384 First Treaty of Partition [1698 of the negotiations between Louis and William; they were protracted through many months, a considerable number of offers and demands being exchanged. All these labours at last terminated in the First Treaty of Partition, signed at the Hague on October 11, 1698. By this Treaty neither France nor Austria, but the Electoral Prince, was declared though not the sole yet the principal heir of the Spanish monarchy. Spain proper, India and the Netherlands, which latter were already under the governorship of the Elector of Bavaria, were assigned to his son, Joseph Ferdinand. The Italian dependencies, however, were detached from Spain proper. The French Dauphin was to receive the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, the places belonging to Spain along the coast, Tuscany and the marquisate of Finale; together with the Spanish province of Guipuzcoa, contiguous to France. The duchy of Milan was to fall to Archduke Charles, the second son of Leopold. This agreement was, after the exchange of the ratifications, to be communicated to the Emperor and to the Elector of Bavaria, in order to obtain their approbation. The Treaty of the Hague did not long remain unknown to the Spaniards. Some time since, the Court of Madrid had been alarmed by the familiar intercourse of Tallard with King William, as well as with the foremost Dutch statesman, the Pensionary Heinsius. From Holland, where no political negotiation could be kept secret, news reached Madrid, through different channels, of an intended Partition of the Spanish monarchy. Vehement indignation arose among the Spanish people. "They will rather," wrote Stanhope, "deliver them selves up to the French or the devil, so they may go all together, than be dismembered." Thus it was as an immediate consequence of the Partition Treatynot, as Ranke says, independently of it-that the idea arose in Spain. of securing a recognition of the rights of the Electoral Prince by the Government, not indeed in the sense of Louis and William, but as a means of transferring the dominions of the Crown of Spain undiminished. from Charles II to his successor. Herein lay the fundamental distinction between the two schemes for settling the Spanish question. In a letter from Louis XIV to Harcourt, he clearly explains the difference. He considers that the Electoral Prince, when of age, will not object to the renunciations imposed on him by the Partition Treaty, if this treaty should be the sole source of his right; but that, were he appointed by a royal will, his title would be much stronger, and he might on some future day declare that, during his minority, the Powers had done him injustice, alienating from him part of his inheritance. Harcourt was therefore to do his utmost to prevent a will being made by Charles II. In this attempt, however, he failed. On November 14, 1698, the Spanish monarch assembled his councillors round him in his palace. He said that he had called them together on account of the most considerable matter that could concern the monarchy; that, since his 1698-9] Charles' will in favour of Joseph Ferdinand 385 last fits of illness, he had been advised to dispose of the Succession before his death; which, in consequence, he had done, and so would have them know his last will before God should call him. In the document, then read by his secretary, the King had appointed the Electoral Prince of Bavaria his successor to the Crown, confirming at the same time the testament of Philip IV. In case of a minority of the future King, Queen Mary Anne was to hold the regency together with a Junta of six persons. And, when the King should have become competent to take the government into his own hands, she was to have a fixed income of 800,000 dollars, and liberty to live in any town in Spain that she might prefer. The councillors, after hearing all this, retired without giving an opinion or even making a reply. This will of Charles II was the counter-stroke of Spain against the policy of the Partition Treaty, an attempt to save the integrity of the monarchy, to deliver it from the danger of being dismembered which threatened it from the agreement between France and the Maritime Powers. Charles had ordered his councillors to keep the secret; but the solemn act performed in the royal palace could not fail to command general attention. A fortnight later, Harcourt was able to send exact details to France; within a few weeks the news had spread through Europe, and everywhere it caused the greatest excitement in the diplomatic world. Those who were ignorant of the contents of the Partition Treaty, as the Ministers of the Emperor still were at that time, were inclined to believe that this great transaction could not have been accomplished without the previous knowledge and consent of France "— the more so since the French Ministers seemed to be well satisfied with the news from Madrid. Others, familiar with the intentions of William and Louis, like Grand Pensionary Heinsius, declared that France would never consent to the will, and that her ambassador in Spain would doubtless hand in a note of protest. Marshal Tallard went so far as to assert that, if this intelligence as to the will should prove true, he was sorry to say that a new war was imminent. In England the public looked with indifference, or even with satisfaction, on the supposed settlement of the great Spanish question, being delivered from the fear that a French prince might succeed in Spain, and glad not to be disturbed in their trade with that country and its colonies. Who can say whether by the succession of the Electoral Prince, had it taken place in one form or another, a general war would really have been avoided? In Austria at least, there was little inelination to submit either to the Partition Treaty or to the will of Charles II. But now an unexpected event happened. The young Joseph Ferdinand suddenly died (February 5, 1699). The cause of his death was officially said to have been small-pox; but reports were spread and the Elector himself seemed to believe in them to the effect that some sinister design had ended the life of his son. C. M. H. V. -- 25 378 English and Dutch commercial interests [1660-97 interest of their commercial policy. Both of them wished to exclude French competition from the trade they carried on with the Spanish monarchy. Thus they were both alarmed at the prospect of the change that would occur in the economic condition of Spain, when the rule over the monarchy of Philip II should pass from the weak tenure of her present King, to be placed in the hands of the mightiest Prince in Europe. "The preservation of the commerce between the kingdoms of Great Britain and Spain was one of the chief motives that induced our two royal predecessors to enter into the late long, expensive war, and one of the principal benefits expected by our people from the conclusion of a peace after such a glorious and uninterrupted course of successes, and is of the greatest importance to the interest of our subjects, and to the riches of our dominions." These words occur in the instructions given in 1716 to Paul Methuen, the first British Minister accredited at Madrid after the close of the War of the Spanish Succession. They were intended to express the purpose which England had followed throughout all the successive stages of the Spanish question, both in peace and in war. The commercial intercourse which England and Holland maintained with Spain and her dependencies was indeed highly important. Yet, for the reasons indicated above, the industry of Spain had never reached any very considerable height - not even, as some believe, in the sixteenth century, when her influence in European politics had attained to its highest point. It was therefore only natural that an enormous amount of foreign manufactures was imported into Spain. England, Holland and France were the principal nations trading in the many articles of European industry. Especially between England and Holland there was constant emulation as to their respective shares in the commerce with Spain and her colonies. During the whole of the seventeenth century, it had been doubtful which of the two Maritime Powers would derive the greater advantage from this trade. Before the English Civil War, the competition of the Dutch having ceased in consequence of their war with Spain, the English had become, as Roger Coke said, "proprietors of the trade with Spain and by consequence great sharers in the wealth of the West Indies." But, when Oliver's breach with Spain followed, the relation between the two nations seemed altogether inverted; the English trade to Spain stopped, while the Dutch, having made their peace, were the masters of the Spanish commerce. After the Restoration, however, the English Government succeeded in restoring the trade on the ancient basis. The old privileges were renewed; the English merchants were enabled to take up their old position in Spanish commerce, and held it in competition with the Dutch through the lifetime of Charles II of Spain. Looking back to the time before the War of the Spanish Succession, William Wood, in his Survey of Trade, states that the goods exported 1665-96] Spanish feeling. Infirmity of Charles II 379 by the English to Spain were different kinds of cloths, stuffs, cotton and silk, fish and other commodities. The goods imported from Spain in return were wine, oil, wool, iron, and other articles, and the balance paid to England in bullion had been very great. A considerable number of British merchants at that time lived in Cadiz and other ports of Spain, which were the marts of the English manufactures for the Indies. Besides this, a great carrying-trade was carried on by English ships between Spain and other countries. Even the intercourse between Spain and her colonies in the West was, under the names of Spanish firms, in a great measure carried on by English and Dutch merchants. If to this are added the numerous legal and illegal advantages gained by British and Dutch merchants, the large smuggling trade in progress between the West Indies and the American continent, the deficiencies of the Habsburg administration in Spain as compared with that of nations much further advanced in their economic development, it becomes evident why the British and Dutch merchants derived the greatest benefit from the colonial possessions of Spain. To the Crown not much was left besides the trouble of administration. The enormous amount of bullion brought over every year by the silver-fleets from the New World only reached the Spanish ports in order to fill the pockets of the foreign merchants. Ever since the testament of Philip IV, confirmed by the Cortes of Spain, had been drawn up for settling the Succession to the throne, this great question had continued to occupy the minds of the Spanish people as well as the Cabinets of Europe. The weak physical constitution of Charles II seemed to presage a premature death. He was never healthy and often so ill that his life was despaired of. The well-known Habsburg type seemed in him exaggerated to a caricature. His lower jaw stood out so far that the two rows of teeth could hardly meet. His diseases were so many that even at his Court there were some persons, and the doctors among them, who would repeat the saying common among the superstitious people, that his sufferings were caused by witchcraft. Whenever his health improved, the recovery was ascribed to a miracle. In his dangerous illness in 1696 the King was cured by the intervention of St Diego of Alcalà, whose body had been brought to him in his greatest extremity. Every fit of illness that befell Charles II alarmed Europe. But still the Powers postponed during many years any decisive resolution on the point, the more so since the policy of Louis XIV set difficult problems enough to European diplomacy. Nothing had been settled, when the Congress was at work at Ryswyk to secure anew the peace of Europe. Indeed, the great question more than once threatened to confuse the labour of the diplomatists- especially in the autumn of 1696, when not only Charles II, but also his Queen, who had been believed of late to be with child, was dangerously ill. A few weeks later William III had to oppose 380 The Succession question after Ryswyk [1697-8 the Imperial Court, which wished the Spanish Succession to be fixed by one of the articles of the Treaty to be concluded. Practically no serious negotiation had been opened on the Spanish question, and no decision had been taken in regard to it, when the peace instruments were signed at Ryswyk. In any endeavour to describe the development of this question from the Treaty of Ryswyk onward to the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, it is necessary to distinguish between the proceedings and events which took place at the Court of Madrid, and the political transactions among the European statesmen outside Spain. For neither could his Catholic Majesty alone make an arrangement sure to satisfy all and therefore to meet with a general assent, nor were the other Powers likely, even if they came to an unanimous conclusion, to obtain for it the approval of the Spanish nation. Castilian pride would never admit the possibility that the monarchy of Philip II could be dismembered, or give room to any doubt, except as to whether the sole heir of the monarchy of Charles II should be a Bourbon or a Habsburg or a Bavarian prince; and, further, held it indispensable that the choice should be determined within Spain itself. On the other hand, the political pretensions and commercial interests of the Powers concerned in the first or in the second line were so diverse that it seemed hardly possible to find a satisfactory solution without proceeding to a partition of the vast empire. More than at any former period in the life of Charles II, the intrigues as to the Succession began after the Peace of Ryswyk to perturb court life at Madrid, where each candidate had his own party —where at one day the French, at another the Austrian or Bavarian, influence seemed to prevail. Next to these, the hereditary right of the Duke of Savoy, whose great-grandmother had been a daughter of Philip II, was also much discussed. Indeed, in addition to these European dynasties, the pretensions of certain noble personages in Spain were also occasionally brought up who could lay claim to at least one or another part of the great inheritance. Among these was even the bearer of the great name of Montezuma. During the greater part of the following year, while the health of Charles II was in a very desperate state, the general inclination in Spain seemed to be in favour of a French Prince. The ambassador of Louis XIV made all imaginable endeavours, squandering great sums of money, to strengthen the French sympathies among the common people. His influence grew stronger every day. "The French ambassador," wrote Stanhope, "dares all this Court, as a hawk does larks." It might be expected that no opposition would be attempted, if after the death of the invalid monarch a Bourbon prince should come into the country as his successor. And this single condition only had to be fulfilled, that the two neighbouring monarchies should remain distinct from each other. The Austrian party at the Court of Madrid consisted at this time |