Blenheim: Battle for Europe

These promotions were indicative of Louis’s conviction, in middle age, that a long reign had imbued him with a multitude of talents. This was a development ridiculed by the Duke of Saint Simon in his secret Versailles diary, who wrote of Louis: ‘He wished to reign by himself … The superior ability of his early ministers and his early generals soon wearied him. He liked nobody in any way superior to him. Thus he chose his ministers, not for their knowledge, but for their ignorance; not for their capacity, but for their want of it. It was the same with his generals. He took credit to himself for instructing them; wished it to be thought that from the cabinet he commanded and directed all his armies. Naturally fond of trifles, he unceasingly occupied himself with the most petty details of his troops, his household, his mansions.’[fn11]

The king’s talent in his prime had been in deciding on a course, and then finding others to pursue it on his behalf. From now on, he would attempt to be both principal and agent.

*

By 1695, after half-a-dozen years of hardship and famine, and with no obvious benefit from the struggle, France was crying out for peace. The Te Deum was sung often to mark yet another military victory, but the excited, united, joy of the triumphant years was missing. The demands of war were felt on the home front with increasing pain.

Regular troops of the French army, short of supplies and low on morale, were denied their right to retire from service. Still, there were not enough soldiers. A dreaded drawing of lots after Sunday church helped fill the ranks of the militia, which was rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the main army. Young men of the parish were prepared to avoid the draft through self-mutilation, or by fleeing their homes. Significantly, recruitment for the militia was confined as much as possible to rural areas, because the authorities feared uprisings in cities and towns. The military machine was starting to overheat.

Meanwhile the suffering of France’s civilians was such that Marshal Vauban estimated that a tenth of the nation was reduced to begging for food. He beseeched Louis to lessen the load on his people. In return, the most talented marshal left to France was treated with harsh recriminations by a king aghast at his impudence. Deaf to Vauban’s pleas, Louis added to his people’s burden by imposing a new poll tax, the capitation. It garnered only half the projected revenue, while helping to incite further resentment against the war and its attendant demands.

In 1696, at last accepting that his people needed respite from warfare, Louis transformed four years of covert diplomatic soundings into a sustained quest for peace. The majority of the alliance arrayed against him were receptive, many of them equally concerned by the expense of long, inconclusive, campaigns. Some of the components of the Grand Alliance were also feeling the strain of their unnatural union, which only the diplomatic skill of William of Orange had held together for so long. ‘Both the imperial and Spanish courts felt a natural unease at allying with the Protestant states of northern Europe, especially since they were, in effect, supporting a Protestant usurper against the rightful Catholic king of England.’[fn12] Ironically it was William’s two nations, England and Holland, which were keenest to end the war, and Spain, which had shown herself militarily weak, which wished to continue the fight. With Swedish mediation, peace was signed in the Dutch town of Ryswick in the autumn of 1697. In London, news that nine years of war had ended was greeted with two months of public celebrations, the likes of which had not been seen since the Restoration.

The Peace of Ryswick marked a change in direction for Louis, for this was a treaty that was to deprive France of territory: she had to surrender her gains of the previous two decades in the Low Countries and the Holy Roman Empire, and she was also obliged to withdraw from Lorraine. A more personal humiliation was inflicted on Louis when he was forced to return the principality of Orange to William and to recognise his old foe as rightful king of England. Louis completed the climb-down by swearing no longer to assist any enemy of William’s. He was not specifically named, but the displaced James II could, if the terms of the Peace were observed, no longer be helped to retrieve his forfeited crown. Louis justified his acceptance of such terms by claiming that he was prepared ‘to sacrifice the fruits of my victory to the Repose of Europe’.[fn13]

William suspected a more sinister reason behind Louis’s eagerness for peace: perhaps Louis had calculated that a resumption of arms in a few years time would not involve such a mighty coalition against him? It must have seemed unlikely that anyone other than William could galvanise such diverse forces into a unified opposition to France; and the Prince of Orange was clearly unwell, a lifetime of conflict and responsibility draining his already poor constitution. In short, given breathing space and the right pretext, could France rise to the occasion yet again, and provide Louis le Grand with another generation of warriors? Could it be that the French were only withdrawing from this conflict to prepare for the next?

Chapter Five – The Spanish Succession

Carlos II, king of Spain, of Naples and of Sicily, sovereign of Flanders, of part of Italy, of several islands in the Ocean and the Mediterranean, of the Philippines in the Indian sea, emperor of Mexico and Peru; Carlos II, without children, languished, threatened by approaching death.

Histoire de France, by Anquetil, Paris, 1832

Carlos II was the wretch to whom heredity had bequeathed the throne of Spain. The royal gene pool from which he sprang had been soured by an unhealthily close blend: Carlos’s father, Philip IV, had married his niece, Mariana of Austria, to produce this boy, the only one of their nine children to outlive his father. Carlos was so inbred that he was ‘more a medical curiosity than a man’.[fn1] His features were cruelly pronounced versions of the distinctive Habsburg physiognomy: his eyes had a thin pallor, and his jaw was so prominent that he was unable to chew; his head so outsized and his balance so poor that during his first appearance at court, as a child, his nurse suspended him from strings to keep him from stumbling forward. It was apt, given his increasing reliance on powerful aristocrats and churchmen, that Carlos was presented to his people while hanging like a puppet.

Syphilitic, afflicted with dropsy and epilepsy, sick in body and mind, his wan features and jerky twitches betrayed a festering inner torment. Carlos became convinced that he was the Devil’s creation, a belief which fostered an obsession with death. He would linger in the royal crypt and gaze with melancholy into the opened coffins of his ancestors, before climbing into his own casket. He found solace from the trials of his earthly existence in contemplation of the afterlife. Beset by ignorant doctors and scheming advisers, his struggle through increasing infirmity was gloomily watched by some of his people, who called him Carlos the Sufferer. Others observed the plethora of his afflictions, and dubbed him Charles the Bewitched. He was never expected to see adolescence, let alone adulthood; but the invalid defied such predictions to limp into manhood, carrying the potential for massive diplomatic ructions on his frail back.

The rest of Europe was more sanguine about the deformed, feeble-minded Spaniard. The details of his treatments were titillating items of gossip — the chopped chicken giblets placed on his sternum; the brutally effective purges of his intestines; the infusions of milk and pulverised pearls. However, to the key figures in the Courts of Europe Carlos’s health, throughout the four decades of his life, was of paramount concern. No matter how weak Spain had become, she retained a core importance born of her days as the premier world power. She still possessed a cornucopia of colonies and dependencies as mementoes of her heyday, from the Spanish Netherlands, the Canary Islands, California, Cuba, Florida and Mexico, to Sicily, Sardinia, Naples and Milan, and the Philippines and much of South America. However, these lands had no direct heir, despite Carlos having taken first a French queen, Marie-Louise of Orléans; then a German one, Maria-Anna of Pfalz-Neuburg. Where these prizes were destined, after the invalid king’s demise, was the backdrop for some of the most complex and important diplomacy of the last decades of the seventeenth century.

*

Carlos’s imminent death had been anticipated ever since his birth in 1661. From his earliest boyhood, when he was crowned king, the powers of Europe tried to contain the expected fall-out from the end of the Spanish Habsburg line. They sought an acceptable and controlled deconstruction of the Empire. The first attempt at this, in 1668, was termed the Partition Treaty. However, as Carlos progressed into manhood its provisions were rendered obsolete.

What remained unchanged was a desire among outsiders to stop the passing of Spain’s possessions to a single heir, since this would destroy the balance of power in Europe. One point that France, England and the United Provinces seemed consistently to agree upon was the need to divide the spoils among the potential beneficiaries. This, it was hoped, would preclude the obvious alternative: pan-European warfare, as interested parties scrambled to gain for themselves what they could, before rivals beat them to the best prizes. How to achieve this controlled detonation, in both theory and practice, exercised the great diplomats and rulers of the day.

Towards the close of the century there were three prime candidates for the Spanish inheritance: France, the Empire, and the German Electorate of Bavaria, all of whom had strong blood links to the ailing Carlos.

The main aim of The Hague and London was to ensure that the crowns of France and Spain would remain separate and distinct. The French, for their part, feared that a union of Madrid and Vienna would leave them sandwiched between the two halves of the huge Habsburg Empire of old. The clash of interests between the great houses of Europe, Bourbon and Habsburg, left Bavaria as an intriguing option. Although powerful compared to other German states, the electorate was not in the first rank of nations; neither would she be able to seek European domination, even if festooned with Spanish dominions. Secondly, the Elector of Bavaria was son-in-law of the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, whilst also being related by marriage to Louis XIV. Therefore, although an Imperial candidate, his line was not intrinsically hostile to France. The Bavarians had the classic hallmarks of the compromise candidate: acceptable to all, and threatening to none.

In 1698, Carlos II was so ill that death once more seemed imminent. France, England and the United Provinces secretly agreed to what was later known as the First Partition Treaty. The three powers consented to support the Bavarian heir, Electoral Prince Joseph Ferdinand, as Carlos’s principal successor. France and the Empire would be awarded minor territorial gains, whilst England and Holland would receive generous trading rights overseas. There was a flaw in this neat dissection: neither Spain nor the Holy Roman Empire had been included in these negotiations. There was outrage in Spain when the secrecy around the First Partition Treaty was, inevitably, breached. It was quite unacceptable to the Spanish aristocracy and senior churchmen that their overseas’ possessions should be parcelled off to outsiders. It was even more outrageous that people they regarded as allies against Louis — the Dutch and English — should have secretly colluded with the enemy. The Court was split as to who was the most appropriate heir to the throne, but it was united in wanting the inheritance to remain undivided.

It may well have been poison, or it could perhaps have been illness. Either way, after displaying disturbing symptoms, the young Electoral Prince died very suddenly in February, 1699. He was taken violently ill one afternoon, lapsed into a coma, and was dead within hours. With him died the First Partition Treaty. The diplomats of France, England and the United Provinces urgently reconvened. Count Tallard, one of Louis’s favoured soldier-diplomats, headed the French delegation. The Earl of Portland — William’s intimate favourite, and a respected figure in Paris — represented Anglo-Dutch interests. The upshot was another theoretical division of Spain’s possessions: Leopold’s second son, the Archduke Charles, would become king of Spain, ruler of the Spanish Netherlands and lord of most of the overseas territories. In return, he would be required to guarantee that these gains would never be incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire. France was to be consoled with the bulk of Carlos II’s Italian lands, as well as Lorraine. England and Holland received their customary pay-off in the form of trading concessions.

Once Louis and William had approved Tallard’s and Portland’s draft terms, Emperor Leopold was presented with a fait accompli. He had been excluded from the Second Partition Treaty and was now given just two months to agree to the new negotiations. Angered, he dismissed the suggestion as impudent effrontery. Leopold knew that the century-and-a-half since Charles V’s division of his lands had been threaded through with marital alliances between the two Habsburg families. These had been open recognition of a deeper understanding: that, if one branch of the family died off, the other would succeed it. For others to interfere in family matters, and questions of sovereignty, was an outrage.

Despite the proposed strictures of the Second Partition Treaty, Leopold remained optimistic that his line would succeed that of his childless cousin. The Emperor had a powerful advocate in Maria-Anna of Pfalz-Neuburg, his sister-in-law and Carlos’s queen. She urged her ailing husband to leave his lands to Archduke Charles, her nephew and Leopold’s son from his third wife. Maria-Anna had displayed her loyalties on learning about the Second Partition Treaty: she ‘flew into such a towering rage that she smashed up the furniture in her apartment, paying special attention to the mirrors and other ornaments that were of French origin’.[fn2] The queen followed her tantrum with ceaseless intercessions on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire.

Louis XIV had influence and spies in every European Court. Nowhere were they more active than in Spain. The coded despatch that arrived at Fontainebleau, near Paris, on the morning of 9 November 1700 was from Blécourt, the French ambassador in Madrid, and it contained the news that two generations of Europeans had awaited: Carlos II had died. More excitingly, Blécourt reported, near the end, the dying monarch had signed a new Will in which he had left his territories in their entirety to Philip of Anjou, Louis’s younger grandson. Sustained French lobbying and some selective bribery had helped secure this result. However, the influence of Spanish churchmen tending the king was significant. They insisted on keeping the German queen away from Carlos’s deathbed while they worked on their victim. The invalid’s attentions were elsewhere: ‘The king of Spain was beginning to see the things of this world by the light alone of that awful torch which is lighted to lighten the dying.’[fn3]

Free from Maria-Anna’s interference, the Spanish Establishment focused Carlos’s distracted mind on maintaining the integrity of the empire. John Evelyn wrote in his diary that ‘the Spanish Counsels dreaded nothing so much as the dismembering of [their] dominions, & this ’tis believed, induced them to make the King settle it by Will.’[fn4] If this meant a French prince being brought in as their king, then that was preferable to seeing their overseas territories cut up and distributed to a variety of different rulers. Alexander Stanhope, the English ambassador, believed that the Spanish ‘would rather deliver themselves to the devil, so that they could all go together, rather than be dismembered.’[fn5] Besides, the grandees and churchmen detested the Austrians — they had been too influential in Spain for too long. Louis was unique among the rulers of Europe in having the power to guarantee the Spanish status quo, and Carlos believed it his duty to hold his inheritance together. When he looked for vindication for favouring the French, Pope Innocent XII assured him this was indeed the right choice.

The Will was signed at the beginning of October. Carlos added a codicil, asking that Anjou marry an Imperial princess, in the hope that this might avert warfare. The king then stumbled to his ancestors’ tombs to plead forgiveness for handing their empire to France, the historic enemy. Four weeks later he joined them in the mausoleum, finally at peace in his longed-for coffin.

Louis now had to decide whether to honour the Second Partition Treaty and reluctantly decline his grandson’s proffered inheritance, or to accept the terms of the Will, and gain huge swathes of territory. The nineteenth-century historian, Sir Edward Creasy, argued that all Louis’s earlier conflicts throughout Europe were mere preludes to this crescendo, for, ‘It must be borne in mind that the ambition of Louis in these wars was twofold. It had its immediate and its ulterior objects. Its immediate object was to conquer and annex to France the neighbouring provinces and towns that were most convenient for the increase of her strength; but the ulterior object of Louis, from the time of his marriage to the Spanish Infanta in 1659, was to acquire for the house of Bourbon the whole empire of Spain.’[fn6] After more than four decades, the opportunity to achieve his ultimate ambition had arrived. However, acceptance of the prize was bound to lead to war with Emperor Leopold.

Louis was unable to see a clear way forward. He summoned his three closest advisers, as well as his mistress Madame de Maintenon, and his heir the Dauphin, to examine the options and their implications. They concentrated on the proviso in Carlos’s Will that passed everything to the Austrian Archduke Charles, should Anjou decline the inheritance. The Marquis de Torcy, Louis’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs, argued that acceptance of the Will was the right course, since war with Austria seemed inevitable either way. It would therefore be folly to decline the bequeathed empire. The Dauphin agreed. Beauvillier, governor to the royal children, took a more legalistic approach. He advised Louis that he should honour the Partition Treaty, because he had given his solemn undertaking to do so. Pontchartrain, the Chancellor, merely itemised the arguments for and against each decision, without concluding which one he believed to be preferable.

Louis still could not decide. He pondered the crucial question for a few days, taking soundings from others whose opinions he valued. There was much to consider: could he persuade himself that the union of France and Spain was justifiable; that his duty as a good Christian monarch was to unite the two nations in a way that could guarantee peace in Europe in general, even if it led to a duel with Austria?

There was a further consideration. Over the previous 150 years the Habsburgs had usually held the whip hand over France. His father and grandfather had both fought off Spanish invasions, as had he, early in his reign. Was this Will therefore not a unique opportunity to put an end to the threat from across the Pyrenees, as well as from the Spanish Netherlands? Practicality, honour, logic and temptation jostled for position in Louis’s mind.

On 16 November, Versailles rippled with excitement. Louis, whose daily rituals were the fulcrum of court life, broke with tradition and invited all to hear his pronouncement on Carlos’s bequest. The king stood by the opened double doors of his study. ‘Then he ran his eyes majestically over the numerous company. “Gentlemen,” he said, showing them the 17-year-old Duc d’Anjou, “here is the King of Spain. His birth called him to this crown, the late king also, by his Will. The Spanish nation has wished it and has demanded it of me: it was the command of heaven; I have granted it with joy.”’[fn7] And thus the king of France recognised his grandson, previously a secondary figure at Versailles, as his regal equal.

While the courtiers digested the ramifications of Louis’s decision, Castel del Rey, the Spanish ambassador, fell to his knees before his new master. His utterance captured the enormity of the moment: ‘Il n’y a plus de Pyrènées’ — The Pyrenees are no more.

Louis continued, turning to Philip and exhorting him to: ‘Be a good Spaniard, that is now your first duty, but remember that you were born a Frenchman to bring about the union of the two nations; that is the way to ensure both their happiness and the peace of Europe.’[fn8] Was this simply advice to an inexperienced grandson, encouraging him to forego aggression? Or was it a veiled threat as Louis asserted his dominance over a vassal, ordering Philip to rule for France’s benefit? To the Courts of Europe, French control of Spain was a huge concern, running counter to thirty-five years of complex diplomacy.

William of Orange was in no doubt as to the correct interpretation of recent events in Madrid and Paris. He was dining at Hampton Court when informed of Louis’s decision. He leaned forward, pulling his hat hard against his features to cover an angry flush. When he regained composure he received the French ambassador to London, Count Tallard, who confirmed his master’s intent. The count had been one of the architects of the now worthless Second Partition Treaty. ‘Tallard did not utter a single word on handing me his sovereign’s letter, the contents of which are the same as of that which the States [the Dutch Parliament] have received. I said to him that perhaps I had testified too eager a desire for the preservation of peace, but that, nevertheless, my inclination in that respect had not changed. Whereupon he replied: “The king my master, by accepting the will, considers that he gives a similar proof of his desire to maintain peace.” Thereupon he made a bow and withdrew.’[fn9]

There was little that William could do. He wrote bitterly to Grand Pensionary Heinsius, the Dutch president: ‘I have never had much dependence on treaties with France, but that this solemn undertaking should be torn up in the eyes of all the world I never would have believed possible.’[fn10] William recognised that his two nations would accept Louis’s reneging on the Second Partition Treaty. The United Provinces showed no inclination for another war; indeed, its stock market rose at the news that the Spanish succession had been settled. Meanwhile the English Parliament was more openly hostile to its own king than to France’s. It contained a resentful Jacobite contingent, which intensely disliked the Dutchman on the Stuart throne. Some moderate MPs were alienated by the revelation that their foreign monarch had secretly — and, in their view, unconstitutionally — agreed the Second Partition Treaty, without reference to them.

The Tories, in power since displacing the Whigs in 1699, had little wish to become embroiled in Continental affairs. The landowners and farmers at the core of their vote had been battling with a run of poor harvests since 1693. The four-shilling in the pound tax imposed during the War of the League of Augsburg was not an experience they were keen to repeat. They were for isolationism. The Whigs appeared to be equally wary. They feared a large, peacetime, standing army, primarily on constitutional grounds. When the Peace of Ryswick drew a line under the War of the League of Augsburg, Parliament insisted that William disband his forces.

MPs were so aggressively determined about this that they almost precipitated William’s abdication and return to the United Provinces. From a war footing of 87,000 soldiers Parliament ordered the English army to be scaled down to 20,000 men. Of these, a maximum of 7,000 could be stationed in England and Scotland. William pleaded for the retention of at least 30,000 troops, but he was ignored. In a symbolic rejection of the alien king and his foreign wars, the elite Dutch Guard were ordered to quit England. William ‘was aghast. Every fibre in his nature revolted at the baseness, cruelty, and ingratitude with which his faithful troops were treated, at the same time he felt his whole European nation undermined by the blotting out of England as a military factor. But he was powerless.’[fn11]