If the confederate army had broke into France,the campaign before this,or in any former campaign;and if the Germans and the Dutch had exercised then the same inhumanity,as the French had exercised in their provinces in former wars;if they had burnt Versailles,and even Paris,and if they had disturbed the ashes of the dead princes that repose at St.Denis,every good man would have felt the horror,that such cruelties inspire:no man could have said that the retaliation was unjust.But in one thousand seven hundred and twelve,it was too late,in every respect,to meditate such projects.
If the French had been unprepared to defend their frontier,either for want of means,or in a vain confidence that the peace would be made,as our king Charles the Second was unprepared to defend his coast at the latter end of his first war with Holland,the allies might have played a sure game in satisfying their vengeance on the French,as the Dutch did on us in one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven;and imposing harder terms on them,than those they offered,or would have accepted.But this was not the case.The French army was,I believe,more numerous than the army of the allies,even before separation,and certainly in a much better condition than two or three years before,when a deluge of blood was spilt to dislodge them,for we did no more,at Malplaquet.Would the Germans and the Dutch have found it more easy to force them at this time,than it was at that?Would not the French have fought with as much obstinacy to save Paris,as they did to save Mons?and,with all the regard due to the Duke of Ormond,and to prince Eugene,was the absence of the Duke of Marlborough of no consequence?Turn this affair every way in your thoughts,my lord,and you will find that the Germans and the Dutch had nothing in theirs,but to break,at any rate,and at any risk,the negotiations that were begun,and to reduce Great Britain to the necessity of continuing,what she had been too long,a province of the confederacy.A province,indeed,and not one of the best treated;since the confederates assumed a right of obliging her to keep her pacts with them,and of dispensing with their obligations to her;of exhausting her,without rule,or proportion,or measure,in the support of a war,to which she alone contributed more than all of them,and in which she had no longer an immediate interest,nor even any remote interest that was not common,or with respect to her,very dubious;and,after all this,of complaining that the queen presumed to hearken to overtures of peace,and to set a negotiation on foot,whilst their humor and ambition required that the war should be prolonged for an indefinite time,and for a purpose that was either bad or indeterminate.
The suspension of arms,that began in the Low Countries,was continued,and extended afterwards by the act I signed at Fontainebleu.The fortune of the war turned at the same time;and all those disgraces followed,which obliged the Dutch to treat,and to desire the assistance of the queen,whom they had set at defiance so lately.The assistance they had,as effectually as it could be given in the circumstances to which they had reduced themselves,and the whole alliance:and the peace of Great Britain,Portugal,Savoy,Prussia,and the States General,was made,without his Imperial majesty's concurrence,in the spring of one thousand seven hundred and thirteen;as it might have been made,much more advantageously for them all,in that of one thousand seven hundred and twelve.Less obstinacy on the part of the states,and perhaps more decisive resolutions on the part of the queen,would have wound up all these divided threads in one,and have finished this great work much sooner and better.I say,perhaps more decisive resolutions on the part of the queen,because although I think that I should have conveyed her orders for signing a treaty of peace with France,before the armies took the field,much more willingly,than I executed them afterwards in signing that of the cessation of arms;yet I do not presume to decide,but shall desire your lordship to do so,on a review of all circumstances,some of which I shall just mention.
The league made for protracting the war having opposed the queen to the utmost of their power,and by means of every sort,from the first appearance of a negotiation;the general effect of this violent opposition,on her and her ministers,was,to make them proceed by slower and more cautious steps;the particular effect of it was,to oblige them to open the eyes of the nation,and to inflame the people with a desire of peace,by showing,in the most public and solemn manner,how unequally we were burdened,and how unfairly we were treated by our allies.The first gave an air of diffidence and timidity to their conduct,which encouraged the league,and gave vigor to the opposition.
The second irritated the Dutch particularly;for the emperor and the other allies had the modesty at least not to pretend to bear any proportion in the expense of the war:and thus the two powers,whose union was the most essential,were the most at variance,and the queen was obliged to act in a closer concert with her enemy who desired peace,than she would have done if her allies had been less obstinately bent to protract the war.During these transactions,my Lord Oxford,who had his correspondences apart,and a private thread of negotiation always in his hands,entertained hopes that Philip would be brought to abandon Spain in favor of his father-in-law,and to content himself with the states of that prince,the kingdom of Sicily,and the preservation of his right of succession to the crown of France.Whether my lord had any particular reasons for entertaining these hopes,beside the general reasons founded on the condition of France,on that of the Bourbon family,and on the disposition of Louis the Fourteenth,I doubt very much.
