poland was a republic with an elective king, and a very peculiar form of constitution, by virtue of which any one of the estates or electoral colleges of the realm was in a position to stop the action of all the others at any crisis when decision was especially needed. The result of this was that the elected king was always a nominee of one or another of the great Continental Powers who took it on themselves to intervene in the affairs of Poland. The election of a King of Poland was always a mere struggle between these Powers: the strongest at the moment carried its man. Stanislaus, the father of Louis the Fifteenth's wife, had been a _protégé_ of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. He was a man of illustrious family and of great and varied abilities, a scholar and a writer. Charles drove Augustus the Second, Augustus, Elector of Saxony, from the throne of Poland, and set up Stanislaus in his place. Stanislaus, however, was driven out of the country by Augustus and his friends, who rallied and became strong in the temporary difficulties of Charles. When Charles found time to turn his attention to Poland he soon overthrew Augustus and set up Stanislaus once again. But "hide, blushing glory, hide Pultowa's day"; the fall of the great Charles came, and brought with it the fall of Stanislaus. Augustus re-entered Poland at the head of a Saxon army, and Stanislaus was compelled to abdicate. Now that Augustus was dead, Louis the Fifteenth determined to bring Stanislaus out from his retirement of many years and set him for the third time on the Polish throne. On the other hand, the Emperor and Russia alike favored the son of {24} the late king, another Augustus, Elector of Saxony. The French party carried Stanislaus, although at the time of his abdication, three or four and twenty years before, he had been declared incapable of ever again being elected King of Poland. The Saxon party, secretly backed up by Russia, resisted Stanislaus, attacked his partisans, drove him once more from Warsaw, and proclaimed Augustus the Third. Louis of France declared war, not on Russia, but on the Emperor, alleging that the Emperor had been the inspiration and support of the Saxon movement. A French army under Marshal Berwick, son of James the Second of England, crossed the Rhine and took the fort of Kehl--the scene of a memorable crossing of the Rhine, to be recrossed very rapidly after, in days nearer to our own. Spain and Sardinia were in alliance with Louis, and the Emperor's army, although led by the great Eugene, "Der edle Ritter," was not able to make head against the French. The Emperor sent frequent urgent and impassioned appeals to England for assistance. George was anxious to lend him a helping hand, clamored to be allowed to take the field himself and win glory in battle; camps and battle-fields were what he loved most, he kept dinning into Walpole's unappreciative ear. Even the Queen was not disinclined to draw the sword in defence of an imperilled and harassed ally.

[Sidenote: 1735--The Emperor's denunciation of Walpole]

Walpole stuck to his policy of masterly inactivity. He would have wished to exclude Stanislaus from the Polish throne, but he was not willing to go to war with France. He could not bring himself to believe that the interests of England were concerned in the struggle to such a degree as to warrant the waste of English money and the pouring out of English blood. But he did not take his stand on such a broad and clear position; indeed at that time it would not have been a firm or a tenable position. Walpole did not venture to say that the question whether this man or that was to sit on the throne of Poland was not worth the life of one British grenadier. The time had not come when even a great minister might venture {25} to look at an international quarrel from such a point of view. Walpole temporized, delayed, endeavored to bring about a reconciliation of claims; endeavored to get at something like a mediation; carried on prolonged negotiations with the Government of the Netherlands to induce the States General to join with England in an offer of mediation. The Emperor was all the time sending despatches to England, in which he bitterly complained that he had been deceived and deserted. He laid all the blame on Walpole's head. Pages of denunciation of Walpole and all Walpole's family are to be found in these imperial despatches. Walpole remained firm to his purpose. He would not go to war, but it did not suit him to proclaim his determination. He kept up his appearance of active negotiation, and he trusted to time to settle the question one way or the other before King George should get too restive, and should insist on plunging into the war. He had many an uneasy hour, but his policy succeeded in the end.

The controversy out of which the war began was complicated by other questions and made formidable by the rival pursuit of other ends than those to be acknowledged in public treaty. It would be unjust and even absurd to suppose that Walpole's opponents believed England had a direct interest in the question of the Polish succession, or that they would have shed the blood of English grenadiers merely in order that this candidate and not that should be on the throne of Poland. What the Opposition contended was that the alliance of France and Spain was in reality directed quite as much against England as against the Emperor. In this they were perfectly right. It was directed as much against England as against the Emperor. Little more than forty years ago a collection of treaties and engagements entered into by the Spanish branch of the Bourbon family found its way to the light of day in Madrid. The publication was the means of pouring a very flood of light on some events which perplexed and distracted the outer world in the days at {26} which, in the course of this history, we have now arrived. We speak especially of the Polish war of succession and the policy pursued with regard to it by France and Spain. The collection of documents contained a copy of a treaty or arrangement entered into between the King of France and the King of Spain in 1733. This was, in fact, the first family compact, the first of a series of family compacts, entered into between the Bourbons in Versailles and the Bourbons in Madrid. The engagement, which in modern European history is conventionally known as "the family compact" between the Bourbon Houses, the compact of 1761, the compact which Burke described as "the most odious and formidable of all the conspiracies against the liberties of Europe that ever have been framed," was really only the third of a series. The second compact was in 1743. The object of these successive agreements was one and the same: to maintain and extend the possessions of the Bourbons in Europe and outside Europe, and to weaken and divide the supposed enemies of Bourbon supremacy. England was directly aimed at as one of the foremost of those enemies. In the compact of 1733 the King of France and the King of Spain pledged themselves to the interests of "the most serene infant Don Carlos," afterwards for a time King of the Sicilies, and then finally King of Spain. The compact defined the alliance as "a mutual guarantee of all the possessions and the honor, interests, and glory" of the two Houses. It was described as an alliance to protect Don Carlos, and the family generally, against the Emperor and against England. France bound herself to aid Spain with all her forces by land or sea if Spain should see fit to suspend "England's enjoyment of commerce," and England should retaliate by hostilities on the dominions of Spain, within or outside of Europe. The French King also pledged himself to employ without interruption his most pressing instances to induce the King of Great Britain to restore Gibraltar to Spain; pledged himself even to use force for this purpose if necessary. There were full and precise {27} stipulations about the disposition of armies and naval squadrons under various conditions. One article in the treaty bluntly declared that the foreign policy of both States, France and Spain, was to be "guided exclusively by the interests of the House." The engagement was to be kept secret, and was to be regarded "from that day as an eternal and irrevocable family compact." No conspiracy ever could have been more flagrant, more selfish, and more cruel. The deeper we get into the secrets of European history, the more we come to learn the truth that the crowned conspirators were always the worst.

[Sidenote: 1735--Compact between the Houses of Bourbon]

This first family compact is the key to all the subsequent history of European wars down to the days of the French Revolution. The object of one set of men was to maintain and add to the advantages secured to them by the Treaty of Utrecht; the object of another set of men was to shake themselves free from the disadvantages and disqualifications which that treaty imposed on them. The Bourbon family were possessed with the determination to maintain the position in Spain which the will of Charles the Second had bequeathed to them, and which after so many years of war and blood had been ratified by the Treaty of Utrecht. They wanted to maintain their position in Spain; but they wanted not that alone. They wanted much more. They wanted to plant a firm foot in Italy; they wanted to annex border provinces to France; they saw that their great enemy was England, and they wanted to weaken and to damage her. No reasonable Englishman can find fault with the Kings of Spain for their desire to recover Gibraltar. An English sovereign would have conspired with any foreign State for the recovery of Dover Castle and rock if these were held by a Spanish invader too strong to be driven out by England single-handed. Many Englishmen were of opinion then, some are of opinion now, that it would be an act of wise and generous policy to give Gibraltar back to the Spanish people. But no Englishman could possibly doubt that if England were determined to keep Gibraltar she must {28} hold it her duty to watch with the keenest attention every movement which indicated an alliance between France and Spain.

Spain had at one time sought security for her interests, and a new chance for her ambitions, by alliance with the Emperor. Of late she had found that the Emperor generally got all the subsidies and all the other advantages of the alliance, and that Spain was left rather worse off after each successive settlement than she was before it. The family compact between the two Houses of Bourbon was one result of her experience in this way. Of course, when we talk of France and Spain, we are talking merely of the Courts and the families. The people of France and Spain were never consulted, and, indeed, were never thought of, in these imperial and regal engagements. Nor at this particular juncture had the King of Spain much more to do with the matter than the humblest of his people. King Philip the Fifth was a hypochondriac, a half-demented creature, almost a madman. He was now the tame and willing subject of the most absolute petticoat government. His second wife, Elizabeth of Parma, ruled him with firm, unswerving hand. Her son, Don Carlos, was heir in her right to the Duchies of Parma and Placentia, but she was ambitious of a brighter crown for him, and went into the war with an eye to the throne of Naples. The Emperor soon found that he could not hold out against the alliance, and consented to accept the mediation of England and the United Provinces.

The negotiations were long and dragging. Many times it became apparent that Louis on his part was only pretending a willingness to compromise and make peace in order to strengthen himself the more for the complete prosecution of a successful war. At last a plan of pacification was agreed upon between England and Holland and at the same time the King of England entered into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the King of Denmark, this latter treaty, as George significantly described it in the speech from the throne, "of great importance in {29} the present conjuncture." These engagements did not pass without severe criticism in Parliament. It was pointed out with effect that the nation had for some time back been engaged in making treaty after treaty, each new engagement being described as essential to the safety of the empire, but each proving in turn to be utterly inefficacious. In the House of Lords a dissatisfied peer described the situation very well. "The last treaty," he said, "always wanted a new one in order to carry it into execution, and thus, my Lords, we have been a-botching and piecing up one treaty with another for several years." The botching and piecing up did not in this instance prevent the outbreak of the war. The opposing forces, after long delays, at length rushed at each other, and, as was said in the speech from the throne at the opening of the session of 1736, "the war was carried on in some parts in such a manner as to give very just apprehensions that it would unavoidably become general, from an absolute necessity of preserving that balance of power on which the safety and commerce of the maritime powers so much depend." With any other minister than Walpole to manage affairs, England would unquestionably have been drawn into the war. Walpole's strong determination and ingenious delays carried his policy through.

[Sidenote: 1735--"Bonnie Prince Charlie"]

The war has one point of peculiar and romantic interest for Englishmen. Charles Edward Stuart, the "bonnie Prince Charlie" of a later date, the hero and darling of so much devotion, poetry, and romance, received his baptism of fire in the Italian campaign under Don Carlos. Charles Edward was then a mere boy. He was born in the later days of 1720, and was now about the age to serve some picturesque princess as her page. He was sent as a volunteer to the siege of Gaeta, and was received with every mark of honor by Don Carlos. The English Court heard rumors that Don Carlos had gone out of his way to pay homage to the Stuart prince, and had even acted in a manner to give the impression that he identified himself with the cause of the exiled family. There were demands {30} for explanation made by the English minister at the Spanish Court, and explanations were given and excuses offered. It was all merely because of a request made by the Duke of Berwick's son, the Spanish prime-minister said. The Duke of Berwick's son asked permission to bring his cousin Charles Edward to serve as a volunteer, and the Court of Spain consented, not seeing the slightest objection to such a request; but there was not the faintest idea of receiving the boy as a king's son. King George and Queen Caroline were both very angry, but Walpole wisely told them that they must either resent the offence thoroughly, and by war, or accept the explanations and pretend to be satisfied with them. Walpole's advice prevailed, and the boy prince fleshed his maiden sword without giving occasion to George the Second to seek the ensanguined laurels for which he told Walpole he had long been thirsting. The Hanoverian kings were, to do them justice, generally rather magnanimous in their way of treating the pretensions of the exiled family. We may fairly assume that the conduct of the Spanish prince in this instance did somewhat exceed legitimate bounds. George was wise, however, in consenting to accept the explanations, and to make as little of the incident as the Court of Spain professed to do.

[Sidenote: 1735--Success of Walpole's policy]

Incidents such as this, and the interchange of explanations which had to follow them, naturally tended to stretch out the negotiations for peace which England was still carrying on. Again and again it seemed as if the attempts to bring about a settlement of the controversy must all be doomed to failure. At last, however, terms of arrangement were concluded. Augustus was acknowledged King of Poland. Stanislaus was allowed to retain the royal title, and was put in immediate possession of the Duchy of Lorraine, which after his death was to become a province of France. The Spanish prince obtained the throne of the Two Sicilies. France was thought to have done a great thing for herself by the annexation of Lorraine; in later times it seemed to have been an ill-omened acquisition. {31} The terms of peace were, on the whole, about as satisfactory as any one could have expected. Walpole certainly had got all he wanted. He wanted to keep England out of the war, and he wanted at the same time to maintain and to reassert her influence over the politics of the Continent. He accomplished both these objects. Bolingbroke said it was only Walpole's luck. History more truly says it was Walpole's patience and genius.

Did Walpole know all this time that there was a distinct and deliberate family compact, a secret treaty of alliance, a formal, circumstantial, binding agreement, consigned to written words, between France and Spain, for the promotion of their common desires and for the crippling of England's power? Mr. J. R. Green appears to be convinced that "neither England nor Walpole" knew of it. The English people certainly did not know of it; and it is commonly taken for granted by historians that while Walpole was pursuing his policy of peace he was not aware of the existence of this family compact. It has even been pleaded, in defence of him and his policy, that he did not know that the war, in which he believed England to have little or no interest, was only one outcome of a secret plot, having for its object, among other objects, the humiliation and the detriment of England. There are writers who seem to assume it as a matter of certainty that if Walpole had known of this family compact he would have adopted a very different course. But does it by any means follow that, even if he had been all the time in possession of a correct copy of the secret agreement, he would have acted otherwise than as he did act? Does it follow that if Walpole did know all about it, he was wrong in adhering to his policy of non-intervention? A very interesting and instructive essay by Professor Seely on the House of Bourbon, published in the first number of the _English Historical Review_, makes clear as light the place of this first family compact in the history of the wars that succeeded it. Professor Seely puts it beyond dispute that in every subsequent movement of France and Spain the {32} working of this compact was made apparent. He shows that it was fraught with the most formidable danger to England. Inferentially he seems to convey the idea that Walpole was wrong when he clung to his policy of masterly inactivity, and that he ought to have intervened in the interests of England. We admit all his premises and reject his conclusion.

Walpole might well have thought that the best way to mar the object of the conspirators against England was to keep England as much as possible out of continental wars. He might well have thought that so long as England was prosperous and strong she could afford to smile at the machinations of any foreign kings and statesmen. We may be sure that he would not have allowed himself to be drawn away from the path of policy he thought it expedient to follow by any mere feelings of anger at the enmity of the foreign kings and statesmen. He might have felt as a composed and strong-minded man would feel who, quite determined not to sit down to the gaming-table, is amused by the signals which he sees passing between the cheating confederates who are making preparations to win his money. Besides, even if he knew nothing of the family compact, he certainly was not ignorant of the general scope of the policy of France and of Spain. He was not a man likely at any time to put too much trust in princes or in any other persons, and we need not doubt that in making his calculations he took into full account the possibility of France and Spain packing cards for the injury of England. The existence of the family compact is a very interesting fact in history, and enables us now to understand with perfect clearness many things that must have perplexed and astonished the readers of an earlier day. But, so far as the policy of Walpole regarding the war of the Polish Succession was concerned, we do not believe that it would have been modified to any considerable extent, even if he had been in full possession of all the secret papers in the cabinet of the King of France and the Queen of Spain.

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[Sidenote: 1735--Professor Seely and the secret treaty]

But is it certain that Walpole did not know of the existence of this secret treaty? It is certain now that if he did not know of it he might have known. Other English statesmen of the day did know of it--at least, had heard that such a thing was in existence, and were or might have been forewarned against it. Professor Seely puts it beyond doubt that the family compact was talked of and written of by English diplomatists at the time, was believed in by some, treated sceptically by others. The Duke of Newcastle actually called it by the very name which history formally gives to the arrangement made many years after and denounced by Burke. He speaks of "the offensive and defensive alliance between France and Spain, called the _pacte de famille_." Is it likely, is it credible, that Walpole had never heard of the existence of a compact which was known to the Duke of Newcastle? Archdeacon Coxe, in his "Life of Walpole," contends that Newcastle was not by any means the merely absurd sort of person whom most historians and biographers delight to paint him. "He had a quick comprehension and was a ready debater," Coxe says, although without grace or style. "He wrote with uncommon facility and great variety of expression, and in his most confidential letters, written so quickly as to be almost illegible, there is scarcely a single alteration or erasure." But certainly Newcastle was not a man likely to keep to himself the knowledge of such a fact as the family compact, or even the knowledge that some people believed in the existence of such an arrangement. For ourselves, we are quite prepared to assume that Walpole had heard of the family compact, but that it did not disturb his calculations or disarrange his policy. From some of his own letters written at the time it is evident that he did not put any faith in the abiding nature of family compacts between sovereigns. More than once he takes occasion to point out that where political interests interfered family arrangements went to the wall. As to the general rule Walpole was quite right. We have seen the fact illustrated over and over again even in our {34} own days. But Walpole appears to have overlooked the important peculiarity of this family compact; it was an engagement in which the political interests and the domestic interests of the families were at last inextricably intertwined; it was a reciprocal agreement for the protection of common interests and the attainment of common objects. Such a compact might be trusted to hold good even among Bourbon princes. On the whole, we are inclined to come to the conclusion that if Walpole knew anything about the compact--and we think he did know something about it--he was quite right in not allowing it to disturb his policy of non-intervention, but that he was not quite sound in his judgment if he held his peaceful course only because he did not believe that such a family bond between members of such a family would hold good. "Tenez, prince," the Duc d'Aumale wrote to Prince Napoleon-Jérôme in a pamphlet which was once famous, "there is one promise of a Bonaparte which we can always believe--the promise that he will kill somebody." One pledge of a Bourbon with another Bourbon the world could always rely upon--the pledge to maintain a common interest and gratify a common ambition.

[Sidenote: 1735--Death of Berwick]

The war cost one illustrious life, that of the brave and noble Duke of Berwick, whom Montesquieu likened to the best of the heroes of Plutarch, or rather in whom Montesquieu declared that he saw the best of Plutarch's heroes in the life. When Bolingbroke was denouncing the set of men who surrounded James Stuart at St. Germains he specially exempted Berwick from reproach. He spoke of Berwick as one "who has a hundred times more capacity and credit than all the rest put together," but added significantly that he "is not to be reckoned of the Court, though he has lodgings in the house." Berwick was the natural son of James the Second and Arabella Churchill, sister to the Duke of Marlborough. When the day of James's destiny as King of England was over, Berwick gave his bright sword to the service of France. He became a naturalized Frenchman and rose to the command {35} of the French army. He won the splendid victory of Almanza over the combined forces of England and her various allies. "A Roman by a Roman valiantly o'ercome," defeated Englishmen might have exclaimed. He was killed by a cannon-ball on ground not far from that whereon the great Turenne had fallen--killed by the cannon-ball which, according to Madame de Sevigne, was charged from all eternity for the hero's death. Berwick was well deserving of a death in some nobler struggle than the trumpery quarrel got up by ignoble ambitions and selfish, grasping policies. He ought to have died in some really great cause; it was an age of gallant soldiers--an age, however, that brought out none more gallant than Berwick. Of him it might fairly be said that "his mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes." This unmeaning little war--unmeaning in the higher sense--was also the last campaign of the illustrious Prince Eugene. Eugene did all that a general could do to hold up against overwhelming odds, and but for him the victory of the French would have been complete. The short remainder of his life was passed in peace.

Walpole gave satisfaction to some of those who disliked his peace policy by the energy with which he entered into the settlement of a petty quarrel between Spain and Portugal. The dispute turned on a merely personal question concerning the arrest and imprisonment of some servants of the Portuguese minister at Madrid. Walpole was eagerly appealed to by Portugal, and he took up her cause promptly. He went so far as to make a formidable "naval demonstration," as we should now call it, in her favor. But he was reasonable, and he was determined that Portugal too should be reasonable. He recommended her to show a willingness to come to terms, while at the same time he brought so much pressure to bear on Spain that Spain at last consented to refer the whole dispute to the arbitrament of England and France. The quarrel was settled, and a convention was signed at Madrid in July, 1736. It was a small matter, but it might at such a time have led {36} to serious and increasing complications if it had been allowed to go too far. Walpole unquestionably showed great judgment and firmness in his conduct, and he bore himself with entire impartiality. Spain was in the wrong, he thought, but not so absolutely or wilfully in the wrong as to justify Portugal in standing out for too stringent terms of reparation. At one time it seemed almost probable that the English minister would have to employ force to coerce his own client into terms as well as the other party to the suit. But Walpole "put his foot down," as the modern phrase goes, and the danger was averted. Even Cardinal Fleury, who co-operated with Walpole in bringing about the settlement, thought at one time that Walpole was too strenuous and was likely to overshoot the mark.

[Sidenote: 1736--Walpole's peace policy]

England had troubles enough of her own and at home about this time to occupy and absorb the attention of the most devoted minister. To do Walpole justice, it was no fault of his if the activity of English statesmanship was compelled to engage itself rather in the composing of petty quarrels between Spain and Portugal than in any continuous effort to improve the condition of the population of these islands. He had at least a full comprehension of the fact that domestic prosperity has a good deal to do with sound finance, and that sound finance depends very much upon a sound foreign policy. But the utter defeat of his excise scheme had put Walpole out of the mood for making experiments which might prove to be in advance of the age. He had no ambition to be in advance of his age. He was not dispirited or disheartened; he was not a man to be dispirited or disheartened, but he was made cautious. He had got into a frame of mind with regard to financial reform something like that into which the younger Pitt grew in his later years with regard to Catholic emancipation: he knew what ought to be done, but felt that he was not able to do it, and therefore shrugged his shoulders and let the world go its way. Walpole was honestly proud of his peace policy; more {37} than once he declared with exultation that while there were fifty thousand men killed in Europe during the struggle just ended, the field of dead did not contain the body of a single Englishman. Seldom in the history of England has English statesmanship had such a tale to tell.

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