thousand men, and the vanquished lost thirty thousand in killed, wounded, and taken, while all their camp equipage, baggage, and artillery, became the prize of the conquerors. The loss of the latter was about five thousand killed and eight thousand wounded. The results of this battle obliged the French to evacuate Germany altogether, abandon Bavaria, and retire behind the Rhine. In the meantime the war continued in northern Italy; Portugal joined the coalition; the arch-duke Charles of Austria, aided by an English force, landed in the Spanish peninsula; and an English and Dutch fleet, commanded by Sir George Rooke, stormed the important fortress of Gibraltar,' of which England has ever since retained the possession. 6. The year 1705 passed away with varied success, the French obtaining many advantages in Italy, while the allies were generally victorious in Spain and on the ocean. In 1706 OF a French force again penetrated into Germany; but the V. EVENTS 1705-6. main army, of about eighty thousand men, commanded by marshal Villeroy, advancing into the Spanish Netherlands, was met by an inferior force under the duke of Marlborough, and utterly routed in the decisive battle of Ramillies.' (May 23d, 1706.) The consequences of the battle were the loss, to France, of all the Spanish Netherlands, except the fortified towns of Mons and Namur. In 1. Gibraltar, the Calpe of the Greeks, formed, with Abyla on the African coast, the "Pillars of Hercules." The fortress stands on the west side of a mountainous promontory or rock, projecting south into the sea about three miles, and being from one-half to three-quarters of a mile in breadth. The southern extremity of the rock is called Europa Point. The north side of the promontory, fronting the long narrow isthmus which connects it with the main land, is perpendicular, and wholly inaccessible, The east and south sides are steep and rugged, and exremely difficult of access, so as to render any attack upon them, even if they were not fortified, next to impossible, so that it is only on the west side, fronting the bay, where the rock declines to the sea, and the town is built, that it can be attacked with the faintest prospect of success. Here the fortifications are of extraordinary extent and strength. The princi pal batteries are so constructed as to prevent any mischief from the explosion of shells. Vast galleries have been excavated in the solid rock, and mounted with heavy cannon; and com munications have been established between the different batteries by passages cut in the rock to protect the troops from the enemy's fire. At Gibraltar, the Arabians first landed in Spain, in the year 711. It was taken from them la 1302: in 1333 they retook it, but were finally deprived of it in 1462 by Henry IV. of Spain, August 4th 1704 the British captured it, since which time it has been repeatedly besieged and assaulted, but without success In 1729 Spain offered two millions sterling for the place, but in vain. The last attempt made for its recovery was by France and Spain combined, in 1779, during the war with England which grew out of the American Revolution. Eighty thousand barrels of gunpowder were provided for the occasion, and more than one hundred thousand men were employed, by land and sea, against the fortress. (Map No. XIII.) 2. Ramillies is a small village of Belgium, twenty-eight miles south-east from Brussels. (Map No. XV.) 3. Mons is a fortified town of Belgium, thirty-two miles south-west from Brussels. (Ma No. XV.) other quarters the tampaign was equally disastrous to Louis. Barcelona' surrendered to the English; even Madrid' submitted to the allies; and prince Eugene, breaking through the French lines at Turin, drove the enemy from Italy. 7. Louis now made overtures of peace; but the allies, hoping to reduce him lower, would not listen to them. VI. CAM 1707. The cam PAIGN OF paign of 1707 in a measure revived his sinking fortunes. On the plain of Almanza he French won a victory over the allies, as complete as any that had seen obtained during the war. (April 1707.) This victory established Philip of Anjou on the throne of Spain. In the same year prince Eugene was foiled in an attempt on the port of Toulon. In the following year, however, VII. EVENTS. (1708) Marlborough and Eugene defeated a powerful French army near the village of Oudenarde," in Flanders, and recovered Ghent and Bruges, which, a short time before, had been surprised by the French. Again the frontier of France lay completely open. VIII. 1709. 8. The year 1709 commenced with one of the most rigorcus winters ever known. Olives and vines, and many fruit trees perished; the sown grain was destroyed, and everything portended a general famine. The French populace began to 1. Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, is a city and seaport of Spain, on the Mediterranean, three hundred and fifteen miles north-east from Madrid. It is supposed to have been founded by the Carthaginians about two hundred years before the Christian era, and to have been named from its founder Hamilcar Barcino. (Map No. XIII.) 2. Madrid, the modern capital of Spain, is in the centre of the kingdom, and occupies the site of the ancient Mantua Carpetanorum, a fortified town belonging to the Carpetani. It was af terwards called Majoritum, and was taken and sacked by the Moors, who gave it its present name. (Map No. XIII.) 3. Almanza is a town of Spain in the northern part of the province of Murcia, ninety-three miles north-west from Carthagena. In the battle fought in the neighborhood of this town April 25th, 1707, the French were commanded by the duke of Berwick. The allies, in the interest of the arch-duke Charles, lost five thousand men killed on the field, and nearly ten thousand taken prisoners. (Map No. XIII.) 4. Toulon, the first naval port in France, is on the Mediterranean coast, thirty-twɔ miles Bouth-east from Marseilles. The town is strongly fortified, and has an excellent harbor. It is wholly indebted for its importance as a great naval port, and strong military position, to Louis XIV., who expended vast sums on its fortifications, and on the arsenal and harbor. (Map No. XIII.) 5. Oudenarde is a town of Belgium thirty-three miles west from Brussels. In the battle of July 11th, 1708, the dukes of Brunswick and Vendome commanded the French army. (Maş No. XV.) 6. Bruges is a town of Belgium, seven miles from the sea, and sixty miles north-west from Brussels. At a very early period Bruges was a prosperous seat of manufacturing and commercial industry. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was the central erporiem of the whole comme: cial world, and, as the leading city of the He seatic confe leracy, had resident consuls and ministers from every kingdom in Europe. (Map No. XV.) clamor from present sufferings, and the dismal prospect before them, but when the French parliament proposed to appoint deputies to visit the provinces, buy corn, and watch over the public peace, the haughty monarch reprimanded them, and told them they had as little to do with corn as with taxation. The magistrates were silent, and lesisted from farther interference with the claims of the royal prerogative. 9 With the finances in disorder, commerce ruined, and agricul tare at a stand, Louis sought peace with Holland; but the States slighting his envoys and his offers, repaid him all his past insults and pride, and he was compelled to resume the war, or submit to concessions degrading to himself and the nation. Again the chief command of the French armies was given to marshal Villars, who fought with the allies the battle of Malplaquet' (Sept. 11th, 1709); but although the latter lost the greatest number of men, the French lost the honor of the day by being driven from the position which they had chosen. The situation of Louis became desperate, when again the successes of his arms in Spain restored him to security and confidence; but domestic misfortune fell upon him, and humbled his pride more than all his military reverses had done. Most of the near relatives of the king were cut off by sudden death,-since attributed to the small pox, but then ascribed to the agency of poison. 10. While these clouds were lowering upon France and her monarch, an unexpected event changed the situations and views of all parties. Early in 1711, the death of the emperor of Austria without issue, and the succession of the arch-duke Charles, the claimant of the Spanish crown, to the sovereignty of Austria, threatened a union of the crowns of Spain and Austria in the person of one individual,an event looked upon with as much dread as the union of France and Spain in the person of Philip of Anjou. From this period the war languished; and when, by a change in English politics, Marlborough, who had supported, so nobly, the glory of England, was disgraced, and deprived of his command, the influence and support which Eng. land had given to the war were taken away. 11. Conferences opened at Utrecht in the early part of 1712, and on the 11th of April 1713, the terms of a general peace were assented 1. Malplaquet (mal-plah'-ka) is a small town of France, near the border of Belgium, forty. three miles south-west from Brussels. In the battle fought here Sept. 11th, 1700-the bloodiest in the "War of the Spanish succession"-the allies were commanded by Marlborough and Eugene The French army numbered seventy thousand; the allies eighty thousand. The ullies lost twenty thousand in killed, and the French about ten thousand (Map No. XV.) S IX. TREATY 1713. to by all the belligerents except Austria. England was gratified by the demolition of the port of Dunkirk, in the cession of Gibraltar and Minorca,' together with Newfoundland," Hudson's Bay Territory,' and the island of St. Christopher. Spain remained to Philip V. of Anjou, on his tenouncing forever all right of succession to the crown of France. The treaty of Radstadt, concluded in 1714 between France and Austria, completed that of Utrecht, and terminated the war, the Austrian emperor receiving Naples, Milan, and Sardinia, together with Spanish Flanders, in lieu of Spain,-the Spanish monarchy thus losing its possessions in Italy and the Netherlands. Louis retained the fortress of Lisle and French Flanders, while the Rhine was acknowledged the frontier on the side of Alsace." X. CHARAC TER OF THE 12. The treaties of Utrecht and Radstadt were the closing political acts of the reign of Louis XIV., who breathed his last in September 1715, after a reign of seventy-seven years, or fifty-four from the expiration of the regency. Louis LOUIS XIV. was the most despotic monarch that ever reigned over a civilized people. In the condition of France at the time of his accession, despotism was perhaps the only remedy against anarchy and it marks an overmastering spirit that the will of the monarch alone was able to bend all minds to his purposes. The nobility stood submissive before the throne,--the people, in silence and suf fering, far beneath it. But the reign of Louis has shown that des potism is not compatible with modern civilization, for everything was frozen under its chilling touch; and although letters flourished 1. Minorca. See Balearic Isles, p. 152. 2. Newfoundland, a large island of North America, off the Gulf of St. Lawrence, is celebrated for its fisheries. Since the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, it has remained in the possession of England. 3. Hudson's Bay Territory embraced a large but indefinite extent of country, mostly on the west side of Hudson's Bay. The Hudson's Bay Company has long monopolized nearly all the ur trade of British North America. 4. St. Christopher's is an island of the West Indies, nearly two hundred miles south-east from orto R.co. It was discovered and named by Columbus, but was first settled by the English in 1623. 5. Radstadt is a small Austrian town one hundred and forty-five miles south-west from Vienna. (Map No. XVII) 6. Lisle is a strongly-fortified city of France, near the Belgian frontier, one hundred and twenty-four miles north-east from Paris. Lisle is supposed to have been founded in 640. If successively belonged to the counts of Flanders, the kings of France, and the dukes of Bur gundy. (Map Nɔ. XIII.) Alsace was an eastern province of France, on the Rhine. In ancient times it was a Ger man duchy, and the inhabitants still speak German. Strasburg is the chief city. (Map No XIII) among the favored few, there was no prosperity, no learning, no life among the people; and had the progress of science, and the development of intellect, been checked by the s rong arm of authority, France would have needed nothing more to reduce her to a state of oriental simplicity and degradation. I. THE NORTH II. PETER THE GREAT OF RUSSIA, AND CHARLES XII. OF SWEDEN.~ 1. While the "war of the Spanish succession" engaged the attention of the south and west of Europe, casting a AND EAST shadow of gloom on the declining years of Louis XIV., OF EUROPE. the northern and eastern divisions of Christendom were occupied with the rivalry of two of the most extraordinary men that the world has ever known-Peter the Great of Russia, and Charles XII. of Sweden. In the preceding chapter we noticed the auspicious events which marked the beginning of the reign of the Russian monarch, just at the close of the seventeenth century, and which promised to his kingdom a rapid augmentation of power, and the opening of a new era in civilization. The results remain to be developed in the present chapter. 2. It was a leading object of the Czar,a to make Russia a great commercial nation; and for the success of his plans a free and unin terrupted communication with the ocean, by way of the Baltic Sea, was deemed of the greatest importance; but Sweden possessed the entire eastern coast of the Baltic, together with the gulfs of Finland and Liv`nia,' thus hemming in the Czar in the only quarter where his ardent wishes might, otherwise, be accomplished. During his travels he had been rudely refused admission into the citadel of Riga, which had once belonged to Russia; and this circumstance afforded him a sufficient pretext for engaging in a war with Sweden for the recovery of that valuable seaport. The kings of Denmark and Poland, both of whom had suffered from the Swedish arms, were easily induced to form an alliance with the Czar for dividing between themselves the possessions wrested from their predecessors. 2 3. Sweden was at this time (1700) governed by Charles XII., a prince only eighteen years of age who was reported by the ministers 1. Finland and Livonia are the two eastern gulfs of the Baltic. St. Petersburg, at the eastern extremity of the former, and Riga, near the head of the latter, are now the two most important cities and ports in the Russian dominions. 2. Riga is a strongly-fortified cv of Russia, situated on the river Dwina, nine miles from a entrance into the Gulf of Livonia. Population, seventy thousand. The title given by the Russians to their king, and pronounced Tzar. |