HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. CHAPTER I. IN contemplating the progress of Europe through the latter part of the seventeenth century, the attention of the student is arrested by the actions of one man-Louis XIV., King of France. He perceives every continental nation bordering on the dominions of that terrible despot paralyzed by the constant dread of encroachment and invasion. What the King will attempt next can be conjectured only by the precedents he has afforded; and his undertakings have hitherto shown in their design a contempt for the laws of society, and in their execution a degree of cruelty scarcely to be surpassed by those of an ordinary brigand. It will not have escaped the notice of the -student that the period at which his Majesty assumes the sceptre is one eminently favourable to a French prince who aspires to subvert the liberties of Europe. The first half of the century has been disastrous to every Power capable under ordinary circumstances of imposing a check upon his ambition. The chivalrous and enterprising spirit of the Spaniards has strangely disappeared. The mightiest and most prosperous nation of the preceding age, they have, under the double calamity of imbecile monarchs and a debasing priesthood, sunk into a condition of poverty and mental prostration in which it is impossible for them to defend the immense empire built up by their ancestors. Germany has been devastated, and in some regions depopulated, by the longest and bloodiest civil war on record. In Holland alone is to be found a people resolutely determined to fight for their freedom and country. Yet the Dutch are a nation of traders and fishermen rather than of soldiers. Their little Republic, defended only by a small and ill-equipped army of mercenaries, lies open to an invader; and human judgment cannot but mournfully prognosticate the futility of their resistance against an ambitious tyrant, who numbers his warriors by hundreds of thousands. Under such circumstances the reign of Louis commences, and the student perceives him through a course of thirty years taking advantage of the weakness of his neighbours, snatching from Spain a portion of the Netherlands, robbing the Empire of the province of Alsace, invading the peaceful Dutch Republic with the full intention of rooting out the religion and liberties of an industrious people, and bribing the ignoble sovereign of England to connive at and even to assist him in his iniquities. At length the scene changes. The student, not without joy that the hour of retribution has arrived, perceives all Europe banded against the tyrant, and stirred up to enthusiasm by men who have been taught from their cradles that enmity to the King of France is the first duty of every patriot. It is my design to commence this history from the accession of Queen Anne. But as the war which England, in conjunction with other Powers, carried on against France forms the chief feature of her reign, and as this war was entirely provoked by the conduct of Louis, a brief summary of the French king's policy will, I hope, not be regarded as a superfluous introduction. Upon two occasions in the history of modern times the ambition of France has threatened the liberties of Europe; and upon both it has been the proud fortune of England, by unsparing sacrifices of her children and her wealth, to stem the torrent of invasion, and to roll back upon France a large portion of the calamities which she had designed to inflict on other countries. At the death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661 the French Council was astounded by an announcement from Louis, then intention to take the reins of in his twenty-third year, of his government into his own hands. Up to that period the young King had attracted little notice. He had submitted to remain as passive under the authority of his mother and the Cardinal as his father had submitted to remain under the authority of Mary of Medicis and the Marshal d'Ancre. That a being so exalted as a king should attend personally to business, should read and digest the reports of secretaries and governors, and issue orders upon military and financial matters, seemed to the idle crowd who formed the Court an arrangement against nature. A succession of favourites had been the real governors of France ever since the assassination of Henry IV., a period of fifty years. That Louis XIV. would prove a very different character from his timid and melancholy father was an idea difficult to realise. He had been kept in such seclusion that little was known of him except that he appeared submissive in all things to his mother and the Cardinal, that he was fond of pleasure, that he was an elegant dancer, but that his education had been in other respects totally neglected.* The death of Mazarin produced a revolution at Court. Louis at once determined to content himself no longer with the empty name of a king. His resolution sprang not from any conscientious scruples, but simply from a love of power. He was unwilling that any creature should share or be thought to share his authority. Almost his first act evinced the tone which would, in future, characterise the government of France. A quarrel about precedence arose between the ambassadors of France and Spain in the streets of London, in which the Frenchman, less numerously attended than his rival, got the worst. All the circumstances of the affair were duly reported by the incensed diplomatist to his master. Louis, burning with indignation, sent instantly to recall his ambassador from Madrid, and gave Philip IV. to understand that, unless he at once recognised the superiority of the French crown, that terrible war between the two kingdoms, which had but recently ceased, should recommence. The pride of the Spanish monarch The following narrative is drawn chiefly from French histories of France. I have not thought it necessary to adduce particular authorities. was forced to give way before the loftily assorted power of France. A year afterwards the Duke de Créqui, by his insufferable bearing at Rome, drew upon himself the vengeance of the papal guard and the mob. Louis, failing to obtain prompt satisfaction for the insults offered to his ambassador, seized on the county of Avignon, and before long the Christian world was scandalized by a spectacle that had never yet been witnessed. A legate, solemnly appointed for the occasion, repaired to the Court of France, not to convey the commands of his Holiness, and to receive the submission of a dutiful son, but humbly to entreat forgiveness for the admitted errors of his master. By such vigorous action as this, Louis soon made himself an object of terror throughout Europe. It was soon discovered that he held no high sense of the sacredness of treaties when interest prompted him to violate them. In 1662, he, in open contravention of his recent engagements with Spain, dispatched an armament to Lisbon, under the command of Marshal Schomberg, to aid the Portuguese who had revolted from Philip. The courage and skill of the French troops enabled the Portuguese to carry off victory at the battle of Villa-viciosa, and to establish the independence of their nation. Philip not long afterwards died, his last days having been embittered by this treacherous act; and then it was that Louis fully revealed his character to the world. By a second marriage the King of Spain had left an infant son, sickly and feeble to the last degree. both in body and mind, to succeed to a vast scattered empire which the genius and activity of a Charlemagne would have been severely tested to defend. Instead of being touched by the utter helplessness of this child, to whom he stood in the relationship of first cousin, Louis took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the disunion and weakness of the Spanish government to put forward an absurd claim of inheritance to several provinces of the Netherlands. An obscure jurist had discovered that, among the ancient laws of Brabant, was a law which appears to have been originally promulgated to discountenance second marriages. It provided that the issue of a first marriage, although female, should succeed to the fiefs of both parents before any child by a subsequent union. In right |