"more, my presence, in England, when I am there, does "them mischief."* Writing to the same person, seven years later, he not very consistently indulges in an empty boast, that he did not leave England till his friends had some schemes in contemplation in which he would not join. **

It may, perhaps, have some bearing to this subject, that we find Pulteney about the same time, or soon afterwards, much depressed in spirits, and seeming to make advances to the Walpoles. The day before the House rose, some remarkable civilities passed between him and Sir Robert; and proceeding on a journey to the Hague, he sent a message to Horace, who, in consequence, came to see him, and was very cordially received. "I endeavoured," says Horace, "to be easy and cheerful, and to make him so; but his con"stant complaint was lowness of spirits, and, in my opinion, "he is rather dead-hearted than sick in body; and, in other "respects, had a stranger come into the room, he would "have thought we had never been otherwise than good "friends."*** Be this as it may, the Parliamentary warfare between them was certainly waged as fiercely as ever in the ensuing Sessions.

* Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. 179.

** Ibid. p. 350. See also some acute observations in the Quarterly Review, No. cviii. p. 386.

*** Sir R. Walpole to Horace, May 25. Horace to Sir Robert, June 10. 1736. Coxe's Walpole, vol. iii.

CHAPTER XVII.

WHILE Such was the tranquillity in England, the hostilities abroad were dwindling into negotiations. The Emperor, chagrined at his losses, and foreseeing only fresh disasters should he continue to stand alone, made every effort to draw the Dutch and the English into his quarrel. He alleged positive engagements; he pleaded for the balance of power; entreaties, remonstrances, and threats were all tried in turn; he even menaced, unless he received some succours, to withdraw his troops from the Netherlands, and cede that country to the French. It may be observed, that even so early as 1714, Prince Eugene declared to Stanhope that Austria looked upon the Netherlands as only a useless drain, and accepted them rather for the sake of her allies than for her own*, but, in fact, during the whole of that century, these provinces were a constant source of uneasiness, vexation, and embarrassment to the Maritime Powers. Lord Chesterfield was, I believe, the first statesman who formed the plan to revive, as he termed it, the Duchy of Burgundy; that is, to unite Holland and Belgium, so as to construct a powerful and independent barrier against France. To this idea he alludes in one of his private letters, just after resigning the Seals.** It has since been carried into execution, under very favourable auspices, by the Congress of Vienna. Yet, above a century before, the genius of Marlborough could discern and declare the fatal obstacle which has lately marred and defeated that promising measure; and he writes to Lord Godolphin, from Flanders: “Not only the towns, "but the people, of this country hate the Dutch.” ***

See in the Appendix to this volume the letters of that year.

**To Mr. Dayrolles, September 23. 1748.

*** To Lord Godolphin, December 6. 1708.

Another hope of the Emperor was founded, as in 1726, on divisions in England. He knew that the King himself, and a section of the Cabinet, headed by Harrington, were inclined to grant him assistance, though not desiring, or not daring, to oppose the ascendency of Walpole; he expected to induce this party to join the Opposition, and thus to overthrow the all-powerful Prime Minister. For this negotiation he availed himself of one Abbé Strickland, an unprincipled adventurer, who had intrigued for the Jacobites and against the Jacobites, and been alternately a spy of the Pretender and of the English Government. In some of his juggling he had caught for himself the Bishoprick of Namur; and he had even some hopes of attaining a Cardinal's hat; but in this new enterprise he reaped neither profit nor fame.* Arriving in England under a false name, he had, indeed; a secret conference with Lord Harrington, and a gracious reception from the King and Queen; but no sooner had his real objects been developed, than Walpole stood forth, and scattered these cabals with a word. At his desire the intriguing emissary was civilly dismissed from England, and Queen Caroline wrote to the Empress, contradicting the erroneous reports of Strickland, and positively declaring, that England would not engage in the war.

Thus disappointed in all his flattering hopes, the Emperor at length, however reluctantly, consented to treat of peace under the mediation of the Maritime Powers. A plan of pacification was accordingly framed and proffered, with an armistice, to the several sovereigns at war. There being very skilful diplomatists on both sides, not a single point or punctilio was omitted, and the negotiation was spun out to an almost interminable length with forms and cavils. Yet the principal articles were early agreed upon; and, when finally matured into a treaty, were as follows: Naples

* Mr. Robinson, the English Minister at Vienna, asked Count Tarouca how the Emperor could possibly send such a person with his commission, but the Count answered, "Que voulez vous que l'on fasse? Quand on est prêt à se noyer on s'attache à tout!" Mr. Robinson to H. Walpole, November 13. 1734. (Coxe's Walpole, vol. iii.)

and Sicily were to remain to Don Carlos; on the other hand, he was to resign the possession of Parma, and the reversion to Tuscany. Augustus was acknowledged King of Poland. Stanislaus was to retain the Royal title, and to be put in immediate possession of the Duchy of Lorraine, which, after his decease, should devolve to the Crown of France. It was to Francis, the young Duke of Lorraine, that the Emperor was giving in marriage his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, the heiress of his states under the Pragmatic Sanction; yet it was not easy to persuade this young Prince to surrender his paternal dominions, the equivalent stipulated for them being only eventual and contingent, namely, the succession to Tuscany in the place of Don Carlos. However, the authority of the Emperor* and a pension from France overcame his unwillingness, and his consent became cordial before the final signatures by the death of the old Grand Duke of Tuscany, the last of the Medicis, in 1737, when Francis was immediately admitted as his heir. France and Sardinia gave their guarantee to the Pragmatic Sanction, and the latter obtained Novarra, Tortona, and other neighbouring districts. Thus was the war concluded, and thus did France obtain, from the pacific Fleury, the province of Lorraine; a richer prize than had ever crowned the aspiring genius of Richelieu, or the crafty refinements of Mazarin. England should, perhaps, have viewed with jealousy this aggrandisement of her powerful neighbour, yet, unless she had herself embarked in war, could scarcely have prevented it; and so favourable were the terms of the preliminaries generally thought, that even Bolingbroke is said to have exclaimed, "If the English Ministers had any hand in it, they are wiser "than I thought them; and if not, they are luckier than they "deserve to be."**

In another foreign quarrel, at the same time, England was more actively concerned. The servants of the PortuThe favourite Minister Bartenstein told the Duke plainly before the marriage "Monseigneur, point de cession, point d'Archiduchesse!" (Coxe's House of Austria, vol. iii. p. 162.)

** Lord Hervey to H. Walpole, January 3. 1736. (Coxe's Walpole.)

1736. DISPUTE BETWEEN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

193

guese Minister at Madrid being accused of having rescued a criminal from justice, were themselves arrested and carried to prison. Complaints were made on both sides; redress was given on neither. The diplomatists all took fire at this insult on one of their own order, and were eager to prosecute this important quarrel, both by memorials and by armies, to the last drop of their own ink and of others' blood. One of them, Senhor Azevedo, hastened over to England to claim succour for the King his master, under the Treaty of Alliance, and a war seemed fixed and unavoidable. But the prudence of Walpole warded off the blow; he sent a fleet of twenty-five ships of the line to the Tagus, under Sir John Norris, but gave him orders to act only defensively, and to urge moderation and forbearance on the Cabinet of Lisbon. At the same time, the sailing of "so terrible a fleet," as Cardinal Fleury called it*, produced a strong effect, both at Paris and Madrid; the French exerted all their influence in Spain to prevent a collision; and at length, under the pacific mediation of Fleury and Walpole, harmony was restored between the two Peninsular Courts.

In all these foreign negotiations the English Ministers found in Fleury the same judicious and conciliatory, though sometimes a little timid, temper. They were also much assisted by the close friendship of Baron Gedda, the Swedish ambassador at Paris. But the case was far otherwise with M. de Chauvelin, the French Secretary of State, who laboured on every occasion to thwart the English councils, and to exasperate the Cardinal against them. He seems to have inherited the old maxims of Louis the Fourteenth; and was even engaged in a secret correspondence with the Pretender, as his own carelessness proved; for having, on one occasion, some papers to put into the hands of the English ambassador, he added, by mistake, one of James's letters to himself, which Lord Waldegrave immediately despatched

*Earl Waldegrave to the Duke of Newcastle, June 1. 1735. (Coxe's Walpole.)

Mahon, History. II.

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