LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class THE STORY OF BRITISH DIPLOMACY Its Makers and Movements BY T. H. S. ESCOTT AUTHOR OF SOCIETY IN THE COUNTRY HOUSE," " KING EDWARD AND HIS COURT," ETC. UN;V PHILADELPHIA : GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO., PUBLISHERS (All Rights Reserved) CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY i II. Two CENTURIES OF ENGLISH DIPLOMACY (1485-1697) 12 HI. TREATIES AND THEIR MAKERS, FROM RYSWICK TO UTRECHT 38 IV. EARLY HANOVERIAN DIPLOMACY 59 V. CHATHAM : HIS WORK AND ITS RESULTS 90 VI. THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE FOREIGN OFFICE - 114 VII. THE FOREIGN OFFICE IN WAR TIME (1792-1806)- 143 VIII. HIGH POLITICS AND HIGH FINANCE 177 IX. FROM TILSIT TO CHAUMONT - 206 X. THE BEGINNINGS OF NON-INTERVENTION 237 XI. THE CANNING TRADITION 264 XII. REACTION TO INTERVENTION - 294 XIII. THE PASSING OF PALMERSTON 332 XIV. OFFICIAL AND UNOFFICIAL DIPLOMATISTS 361 XV. NEW VIEWS AND VENTURES - 384 INDEX - 409 Vll 208132 +* PREFACE A HISTORY of English diplomacy, that attempted the revelation of Foreign Office secrets, might resolve itself into a series of imaginative conjectures, sure to prove often most unhistoric and generally unedifying. The less ambitious object of this work is systematically to disentangle the thread of inter- national narrative from the general events of contem- porary history. Those events have been entirely avoided, except when they formed a part of the particular subject in hand. When the notion first suggested itself to me some years ago, I was in the habit, as a writer for the public press, of seeing several of those high in authority at the Foreign Office or in the diplomatic service. Among these were Lords Granville, Kimberley and Salisbury. The first of these was kind enough to recall for my instruction an oral account of the course of our diplomacy he had himself received, when first going to the Foreign Office in 1851, from his predecessor, Lord Palmerston. That included a summary of our foreign relations, from a date earlier than that of the Foreign Office itself indeed from the year 1714. The Secretaryship for the Southern Department had then been taken by IX Preface Stanhope, whom Palmerston seems to have regarded as the first official who made foreign policy his dis- tinctive province. And here in passing I may observe I am aware of some reasons given by Mr Pike* for seeing in the Northern department rather than the \ Southern the specific germs of the Foreign Office. As a fact, I have in the introductory chapter of the present work opened my brief retrospect with a period considerably before that of Stanhope. For the rest it has been my first object, avoiding all excursions into general history, as well as the more universally familiar portions of the diplomatic narrative, to confine myself to the foreign transactions of the English Government, to the individuals chiefly associated with these, and, for choice, to dwell in detail rather upon those that naturally and properly have occupied less space in the general histories of the time. My special obligations to other works as well as to individuals have been mentioned generally at what seemed the right place in the course of this narrative. Over and above these, independently too of the Palmerstonian reminiscences by which Lord Granville allowed me to profit, I am indebted to Lord Granville himself for many hints upon those periods of which he had personal experience and with which I have had to do. Lord Kimberley also gave me much information bearing on the epoch of his Copenhagen Commission * The Ptiblic Records and the Constitution, a lecture delivered at All Souls College, Oxford, by Luke Owen Pike, M.A. (Frowde, Oxford University Press, 1907.) Preface in 1863. As regards the diplomatic story of the early nineteenth century, I was shown very many years ago by Mr Spencer Montagu, who afterwards became the last Lord Rokeby, some most interesting family papers rich in fresh impressions of Metternich and of Metter- nich's time generally. I am conscious of having derived equal or greater profit from frequent conversa- tions on contemporary or former events and personages with that kindest of friends, Lord Currie, who abounded in first-hand knowledge handed down to him by his father, Raikes Currie, of diplomatic transactions during the Napoleonic era. Such acquaintance with the interior of the Department as I may have acquired began when Lord Currie first became Permanent Under-Secretary. Nor have my obligations been less to those connected with the Foreign Office since Lord Currie's time, especially to the present Lord Dufferin and to Lord Fitzmaurice. Among all living experts on international or diplomatic subjects, my greatest indebtedness is to my kind friend of now very many years' standing, Sir Charles Dilke, and to my Oxford contemporary, now of our French Embassy, Sir Henry Austin Lee. Had any of those now mentioned with- held from me their good offices my task could not have been completed. As regards books, Dr Franck Bright's and Sir Spencer Walpole's histories have provided me with innumerable data which I could not otherwise have obtained ; while Dr Bright gave me invaluable assistance in preparing the whole ground- work and plan of this volume, as well as in advising XI Preface me about some of its details, and Lord Reay assisted me with invaluable details concerning Pitt's Dutch diplomacy in the Napoleonic era. Apropos of Pitt's financial operations at this period, Sir Charles Rivers Wilson's good offices, and the mastery of the subject possessed by Mr A. T. King of the National Debt Office, have enabled me to illustrate the connection between high politics and high finance, with personal information of great interest and value now printed for the first time. T. H. S. ESCOTT. WEST BRIGHTON, April 1908. xii THE STORY OF BRITISH DIPLOMACY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The object of diplomacy Its genesis in Classic Greece Machiavelli : his influence upon European diplomacy before and after his death Italy succeeded by Russia as a school of statecraft English foreign policy The various causes of its lack of unity Early examples of Britain's relations with Continental Powers Inclination to Anglo-Spanish rather than to Anglo-French alliances Anglo-Spanish relations changed by the divorce of Henry VIII., the Reformation and the naval enterprises of Elizabeth's reign. THE elementary object of diplomacy in all countries and ages may be roughly described as the maintenance of international relations on terms of mutual courtesy, forbearance and self-control, such as regulate the intercourse of individuals in private life, the reduction to a minimum of causes of inter- national friction, the actual avoidance or the indefinite postponement of recourse to war for the settlement of disputes between independent states. Should pacific negotiations have failed and hostilities become un- avoidable, diplomacy, defeated for the moment, does not sink into an attitude of mere passive, idle spectatorship ; preserving presence of mind and cool- The Story of British Diplomacy ness of head even amid the clash of arms, it awaits the opportunity of the peacemaker. It follows, from whatever distance, the varying fortunes of the field. Trained agents at the courts or capitals of the warring states keep it accurately informed concerning the resources of the belligerent Powers, the movement of their high finance, the conflict of interest or opinion among allies, concerning fluctuations of popular feeling, penetrates, if not the tactics of generals, the designs of the sovereigns or statesmen who direct them. It watches and seizes opportunities for mediatorial action with a view to the conclusion of a settled peace. The different states of classical Greece gradually created for themselves a species of diplomatic machinery in that Amphictyonic Council, existing for the purpose of settling disputes between the various Hellenic com- munities by peaceful compromise instead of by in- ternecine war. To the influence of that body may be attributed the strong public feeling against resorting to the sword in the earlier stages of a quarrel, and, above all, against omitting the due formalities when the rupture came, against, in a word, an appeal to the god of battles without due proclamation by heralds. The beginnings, however, of European diplomacy are not discernible till the Roman Empire was replaced by the European state system. The essence of the Renaissance statecraft distilled itself into diplomacy ; that art had Machiavelli for its first Italian teacher ; Spain, two centuries later, produced Alberoni ; between these came the Swedish Oxenstern, remembered for a single aphorism, to-day more familiar than any Machiavellian maxim, notwithstanding that the great Florentine may be said to have had all Europe for his Introductory pupil. No political instructor of any epoch projected his ideas further or more powerfully into future gener- ations than was done by the man whose very name has become a synonym for heartless cunning and un- scrupulous craft. If the fact of having influenced the thought and the politics of his time makes a man great, that epithet unquestionably belongs to Machiavelli. As a diplomatist the combination of insight into human nature and dexterity in dealing with it commanded admiration and success. As a writer he condensed into pithy and pungent apothegms those generalisations from his own experience and conversance with affairs which, as will presently be seen, if they did not actually mould, at least reflected themselves in the administrative or executive ideas of his own as well as of later generations. The earliest professor of the diplomatic art, Machiavelli is also the first to describe the stages and tactics by which this art can alone reasonably count upon success. For to him diplomacy means nothing less than the management of human nature by appeals to its own master-motives or passions. These, from his point of view, are constant qualities. States rise and fall. Fortunes, whether acquired by communities or individuals, are consolidated or melt away. Human nature never changes ; its manifestations, like its expedients, may vary in their degrees of complexity ; its fundamentals are always the same. As humanity is in its essence unchangeable, so must be the most effective methods of dealing with it in an individual or in a community. Much truth is there from this point of view in the old Italian proverb, " So good a man as to be good for nothing," or, to quote the nineteenth - 3 The Story of British Diplomacy century English variant of the same idea, " A good man in the worse sense of the words." Fifty years after his death, Europe began to see, personified as it were, in Machiavelli's ghost, the evil genius of the age. Possessed by that sinister spirit, the pious and devout Calvin became a party to the burning for heresy of Servetus at Geneva (1553). Twenty years later the same malignant influence prompted Catherine de Medici to the massacre of St Bartholomew's Day. Another hundred years pass ; the master-strokes of policy which signalised the reign of Louis XIV., what are they save modernised mani- festations of Machiavellian statecraft ? But why con- fine within such limits the operation of a force which, notwithstanding its Florentine label, amounts in reality to the sum of human nature's concealed but ever-living, dissembled yet always in the last resort decisive, in- stincts and aims. Nor for that matter was the mock- ing fiend of Machiavellianism, assuming perhaps other shapes, less busy under the Fronde than under the League. Or again, to descend to our own days, the tactics of the twin creators of existing Italy, Cavour and Napoleon III., what were they but an adaptation to later needs of weapons, meet for patriotism and piety, chosen from the Machiavellian armoury ? Yet once more : the idees Napoleoniennes, the Bismarckian beatitudes (beatipossidentes), surely these, quite as much as the policy and maxims of Frederick the Great, are the latter-day fruitage of the sixteenth-century " Prince." To pass to the Machiavellian spirit in con- nection with the diplomatic developments of our own country. In England Machiavelli's writings excited much interest very soon after they began 4 Introductory to be known anywhere. They were recommended to Cardinal Pole, as practical treatises on the arts of government, by Thomas Cromwell, who had visited Florence at the time when they were being written. The eminently practical tone of their leading principles were akin to those advocated by Bacon for conducting physical research. As might be ex- pected, therefore, Machiavelli receives a panegyric in the Advancement of Learning. As in his masterly Romanes Lecture (1897) Mr John Morley pointed out, in both Bacon's Essays and History of Henry VII. the student of Machiavelli stands revealed. James Harrington, converted from republicanism to courtiership, the attendant of Charles I. on the scaffold, shows familiarity with Machiavelli in his Oceana. After the Restoration the Leviathan and Human Nature of Thomas Hobbes testify to the literary vitality of Machiavelli. No one can miss the family likeness of the Tudor sovereigns' policy to the Machiavellian model. Bacon, however, himself describes Machia- velli as only putting men's actual practice into formulas. Embodying the materialistic wisdom of his age, Machiavelli taught diplomatists, like statesmen, to regard their calling not as an abstract science but an empirical art. To vary Bacon's phrase, he sublimated the shrewdest and hardest wisdom of his time into precepts which stamp themselves on the memory, though they jar the conscience and revolt the heart. By the seventeenth century the public as well as professional statesmen had become familiar with Machiavelli's ideas and maxims. The statecraft of the Stuarts or of Cromwell was not more Machia- vellian than that of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth at a 5 The Story of British Diplomacy time when the political ethics of The Prince were known only to a comparatively limited number of students and specialists. The commanding prominence secured by the writer of this work is largely to be explained by the natural tendency to attach the label of a well-sounding name to any body of doctrines or practice. So was it with Epicurus, Arminius or Calvin. In the same way certain natural and in themselves commonplace methods in domestic or international politics seem to gain defmiteness and consistency by association with Machiavelli. Among English writers on international topics familiar aphorisms connect themselves with Sir William Temple or the men with whom he lived. These, how- ever, will be most fittingly, if at all, considered at a later stage in this work. On this the threshold of our inquiry only one other remark need be made. The place of Italy as a school of statecraft and diplo- macy during the Middle Ages was, in modern times, to a great extent filled by Russia.* Here the intellectual activities of the higher classes were not distracted, as has been the Anglo-Saxon experience, from state duties by agriculture, manufactures, or even by judicial and civil employments. The two former were left to the lower classes. Those who constituted the flower of the nation, such as did not enter the army, were trained from early youth for diplomacy. The diplomacy whose movements are now to be traced is that in which England has taken an active part and which have had for their headquarters the * Diplomatic relations between England and Russia seem to have begun in the February of 1557, when the Czar Ivan Vasilivich sent an ambassador to the Court of Philip and Mary. 6 Introductory English Foreign Office, in one or other of its various abodes. The traditions of our international administration and the principles underlying the policy of its directors are for the most part not less untrustworthy than are other stereotyped commonplaces of the platform, the dinner-table or the press. On no subject indeed is generalisation likely to prove more misleading than on that of English foreign policy. The insular position of this realm has affected alike the character of its population and the temper of its rulers. How dis- turbed has been the course of our history may be judged from the fact that, among the thirty-six sove- reigns since the Conquest, except in the case of Edward III. (great-great-grandson of John), there is no instance of the crown descending in lineal and unbroken succession through four generations. Repeated changes of dynasty have combined with an unbroken development of mercantile power to create new political forces in the nation. The growth of the English navy and its constantly varying requirements have produced further solutions of continuity in our diplomatic record. Nowhere else has opportunism to such an extent moulded statesmanship. Add to these interrupting influences two centuries of party- government, the periodical transformation scenes re- sulting from them, and the growth of the popular belief in the international value of matrimonial alliances ; here there is more than enough to account for lack of unity in the external policy of the national rulers. It is, however, possible to trace the varying tendencies which have been operative from time to time and have reflected themselves in the relations 7 The Story of British Diplomacy between England and other nations during shorter or longer periods. England's dealings with her European neighbours only began to be methodised under the first Tudor sovereign in the sixteenth century. Long before that, however, and almost from prehistoric times, the isolated points of contact between these islands and Continental states had been numerous as well as, in some instances, so significant or sugges- tive as to prepare a rude and insular race for the amenities of peaceful intercourse with countries beyond the four seas ; they formed the preparatory school of diplomacy itself. The Western barbarians, described by the Roman poet as remote outcasts from civilisation, thus began to acquire an international status when, after the invasion of their land by the Roman legions, a British princess became the mother of the future emperor who made Christianity the State religion. Before the Welsh or Irish missionaries and the coming of Augustine, Ethelbert's marriage to Bertha, the daughter of the Prankish king, had planted the Cross in Kent. The Latin priest, Birinus, and others of his order who may have followed Augustine were additional links in the chain connecting primitive Britain with the capital of the world. These ties were from time to time drawn closer by the many early British sovereigns who, on the warning of con- science or sickness, retired to Italy that they might breathe their last on soil which the Apostles had trod. Met on his journey thither by the King of France, Charles the Bald, Ethel wulf passed a year in Italy ; the purpose of his visit was the presentation to the Vicar of Christ of his son the future King Alfred who already had the pope for his godfather. A Saxon Introductory college had for some time existed on the Tiber ; from Ethel wulfs Roman visit dates not only the completion of its buildings and endowments, but, according to tradition, the institution of Peter's Pence. During that residence abroad the English king found a second wife in Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bald. Hence his prolonged absence from his realm and the consequent unpopularity which faced him on his return. The next Anglo-Continental marriage in high places was two hundred years later when, in 1035, the Princess Gunhild, King Canute's daughter, became the bride of the Emperor Henry III. Of all the Anglo-Continental episodes in this century, none associates itself with events of more importance than the rivalry between the Saxon party under Godwin and his sons and the French faction, largely stimulated by the foreign bishops, favourites of Edward the Confessor. Hence followed the peaceful visit of William of Normandy and the alleged promise whose violation led to the Norman Conquest. After the events of 1066 it became an absolute certainty that an anti- French policy would prevail. A lately arrived invader, formerly the chief vassal and now the rival of the French king, could not be other than the enemy of his suzerain. Subsequent events combined to emphasise the estrangement between the rulers of the two countries. Germany, Spain and Guienne entered actively into the situation. A national era of commercial competition opened. The bonds of amity uniting Spain and Guienne on the one hand with England on the other deepened and broadened the separation of England from France. 9 The Story of British Diplomacy During the twelfth century the Anglo- Spanish entente became increasingly cordial. The marriage of the second Henry's daughter, Eleanor, with Alphonso of Castile set on foot an international friendship that even outlived the Reformation. The next incident tending in the same direction was the marriage of Edward I. to a Spanish princess of the same name, Eleanor of Castile. To that feat of matrimonial diplomacy the English monarchy owed the establish- ment of its pecuniary fortunes, and English farming the most profitable impetus as yet communicated to it. The earliest among our royal women of busi- ness, Queen Eleanor, brought her husband a more valuable dower than her Southern -European territories in the capacity which, by reconstructing the wool trade and organising the Northumbrian collieries, not only increased the national wealth, but doubled the royal income. Other international connections of the domestic kind had been made with different foreign countries about a hundred years earlier. Of the children born to Henry II., one son at least married a French princess ; the eldest daughter became wife of Henry the Lion, of Saxony ; another wedded the Norman King of Sicily, then the chief naval power in the Mediterranean. Before, therefore, the twelfth century had closed, the peaceful agencies of her diplomatists had won for England a place of European authority which could never have been gained by the military triumphs of her kings, notwithstanding that French addition to their royal title that remained in use till George III. In 1371, Edward III/s sons, John of Gaunt and the Earl of Cambridge, found wives in two Spanish princesses; respectively Constance 10 Introductory and Isabel, both daughters of Pedro the Cruel. The bias towards Spain, thus instituted, was strengthened by Henry V.'s strong attachment to the European unities. To him indeed the Church and the Empire were the two guarantees for the maintenance of the national and even social system of Europe. The foreign policy of the Tudors will receive separate notice presently. It is enough here to say that the predecessors of Henry VIII. had all of them, in different degrees or manners, contributed to the building up of the Anglo-Spanish alliance. The master-stroke of Henry VII.'s diplomacy was his son's union with Katharine of Aragon. The relations between London and Madrid were of course changed by the Reformation. English enthusiasm for Spain may have burned hot during the few years of Mary's reign ; under Elizabeth it gradually cooled. It died out amid the glories of Drake and the Armada. These last words indicate the continuance of influences as personal and as far-reaching upon English policy as was that exercised by the seventh Henry himself. Mercantile enterprise and naval strength, the creations of a few great men, supported and directed the management of our external affairs in the Tudor period. How the Stuarts inherited the Elizabethan tradi- tion, how, in spite of his oddities, James I. was true to his Protestantism, and how amid many variations and vacillations the diplomacy of that king made France upon the whole the bulwark of the new religion, all this and much else will be related in its proper place. ii CHAPTER II TWO CENTURIES OF ENGLISH DIPLOMACY (1485-1697) Henry VII. his own Foreign Minister The Great Intercourse Diplomatic royal marriages The evolution of the Foreign- Secretary The personal element in English diplomacy under the Tudors The policy of Henry VIII. and Wolsey England as arbitrator between France and Spain Diplomacy under Edward VI. Scotland as the instrument of France Mary's Spanish alliance Religion as the cloak for international intrigue The influence of popular feeling The policy of Elizabeth and Lord Burleigh The Queen's Spanish inclina- tions counteracted by her religious opinions, continued by James I. The Royal matrimonial arrangements of the younger Cecil The Juliers and Cleves dispute The Thirty Years' War The Protestant feelings of the English people opposed to the Spanish sympathies of the King The Peace of Westphalia Cromwell revives Elizabeth's diplomacy The emancipation of Switzerland The Anglo-French alliance Clarendon as a Foreign Minister The Relations of Charles II. with Louis XIV. The first Triple Alliance (1668) Sir William Temple Danby The position of William III. The Grand Alliance (1689) William's diplomacy up to the Treaty of Ryswick. RESUMING in some detail the international narrative, we reach a distinct and most im- portant landmark in England's connection with foreign states under the earliest of the Tudor kings. The reign of Henry VII. witnessed the establishment of quietness and security at home and the preservation of peace abroad. It therefore provided opportunities singularly favourable for systematising English diplo- 12 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy macy. Upon that, as upon other departments of Imperial rule, public opinion generated by national well-being and the progressive growth of a middle- class could now make itself felt. Henry's Chancellors or Secretaries were serviceable instruments for raising money ; there seems no reason for supposing that Morton, Dean, Warham or any other of this sovereign's ecclesiastical statesmen originated, as in the next reign Wolsey was to do, a foreign policy of their own. The king, it may be assumed, was his own Foreign Minister. In that capacity he negotiated (1496) the Great Intercourse to cite by its best-known name the treaty with Burgundy, then an independent state, under its own duke for promoting trade between England and the Netherlands and for putting down piracy ; it also supplied a convenient means for suppress- ing Burgundian plots in the Yorkist interest. Among other diplomatic results contrived by the founder of the Tudor dynasty were the marriage of his daughter Margaret to James IV. of Scotland, the overtures to Ferdinand of Spain, whose daughter he desired as a wife for his eldest son, and eventually that marriage between Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Katharine of Aragon, destined so profoundly to influence the history of two hereditarily allied peoples. After this the death of his wife, Elizabeth of York, caused Henry, as a step to a second marriage, to open com- munications with the dowager Queen of Naples, with Margaret of Savoy and, after the Duke of Burgundy's death, with the widowed duchess. Before these matrimonial overtures could provide him with a second consort, Henry died ; he had lived, however, long enough to see his policy yield some result in 13 The Story of British Diplomacy the Treaty of E staples. This transaction secured him ,149,000 and the expulsion from the French Court of Perkin Warbeck, whom the Great Intercourse was to shut out from Burgundy also. Whoever may have been his agents in these negotiations, English diplomacy in the hands of the king who may be regarded as its founder proved successful, both from a political and matrimonial point of view. After the eighteenth century is reached the chief officials employed in the management of English deal- ings with foreign countries, or the buildings where their work was transacted, will suggest practicable and convenient heads under which to group different portions of the subjects treated in this volume. State officials charged with most or all the duties of a minister of the exterior existed in the fifteenth century under Henry VI. Not till more than a hundred years later was the business of the king's principal Secretary divided between two coequals in rank and occupation. In addition to any purely domestic functions, these ministers were responsible for the superintendence and regulation of England's external interests. Under Henry VIII. it may be even said that the machinery of the English Foreign Office began to exist in detail. In 1539 the single Secretary gave place to two officials, known respectively as Secretary for the Northern and Southern Departments. The former sphere of duties included Denmark, Germany, the Low Countries, Poland, Russia and Sweden ; the latter co-extensive with France, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. From the point of view taken in these pages it will thus be seen that the head of the Southern Department was beyond 14 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy all comparison the more important of these two func- tionaries. Complications between England and the Northern Powers could be but exceptional and occa- sional only ; as a fact, throughout the Tudor period Germany meant the Empire, whose elective head was for the most part identified with Spain. Hence it follows that whoever for the time presided over the Southern Department was practically the Foreign Minister of the sovereign. None of Henry's foreign agents can have approached, in point of genius or during his ascendancy in authority, Cardinal Wolsey ; but Wolsey 's fall took place in 1529, ten years, that is, before the official division into the two departments. Although, therefore, the conduct of Anglo-French, Anglo- Spanish and Anglo- Roman relations remained almost uninterruptedly in his hands, Wolsey could not have been the titular occupant of the position which, more nearly than any other, foreshadowed that of Foreign Secretary, first created in 1 782. Never was the personal element in English diplomacy marked more strongly than during the reign of the second Tudor king. Without any attempt to thread the labyrinth of international movements in this epoch, some of its more characteristic incidents or defined land- marks may be briefly indicated. Of the trans- actions in which from 1509 to 1547 the English sovereign engaged with foreign states, the general tendency was to commit this country to new inter- national responsibilities, to encourage it to a course of European intervention, and to make the voice of these islands felt in the politics of the Continent. To the League of Cambrai, formed between France and Spain against Venice, England had IS The Story of British Diplomacy not been a party. The confederation that first formally drew her into the foreign vortex was the Holy League, at once the successor and corrective of the earlier arrangement, and set on foot by Pope Julius II. for preventing the undue preponderance of France. Another object of this combination was to preserve the Italian States to the papacy. In this place, however, the significance of England's member- ship of the compact consists in the declaration which it implied that the European balance of power was a distinct English interest. Thus, too, was established the diplomatic tradition which during many years afterwards made the English bias in Continental affairs on the whole in favour of the Empire, then including Spain and Austria, and against France. Thus a ministry of foreign affairs no sooner acquired a potential existence under Henry VIII., than two distinct principles of English inter- national procedure began to shape themselves : the first was that of intervention in Continental affairs ; the second that of an anti- French European alliance. The central ideas guiding Henry VIII.'s ministers were those which, notwithstanding periodical de- partures from the traditional line, animated their successors throughout the following centuries, as well as the Palmerstonian period, and the democratic break with European intervention as a tradition of the English Foreign Office. Henry's religious or matri- monial projects and Wolsey's personal ambitions caused a perpetual fluctuation between the French and the Imperial alliance. Notwithstanding, however, all the shiftings, vicissi- tudes and transformations of England's oversea 16 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy connections under the Tudors, that period ended as it began with Spanish and Imperial friendship. Other things being equal, it was understood that the preference of English diplomacy would be for an anti- French and pro-Austrian policy. A very brief historical summary will suffice to illustrate the absence from Henry's policy of any deep or abiding principle. In 1519 had died the Emperor Maximilian, chief among the earlier of Henry's Continental allies ; Maximilian's son the Archduke Philip, by his marriage with Katharine of Aragon's sister, had left a son, Charles V. of Spain, who claimed the emperorship as an hereditary right. Henry VIII. was also a candidate for the Imperial throne, but subsequently withdrew in favour of the Spanish monarch, whom he supported against Francis I. of France. French diplomacy, seeing in the English king the arbiter of Europe, now engaged in those negotiations which culminated (1520) in the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Eventually, however, under the guidance of Wolsey, the arch-diplomatist of the period, the Anglo- Spanish alliance stood firm, if for no other reason than that the great minister thought it would help him to the papal throne. No attempt need here be made to follow the international intricacies of the period ; one feature in them is invested, by events which happened long afterwards, with too much interest to be ignored. For the first time during these sixteenth-century European complications, arbitration as a diplomatic agency appeared in 1521. In that year Wolsey at Calais mediated on the Franco- Spanish War in favour of England's helping Spain. The personal element B 17 The Story of British Diplomacy already mentioned now asserted itself more definitely than before. Twice disappointed in his attempts to occupy the Chair of Peter, and therefore disgusted with Spain, Wolsey negotiated with France an offensive alliance against the Peninsula. A specific justification of this step was forthcoming in the plea that Spanish and Imperialist troops had lately sacked Rome, had imprisoned Pope Clement VII. and thus outraged the religious conscience of Europe. Plausible as this new diplomatic departure seemed at the moment, the divorce proceedings prevented its being a practical success. Francis was not in a position to forget that, as French king, he was the eldest son of the Roman Church first and could only be the ally of the English monarch afterwards. In 1532 he formally approved the pope's refusal to sanction the putting away of Katharine of Aragon, and showed his loyalty to the Vatican by condemning on grounds of religion that step of the English king which Charles V. of Spain, for considerations of national pride if for no other, was bound from the first uncompromisingly to oppose. The whole international episode therefore terminated in no fresh alliance, but in the isolation of Henry. Under Edward VI. (1547-1553) foreign affairs re- mained in the hands of Protector Somerset, the most commanding figure among those Lords of the Council from time to time consulted by the Tudor sovereigns in the direction of their diplomacy. Throughout the reign now reached, whether there was peace or war, the same kind of international questions that had exercised the father confronted the son. In addition to these there were the futile negotiations with Charles V, 18 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy against France; they were followed, in 1551, by the proposals for marrying the young English king to a French princess. All this time the official and the popular wish for a spirited policy was frustrated by the state of affairs north of the Tweed ; there Henry II. of France had begun the long series of intrigues, for whose conduct Scotland continued to offer facilities till the union of the two countries under Anne. It had at one time seemed as if the Tudor Princess Mary, in- stead of finding a husband in his son, Philip of Spain, might have married the father, Charles V. Hence the communications, that, begun so far back as 1518, had resulted in the visit of the emperor to Canterbury. Mary's accession in 1553 gave the signal for the renewal of politico-religious intrigues with the English Romanisers by Renard and Noailles, respectively the representatives in London of the Austro- Spanish power and of France. In none of these could the plea or pretence of religion conceal the consistent reality of political aims. The diplomacy which preceded Mary Tudor's union with Philip of Spain remained the object of the country's uneasy observation from the day that marriage negotiations were suspected to be actually on foot. The air indeed had been full of matrimonial possibilities. The object of Cardinal Pole's sojourn in England was to promote the re- union of Rome and Canterbury. Gossip whispered significantly, if absurdly, about the favour his hand- some person had found in the eyes of the English queen. The pope, it was said, so much desired to see Mary Tudor, his cardinal's wife, that he would have absolved the bridegroom from his priestly vows of celibacy. The fatal obstacles were the 19 The Story of British Diplomacy fanatical scruples of Mary herself, perhaps of Pole also. If, however, the cardinal's conscience would not let him marry the queen, his influence was certainly used to prevent her finding any other husband. It was the jealousy of the ambitious cleric, not of the dis- appointed lover, which spoke. Popular feeling and national interests had now begun to influence the arrangements of sovereigns and states- men. The middle classes anticipated advantage to their trade with the Netherlands from their sovereign's taking a Spanish husband. That appeal to material interest did much to overcome the instinctive aversion of the Protestant mind to a Roman Catholic consort. By independence of her professional diplomatists Mary thought she would best consult the material welfare of her subjects. At this time, however, France swarmed with English refugees. Hence the risk of international complications. At last, after the diplomatists had done their work, the price paid for the friendly understanding with Spain was the war with France, which lost Calais to England and brought on the fatal failure of the English queen's health. During the reign of Elizabeth the task set itself by English diplomacy was the now familiar and periodically recurrent playing off of France against Spain. All international affairs were now in the hands of the queen's greatest minister, Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh. The object of Burleigh's diplomacy never varied ; it was always so to divide the Continental Powers among themselves that England could stand alone. On details from time to time the queen and her minister may have differed. On central principles 20 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy of policy there was between them absolute agree- ment. More than once, indeed, the personal leanings of Elizabeth toward Spain had moved Burleigh's apprehensions, but for a moment only. The loyalty felt by Henry VIII. 's daughter to her father's religious settlement more than neutralised any personal predisposition of her own for a Spanish policy. It therefore became Burleigh's paramount object to strengthen, and if necessary embitter, the queen's antagonism to Rome. That, if properly managed, would constitute his best means for pre- venting either her marriage with the Spanish king or her inclination to a diplomacy tinged too deeply with Spanish sympathies. Either of these things, if not counteracted, must have fatally interfered with the minister's statecraft. England, he intended, should hold the scales containing respectively Spain and France. It was Burleigh's duty so nicely to adjust the balance that the international equi- poise should be perfect and permanent. In this way only would the subordination of England either to France or to Spain be averted. Rather indeed, as was his dominating ambition, would the superiority of England to both be secured. Eliza- beth's partialities to Spain did not, as everyone knew, imply any fondness for its national religion. Spain, however, manifestly reciprocated the friendly disposition of the English queen. No state really loyal to the Vicar of Christ could consent to be on friendly terms with a sovereign who lay under the ban of papal excommunication. So argued the most fervent and uncompromising of the papacy's English friends. Consequently they showed their consistency by looking 21 The Story of British Diplomacy for future religious leadership in the direction, not of Spain at all, but of France. Had not Mary Stuart by her marriage with the Dauphin become potentially a French princess ? Might she not also even yet be able to assert her claims to the English crown and dethrone the detested daughter of Anne Boleyn ? The ideal therefore always present to the strongest and most representative of English papists was the transforma- tion of England into a Roman Catholic Power first, and afterwards its union with France in a social and political as well as religious alliance. To English Catholics, therefore, Spain seemed no longer a desir- able or profitable ally, but rather a rival to be defeated with French help. Purely secular causes throughout the last half of the sixteenth century contributed to loosening the heredi- tary connection of Spain and England. With the great maritime adventures of the era, there had set in the mutual jealousy between these nations as com- petitors in colonial enterprise. The first James indeed, on at least two occasions, showed his readiness to sub- ordinate to Spanish interest or sentiment his policy abroad and his action at home. There can be no reasonable doubt that Sir Walter Raleigh's execution in 1618 was chiefly due to the intrigues of Spain, whose national pride had been wounded and whose colonial supremacy was threatened by the exploits of that English navigator. The second occasion came later in the reign (1622). During the seventeenth century Spanish diplomatists had succeeded to the European position that had formerly belonged to Machiavelli as founder of the art, and his Italian disciples. The greatest master of the Spanish school, 22 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy Gondomar, was the ambassador sent from Madrid to Whitehall. Through him the Government of the Peninsula proposed to James the betrothal of his son Charles to the Infanta. The marriage now proposed formed a complete contrast to the two royal matches designed in 1612 by Cecil, the second son of Queen Elizabeth's Burleigh. Nor could any two instances of matrimonial diplomacy more faith- fully illustrate the diametrically opposite characters of the men by whom they were respectively originated or negotiated. In arranging the alliance of hearts or of nations Cecil knew only one motive to strengthen his nation's position as arbiter of European Protestantism. In 1612 he made his greatest stroke in this direction by securing for the Princess Elizabeth a Protestant husband in Frederick, the Elector Palatine ; that union was to affect the whole future of his country and to guarantee for it not only the Protestant succession but its present reigning house. Cecil's further attempt to provide the king's elder son, Prince Henry, with a French princess as wife was frustrated by the potential bridegroom's premature death. Protestant zeal, how- ever, had originally animated the scheme, one condition of which had been that the French princess should be from childhood accessible to Protestant influences. On the other hand Buckingham's readiness to promote the betrothal of Prince Charles to the Infanta, by accom- panying the prince to Madrid, was marked by a sense of irresponsibility and was prompted by no other aim than to prove himself the pliant tool of the court. How the incognito journey of Charles and Buckingham to Spain failed in its real object, but en route at Paris made the future Charles I. acquainted with his queen, 23 The Story of British Diplomacy Henrietta Maria, forms a familiar episode in general history. At first the choice of the daughter of Henry of Navarre may have pleased English taste. That feel- ing disappeared so soon as Englishmen realised the foothold in the realm given by details of the marriage treaty to papal projects. Yet, in spite of all this, the general drift of English diplomacy at the beginning of the Stuart epoch was decisively Protestant. One instance of this, not yet mentioned, is the episode of the Juliers and Cleves duchies. That affair, occurring in 1 609, calls for a few explanatory words. The Duke of Brandenburg and the Duke of Neuburg, both Protestants, claimed the succession to supremacy in the two duchies. By an act of arbitrary intervention the Emperor Rudolph gave the duchies to his relative, a papist, the Archduke Leopold. On this the two ducal and Protestant claimants united in common cause against the Imperial nominee. English diplomacy was then entirely in Cecil's hands. In other words, its Protestantism and patriotism were beyond suspicion. After a short time spent in negotiations, England, the German Protestant Union and France prepared to support by arms the two dukes whom the emperor had displaced. This piece of military policy succeeded and the two dukes regained their thrones. No manifesta- tion of the anti-papal spirit now dominating the foreign policy of England could have been more emphatic or opportune. It was followed by, and may have con- stituted a preparation for, the distribution of inter- national sympathies that marks the English attitude during the Thirty Years' War. With that struggle our concern here is, of course, but secondary. Nor in 24 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy reference to it need more be done than to indicate the different confusing and conflicting currents to be seen in the diplomatic stream as it then flowed. Each of the factions composing the political parties of the period had its private agents abroad, often without disguise counter-working the accredited ambassador. The king's instructions to his representatives were to put all the pressure which peace permitted upon the Catholic Archduke of Austria, Ferdinand, who was also emperor, to arrange terms with the Protestants. Above all, he was to secure the speedy restoration of the Palatinate to its ruler, the Elector Frederick, his own son-in-law. The necessary promises were repeatedly given by Philip IV. of Spain, the relative, the co- religionist and ally of the Most Catholic Emperor. The Spanish arms were actively employed on the papal side. In England the Parliamentary and popular objection to the royal policy was not that the king was heading for war, but that the hostilities, to which his subjects were in danger of being committed, would be on behalf of Continental Romanism instead of the Protestant cause personified by Frederick. So far as there then existed any means for making popular influence felt upon foreign policy it would have been in the direction of an English alliance with Con- tinental Protestantism against Spain and with the specific object of securing for the future Charles I. some bride who was not a Roman Catholic. Buckingham did not pass away before 1628. Throughout his closing years, ever indeed since the failure of his Spanish mission, he used all his influence, secret or open, to complicate the international situation by placing obstacles in the way of Anglo-Spanish policy. 25 The Story of British Diplomacy The notorious bias of the first Stuart king towards absolutism in politics and against Presbyterianism in religion originated the misgiving of Parliament lest it should find itself committed to support the Catholic emperor against the Protestant Elector. The national feeling was not for peace at any price, but for war if necessary on behalf of the Protestant husband of the English princess. Foreign policy, it will thus be seen, in a scarcely less degree than conflicting views of the royal prerogative at home, was involved in the quarrel between Parliament and king. At least, it was urged by those who insisted that the opinions of subjects should act as a check on the foreign diplomacy of the court ; if English armies cannot be used to prevent the work of the Reformation being undone abroad, let the penal laws of the Tudors be enforced against Romanists living within the four seas. But the sovereign who would send Raleigh to the scaffold rather than offend the susceptibilities of Philip III. and his people, demurred to measures whose first effect must have been to exasperate both the Spanish people and the Spanish king. What, however, it chiefly concerns us to recognise here is this. Our foreign policy may have been less spirited than the more pugnacious Protestantism of the period wished. It embodied, as upon the whole it has from that time continued to do, not so much the decision of courts and cabinets as the deliberate purpose of the nation's sobriety and common-sense. Nor probably has sub- jection to popular control really interfered so much with the continuity of English diplomacy as it is sometimes supposed to have done. The great principle established by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the balance of 26 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy power, had been first formulated by Henry VIII. That equilibrium, through the reign of William III. and indeed till the middle of the nineteenth century, formed the regulating motive of English statesmanship abroad. In other ways the Peace of Westphalia opened a new era in the international relationships of the European system. It secured freedom of worship for the Protestants of the Empire. It created Switzerland. For the first time elsewhere it practically recognised the claims of the smaller Continental states to inde- pendent existence. The Empire thus received the earliest in a series of blows, the last of which was to be given with fatal decisiveness by Napoleon in 1806. Advancing in chronological order, we pause for a moment at the international aspects of the short republican interval dividing the two periods of the Stuart monarchy. Retrospectively regarded, the foreign policy of the Protectorate was an application of the Elizabethan expedient of playing off France against Spain in the Protestant interest. In carrying out his ideas Cromwell found himself confronted by the anti- pathy and antagonism of the courts and capitals of monarchical Europe. Baffling alike Stuart intrigues and foreign designs against English republicanism, he made insults and even outrages the instruments of diplomatic success. One of his ambassadors was attacked and killed at The Hague ; another met a like fate at Madrid. This did not deter him from a practical anticipation of those international principles afterwards to be asserted by William III. The position of England at the head of European Protest- antism was confirmed. Without military intervention, by the steady employment of diplomatic pressure alone, 27 The Story of British Diplomacy the persecution and the Romanising by brute force of the Vaudois were stopped. Mazarin, Louis XIV.'s minister, desired a treaty with England. Cromwell refused his signature till the French king should have prevailed upon the Duke of Burgundy to guarantee the Protestant Swiss in their own form of worship. Now, English diplomacy definitely declared its pre- ference for a French over a Spanish alliance. The determining motive was, of course, the gratification of the Protector's co-religionists. It is worth noticing that to Cromwell's diplomacy continental Europe owed the unrestricted circulation of the Scriptures. Free use of their Bibles in all parts of the Spanish realm and freedom of international trade had been Cromwell's demands of Spain. Turning now to the friendship of France, Oliver engaged in the negotiations which preceded the war. One result of the struggle with Spain following the Anglo-French alliance was the acquisition of Jamaica, as well as the introduction of English Bibles, together with English commerce, into West Indian waters. Another territorial gain to England resulted from Cromwell's policy of Anglo-French friendship. The despatch (1657) of the English contingent to help Louis XIV. secured the fall of Dunkirk, then besieged by the French king. The next year the town surrendered, nominally to Spain. Through the Protector's astute negotiations it become at once an English possession. After the Restoration, English diplomacy still ran in the channel into which it had been directed during the Commonwealth. The minister of Charles II., Clarendon, joined the Northern Protestants against Austria and Spain. That this policy should have been 28 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy carried out, or even have suggested itself as possible, was due entirely to those clauses, already referred to, in the Peace of Westphalia, which transformed the smaller nationalities of central Europe from Imperial vassals into independent states. Clarendon's failure as a Foreign Minister had for its chief and continuing cause his inability to realise the entirely new position on the Continent created by the equilibrium that the West- phalia peace established and by the fresh communities carved out of the Empire. The cultivation of French goodwill also explains the great achievement of Clar- endon's diplomacy, the king's marriage with Katharine of Braganza ; for Portugal had then thrown off the Spanish yoke and had become the trans- Pyrenean outwork of France. If the motive of the union had been to gratify France as against Spain, its conse- quence was by the bride's dowry of Bombay to give to her adopted country the first commercial and military centre acquired by England in Western India. After this the foreign policy of England under Charles II. modelled itself on that of Louis XIV. In the June of 1660 that king had effected a Franco- Spanish rap- prochement by marrying the Infanta Maria Theresa, The obvious object of this union was to concentrate in French hands the dominion of the Low Countries, and Franche-Comte', as well as to improve the French frontier on the Rhine. Henceforward in his impor- tunities to Parliament for money the systematic plea of the second Charles was the necessity of not being inferior to the French king. Hence, too, in 1668, the first of the international arrangements known as Triple Alliances, for uniting England, Holland and Sweden against French aggression in the Netherlands. That 29 The Story of British Diplomacy was effected by the king's accredited ministers in the usual way. His other transactions were less 11 correct"; for, while his statesmen were busy with negotiations their royal master had approved, Charles, on his own account, was himself, over their heads, communicating with the French king. This may serve as one of the earlier illustrations of the private, unofficial and irresponsible diplomacy of which in its due place something hereafter will be said as, for instance, when Fox and his friends, while in Opposition, kept their own envoys at Paris or elsewhere as rivals to the ministers employed by the Government of the day in negotiations with France or the United States. Less peaceful in its aims and more uncon- stitutional in its methods than that of the mortified Whig leader in the eighteenth century, the private diplomacy of the second Charles in 1670 eventuated, two years after the Treaty of Dover, in the Dutch War. National feeling, as might have been expected, was soon to frustrate the international statecraft of the English king. The situation in which the royal diplomatist found himself rather resembled that pro- duced by the personal sympathy of his grandfather, James I., with Roman Catholic Spain when his people were bent on supporting his own Protestant son-in-law, the Elector Frederick, against the emperor. The French king might send his agents to bribe the Houses not to sit at Westminster ; but the responsible directors of England's foreign relations made it known to their employer that the hour had struck for England's retirement from the struggle to which he wished to commit his country. To the period now reached belongs Sir William 30 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy Temple, the most widely experienced, accomplished and popularly trusted ambassador of his time, to whom, it may be said in passing, is often attributed a phrase that was none of his. The description of an ambassador as "an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of the commonwealth " had passed into currency before Temple's time ; its real author was Sir Henry Wotton, who, under James I., after twenty years as English representative at Venice, as well as various missions to the emperor and German princes, gave conclusive proof of his own integrity by returning to England a poor man. To a place in the same category indeed as Wotton Sir William Temple is entitled by gifts, qualities and conversance with affairs, resembling those of the most distinguished predecessor in his profession. England, Holland and Sweden had, we have seen, coalesced against France : it was Temple who carried through the threefold compact. In 1678 he was to accomplish another stroke of policy whose ulterior consequences were to dwarf into comparative insignificance his earlier achievement. This was the betrothal of the Princess Mary, eldest daughter of the then Duke of York, afterwards James II., to William of Orange. The disgust of Louis XIV. at this match could not have been greater had he actually foreseen that it would directly result in the mustering of those forces whose combination was to wrest from his monarchy the prerogative of European arbiter. Charles II. had made the experi- ment of being his own Foreign Minister, above and independently either of Lords of the Council or of Parliament. In other words he began a series of private deals with the French king. So long as he The Story of British Diplomacy pleased his paymaster, Charles pocketed his money with a smile at having dished his Parliament. In 1678 the Princess Mary's betrothal to William of Orange so exasperated the French king that, charging his royal brother with breach of faith, he stopped supplies. Charles then turned to his Parliament for a grant, as he said, to undertake, if compelled, war against France : he also actively took in hand the raising of troops. The Houses, as a condition of any money supply, insisted on these troops being disbanded, and even then did not give enough to prevent the king from once more turning to Louis. Thus English diplomacy under Charles II. resolved itself into an interchange of cajoleries, bribes, bargains and recriminations between the courts of Great Britain and France. The English negotiator was Danby, though he kept his disapproval in the background and from the first knew that neither his Parliament nor people would tolerate the mutual hagglings of Charles and Louis. Not, therefore, without reluctance or even protest did he convey his master's fresh political proposals and pecuniary demands to Versailles. More money Louis would not give. The English centre of diplomatic gravity now shifted to the official residence of the British ambassador, Montague, at Paris. The engagement which Charles had volun- teered with Louis was, if he could not openly become his ally, at least to abstain from helping Holland in the Dutch War which France then had on hand. In Charles, Louis saw only a self-indulgent, indolent, vacil- lating schemer prepared, for a consideration in cash down, to make any promise that there might be a reason- able chance of evading afterwards. I n Danby he recog- 32 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy nised the overruling mind that had caused Charles to fail his royal brother of France in so many details. Louis therefore determined to use the state secrets of which he was master for working the English minister's ruin. The French king had already through his agents in London bribed members of the English Parliament. He might therefore consistently enough have now directly laid before the Houses at West- minster an account of his secret dealings and private treaties with Charles. He preferred, however, to follow on this occasion the orthodox diplomatic precedent of making his first communications to the English ambassador at his court. Neither as diplomatist nor as politician does Danby seem to have sunk below the moral standard of his time. In executing his sovereign's behests he only showed his fidelity to the spirit which had animated the Stuart Restoration. Nor, when exposure and overthrow came, did the public opinion of his day forget that he was a scape- goat, the prime offender's agent, rather than the offender himself. If men used strong language in denouncing Danby, its force only meant that the censure, though addressed to a vulnerable minister, had for its real object an inviolable king. Danby was indeed a trimmer and a turncoat. That in his day meant no more than being a versatile tactician. As were the period and the statesmanship, such also were the diplomacy and the diplomatists. Danby had long foreseen the fall of the Stuarts. When, in 1688, it came, he was found in the same camp as Temple, whose personal friendship he had made during that diplomatist's official residence at The Hague. A moral anachronism is involved in the C 33 The Story of British Diplomacy notion that affection for a doomed dynasty might have prevented Danby from promoting the Revolution and Settlement, or from accepting, as the reward of his services to the usurper, the dukedom of Leeds in 1 694. With the first sovereign since Henry VII. to reign by a purely Parliamentary title, a new epoch in the narrative of diplomacy naturally begins. The parts which it seems sometimes thought are traditionally characteristic of Whig and Tory in connection with foreign policy are reversed. William III. personifies the principle of English intervention in Continental politics ; he stands forth as the advocate of English championship universal and ubiquitous, of Protestant- ism and of the international equilibrium. Wherever and whenever Continental policy, whether of the Empire or of France, aims at exclusive preponderance in the European system or at enforcing the paramount claims of the papacy, William interposes the authority of his newly-acquired realm. All this is resented by the Tories, now for the most part Jacobites, as ill-advised, interested, unpatriotic intermeddling. William's marriage with a Stuart princess the very possession of the British crown was chiefly valuable in his eyes because of the fresh and mighty leverage which he thus secured for combating the ambitions or aggressions of the French king. The influences that had placed him on his father-in-law's throne were indeed not less essentially aristocratic than the earlier Puritan movement for subordinating kingship to Parliament had been plebeian. The promoters of the seventeenth-century revolution were not less patrician because they happened chiefly to be Whigs. Throughout, therefore, the life of William III. the 34 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy maxim of Tory statesmanship was the deliverance of England from Continental entanglements. To talk of Britain as asserting an imperial authority by implicat- ing herself in Continental broils was called by the Tories the treacherous cant of the Orange and Dutch faction. The second article in the international creed of Toryism was that, if war became inevitable, an insular Power should only wage that war by sea. Our true interests, in the authoritative words of Bolingbroke, required us to take few engagements on the Continent, and never those of a land war unless the conjunction is such that nothing less than the weight of Great Britain can prevent the scales of power from being quite overturned. The seventeenth century had produced treatises both thoughtful and original on foreign policy. One of these was the Due de Sully's elaborate speculation for securing the European equilibrium by a kind of international Amphictyonic assembly. Bolingbroke in his political writings shows his debt to contemporary thinkers and authors, but, unlike most of them, looks at the inter- national topics of the time from an essentially English point of view, as well as expresses himself with a force and terseness that are all his own. Political philosophy had been thus for some time teaching by precept when there happened events that were to supply her with a rich store of examples. The state system of modern Europe began to be organised on broad and general lines by the Peace of Westphalia already dwelt upon. Some fresh details were added by the Peace of Ryswick, to which we now pass, and more by the Treaty of Utrecht, half a generation later. The course and significance of 35 The Story of British Diplomacy these two transactions will presently be described in their proper place. In 1672 Louis XIV. had invaded Holland. From that day the Dutch prince, who incarnated in himself the military patriotisms of his native land, schemed and toiled only that he might reduce the French monarchy to impotence. After 1688, he was able to use the resources of Great Britain in the execution of his youthful vow. William's patient years of diplo- matic preparation resulted in the great confederation, known as the Grand Alliance, about the same time as his accession to the English throne. In the May of 1689, the combined states of Brandenburg (the Prussia of to-day), the Empire, Savoy, Spain and the Dutch States were thus arrayed with England against France. The absolutism of Louis, unchecked by parliaments or council board, was constituted his first great advantage. William's diplomacy was hampered by the same causes that so often interfered with his strategy. Had his knowledge of human nature or his sympathetic skill in dealing with its weaknesses been on the same scale as his energies and will, he might have been as great in the council as on the field. Dexterous manipulation and a nicely calculated appeal to national prejudices and personal feelings might have prevented even his foreign birth from operating as an impediment in the way of his political projects. Of the condescension to the foibles of individuals or the susceptibilities common to masses of men, which is the most useful and indeed the essential quality of the diplomatist, William had nothing. The attributes that go to the making of a successful party-leader at home may, as in the case of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord 36 Two Centuries of English Diplomacy Beaconsfield, at the Berlin Conference, make him a profoundly impressive, if not supremely successful, figure in foreign statesmanship. Wholly possessed by the one paramount interest of his life, William neither derived from nature nor acquired by art the consideration for popular antipathies even a con- temptuous recognition of which would have prevented a King of England from surrounding himself with Dutch diplomatists as well as Dutch generals. If, however, William III. cannot himself be called a great diplomatist, the Treaty of Ryswick by ending his war, prepared the way for the diplomacy of others. 37 CHAPTER III TREATIES AND THEIR MAKERS, FROM RYSWICK TO UTRECHT The Peace of Ryswick Matthew Prior The Partition Treaties Their failure The War of the Spanish Succession The Tory Peace Policy The Methuen Treaty Its unpopularity turned to account by the Tories The Utrecht Peace a treaty of intrigue The Abbe Gaultier Mesnager Secret treaties The popular and technical meanings of " the Treaty " and " the Peace" of Utrecht The Utrecht signatories The principal settlements of the Utrecht Peace The commercial treaty. THE Peace of Ryswick in 1697 rather marks a stage in the military history of Europe than constitutes a diplomatic event of abiding interest and importance. At the same time it shows the third William's diplomatic judgment in a light more favourable than has sometimes been recognised. He could have secured a cessation of hostilities four years earlier ; he is sometimes blamed for not having done so. He counted in the later negotiations on receiving stronger support from Austria than was actually forth- coming. Had he not been disappointed, he might have obtained terms which would have made the Ryswick settlement a personal and national triumph. As it was, the arrangement proved more advantageous to England than the earlier offer of 1693. That France actually obtained Strasburg and very nearly got Luxemburg, was certainly due to no other 38 Treaties and their Makers cause than the slackness of William's Imperial ally. The truth, of course, was that circumstances left the English king little choice in the matter. The military operations on the Continent had followed the repulse of the attempt made by James II. to re-establish himself in Ireland. The two campaigns together had exhausted for the time the energies and resources of the country. Our Ryswick negotiators were not therefore in a position to reject the constantly rising conditions demanded by France, since the Duke of Savoy's defection had left us with no independent ally but the emperor, who had long been losing interest in the struggle. Among those actively associated with the Ryswick diplomacy was Matthew Prior, a man too personally interesting to be ignored. In 1907 Sir Mortimer Durand's successor at Washington was found in Mr James Bryce, then M.P. for South Aberdeenshire for more than twenty years. Though not without official as well as Parliamentary experience, Mr Bryce had achieved literary distinction before he became a political figure. And the selection of men of letters for high diplomatic posts has not of late been as common as it was in the Augustan age of Queen Anne. Joseph Addison, indeed, proved an indifferent Secretary of State. The brother litterateur, Tickell, whom he made his Under- Secretary, was not a success. Even apart from the escapades ending in his expulsion, Steele never became an effective member of the House of Commons. George Stepney, it is true, the poet who as a youth is said to have made grey authors blush, really touched a high point of excellence in international statesmanship ; among the Englishmen 39 The Story of British Diplomacy of his time none knew Germany and German affairs so well as this facile versifier, equally in Latin as in English, who at different times was envoy to the emperor, to the Electors of Brandenburg, of Saxony and to others. Few among Germans themselves knew the subject so well. With that possible excep- tion Matthew Prior stands out unrivalled among the poet-diplomatists of his day. " One Prior," is Burnet's contemptuous description of him ; " nothing out of verse," are the words in which he is summed up by Pope. Swift, however, at least as severe and, in such a matter, a more competent judge, formed a very different estimate. The most original and penetrating political genius of the time, St John, afterwards Viscount Bolingbroke, endorsed the verdict of his friend Swift, and rated Prior's business habits and aptitude for affairs so highly as to urge on Queen Anne Prior's attachment to his own French mission. The overture to the Peace of Ryswick was the congress at The Hague. The English representative, Lord Dursley, took thither Prior with him as Secretary. This mission produced not only much noticeably excellent work of the official sort, but many copies of impromptu verse ; these have something like the musical ring of diplomatic wit which resounded in a later century through the compositions of George Canning and John Hookham Frere. "Who," asks the melodiously epigrammatic Prior, "so blest as the Englishen Heer Secretaris ? " " In a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night, On my left hand a Horace, a nymph on my right, No memoire to compose and no post-boy to move That on Sunday may hinder the sweetness of love. 40 Treaties and their Makers " For her, neither visits nor parties at tea, Nor the long-winded cant of a dull refugee, This night and the next shall be hers, shall be mine, To good or ill fortune the third we design." In the October of 1696, Prior was on his way back to England, bringing with him the articles of the Ryswick treaty ; he received two hundred guineas for his share in the business. Immediately afterwards, under the Earl Portland, the ambassador to France, he was occupied with the secret negotiations for the first Partition Treaty. That transaction formed the earliest step on the part of William III. and Louis XIV. towards deliberating on the peaceful distribution of the King of Spain's world- wide possessions among his legitimate heirs. At the end of the seventeenth century the health of Charles II. of Spain was failing. To devise such an apportionment of the childless Spanish sovereign's possessions among their respective claimants as would preserve the balance of power and avert the chance of war, became the cardinal object of English diplomacy. William III. and Louis XIV. were agreed in wish- ing to settle the Spanish succession without consulting the King of Spain himself or the Emperor Leopold. Eventually England, France and Holland came to an arrangement by which the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, grand-nephew of Charles, should succeed to the Indies, to Spain, and to the Netherlands, then a Spanish state distinct from Holland. The Imperial family was to be bought off with the Milanese ; the Dauphin was to get the two Sicilies. While, however, these negotia- tions were going forward, in 1698, the Bavarian prince died. In 1700, therefore, England, France, The Story of British Diplomacy and Holland adopted a new Partition Treaty. This gave the Indies, Netherlands and Spain to the Archduke Charles, the Emperor Leopold's son. France received Lorraine. The national dissatis- faction in Spain with these dispositions produced from the Spanish ambassador in London a remonstrance with the English Government, so peremptory that King William at once handed him his passports. The Spanish monarch promptly retaliated by showing the representatives of Holland and England out of Madrid. Charles was thus left with the ambassador of Louis XIV. as the one foreign diplomatist in his capital. His court had become the scene of factions, con- spiracies and intrigues, which here can only be glanced at. One faction had for its centre the queen-mother, a princess of the Austrian house, in her adopted country the champion of her Imperial relatives. In opposition to this group, Cardinal Porto Carrero, Archbishop of Toledo, a worthy predecessor of the prince of Spanish diplomatists, Alberoni, co-operated with the emissary of Louis XIV., Harcourt, the most consummate political strategist and finished courtier of his day, a renowned general in the field, whose diplomacy, social and political, presented an irresistible blend of Parisian wit and Castilian gravity. An Austrian diplomatist, who appeared afterwards on the scene, injured, rather than assisted, the cause of the Empire with the court or the capital. The sick king was in the hands of Porto Carrero. Harcourt was ingratiating, by all the arts of which he was master, himself and the nation he represented, with the Spanish people. Perplexed as to the right be- queathal of his vast possessions, the King of Spain, 42 Treaties and their Makers at Carrero's instance, consulted the Pope. The Vicar of Christ was then notoriously the tool and creature of France. The will of Charles II. was practically dic- tated by the papal representatives at his palace. In the first week of November 1700 he died ; it immedi- ately became known that Charles had left the whole Spanish monarchy to the Duke of Anjou ; till his arrival the Government would be in Cardinal Carrero's hands. But not without sore misgivings and many tears had Charles at last put his name to this instrument. The triumph for France was greater even than Louis and his servants had dared to hope. "The Pyrenees," on knowing the will proudly exclaimed the French king, "have ceased to exist." The violent disturbance of the European equilibrium thus produced was enough of itself to have plunged the world in war. Yet war, or at least England's active participation in it, might perhaps have been averted had Louis XIV. not, by a master-stroke of infatuation and ill-faith, obliterated the differences dividing English parties, and united the entire country against himself as the nation's enemy. The death of Charles II. of Spain had rendered the efforts of English diplomacy in the matter of the Partition Treaties so much lost labour, and had, irrationally enough, injured the reputation of the Whig negotiators. In his destruction of international compacts, Louis now included the Treaty of Ryswick. James II. died in his French exile within a year of the King of Spain. Flushed with triumph, Louis XIV. recognised as the lawful heir and suc- cessor of James his son, the old Pretender. This affront to William as the constitutional nominee of the English Parliament and people to the throne 43 The Story of British Diplomacy produced a complete and immediate change in those political conditions at home on which has always depended English policy abroad. During the years before the flouting of English opinion and honour by Louis in 1701, party rivalry in Parliament and in the country had been so keen as to prevent any approach to political unanimity on the subject of the national concerns beyond seas. Shortly after the Ryswick peace, the Tories succeeded to power on the basis of non-intervention as a policy. The first of English interests, commercial and Imperial, was, they con- tended, peace. Tory policy from this point of view was clearly put by Bolingbroke in a single terse and often quoted sentence. " Our true interests," he said, "require that we should take few engagements on the Continent and never those of a land war, unless the conjunction be such that nothing less than the weight of Great Britain can prevent the scale of power being quite overturned." This is the first occasion that a Tory statesman formulated a national policy in words and on lines for which parallels might be found in the speeches made by leading politicians on both sides during our own time. That the uncompromis- ingly pacific counsels of Toryism did not prevail at the beginning of the eighteenth century and that England once more stood forth as the armed champion of the balance of power, was primarily due to the with- drawal of the French king from the settlement he had solemnly sealed in 1697. William's diplomacy showed itself at its best in his negotiations with the emperor against France. On i5th May 1702, by preconcerted arrangement proclamation of war was made at Vienna, in London, and at The Hague. Before England's 44 Treaties and their Makers implication in that struggle the king, who was his own Foreign Minister as well as his own commander-in chief, died. The policy, however, of William III. had too deeply rooted itself in the popular mind and was too much helped by the temper and acts of Louis, to disappear with its author. It was a Whig war and, ex- cept during her last year, continued throughout the reign of Queen Anne. It does not belong to the present undertaking to follow, or even to summarise the for- tunes of the struggle which began after William's death in the first May of the following reign. The actual outbreak of war was preceded by long and laborious working of that international machinery whose chief triumph is the preservation of peace. The profitless parade of diplomatic activity, which ushered in the war of the Spanish Succession, repeated itself, on the same scale if with less absence of definite result, in the negotiations that closed the struggle by the Peace of Utrecht. The interval separating these two sets of events was marked by an international exploit of the first political importance at the time, as well as historically memorable for its consequences to the social life and habits of the English upper and middle classes. This transaction, during the second year of the Spanish Succession War, showed English diplomacy not only in its best, but in its most interesting aspect. While William was forming the Grand Alliance against France, and indeed from the time when Clarendon arranged the marriage of Charles II. with Katharine of Braganza, Portugal had been under French influ- ence. At the beginning, however, of the Succession War, the Austrian proclivities of Peter II., the 45 The Story of British Diplomacy Portuguese king, occasioned disagreeable disputes with his ministers. Presently he began to sulk and decline all discussion on the subject by affecting ignor- ance of a struggle felt in every quarter of the world. He knew of it only from hearsay and took not the least interest in its progress. He would have nothing to say to either of the combatants ; he objected even to receiving the ministers of the belligerent Powers. At last, as he said, most reluctantly, he yielded to the importunities of Louis XIV. as far as to entertain the notion, if he never fully signed a document, of an understanding with France. Suddenly he discovered that the French king's word could not be trusted. Happily, he declared, he had kept clear of any entangling engagements with Louis. When the instrument was brought to him for execution, the only notice of it he vouchsafed was to throw the paper down and, in a childishly peevish temper, to kick it round the room. The then minister from England at the Lisbon court, Mr, afterwards Sir, Paul Methuen, heard of this, as, indeed, he heard of everything that passed at the palace. He immediately sought and obtained an interview with the petulant monarch. Of course and rightly, he said, His Majesty was indignant with the French king, who only made promises to break them. Equally of course the Portuguese sovereign desired to turn the present world-wide crisis to his own advan- tage. Only let him be sure that the state which he honoured with his confidence should be in a position to give something in return. Such a Power was England. What would His Majesty say to the admission of Portuguese wines, for an equitable con- sideration, to British ports at a duty less by one third 46 Treaties and their Makers than that levied on French vintages ? The sovereign, while maintaining a discreet silence, showed his satis- faction by the smile that began to overspread his countenance. His chief minister was immediately summoned. Within a week Methuen was able to report home the conclusion of the famous treaty that bears his name. Never was there concluded an international engage- ment which came more home to "the bosoms and busi- ness " of the English nation. The countervailing ad- vantage to be given by Portugal was the importation of all woollen goods from England. The political and fiscal consequences of the arrangement were, however, almost insignificant in comparison with its social, moral and even physical results to the English generation that witnessed or that followed its ratification. The familiar lines with which the compact inspired the versifier of the next century remain the truest and most suggestive summary of the Methuen Treaty's tendencies and results " Proud and erect the Caledonian stood, Prime was his mutton and his claret good. * Let him take port ! ' the English statesman cried : He took the poison and his spirit died." Hitherto the habitual beverage of the English upper classes had been distilled from the grapes of Italy and France. The Duke of Marlborough's wars had incidentally involved a disagreeable increase in the import of French wines to England. Many hard drinkers among the upper classes protested that they had outlived their powers of drinking port with im- punity. Bolingbroke, whose favourite wine was 47 The Story of British Diplomacy Florence, emphasised the arguments against the war which were drawn from the cellar. He also denounced the Methuen Treaty as an anticipatory interference with the commercial arrangements he meditated between England and her European neighbours. There is nothing at all fanciful in attributing to the topers a good deal of the popular pressure placed upon diplomacy to hasten the conclusion of peace. Amongst the more highly-placed tipplers who protested against compulsory port as murderous, was Dr Aldrich, the logician and Dean of Christchurch ; another was Dr Radcliffe, the Jacobite physician, who did not refuse to attend William III., who founded the institutions which still bear his name at Oxford, and who from his bibulous capacities was known as "the Priest of Bacchus." Many other physicians of note went with Radcliffe, as well as a large contingent of the inferior clergy. On the same side as, and by way of contrast to, these divines were many ladies of easy virtue who idolised Bolingbroke and echoed the demand of the clerical, medical and legal viveurs that diplomacy, by re- establishing peace, should, in the interests of morality and health, reintroduce the lighter French wines, too long interdicted by the military ambition of Marlborough and the Whigs. It will be seen presently, in the case of Alberoni, how the meanest and feeblest of human beings may be made instruments in a great diplomatist's fall. In the present instance agencies of an equally commonplace character played a definite part in pro- moting the international policy that, exactly ten years after the Methuen Treaty, was to triumph in the Peace of Utrecht. Services connected with the Treaty 48 Treaties and their Makers of Ryswick had, in the seventeenth century, made Sir Edward Villiers Earl of Jersey. With the Peace of Utrecht may be associated the transformation of its chief promoter, St John, into Viscount Bolingbroke, though the title had been conferred before the treaty was actually concluded. Before entering upon any details connected with the most famous and the most bitterly controverted international episode of the early eighteenth century, the Treaty of Utrecht may at the outset be described as a typical product of an age in which European politics formed a system of brigandage tempered by conspiracy. Ignoring the welfare, the aspirations, even the national tendencies of their subjects, sovereigns were concerned for nothing else than the extension of their territory, the increase of their resources and their own personal advancement in the ranks of the royal caste which then formed supreme power in the world. Statesmen, supposing them not to be engaged in any intrigue against their monarchs, were reckless of or indifferent to the means, provided they could achieve a momentary success by outwitting a party rival or successfully counter-working an unpopular colleague. The Utrecht settlement was less the outcome of inter- national deliberations held by European pleni- potentiaries than the embodiment of private " deals " between the French representative, De Torcy, and the English Tory leader, Bolingbroke. The termina- tion of a struggle that was bringing no return pro- portionate to the expenditure of blood and money and the disastrous interference caused by it to English commerce and industry formed indeed a sufficient justification for the policy to which the Tories, as the D 49 The Story of British Diplomacy peace party, had committed themselves. With Bolingbroke and Oxford the actually determining motive showed itself in the pressing necessities of the Tory party at home. The owners of the old acres had long and bitterly resented their growing unimport- ance, social and political, in comparison with the increased consequence of the representatives of the new wealth. The large loans necessary for carrying on the war had naturally brought into prominence the Whig capitalists and eclipsed the Tory landlords. Peace had thus become not only a matter of pressing national concern, but, as Bolingbroke repeatedly said, a paramount necessity to the Tory system. From Bolingbroke's point of view, and indeed according to the political ethics of the time, so indispensable an end justified whatever means might prove the least difficult and the most effective. On the other hand the lead- ing statesmen of France desired peace even more keenly than the English Tories. The Foreign Minister of Louis XIV., De Torcy, frankly confessed that he and those with whom he acted wished for it as a dying man may desire life and health. Long before the Tories, under Harley and St John, came into power they had been engaged in confidential communications with the French king's advisers about terms of accom- modation. As for the Dutch allies of England and the Spanish allies of France, these were excluded from all knowledge of what was going on. There were two parties to the peace and two only ; on one side the Marquis de Torcy, on the other Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke. Among their most active and useful instruments was one of those ingenious adven- turers who, like stormy petrels, appear on the inter- So Treaties and their Makers national waters when the air is charged with electricity and the sky is overcast. During the earlier years of the eighteenth century, diplomacy offered the same career to ability, often of very humble station, as war, or as had been done in the Middle Ages by the Church. The poet Matthew Prior had done so well at Ryswick that Bolingbroke vainly endeavoured to secure him for one of the plenipotentiaries at Utrecht. As it was, Bolingbroke's most serviceable agent in the latter business, Gaultier, belonged to the class which, a little later, was to supply Spanish diplomacy with a Ripperda. Jean Baptiste Gaultier, best known as the Abbe Gaultier, was a French priest who had drifted on the tide of circumstance and adventure to England ; here he arrived in the train of Marshal Tallard. When the recognition, in 1701, by Louis XIV. of the Pretender as King of England caused the departure of the French ambassador from the English court, Gaultier informally took his place ; settling in London he kept the French Government accurately in- formed of political movements and national feeling. Closely associated with him was another of Boling- broke's French colleagues. This was Nicolas Mesnager ; born at Rouen in 1665, he began life as a barrister, was sent on his first diplomatic mission to Spain by Louis XIV. in 1700, and afterwards to The Hague. In the August of 1711 he was with Gaultier in London, received much hospitality from Harley ; with him and with Bolingbroke he concluded (8th October 1711) the preliminaries of the Anglo- French agreement. The next day Bolingbroke intro- duced Mesnager secretly to the queen at Windsor. Almost immediately afterwards he embarked for France, The Story of British Diplomacy taking with him the secret instruments which were the preface to the opening of the Utrecht conferences. The negotiations thus carried on, partly by letters, partly by journeys of the men now mentioned to Paris, had for their result a detailed understanding between the French and English intermediaries about the terms of peace. " Plain dealing " was one of Bolingbroke's favourite phrases. Had he carried it into practice now, England would have told her allies that if they insisted on continuing the struggle, they must no longer count on her co-operation. That, however, would not have been in keeping with the Franco- Italian subtlety of Bolingbroke's political genius. Keeping his own counsel, he intrigued with the French against the Dutch. The emperor resented the idea of concluding a peace under international pressure as bitterly as did the English war party, the Whigs and Marlborough themselves. Yet peace was now the first of English interests. To secure, there- fore, the Anglo-French entente, everything, not even excepting England's Dutch allies and the gallant Catalans, must be sacrificed. Unless the ministers of Queen Anne and of Louis XIV. had exchanged secret guarantees of a mutual understanding before the repre- sentatives met at Utrecht, isolated from all European support, England would have been equally impotent to secure peace or resume war. In all this, of course, Bolingbroke and Oxford, like De Torcy and their French colleagues, were acting rather as conspirators than as diplomatists ; but then conspiracy had long been counted one of the legitimate international methods of the time. In proof of this, it is enough to mention the precedent of 1698. In that year the con- 52 Treaties and their Makers ferences held at Ryswick would have ended, not in a treaty, but in failure involving probably a new war, if the English and French plenipotentiaries, Villiers, Earl of Jersey, and Callieres respectively, had not, on first entering the council -chamber, brought in their pockets a written agreement on all controversial points. The precedent of 1678, the year of the Nimeguen Treaty, sometimes cited as applicable to Utrecht, is not exactly relevant ; for then the immediately contract- ing parties were not the ministers of kings, but the kings themselves. Louis XIV. at that time desired peace with Holland. William of Orange would have con- tinued the war. Charles II. of England secretly agreed with Louis to force a cessation of hostilities on William by assuring the French king of England's neutrality. England's desertion of the Catalans and her acqui- escence in the territorial weakening of Holland, her ally, may have been indefensible. To the secret Anglo-French treaty which preceded Utrecht and which, in return for her recognition of Philip V. as King of Spain, secured her the Protestant succession at home and territorial gains abroad it would be a pedantic anachronism to object on the ground of principle. Recent experience had emphasised the fact that without the formal execution of a diplomatic instrument practically binding on England and France, no sure step toward peace could betaken. In 1710 the Gertruydenberg Congress had broken down over the relations between the Austrian Empire and the French monarchy. At the period of Utrecht, England might have carried the other delegates with her in the matter of strengthening the Dutch frontier. The one indispensable preliminary condition was for 53 The Story of British Diplomacy England not to insist on the withdrawal by Louis of his grandson, Philip V. of Spain, in favour of the Archduke Charles, who became emperor before the Utrecht conferences opened. When, in the January of 1711, Great Britain suggested the meeting at Utrecht, she would have been making merely an academic pro- posal, unless she had been prepared to offer France terms on which a great nation and a proud monarch could, without sacrifice of their honour, have seconded the British movements in the direction of compromise. It had already become clear that the chief ostensible object of the war, that of keeping a Bourbon prince from the Spanish throne, must be sacrificed. It was also plain that to push the humiliation of Louis XIV. too far would be to risk the wreck of the whole negotiations. The French king must not be asked to sue for peace from conquerors ; it was enough that he should take part in the arrangements for its conclusion on equal terms with the neighbouring Powers. Practically the secret preliminaries, already settled in London, had secured the peace before the conferences at Ultrecht commenced. Louis XIV. saved his honour by England's acceptance of his grandson as Sovereign of Spain. England secured the French recognition of the Hanoverian dynasty, the cession of Minorca, of Gibraltar, of Newfoundland and a great increase of her territories on the North American continent. " The Treaty of Utrecht "is an expression with a twofold meaning ; used in different senses the words are at once popular and inexact or technically accurate. The entire group of international compacts whose scene was the old Dutch town, in the second decade 54 Treaties and their Makers of the eighteenth century, is known officially to the chanceries of Europe as the Peace of Utrecht. When our Foreign Office speaks of the Treaty of Utrecht it refers to the treaty of commerce and navigation signed between Great Britain and France, nth April 1713. This is the famous instrument chiefly due to Bolingbroke and the result of the secret negotiations already described. It was signed on behalf of France by Nicolas, Marquis de Huxelles, and by Nicolas Mesnager. The men who signed for England were John, Bishop of Bristol, and Thomas, Earl of Strafford. The episcopal diplomatist whose name on the docu- ment stands before his colleague's, John Robinson, was or had been Lord Privy Seal, had gone through a thorough apprenticeship to diplomacy, beginning at the Court of Sweden where he was chaplain, before settling down seriously to professional churchmanship. " A little brown man of grave and venerable appear- ance, in manners and taste more of a Swede than an Englishman, full of good sense, punctiliously careful in business " ; such was the impression left by him in the best Continental circles of the period. The pleni- potentiary whose name came next, Thomas Went- worth, son of Sir William Wentworth of Northgate- Head, Wakefield, having served as page-of-honour to Mary of Modena, queen of James II., in 1688, entered the army a little later ; in 1695 succeeded his cousin as Baron Raby ; became ambassador at Berlin in 1706; five years later his diplomatic services secured him the earldom of Strafford. Successful in international politics, he failed in Parliament, where his wealth was not regarded as any compensation for his illiterate loqua- city, or for the anniversary declamation on the subject 55 The Story of British Diplomacy of the army, inflicted by him on the Upper House. M There was nothing," says Hervey in his pleasant way, " so low as his dialect, except his understanding." The treaty of friendship, commerce and naviga- tion, including as it did every sort of minor matter, executed by these two British plenipotentiaries, was only intended to be between England and France. The English surrender of the Catalans to the wrath of Philip V. had dissatisfied many friends of this country in Spain. Bolingbroke's undisguised appeal to the English jealousy of Dutch commerce made the settlement of European affairs effected at Utrecht as unpopular in Holland as in Hanover, or among the English Whigs themselves. Eventually, however, the Dutch, if with no better grace than the emperor himself, came round to the Utrecht arrangement. The emperor indeed throughout refused any formal responsibility for the documents "done" at Utrecht. But practically he made himself a party to them when, in the March of the next year (1714), he agreed at Rastadt to withdraw his troops from Catalonia, from the islands of Majorca and Ivica, in return for the engagement by France to restore to the Empire Brisach, Fribourg, and Kehl, as well as to destroy the Rhenish fortresses built by France since 1697. On the other hand the emperor was to re-establish in their dignities and former territories the protege's of France, the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne. This arrangement, first draughted in the spring of 1714 at Rastadt, was confirmed in the autumn at Baden. Alsace, gained by France at Ryswick, was confirmed to its French possessors ; with them it remained till the Treaty of Frankfort that closed the Franco- 56 Treaties and their Makers Prussian War (1871). In its general outlines the Utrecht settlement regulated international relations till the latter part of the nineteenth century. But while Gibraltar remains to this day invincibly English, Minorca reverted to Spain at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The immediate effect of the treaty on Spain was to deprive her of her possessions in Italy and the Netherlands. Seen in its relation to the later developments of the European system, the most suggestive among the separate international arrangements included by the Treaty of Utrecht was the recognition as a kingdom by France of the power that to-day dominates Germany. In his own domin- ions indeed the ruler of Prussia, the first Frederick, had been known as a king in 1702. The earliest King of Prussia acknowledged by France under the Treaty of Utrecht was his son Frederick William, who reigned till 1740. The treaty further transformed the Duke of Savoy into the King of Savoy. The world had still to wait a hundred and fifty-seven years before the wars of our time resulted in the replace- ment by Prussia of Austria in the German leadership and in an Italy united under a monarch of the House of Savoy Victor Emmanuel. It is, however, scarcely too much to say that the earliest preliminaries of these two consummations formed part of the nine separate instruments included in the Treaty of Utrecht. Bolingbroke, it has been seen, objected to the Methuen treaty with Portugal because it might interfere with his own long-cherished Free Trade policy. As a fact, his commercial arrangements, an essential part of the Utrecht treaty, placed the trade of England on an equality with that of France. By 57 The Story of British Diplomacy this time his critics saw in the international settlements of 1 7 1 3 the outcome of the plot which, with Gaul tier's help and in the interests of the Tory party, he had laid to satisfy France at the expense chiefly of Holland. So as regards the commercial treaty, the Turkey merchants and other guilds, who complained that it meant their ruin, declared that here Boling- broke's tool, who in other matters had been the Abbe* Gaultier, was a low fellow who had been a footman, but who had a turn for figures and other dirty work of that sort, Arthur More. CHAPTER IV EARLY HANOVERIAN DIPLOMACY Addison's Cato turned to Tory account by Bolingbroke The Continental results of the Peace of Utrecht Cardinal Alberoni Prime Minister of Spain James, Earl Stanhope The Anglo- Spanish Alliance Alberoni's intrigues with Sweden and Russia Stanhope's meeting in Hanover with the Abbe Dubois The Triple Alliance of 1717 -The Peace of Passarowitz and the Quadruple Alliance of 1718 The fall of Alberoni Ripperda The Pragmatic Sanction Walpole as a diplomatist Cardinal Fleury The Austro-Spanish Alliance against England The Treaty of Seville The first Vienna Treaty The Definitive Peace of Vienna The Family Compact f J 733 War with Spain Was Walpole's policy justifiable? The War of the Austrian Succession Carteret Sir Thomas Robinson brings about the Treaty of Breslau The Treaties of Fuessen, Hanover and Dresden The fourth Lord Holdernesse The change of allies by the Treaties of Westminster and Versailles The European situation in 1736. DISHING the Whigs," to use a familiar and later figure of speech, was admitted by its English authors to have been their real motive in the Treaty of Utrecht. Bolingbroke's policy with that end displayed itself characteristically else- where than at the Utrecht conferences. Joseph Addison had been for some time the chief writer on the Whig side. His tragedy Cato was produced during the year in which the Treaty of Utrecht was signed. The Whigs determined to mark the first night of the drama with a political demonstration. The piece might of course be counted on to contain 59 The Story of British Diplomacy noble sentiments and stirring speeches in favour of the Whig principle of civil and religious liberty. To lead the applause of such passages, a fashion- able Whig claque had established themselves in the Covent Garden proscenium. Bolingbroke, however, had been beforehand in insuring the occasion should be turned to the Tory account. Each speech, soliloquy, aside or piece of acting charged with a complimentary reference to the hatred of tyrants or to the public danger constituted by the over- mastering power of an individual subject was at once taken up by Bolingbroke and by the friends with him in his stage-box. The audience showed themselves quick to seize the point. The ambitious and all-dominating man who bestrode the state like a Colossus who was he but the military dictator of the hour, the Duke of Marlborough himself? The Peace of Utrecht what was it but the patriotic device of the Tories as the true friends of liberty and peace for depriving Marlborough of his perilous pre-eminence. From Marlborough, when reduced to the level of an ordinary citizen, English subjects would learn the wisdom which would prevent their princes from prolonging the nationally ruinous game of war ? The effect of the appearance and action in the play- house of the chief author of the treaty reached a most dramatic climax when, just before the curtain dropped, Bolingbroke, calling the principal actor to his box, presented him with a purse of gold.* In this way the Whig playwright's drama, instead of serving for a * Now too, probably for the first time, diplomatic achievement was recognised in the Anglican ritual by Handel's commission to compose a Te Deum in honour of the treaty. 60 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy panegyric on the military idol of the party, was construed by Bolingbroke's cleverness as a popular demonstration in favour of the chief object of the Whig attack, the Utrecht treaty. On the whole, Bolingbroke's dexterous interpretation of the play was in keeping with popular sentiment about the peace. The real safeguard against the union of the French and Spanish monarchies in one king was less its prohibition by the treaty than the jealous and mutually opposed tempers of the two nations. The immediate Continental result of the Utrecht arrangements was to leave France slightly weakened rather than perman- ently injured, and to give Holland a grudge against England for exclusion from any share in the compact known as the Assiento, making Britain the great slave-dealer of the western world. The court of Hanover detested the treaty not less than did the Emperor of the Dutch himself. Its conclusion by the Tories sufficed to prejudice the Hanoverian dynasty in favour of the Whigs. The Tories were thus more and more impelled to the side of the Pretender. Unresistingly acquiesced in by the mass of the English people, the Treaty of Utrecht completely served the end of all Bolingbroke's foreign or domestic intrigues. Marlborough's victories had for the time destroyed Tory ascendancy. It was re-estab- lished after Utrecht ; it remained till Bolingbroke's disappearance and the accession of the first Hanoverian sovereign brought upon the stage the first and greatest among the Whig diplomatists of the eighteenth century. During the first quarter of the eighteenth century the two foremost figures in the international politics of Europe were the Englishman who became the 61 The Story of British Diplomacy first Earl of Stanhope, and the Spanish ecclesiastic, Cardinal Alberoni. The pair started as friends, even colleagues ; they were forced into rivalry. European diplomacy became a duel between the two. " Five years of peace will suffice to raise Spain to an equality with the greatest nations of the earth." The man who made this boast, Alberoni, a poor gardener's son who, in 1714, had risen to the Spanish premiership, had an appearance and manner as remarkable as his career. His head, disproportionately large for his body, might have suggested a comic monstrosity of the pantomimic stage. His habits were coarse even for a Spanish peasant of that period. He systematically posed as a blend of the toady and the merry-andrew that he might take his rivals and opponents off their guard. They had reason to regret it if he succeeded, for none of his contemporaries could afford to give him a single point. Having become Bishop of Parma, he was sent by his patron, the Duke of Parma, to confer with the Due de Venddme, a soldier as in- famous for the coarseness of his manners and the foul- ness of his speech as he was renowned for his skill and courage in the field. Alberoni saw the situation at a glance and knew intuitively how to deal with his man. Suiting himself to Vendome's characteristic humours, and outdoing him in his own accomplishments, Alberoni issued from the interview as a conqueror from a fight. Henceforth his career was secure. His cardinal's cap came about the same time that Philip V. made him prime minister. His policy had for its earliest motive the recovery for Spain of her lost Italian provinces and the restoration of the supremacy she had reached when Charles V. ex- 62 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy changed a palace for a monastery. A nation's power was then measured by the extent of its possessions. Nor did Alberoni so far rise above the conventional ideas of his day as to recognise, even if he secretly suspected, that the Flemish and Italian provinces of Spain were and must be a source of weakness rather than strength. The two rivals against whom he pitted himself were the emperor, who had wounded his pride, and the French regent whom he considered more seriously in his way. His first act on coming into power was to attempt the establishment of good relations with England. Thus he brought to a satisfactory close the long-standing arrangements for a commercial treaty between the two nations. He further reinstated the British subjects, by a most favoured " nation-clause," in the commercial ad- vantages received from the Austrian kings of the Peninsula. Bolingbroke may have acted against the Hanoverians ; he was never himself a true Jacobite. So Alberoni, a prince of the Church to which the Pretender sacrificed the crown, had no sentimental preference for intrigues with the Stuarts, and im- pressed the British representative at Madrid with his zeal for George I. The great work of English diplomacy in the early eighteenth century was Stanhope's Anglo - French Alliance of 1716. That had been preceded by Anglo- Spanish negotiations undertaken, at least by Spain, in order to strengthen by a British alliance the Peninsula against France on the one hand and the Empire on the other. This business was managed entirely by Alberoni and Stanhope. The former has been described ; I now pass to the English negotiator. 63 The Story of British Diplomacy James Stanhope, a member of an old Northampton- shire family, was a soldier-diplomatist, as his associate Alberoni belonged to the ecclesiastical section of the class. He had indeed been born into diplomacy, for his father, Alexander Stanhope, was for sixteen years envoy to the States-General of Holland. While a soldier, James Stanhope had served with distinction at Piedmont, at Namur, at Cadiz, at Barcelona, at Madrid and at Port Mahon. Rooke had already (1704) planted the British colours on the rock of Gibraltar. To Stanhope, with his colleague Leake, was due the inclusion of Minorca in England's Mediterranean gains at Utrecht. Stanhope's career as a diplomatist was preceded by an apprenticeship to official life at home. Having made his mark in both Houses he was at one time a commissioner in the Treasury, at another Chancellor of the Exchequer. His earliest diplomatic mission was to Paris. Then in quick succession came errands to Madrid, to The Hague, to Berlin and to the Imperial court at Vienna. At the Utrecht conferences Stanhope served the Whig interest, made himself the spokesman, and gained the confidence of the English commercial classes by his opposition to Bolingbroke's Anglo-French trade compact. As Secretary of State, Stanhope, by his accurate and comprehensive acquaint- ance of international affairs, really acted as Minister of the Exterior before the Foreign Office as a department of State had come into existence. During the years in which Stanhope's influence dominated diplomacy may be traced the beginnings of the jealousy between the English and Russian courts. Alberoni's machina- tions, indeed, helped to sow the seeds among the English masses of that distrust in the Czar and his 64 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy statesmen which has been liable since periodically to influence the diplomacy of Great Britain. In 1716 occurred an international episode in which the Foreign Ministers of Spain and of England, from having been friends and, in a sense, colleagues, began to counter-work each other's political schemes. The diplomatists of other nations entered into and helped to stimulate the rivalry between Alberoni and Stanhope. Goertz, the chief adviser in foreign affairs of Charles XII. of Sweden, urged upon his master an alliance with Peter the Great of Russia. In this way the supremacy of Northern Europe would have been divided between the Swedish and Russian monarchies. Towards that compact Alberoni's attitude was not one of merely benevolent neutrality ; he did all in his power to supply the funds necessary to promote it, with the immediate view of weakening Denmark, ruining Hanover, and securing the landing on British soil, from Russian ships, of Swedish troops who might restore the Stuarts. It so happened, however, that in the year already mentioned Stanhope accompanied George I. dur- ing one of his journeys to Hanover. There the English minister met the Abbe Dubois, the priest- diplomatist employed by the French regent Orleans. That interview wrought a complete transforma- tion scene in the politics of Europe. The Anglo- French alliance of 1716 at once dominated the whole European situation. There could be no security for the new English dynasty so long as it lacked means for checking Stuart conspiracy and intrigue. England's promotion of the Barrier Treaty, securing a line of fortresses in the Austrian Netherlands, garrisoned by E 65 The Story of British Diplomacy the Dutch, but at the charge of Austria, had so offended the emperor that the Hanoverians could expect no help from him against Jacobite designs and attacks. During their conferences at Hanover, Stanhope and Dubois negotiated the Triple Alliance of 1717. The treaty relation into which England, France and Holland now entered secured this country against attacks from abroad and Stuart conspiracy at home. Thenceforth the Pretender disturbed but little the course of English politics or the progress of English prosperity. The fresh foreign guarantees for the Protestant succession now given were accompanied by material safeguards, presently to be mentioned, against foreign attack on England. Napoleon used to say that to possess Antwerp was to hold a pistol at the head of England. In the eighteenth century Dunkirk first and Mardyke afterwards formed a menace to British security such as Napoleon saw in Antwerp. Mardyke was on the same coast as, and quite close to, Dunkirk. Its harmlessness to this country was practically insured by a provision in the Triple Alliance treaty, reducing its sluices to a width of sixteen feet, and so prohibiting the entrance or exit of ships of war and privateers. For the reasons and in the way already described, peace had become a domestic and dynastic necessity to England. It was scarcely less important to France. To the regent, personally, it was a matter of life or death. Under the Utrecht treaties he was next heir to the French throne. With a fresh war the obliga- tions of these treaties would have ceased to exist. The renunciation by Philip V. of the French crown would have become waste paper, and he himself the 66 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy lawful heir of Louis XV. The Hanover conference between the two diplomatic managers of their re- spective sovereigns not only, for the first time since 1688, resulted in a real friendship between the two countries, but for some years to come made the Anglo- French alliance the controlling force in European affairs. At the time it had another consequence. Peter the Great had recently made a progress across Europe with the hope of inducing France to join the Northern confederation against England. Dubois at once acquainted Stanhope with all that was going on, and strengthened himself in his determination of fidelity to the new compact. During the years now looked back on, diplomacy, if never more active, had also never been more unscrupulous. It was indeed an aggravated Machia- vellianism. The relations between the sovereigns and the statesmen of the world, disclosed by the foregoing narrative, were rather those of con- spirators, each eager to seize before his fellow the dagger by the handle, than of statesmen consulting about monarchies and peoples. Spanish diplomacy continued to be the most powerful of European agencies. It was imitated and rivalled, if not out- done, by Spain's disciples in the diplomatic art elsewhere. Austria, Italy and Turkey had been engaged in a war, anxiously and actively watched by England. In July 1718, English mediation secured the Peace of Passarowitz. This extended the Austrian frontier so as to include part of Servia and Wallachia. The consequent attraction of Austria to the federated Powers changed the Triple into the Quadruple Alliance for maintaining the Peace of Utrecht and guaranteeing- 67 The Story of British Diplomacy the tranquillity of Europe. By this great compact of 1718, the emperor abandoned his pretensions to the kingdom of Spain, as well as to all territories recognised at Utrecht as belonging to Spain. He also agreed that, on the death of their reigning princes, the duchies of Placentia, Parma and Tuscany should pass to a Spanish prince, Don Carlos. Persons bearing this name have appeared so often upon the stormy stage of Spanish politics, that it may be as well to mention that the Don Carlos now spoken of was a son of Philip V. of Spain by a second wife ; after the death of his half-brother, Ferdinand, he came to the throne under the title of Charles III. The only further stipulation on these points enforced by the Quadruple Alliance was that Leghorn should be a free port, and that in no event should the crowns of the Italian duchies just named pass to the sovereign of Spain. Swiss garrisons were told off, at the charge of the contracting Powers, to establish Don Carlos in his new possessions. At the same time Philip V. was to renounce his pretensions, not only to the duchy of Milan, but to the two Sicilies and to the Netherlands. The arrangement of the Quadruple Alliance was justly considered at the time, and deserves to be looked back upon, as a monument of knowledge, resourceful- ness, patience and skill on the part of its chief English promoter, Stanhope. On an issue of Alberoni's own choosing, he had defeated the most astute of Continental diplomatists. After the death of the Swedish monarch, he had caused the collapse of the Northern confedera- tion against England. Stanhope's most dangerous opponents were not his professional rivals at the council-board, but his personal maligners belonging to 68 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy the German faction at court. He also had enemies within the ranks of that Whig party which he served so well, equally abroad and at home. Sir Robert Walpole was jealous of his influence with George I. ; he also held Stanhope responsible for the slackness in pressing on Oxford's impeachment. Himself essenti- ally a cosmopolitan by experience and temper, Stanhope was always too much occupied with foreign politics to play a very active part in faction fights or personal rivalries at home. In his successful struggle with Alberoni his only allies were his opponent's follies and blunders. Alberoni's absurdities, conceit and arrogance secured for his fall an outburst of delighted ridicule, alike from the court and the entire populace. No weapon was too small or mean to be used against lim by the men over whose heads he had risen. The hostility of the French regent, of Dubois and of Peterborough was reinforced by the Spanish king's confessor, and even by a court nurse. Amid the crash of his ruin and exile, the cardinal's cap was plucked from his head, and the very gates of Rome were closed against him by Pope Clement XI. The European diplomacy of this age resembles a theatre whose stage is crossed and recrossed by a succession of strange personages, each newcomer more grotesque than his predecessor. The Spanish cardinal was followed by a Dutch adventurer who had taken up the diplomatic role and who became a duke. This was Ripperda, the perfect type of a class generated in all epochs, under various appearances, by the forces of political feverishness and international electricity. By birth a Dutchman, by profession an adventurer, he had through Alberoni's 69 The Story of British Diplomacy influence become a court favourite at Madrid. In 1725 he conducted an international transaction which was to change the entire European situation. His title of " Duke" formed the reward given him for his secret treaty between the Emperor Charles VI. and Philip V. of Spain. Thus, at least for a time, was closed that rivalry between two monarchs which had distracted Europe not less seriously than had the aggrandising ambition of Louis XIV. This compact also recognised the Pragmatic Sanction, which had been fully ratified in 1725, and which settled the Austrian succession on the eldest daughter of Charles VI., Maria Theresa. Ripperda's personal peculiarities, his exaggerated contempt for seriousness of conviction and earnestness of purpose, and the rapidity with which he ran the gamut of religious professions, from Popery, through Protestantism to the Moslemism in which he died, do not inspire respect. The man himself must rank among the great international forces of his time. The mere mention of the Pragmatic Sanction and Maria Theresa in connection with his Franco- Spanish treaty of 1725 associates him with events that left an abiding mark on the international relationships of Europe. Stanhope, as has been seen, had for his Continental contemporary Alberoni, whom he overthrew with little encouragement from his fellow- Whig, Walpole. In foreign affairs, Stanhope and Walpole, his successor, were rivals, often occupied with the same set of inter- national problems. With Ripperda, it now remained for Walpole himself from time to time to deal. In foreign politics Walpole was the first statesman on the Whig side whose sole aim was to keep England clear 70 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy of external entanglements. The earlier international tradition of Toryism had thus become a principle of Whig practice, and on one point, at least, the earliest of the Whig Prime Ministers showed his agreement with the bitterest of his Parliamentary opponents, Bolingbroke. Ever-increasing taxation was the price paid by the country for its glories in war. Even Maryborough's victories were beginning to arouse a sense of satiety rather than of proud satisfaction. Weariness of the war naturally implied discontent with its Whig authors and conductors. The incessant demands of the struggle on the national resources had given an entirely new influence to the moneyed classes, those who drew their income from the Funds or from other investments, and not from the land. Walpole's conduct of our inter- national relations had therefore, for its chief motive, to restore to the Whig connection those whom the cost of militarism might have tempted to leave it. War expenditure meant a land tax of four shillings. That was enough to make the territorial class the desirers of peace. Walpole's foreign statesmanship was thus, after the usual English fashion, determined by the necessity of strengthening the position of himself and his party at home. Walpole, indeed, was now bent upon beating Bolingbroke not only at his own game, but with his own tools. The ex-footman, afterwards a commissioner of plantations, Arthur More, who had helped Bolingbroke in his commercial arrangements with France at Utrecht, was no sooner out of work than he offered his services to Walpole. They were readily accepted and promptly utilised. The first speech from the throne ever drafted by Walpole, that The Story of British Diplomacy opening the session of 1721, promises an extension of our commerce and the facilities in the export of our own manufactures, as well as in introducing the articles used in preparing them for the market. Walpole's negotiations with foreign ministers proved so successful that before Parliament was prorogued, export duties on more than a hundred British manufactures had been removed, as well as import duties on nearly forty kinds of raw material. In 1723, George I. asked the minister to find him money to prevent by arms the Czar from deposing the King of Sweden. The funds were indeed forthcoming, but only because the minister hoped they would never be wanted. " My politics," he said, "are to keep free from all engagements as long as we possibly can.'' Europe had seen both the papacy and the Empire fail in the attempted role of world-wide peacemaker ; for himself Walpole cherished no such ideas of universal mediation. Tranquillity had become indispensable for the success of his own policy and for the national well- being. The only hope of securing it lay in practically perpetuating the tradition of Anglo-French friendship, established by Elizabeth in her co-operation with Henry IV., acted upon by Cromwell in his alliance with Mazarin, more recently reproduced by Stanhope in his dealings with Dubois at Hanover, 1716. Thus came about Walpole's alliance with Cardinal Fleury, which at least gave the world ten years of, not indeed unbroken, but never long interrupted peace. Before the understanding between the French cardinal and the English minister had ripened into intimate friend- ship, Fleury constantly said that he had never seen an Englishman with whom it was so delightful to do 72 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy business as Walpole. The English and the French Prime Ministers were fitted by nature for mutual co- operation. Both were economists with a strong pre- disposition against war. Both were constitutionally tolerant of differences of opinion. Both distrusted extremes and believed in the virtues of compromise. The cordial relations of the two men were much pro- moted by the geniality and tact of the English ambas- sador in Paris, Sir Robert's brother, old Horace Walpole. The British envoy had formed the true estimate of the cardinal's abilities. When therefore Fleury fell from court favour for a short time, " Old Horace " instead of slighting him, as did other members of the diplomatic circle, became more conspicuously respectful in his attentions than before. The British ambassador's commanding position at the French court was recognised at home by giving him carte blanche in his dealings with the French Government. Hence the smoothness and success of his brother Sir Robert Walpole's dealings with the Paris Foreign Office. Sir Robert Walpole himself was soon to profit by the result of his brother's well-judged courtesy to the French cardinal during the short season of his former eclipse. In 1727, George II. on his accession dis- missed Walpole, and for forty-eight hours replaced him by Spencer Compton, afterwards Lord Wilmington. Queen Caroline's was not the only influence exercised to secure Walpole's prompt return to power. Cardinal Fleury and other important personages in Paris repre- sented to the English sovereign the danger there must be to the Anglo-French alliance from any break of continuity in the relations between the two countries instituted and maintained by the Whig minister's tact. 73 The Story of British Diplomacy The movements of European diplomacy, in which Walpole was to take his part, may be compared to the processes of weaving and unweaving the web of Pene- lope. Treaties made one day to be broken the next, alliances concluded only to be dissolved, a bewildering series of shifting combinations of Powers. These were the phenomena that came daily under his eyes. Alberoni had fallen not to rise again ; but his pupil Ripperda remained to promote any European move- ment unfavourable to England. The prime object of the Austro- Spanish alliance, the establishment of a Spanish kingdom in Italy, formed a standing threat to the European equilibrium. The means employed to secure that end exemplified the circumlocutory and mystifying processes of eighteenth-century diplomacy. The policy of the Austro-Spanish understanding, expressed in the Treaty of Vienna (1725), joined Austria and Spain against Great Britain. The stereotyped routine was followed. Congresses that settled nothing were held at Cambrai, Soissons and Aix-la-Chapelle ; but no effective counter-move to the Vienna treaty was taken till Walpole organised the threefold compact uniting England, France and Prussia. Stanhope had been willing to purchase the friendship of Spain at the cost of Gibraltar. Alberoni had declined the over- ture. Gibraltar became the object of periodical attacks and even of a siege by Spain ; Walpole's diplomacy at Vienna and Austria's failure to support Spain alone prevented a European war. In 1729, Walpole combined England, France and Spain first and Holland afterwards in a defensive alliance, the Treaty of Seville. This arrangement 74 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy finally set at rest the question of restoring Gibraltar to Spain, and composed the Anglo- Spanish differences about English trade across the Atlantic. It was seized upon by the Tories and malcontent Whigs, under Bolingbroke and Pulteney, as a handle for attack- ing Walpole on the ground of sacrificing England's interests to gratify German feeling and to further his own party policy, and conniving at a dangerous friend- ship between France and Spain. The Treaty of Seville was confirmed in 1731 by the second Treaty of Vienna. This provided, more explicitly than had been done at Seville, the annulment of the first Treaty of Vienna and pledged its signatories to abstain from any action that might disturb the balance of power. Three years later the precarious foundation of treaties based upon artificial arrangements of territory, regardless of national feeling, merely to preserve the balance of power, was to receive a fresh illustration. In 1734, but for Walpole's sagacity and firmness, England might have been involved in the European complications arising out of the Polish succession. In the hostilities that followed, Austria found herself pitted against the united forces of France and Spain. In his firm adherence to the policy of non-intervention, Walpole stood between two fires at home. The old seventeenth-century Whigs denounced him for his absolute rupture with the methods originated by William III. of arming everywhere for the humili- ation of France. The Tories raised the cry of treachery to British prestige. The diplomacy, however, which neither domestic opposition nor foreign intrigue was suffered to interrupt, proved successful, not only in keeping England out of the hurly-burly, but in pro- moting those mediatorial negotiations which in October 75 The Story of British Diplomacy 1735 resulted in the great treaty known as the Defini- tive Peace of Vienna. By this instrument Naples and Sicily remained in Spanish hands, Sardinia received Novara and Tortona. Lorraine became the property of France. In exchange for his principality, the young Duke of Lorraine, Francis, betrothed to Maria Theresa, accepted Tuscany. Thus the Bourbons were now established in Naples as well as in Spain and France, and a close connection was effected between Tuscany and the Austrian Empire. In this way did Walpole become associated with the extension of Bourbon influ- ence, destined afterwards so long to prove the source of England's deadliest dangers. To counteract and destroy this Bourbon ascendancy formed the task successfully acomplished by the elder Pitt when the national recognition of his genius and patriotism clothed him with a power and placed at his disposal resources, diplomatic and military, previously unknown in the annals of English statesmanship. In its relation to the Bourbons, Walpole's diplomacy is not always seen to as much advantage as in the case of the Definitive Treaty of Vienna. In 1733 had come the first of those Family Compacts which, renewed in 1743 and in 1761, sealed a conspiracy of the Bourbons against the rest of Europe, with the special object of humiliating and weakening England. These under- standings " pactes de lafamille "-to call them by their official name, were made in secret and were surrounded with an air of mystery. Their existence, however, was certainly more than suspected by Continental diplomatists ; it was mentioned in the Duke of Newcastle's correspondence. Walpole therefore may have had some idea of what was going forward, though^ 76 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy as he might have said and himself believed, an idea not definite enough or sufficiently substantiated by facts to justify him in making it the basis of his policy. The earliest of these compacts, that of 1733, with which alone we now have to do, committed the French and Spanish monarchies to defend Don Carlos, the son of Philip V. of Spain by his second wife, Elizabeth of Parma, against the emperor and England, as well as to combine attacks upon English commerce every- where and to watch an opportunity for restoring Gibraltar from its English occupants to its Spanish owners. However successfully the secrecy of the anti-English concert was maintained, the evidence of actual events must have shown a diplomatist, far less vigilant and well informed than Walpole, that far- reaching mischief was intended against England. The public as well as the chanceries of the Continent asked why the French navy should be placed upon a war footing. In Spanish waters the outrages upon English ships and sailors brought the flag and name of Great Britain into daily contempt. The English smugglers may have been troublesome. The brutality of the Spanish reprisals was out of all proportion to the offence. The climax was reached in the well- known episode of Jenkins' ear. The militant patriotism ran high, not only in Parliament and in the country, but at court, and the Duke of Newcastle began to outbid Walpole by favouring the war party. Walpole himself, however, persevered doggedly with his diplomacy ; he succeeded in securing the agreement of Spain to a convention for restoring the treasure and the sailors made prisoners on English ships. The Parliamentary debates on this convention are 77 The Story of British Diplomacy noticeable in the present context, because they brought forward for the first time the statesman who was to redeem English diplomacy and English honour from the disgrace attributed by the patriots to Walpole's pusillanimity. The future Chatham led the attack upon the English minister for having accepted from Spain money compensation scandalously inadequate to the injuries committed. To no purpose did Walpole, in and out of Parliament, endeavour to arrest hostilities by emphasising a diplomatic formula which was then heard for the first time, but has since become a commonplace. " Before," he said, " we can prudently declare war, we must know the whole system of European affairs at the present moment ; we must also know what allies our enemies may have and what help we may expect from our friends." The intense and universal passion of the moment overwhelmed all considerations of prudence. Instead of resigning, as more wisely and honourably he might have done, Walpole yielded to the royal and popular wish by declaring war with Spain, October 1739. When the military passions of a people become strongly excited, diplomacy lends itself as readily to the purposes of the war party as, in more tranquil times, to the cause of peace. So was it now. So was it to prove in the next century when the younger Pitt drifted into hostilities with France, and so again when another peace minister, Lord Aberdeen, invaded the Crimea. Fleury, who a little before had offered Walpole his services as mediator with Spain, ceased to disguise his sympathy with the enemies of England, and made overtures to the Jacobites ; he even promised military support for a Stuart restoration. 78 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy Amid the political defeats at home following these diplomatic failures abroad, Walpole's career closed. He had been the first great Whig minister to attempt a systematic reversal of the principle of military intervention in European affairs which the Whigs had adopted from William III. He had, how- ever, done more than this. He had made the cabinet the executive committee of the House of Commons ; it followed therefore that the foreign policy of the country had ceased chiefly or necessarily to reflect the ideas and wishes of the sovereign. No longer the exclusive product of courts or chanceries, it began, like legislation itself, to bear the trade-mark of Parlia- mentary manufacture. Before, therefore, the middle of the eighteenth century there had opened the popular era in the narrative of our international statesman- ship. The European system of the Middle Ages was not indeed yet broken up. The European equilibrium still implied a balance of kings and courts rather than of peoples. The principle of nationality systematically ignored by the Utrecht settlement had still to become an inspiring idea of diplomacy. Walpole, however, did something to introduce the notion to the public mind. Before passing to the relations between his work and that of his successors, something must be said of his connection with the development of Bourbonism, the shape it was assuming and the attention it was exciting in 1733. I n ^at year Lord Carteret and Townshend as Secretaries of State were subordinately responsible for foreign affairs, but the Prime Minister decisively shaped policy abroad as well as at home. Had Walpole then learned of the earliest arrangement be- tween the French and Spanish Bourbons? If he had, 79 The Story of British Diplomacy his persistence with pacific negotiations, foredoomed, as he must have been aware, to certain failure, was without excuse. The chief argument in favour of the 1733 compact not having been known to the minister, as stated by Professor Seeley,* is that the later agree- ments (1743 and 1761) took the world by surprise. Against this there is now evidence to show that, its secrecy notwithstanding, the earliest of the compacts was certainly known to some of Walpole's colleagues, especially the Duke of Newcastle, then Lord Chamberlain. The Newcastle correspondence, summarised by an expert in this subject in the Quarterly Review (vol. 380, p. 346), has disclosed the existence of a certain " One-hundred-and-one." This mysterious entity, who in the flesh was a lady, proud of her unimpeachable respectability, and expecting to be paid proportionately, constantly recurs to stipu- lations which have just been agreed upon between France and Spain. Further details, she adds, will be sent when more money is received. These, the duke may rest assured, will only confirm previous accounts of the danger threatened by "the project to the House of Hanover and the whole empire of George II." The later developments of to adopt " One-hundred- and-one's " euphemism "the project," under the shapes in which it reappeared or was continued during the greatest foreign ministry of the eighteenth century, that of the elder Pitt, will receive minute notice in their proper place. Meanwhile I pass on to those controllers of England's external relations who more immediately followed Walpole, and to those points at * "The House of Bourbon," by J, R. Seeley, English Historical Review, vol. i. 1887. 80 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy which they were brought into active relations with the European situations of their periods. Two years before Walpole's retirement died the Emperor Charles VI. Foreseeing his end, he had taken the step intended to ensure the fulfilment of his fondest wish by gaining the consent of Europe to the Pragmatic Sanction ; this was accepted both by England and France ; nor at the time did any European state refuse its signature, except Bavaria. In 1740, Maria Theresa, as Queen of Hungary, quietly succeeded to her father's dominions. The first blow at the agreement, however, pro- ceeded from an unexpected quarter. The great Frederick of Prussia had long resented the loss of the Juliers and Berg duchies ; he now made his signature of the Pragmatic Sanction conditional on their restoration ; he emphasised his claim by seizing Silesia, at the same time protesting that he had no wish to quarrel with Austria. It had already become a maxim of French diplomacy to miss no opportunity of acquiring influence in Germany. The King of France, Louis XV., therefore welcomed the oppor- tunity of now concluding a secret treaty with the Prussian monarch. Walpole, who lived till 1745, had foreseen the danger to the peace of the world threatened by a possible collision between the militant Prussian monarch and the young Austrian queen. He had therefore advised timely Austrian concessions to the new Prussian crown. By this time, however, influences very differ- ent from those sedulously fostered by Walpole were in the ascendant with the English court, Parliament and people. George II., flushed with F 81 The Story of British Diplomacy military ambition, had always desired to pose as the armed champion of the late emperor's heiress ; he had more than once asked, or talked of asking, Parliament for money to support her in the field. The belligerent humour of the English king was now to be gratified by the foreign statesmanship of a great minister whose temper was as warlike as the sovereign's Carteret. This was the remarkable man whose death, when it came, made Chesterfield exclaim, "There goes, take him for all in all, the best brains in England." In his political methods and ideas of home and foreign statesmanship, Carteret presented a contrast not less complete than in his person and deportment to Walpole. To knock the heads of the kings of Europe together and jumble something out that may be of service to this country was, as Mr Morley has well put it, his dominating ambition. (Walpole, p. 28.) He first came into favour with George I. because he was the only public man of the day who could speak the king's native language. " Fancy," said the adroit courtier to his sovereign, "a gentleman not knowing German!" From being the rival of Walpole in the first Hanoverian reign, Carteret became the most formidable of Newcastle's competitors in the second. With more, or at least with something, of moral ballast, Carteret would have been as great in politics as he was accomplished in scholarship. As it was, the intricacies of foreign affairs in his day exactly suited his tastes and powers. He regarded them as a game in which he could give the ordinary player points and maintain his lead from the opening to the finish. Trained by Stanhope and Sunderland, he knew, as few of his contemporaries 82 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy did, not only the details of every foreign question, but the nature of the unseen forces to be considered in dealing with it. Sufficiently loyal as a subordinate, he no sooner found himself a principal than he treated with contempt all obligations of party and all scruples of patriotism. Once he had established himself in office, he knew no other object than to remain there on the terms most profitable or pleasant to himself, and most likely to ingratiate him with the sovereign and the public. Not less self-conscious than he was capable, he always asked himself what posterity would be likely to think of any particular coup, as well as what momentary effect it would produce. The fame and the very names of kings outlive the reputa- tion of subjects. Therefore his first maxim was to show himself in sympathy with the court : once delight the boxes, the applause of the gallery will follow. Carteret's natural turn for diplomacy showed itself even in his personal , dealings with George II. " Recollect," said the fiery little king, " I am all for Maria Theresa and the Austrian alliance." " Your Majesty," replied the minister, "does but follow the tradition of the greatest foreign statesman among your royal predecessors, Henry VIII., who was the first to see in Austria the true English make- weight to France." The spring of 1741 produced events that fixed un- alterably the English line in the Seven Years' War. Frederick's victory at Mollwitz made France side with the conqueror. The Franco- Prussian Treaty of Nymphenberg pledged the two Powers to promote the Bavarian Elector's succession to the Imperial crown. The eighteenth - century precursor of the 4 'spirited diplomacy" of our own day, Carteret, in 83 The Story of British Diplomacy 1 742, successfully urged the timely wisdom of pacific surrender upon a martial queen. The English court had for some time used its influence with Maria Theresa to secure her cession of Silesia to Frederick. The Franco- Prussian compact of Nym- phenberg stimulated Carteret to action. From 1730 to 1748, England was represented at Vienna by a York- shire baronet, Sir Thomas Robinson. For that work he had been trained in our Paris Embassy. His zeal in negotiating between Maria Theresa and Frederick the Great secured him the nickname of " L'Infatigable Robinson." His industry and skill enabled Carteret to convert the Austrian empress to the English views. In 1742, by the Treaty of Breslau, she made Silesia over to Frederick. Twelve years later Robinson was to prove less successful. His failure to obtain Maria Theresa's consent to a general pacification caused his recall in 1754, when, as the Duke of Newcastle's colleague, he went into the House of Commons. The Breslau treaty was not only Carteret's most important work, it was also his last. Having by his mother's death become Lord Granville, he resigned in 1744. The Pelham ascendancy which followed this event gave, as some thought, a promise of peace, but without its fulfilment. In France Fleury was now dead ; his successor, Cardinal Tencin, proved more vehemently anti- English than had been Belleisle himself. Tencin's open encouragement to the young Pretender, Charles Edward, culminated (March 1745) in the declaration by France of war against England. A few weeks later France added Austria to the list of her avowed enemies. The struggle originating in the Austrian 84 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy succession, like the Seven Years' War into which that contest merged by degrees almost imperceptible, belongs to the general history of the time. British diplomacy did not remain an idle spectator of the con- fused and sanguinary engagements between the Prussian, Bavarian and Austrian troops, suspended rather than terminated as these had been by the Austro- Bavarian Treaty of Fuessen and the Anglo- Prussian Treaty of Hanover. The Fuessen Treaty had established Maria Theresa's husband, Francis, on the Imperial throne. By the Treaty of Hanover, Frederick promised England to accept Francis I. as emperor, but only on the condition of Silesia remaining a part of the Prussian kingdom. Robinson's persuasive powers were for some time spent in vain on the Austrian empress. At last the British ambassador succeeded, and the Austrian acceptance of these terms was embodied in the Treaty of Dresden, 1745. From the first it had been evident that the primary condition, the "idem velle et nolle" of international friendship, had been wanting to the Anglo-Austrian relations. Nor do these seem to have been improved by the men into whose hands their management had fallen. Robert D'Arcy, fourth Earl of Holdernesse, as Secretary of State, stood high in Newcastle's opinion, but his character was traversed by a vein of frivolity, shown, as his opponents de- clared, by the fact that, when as a younger man he ought to have been a student of politics, he thought of nothing but private theatricals. How, it was asked, could such a man, bred behind the curtain, keep an official secret or be trusted in anything more serious than the business of stage-management ? Moreover, 85 The Story of British Diplomacy Robert Keith who, in 1748, had succeeded Robinson at Vienna another of Newcastle's friends, was with- out the tact and energy shown by his predecessor in dealing with Maria Theresa ; he weakened rather than strengthened the hold of her English friends upon the wavering loyalty of the empress. Nor did Maria Theresa at any time underrate the two definite and practical reasons she had for regard- ing the English alliance as unlikely to stand any severe strain. The Hanoverian court of England was secretly if not openly Prussian in its sympathies. The statesmanship and sentiment of England, she also knew, only valued Austria as an instrument for pro- moting the paramount object of English policy, the overthrow of the Bourbons. In 1756 the Austrian ruler's suspicions received a most dramatic and unex- pected justification. There was, and for some time had been, an understanding secret, of course, after the manner of the time between England and Prussia. It took the shape of the Anglo- Prussian Treaty of Westminster (January 1756). As a natural check to this move thought by some to have been the sug- gestion of Henry Fox, then Secretary of State Austria and France now engaged in a little business of the same kind on their own account. The Franco- Prussian entente had for some time ceased to be operative. Louis XV. never forgave what he called the personal discourtesy of the great Frederick. He now eagerly welcomed an ally of better manners if not of equal strength. The country-house of the French Foreign Minister, Rouille", witnessed the final execution of the Franco-Austrian counter-move to the stroke dealt by " perfidious Albion " in the Westminster treaty. 86 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy Maria Theresa's greatest minister, Kaunitz, once described England as Austria's natural friend, France as her natural enemy. In 1756, however, Kaunitz was immensely popular in Paris, and the chief promoter of the diplomatic instrument, by way of answer to the Westminster League, forthcoming from Versailles. The Treaty of Versailles, concluded in the May of 1756, was the product of the secret forces now direct- ing French diplomacy. The conscience of Louis XV. was in the keeping of the Abbe Bernis ; Madame de Pompadour was the royal mistress. The churchman and the concubine, combining their different kinds of ascendancy to a common end, secured the king's consent to terms between the two countries by which Austria for the present was to remain inactive, and France not to involve other Powers in war, and above all things not to invade the Netherlands. Of the two French signatories of the Treaty of Ver- sailles, Rouille was the Foreign Minister ; his colleague's full name was Francois Joacim de Pierres Bernis. The latter, the idol of fashionable Europe, had made a brilliant beginning at the Venice Embassy in 1740, and, though more than once officially disgraced, remained till his death, in 1794, the most popular of ambassadors in Europe, and not the least successful of diplomatists. Keith, now British ambassador at Vienna, obtained an early interview with Maria Theresa. Why, he reproachfully asked, had she deserted England? Why, was the further enquiry that met this question, had the ministers of George II. forced on her the surrender of Glatz and Silesia? It now remained for English diplomacy to secure its ends by the use of English gold. Heavy bribes from Whitehall to the 87 The Story of British Diplomacy Russian Government at St Petersburg and to their ambassador in London, Bestuchoff, secured the accession of the Czarina Elizabeth, Peter the Great's daughter, to the Treaty of Westminster. We have now (1756) reached the period of the Seven Years' War. The preoccupation of Europe with this contest was the elder Pitt's opportunity for creating or establishing the modern empire of Great Britain. This therefore is the place in which briefly to explain the leading features of the European situation so far as it concerns the foreign policy of England. The Western world had divided itself between the support of England or France. It was, in fact, a duel between those two Powers. At the same time the re- sponsibilities in which the treaty system of Europe had involved the neighbouring states made it impossible that the struggle should be confined to the two competitors for supremacy. The tradition of English diplomatic ascendancy, established by Robinson at Vienna, had proved too weak for the skill and resources of French statesmanship. Nor ought Robinson's colleagues, suc- cessors or employers to have been surprised by Maria Theresa's exchange of an English for a French alliance. Nothing but tact on Robinson's part amounting to genius kept the empress from breaking with England after the Pelhams had forced on her the surrender of Silesia ; and, though he nominally occupied the embassy till 1763, Robinson, between 1748 and 1756, seems to have been mostly absent from the Austrian court. Between the " Devil " of Prussia and the " deep sea " of Turkey, Maria Theresa had been driven by the diplomatic remissness of her English ally into the Versailles treaty with Louis XV. 88 Early Hanoverian Diplomacy The Seven Years' War, as a European episode, consisted of military operations in Germany, which, belonging to general history, need not be recapitulated here. While it was in progress, the elder Pitt began to make himself necessary to the English administrations that were closely following the Continental struggle. At first the policy in regard to it which he advocated for England was an adherence to those traditions of non- intervention, declared by Bolingbroke to be the foundation of Toryism, during the wars ending in the Peace of Utrecht. As time passed on, Pitt saw more and more clearly that in establishing her empire, the one enemy with whom England had to reckon was France ; he therefore entirely changed his attitude towards the combatants in Germany. To assist Frederick of Prussia in occupying the French arms in Europe was to withdraw France from her aggressive enterprises in Hindustan and across the Atlantic ; he was thus, to adapt his own phrase, literally " winning for England, America in Germany." With the course of conquest that formed the fulfilment of these words we are not here concerned. The diplomatic incidents that it originated, and the diplomatic methods adopted by Pitt for the achievement of his Imperial aims, afford material for a new chapter. 89 CHAPTER V CHATHAM I HIS WORK AND ITS RESULTS The Departmental arrangement at the time of the elder Pitt Its disadvantages, and abuses The case of Carteret and Townshend Sir Luke Schaub The elder Horace Walpole The Duke of Newcastle and Lord Harrington The unsatis- factory state of the British Embassies Abraham Stanyan Lord Kinnoull Benjamin Keene Robert D'Arcy, fourth Earl of Holdernesse William Capel, third Earl of Essex James, first Earl Waldegrave Chatham's diplomacy His use of Parliament His oratory The Family Compact of 1761 Chatham's knowledge derived from secret agents Richard Wall, the Spanish Foreign Minister Duten's information from Turin Chatham's resignation Hans Stanley, the English Ambassador at Paris The Peace of Paris, 1763 Chatham's attempted Protestant Alliance The American War The founding of the Foreign Office, 1782. PITT'S triumphs in international statesmanship were won during the period of the Seven Years' War (1757-63), and in the teeth of official difficulties and disorganisation which were then reaching a pitch so intolerable as to necessitate, four years after his death, an attempt to secure something like method and discipline in administration by forming a new and distinct department of State for the conduct of our foreign affairs. The obsolete machinery existing for a Foreign Minister throughout Pitt's time was supplied by the already mentioned Northern and Southern Departments, both domiciled either at the Cock-pit, Whitehall, or at Cleveland Row, St James's. This two- fold division had been made when the king's secretarial 90 Chatham : His Work and its Results business began to be too heavy for a single servant. The appointment, however, of a second Secretary of State under Henry VIII. did not make either of the two less the creature of the court. Both were to the last practically untouched by any new doctrine of responsibility to Parliament. Throughout the Tudor period, perhaps long afterwards, the question of priority between the two was practically settled by the temporary importance of the work done in each of the departments, and on the ability of the men who did it.* Theoretically their duties and dignity may have been equal. Cases like those of Stanhope and Carteret show that the course of events at home and abroad conspired with the natural adaptabilities of the man himself generally to make one of the chiefs of the two departments practically Foreign Secretary, if not Prime Minister as well. When the Secretaries began to be responsible to Parliament rather than to a king, their importance increased, but the old division of duties proved inconvenient. Many of the blunders that confused and miscarried English diplomacy in its eighteenth-century relations with Louis XV., Maria Theresa and Frederick the Great, may be directly traced to the obsolete dual arrangement. It was, to quote Lord John Russell's description, as if " two coachmen were on the box of a mail-coach, one hold- ing the right-hand rein and the other the left." The period which closed with the supremacy of the elder Pitt had been marked by intrigues and counter- intrigues between the two Secretaries of State, that * On this subject see The Public Records and the Constitution^ a lecture delivered at All Souls, Oxford, by Mr Luke Own Pike, who favours the idea of the Foreign Office having specifically grown out of the Northern Secretaryship. 91 The Story of British Diplomacy alternately agitated and paralysed our diplomacy ; during a quarter of a century. The plots and counter- plots of English ministers reflected in miniature the duplicity and overreaching that, on a larger scale, has been seen to characterise the relations of the Austrian, the English, the French and the Prussian cabinets and courts. During the second decade of the eighteenth century, Carteret and Townshend, both of them Secretaries of State under Walpole, were competitors for the conduct of our foreign policy. The royal favour, the essential preliminary to the achievement of that ambition, could only or most easily be secured by the good offices of one of the royal mistresses. The Duchess of Kendal promised to be the most amenable to the necessary pressure ; she had already been in the pay of Bolingbroke ; to her therefore, as to the most useful ally in his diplomatic projects, Carteret addressed himself. Speaking of the stateswomen who make international politics their metier, Walpole had said that he knew of only one who would not take money, and she took diamonds. The Duchess of Kendal had a soul above either gold or jewels, but sighed for the ennoblement of her kindred. Carteret and Townshend so hated and distrusted each other that neither of them would let George I. be out of his sight a moment. When, therefore, their sovereign went to Hanover, both these ministers insisted on accompany- ing him. The absence of the two was the secret of the diplomatic successes already related of the home-staying Walpole. Carteret was now to discover the price fixed by the chief court concubine for her assistance. Her Grace of Kendal's niece probably a synonym 92 Chatham : His Work and its Results for daughter was the bride elect of the son of La Vrilliere, the French Secretary of State. As a con- dition of the marriage, the young lady's friends in- sisted that the bridegroom should be made a duke by Louis XV. ; the influence of the English court, it was assumed, might successfully be exercised to that end. George I. approved of the match. Carteret resolved to buy his monarch's mistress by using his influence at the French court to gratify her whim. England then had for its ambassador at Paris a certain Sir Luke Schaub, a native of Switzerland, and a standing illustration of the truth of the French proverb, "pas d? argent, pas de Suisse" This diplomatist had already been heavily fee'd by Townshend to counteract the policy of Walpole and Carteret ; he now took Carteret's money to obtain for the bridegroom elect the title stipulated for by the young lady's relatives. Schaub, having betrayed his original purchaser, Townshend, really exerted himself to earn the money paid by his second buyer, Carteret. Townshend, however, had now a trusty agent of his own for counter-working both his rival and Schaub at the French court. The incident ended in Schaub being recalled for an incompetent bungler, in old Horace Walpole, Sir Robert's brother, superseding him, and being plainly told by the French regent that the de- scendant of St Louis could not sully the highest title in his peerage to promote his subject's marriage with a bride of such questionable parentage. The "old Horace Walpole," of his more famous nephew and namesake's diaries, remained at the English Embassy in Paris till 1730. His ascendancy over Cardinal Fleury was due to the marked courtesy paid 93 The Story of British Diplomacy the French minister by Walpole, while that official was for a short time out of favour. Hence the oppor- tunities enjoyed by the elder Horace Walpole of promoting the diplomacy of his brother, Sir Robert, and of contributing to the fall of Carteret. This too- clever servant of the English crown, as social and political diplomatist indeed overleaped himself; the Walpoles took the winning trick in the international game ; Carteret himself was shelved in Ireland. In 1724, the Duke of Newcastle, succeeding Carteret as Secretary for the Southern Department, had France in his province ; he managed his French business through the veteran who had relieved Schaub in the way already described. Townshend, however, as the other State Secretary, disputed his colleague's right to the exclusive control of the English chancery in Paris. The Anglo-French diplomacy of this period was as confused and con- tradictory as the crooked purposes and intrigues of its directors could not help making it. Abuses and inefficiency of all kinds were indeed guaranteed by the arrangements for regulating our external relations during nearly three centuries (1539-1782). However the work might have been divided, it was obviously of a kind demanding the unintermitted supervision and control of one competent and responsible chief. That had no doubt been forthcoming when a Tudor king was his own Foreign Minister and used his Secre- taries of State as clerks. Afterwards, however, the welfare of Great Britain beyond seas was left to be intrigued about and quarrelled over by two de- partmental heads, each playing for his own hand, and constantly endeavouring to assert himself outside 94 Chatham : His Work and its Results his own territorial limit. As Southern Secretary, the Duke of Newcastle had nothing to do with Austria, which belonged to the Northern Secretary. This, in succession to Townshend, was William Stanhope, known from 1730 as Lord Harrington. Like Benjamin Keene, he learned diplomacy in the same Spanish school as that studied in by his famous kinsman of an earlier day, the first Earl Stanhope. As has been done by other members of his profession, he illustrated the diplomatic aptitude hereditary in certain families ; if, since him, none of his stock have been ambassadors, every generation of Stanhopes has produced men cast by Nature for the part of diplomatist. Newcastle was bent on including all foreign affairs in his province ; he plagued Harrington, as he had plagued Robinson, Keene and others before him, with letters marked "most private and confidential," not exactly instructing their recipients what to do, but only saying what, if he were in their position, the writer would do himself. The chaotic character of our international states- manship in the early eighteenth century was further promoted by the frequent absences of the two first Georges in Hanover. George I. made the journey to and fro five times in the thirteen years of his reign ; his son, including the time spent on the road, out of the three-and-thirty years of his kingship, passed an aggregate of three in his German realm. As absolutist in their pretensions and as autocratic in their ideas as the Stuarts, the earlier Hanoverian kings used their Secretaries of State, Northern or Southern, as servants of their household at home for sending instructions to their representatives 95 The Story of British Diplomacy abroad. The monarch spent much of his time upon the road ; with him was always a minister in attend- ance. The secretary who stayed at home was caballing against the colleague who was abroad. Which of the two succeeded in making the Govern- ment of the day the organ of his ideas, was deter- mined by a scramble that made State policy the creature of luck and chance. The Duke of New- castle, the real Foreign Minister in the Pelham ad- ministration, hated foreign travel for personal rather than patriotic reasons. He saw, however, the in- conveniences to the public service caused by gadabout ministers, dancing attendance on feverish and fidgety kings. " The wonder," he said, " is not that things so often go wrong, but that anything should ever go right." Politically and diplomatically, English ambassadors and their staffs looked ahead as little as might be ; if their statesmanship was wise and carefully thought out, it might be overruled at any moment by their private enemies in the favoured faction at home. Literally, too, as well as politically, they lived from hand to mouth. Their salaries indeed were, for the most part, paid pretty punctually. The allowances for incidental outlay, known as "extraordinaries," were always in arrear. The Treasury had to be dunned for months and even years before these claims were settled. Lord Waldegrave at Paris, and Sir Benjamin Keene at Madrid, the latter the most useful am- bassador of his time, finding mere importunity fail, tried bribery in the hope of getting back their out- of-pocket expenses. They sent large presents of wine and tobacco to the Pelham brothers, or costlier "gratifications" to under-strappers at St James s and 96 Chatham : His Work and its Results head clerks at Whitehall ; but no cash came. The British Embassy at Constantinople, in particular, was notorious as a hotbed of scandal and incompetence. Abraham Stanyan (1669-1732) first made his mark in the diplomatic service as envoy to the Swiss cantons. Appointed to the Constantinople Embassy, he acquired the luxurious habits and official indolence of the East. His recall became inevitable. He re- fused, however, to leave till the Government had squared a long-standing account he had against them ; for had he not, as a junior in the service at Turin, pawned a diamond ring and a gold snuff-box to pay his weekly living bills, when his salary was just a year overdue ? Let the State settle accounts with him ; he would then think of vacating the legation. Lord Kinnoull, who eventually replaced Stanyan, united with some of his predecessor's tastes a violently ungovernable temper. He reached Turkey at a moment when France was trying to embroil the Porte in a war against the Empire ; his instruc- tions were to co-operate with the Dutch ambassador in urging a peace policy upon the Sultan. Instead of doing this, he at once quarrelled with the diplo- matist from The Hague, and found his special friend in the Parisian diplomatist, Villeneuve. He was soon recalled ; Sir Everard Fawkener was nominated to the appointment. Kinnoull, however, refused to go on board the man-of-war which had been sent to take him home. He remained as a rival envoy for a year at Constantinople, thwarting Fawkener at every point, and eventually asking promotion from his Government as a reward for extraordinary services. Another diplomatic curiosity of this period is best G 97 The Story of British Diplomacy known from Chesterfield's oft-quoted remark " The truth is, that Tyrawley and I have been dead for some years, but we have not let anyone know." Lord Tyrawley, when in the army, had been Maryborough's aide-de-camp at Malplaquet. Sent as envoy to Lisbon, for the special purpose of preventing war between Portugal and Spain, he had no sooner reached his destination than he was " spoiling for a fight," if not between Spain and Portugal, with his colleague Sir John Norris, whom he abused roundly in all his home despatches. Norris returned the compliment. The two ambassadors excluded each other from the dinners given by them on the queen's birthday. Each of the hosts told his guests that he hated his colleague only one degree more than he did the Dutch minister with whom he had been sent to co-operate, and whom both Tyrawley and Norris always spoke of as "that d d Til." Benjamin Keene, at Madrid, had other difficulties than those arising from the retention of his agency for the South Sea Company after he had become representative of the English king ; some of these resulted from the peculiar habits of the Spanish court. Philip V. occasionally amused himself by taking to his bed for months at a time, leaving State business to his ambitious wife, Elizabeth Farnese, but stipulating that no final decision should be given till he might be in the humour to deal with State papers. If Keene had possessed the social con- nection, the spirit and the energy shown by his predecessor Stanhope, he would have passed for Stanhope's superior. As it was, he had not the good fortune to be actively employed under the dis- 98 Chatham : His Work and its Results pensation of the elder Pitt, whom he would have exactly suited. The trained intellect, the habit of accurate observation which it ensures, loyalty, spirit, promptitude and exactness in fulfilling orders based on the reports furnished, "These, said Chatham, "are the qualities indispensable to a good ambassa- dor." They were all of them combined in Keene. Among his professional contemporaries, mention has been already made of Robert D'Arcy, fourth Earl of Holdernesse. The son of the second earl, he succeeded to the title in 1722, began his Continental career by going with George II. to Hanover as lord- of- the -bedchamber in 1743. Next year came his embassy to the republic of Venice, lasting to 1746. Serving in the same Government as Walpole, he seemed to that statesman an unthinking, an unparliamentary minister. In diplomacy his figure is of permanent interest. More vividly and consistently than had yet been done by most members of his vocation, he realised the ornamental possibilities of an ambassador's calling, and reflected the dignity and magnificence of the sovereign he represented in the superb appoint- ments of his own daily life. In the sight of the court to which he was accredited and the capital at which he lived, to magnify his apostleship seemed to Holdernesse only the loyal glorification of King George of England. It is recorded of a popular diplomatist the Lord Napier and Ettrick of the nineteenth century that, asked by a great lady who was the most agreeable man in Europe, he replied quite simply, " I am." To a similar question a like answer might properly have been given by William Capel, the third Earl of Essex, who in 1743 represented England at Turin. Belong- 99 The Story of British Diplomacy ing to the stately school of Holdernesse, Essex would not be bored with the drudgeries of diplomacy ; he entertained illustrious Englishmen, when on their travels, at his embassy ; he introduced them, if they were sufficiently presentable, to the prettiest women, the most serviceable men and the most desirable hosts of the capital. He wrote a few important despatches with his own hand ; by his suavity and tact he helped on the treaty between Maria Theresa and the King of Sardinia, which constituted the sum and essence of Anglo- Austrian policy in 1740. He at no time, however, seemed so happy or so much in his element as when arranging the dinner menus, the private theatricals or the concerts which made his house at Turin the most charming and coveted of cosmopolitan resorts in the first half of the eighteenth century. His contemporary, at Paris, and socially his rival, was James, the first Earl Waldegrave. As Holdernesse had stamped diplomacy with the mark of magnificence and fashion, so did Waldegrave invest it with the associa- tions of intellect. The tradition thus created for diplomacy was to descend from the man who founded it, as a paternal legacy, to his son, the second Lord Waldegrave, who owed his gift of literary portraiture to his father. The first Lord Waldegrave was not only a good talker himself, but made those he gathered about him talk better as his guests than they were ever known to do elsewhere. All the controllers of English diplomacy in the eighteenth century now passed in review are insignifi- cant in comparison with the elder Pitt, who died Earl of Chatham. His career and achievements belong- rather to the general history of this country than to 100 Chatham : His Work and its Results the present narrative of diplomatic movements and their directors. The anomalies of his position are, in their way, not less than the picturesqueness of his personality or the durability of his statesmanship. The supreme moulder of international politics, he had, till his decline after 1761, undergone no technical apprenticeship to diplomacy and was never sent on any foreign mission. The mover of fleets and armies from one end of the world to the other, the organiser of victory by land or sea in both hemispheres, he never presided over the departments of Admiralty or War. The unmaker and maker of administrations, the ruling spirit of national policy, he never bore the title of First Minister of the Crown, nor officially advanced beyond the Secretaryship of State for the Southern Department, The object of his diplomacy was to enforce, through his ambassadors, the public opinion which he had created and the national ambition which he had inspired. The specific means employed to pursue that end were those provided by the circumstances and agencies of the time. The fundamental principle of his policy survives to-day in the familiar phrase, ''Trade follows the flag." Directly he saw himself backed by the nation, and not before, he took office as a step towards a single end the salvation of the country and the creation of the empire. The condition on which he entered the Government of the day was that he should in himself embody the entire adminis- tration and, though the holder of a nominally subordinate office, should exercise supremacy over every section of the public service. Master of the House of Commons, he dealt with that assembly in much the same fashion as it had been used by absolute 101 The Story of British Diplomacy monarchs, not for council or discussion, but for raising the supplies required to enforce a predetermined policy. A ruler by hereditary right might claim the prerogative of war and peace. The true " patriot king," drawing his mandate not from Parliament, but from the nation, was Pitt himself. His statesmanship abroad knew but a single end, to be promoted by two sets of means. The object showed itself in the world- wide ascendancy of England ; the method, never lost sight of in all the dealings with foreign Powers, was the thwarting of Bourbon ambition and, as instru- mental to that, the alliance between Great Britain and Prussia. Treaties, truces, armaments, campaigns, the bitterest opposition to Hanoverian subsidies at one time, millions lavished on Hanover and Prussia at another, all this judged by the result, becomes in- telligible and consistent, as it seemed to Frederick the Great himself when he said " Monsieur Pitt, a la meilleure tete dans 1'Europe," and, " England has long been in travail : at last she has brought forth a man." Though during four years he controlled foreign policy as for that matter he controlled the great spending departments of the State it would be not less inappropriate to call Pitt a professional dip- lomatist than it would be to call him a professional soldier, because for the same time he had in his youth held a commission in the Blues. His oratory was the prolonged, but emphatic, echo of the voice which his inspiration had drawn forth from the mass of his countrymen. At foreign courts and capitals he expected British ambassadors to be the nation's mouth- pieces and his own instruments. The most memorable phrases of his eloquence, soon after they had been 102 Chatham : His Work and its Results uttered, became for all time the commonplaces of patriotism and of practical wisdom. The best-known specimens may be given in a few words here. " Con- fidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom." " Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights, form the Bible of the English Constitution." " Where law ends, tyranny begins." " Every English- man's house is his castle ; the wind may blow through it, the storm may enter, but the King of England and all his forces cannot cross the threshold of the tenement." A consummate actor, with the whole nation, if not the entire world, for audience, the elder Pitt used Parliament as a platform for addressing the nation, just as his son consulted no other tastes than those of the House of Commons. However danger- ously near to being platitudes, sonorous generalisations and fine sentiments never fail to move the gallery. Hence their abundance in Chatham's speeches. To inflame his countrymen with a sense of their duties and their greatness was the one object of his eloquence ; to that end it was perfectly adapted. Equally simple was the line of international statesmanship which he had laid down for himself to employ the greatest European conqueror of his time, Frederick the Great, as an agent and colleague in building up the fabric of British empire. Such an ally was well worth the heavy price of furnishing the gold and arms that defeated the European combination to crush the Prussian king. Something more must now be said about Pitt's dip- lomatic methods and the incidents connected with them. " Omne solum forti patria" he himself denounced as the fatal casuistry of a villain like Bolingbroke. 103 The Story of British Diplomacy " Nullum solum nisi Britannia " would have been a fit motto for Pitt's lifelong motives. His ambition, had it been fulfilled, would have annexed the four quarters of the globe to the English crown. The diplomacy of Pitt was the embodiment and glorification of the inconsistency and opportunism which in an earlier chapter were seen to be the general characteristics of England's foreign statesmanship. In 1735 he first made his parliamentary mark by denunciations of the English payments to Hessian and Hanoverian troops. In 1757 he risked the loss of favour with George II. by insisting upon the alliance of England with Prussia, and he sent Frederick reinforcements of 12,000 men. Of course, during this interval of twenty odd years the European situation, and with it the international interests of England, had undergone a complete change. Pitt was in advance of all his contemporaries in seeing where the true concerns and obligations of his country now lay. It had, as he was the first to perceive, and as he gradually convinced both court and cabinet, ceased to be merely a ques- tion of reinstating Maria Theresa in her ancestral dominions, on the one hand, or of squandering English treasure and lives upon a petty Teutonic principality on the other. The one ally possible for England was in danger of being crushed by the colossal confederacy of Continental states, whose next victim was to be Eng- land herself. At the period now reached (1757-1761), the European episode determining Pitt's diplomacy was the understanding, begun in 1733, renewed in 1 743, between the French and Spanish Bourbons for crushing England. Taken in connection with earlier documents of the series, the Family Compact of 1761 104 Chatham : His Work and its Results formed part of the Franco-Spanish policy secretly elaborated for dividing the world between the dynasties of Paris and Madrid. Of the first treaty, that of 1733, enough has been said in an earlier chapter. The agreement of ten years later was merely its emphatic enlargement. As was first, among English writers, shown by Professor Seeley, and among English statesmen of his time was first seen by Pitt, each of these treaties formed part of one diplomatic whole. That unity constituted the crowned conspiracy against his country which Pitt baffled. In his early and accurate acquaintance with the designs of foreign sovereigns and their ministers, Pitt contrived to show himself omniscient. He often, however, derived little of this knowledge from the accredited diplomatists of England. Thus, in and about the year 1761, Bristol, the British ambassador at Madrid, was as ignorant as a babe of the latest Franco-Spanish negotiation. From his secret agents alone, mysterious and nameless persons, sometimes ladies, Pitt became cognisant of each successive detail within a day or two of its being settled. The official representative of England in Spain, confronted by Pitt with these discoveries, could only raise his hands to heaven in silent horror. General Wall, the Spanish Foreign Minister, admitted their truth, but protested Spain had no ill-will to Britain. That Pitt knew better was due to his spies in every corner of France and Spain. These had forwarded him copies of the clauses levelled against the very existence of his country, contained in the diplomatic instruments which, the English Government were assured, were in no degree inimical to King George. While the fair words were being uttered, 105 The Story of British Diplomacy Pitt knew they were being contradicted by intrigues and by preparations for war. And yet he had really shown a wish for peace. In 1757 he had induced George II. to acquiesce in a secret treaty with Spain, upon terms that, while testifying the sincerity of Pitt's desire to bring hostilities to a close, must have done violence to his patriotic pride. Ever since the Utrecht settle- ment had confirmed England in its possession, Gibraltar had been the subject of clandestine negotia- tions between the Spanish Government and English statesmen of all parties. Its surrender to Spain was contemplated by one of the provisions which Pitt entertained in 1757. In return, Spain was to assist England to recover Minorca. It may well be that Pitt acquiesced in such concessions, rather to test the genuineness of the Spanish Government's pacific pro- fessions than because he believed his offer would be accepted. The chief of the Madrid Foreign Office, Wall, with whom Pitt and his private agents, as well as the ambassador Bristol, had to deal, shrewdly abstained almost entirely from committing himself by writing, and often succeeded in talking over the British representative. The admixture of Spanish blood still shows itself in the features and complexions to be seen in the extreme West of Ireland. The controller of the diplomatic system of the Peninsula, from 175410 1764, was a Galway man. Born in 1694, Richard Wall served both in the Spanish fleet and the Spanish army. In the international affairs of his adopted country he made himself so indispensable that his resignation of office, repeatedly tendered, had been thus far refused. He saw no other way for getting out of harness than by a sufficiently simple ruse. One 106 Chatham : His Work and its Results day he appeared at his office in the Prado, with a shade over eyes that looked red and angry. His sight, he said, was failing ; the inflammation proved indeed to be temporary only ; it had been produced artificially by some ointment. The device, however, succeeded and Wall obtained his discharge. During the ten years he directed the foreign politics of Spain, Wall proved himself more than a match for the com- bined diplomacy and diplomatists of Western Europe. Bristol, high bred, honourable, but never properly grounded in the elements of his trade, was systemati- cally hoodwinked by him. Pitt's private agents were bamboozled. Only Pitt himself was not to be caught. Pitt's diplomacy attained its object for two reasons. In an age when the giving and taking of bribes, from the highest to the lowest, was universal, he trusted no foreign statesman or sovereign. He checked the reports received from his ambassadors by the inquiries of his secret agents; in the background of his peaceful international machinery he had stationed an army and navy, at a cost of be- tween eight and nine millions, increased by 100,000 men. What were the exact means by which Pitt had acquired the knowledge that had shown itself in his whole scheme of international policy and in this strengthening of the national resources as the only method of giving to that policy effect ? The details involved in an answer to this question will also serve to explain the secret of the great minister's resignation. Throughout the eighteenth century, Turin was the chief centre of political intrigue in Southern Europe. The English representative at this capital was Sir James Stewart Mackenzie. His first secretary who afterwards became his successor, was a certain Lewis 107 The Story of British Diplomacy Dutens. By detecting and deciphering the secret correspondence between the Neapolitan Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Minister of the King of Savoy and Sardinia, Dutens had discovered the secret treaty of Spain with France which, concluded in the hour of Spain's professed neutrality, constituted the Family Compact of 1761. Dutens himself, whatever may have been alleged to the contrary, had no direct communication with Pitt ; he was, however, on intimate terms with one of Pitt's secretaries. To him therefore Dutens confided what he had found out. In October 1761 came the famous meeting of the British Cabinet in London. Pitt denounced to his colleagues " the secret engagements of the whole House of Bourbon." Now was revealed the effect of the work in London society and politics, on which Bussy and his foreign colleagues had long been engaged. These of course had found convenient material on which to work in the social and political jealousy of the great minister. " Does the right honourable gentleman seriously intend us to believe this cock-and-bull story ? "asked one of Pitt's colleagues. The thing, it was asserted was an absurdity which no reasonable man could credit. At any rate, if he had them, let Pitt produce his authorities. The only notice taken of this challenge by Pitt was a sneer about playing with men who used loaded dice. " I say," he said, " that which I know ; I will not disclose my proofs to an incredulous audience." With these words the great Commoner quitted the room, went home, and wrote his letter of resignation to the king.* In doing so, he of course played his enemies' * The authorities for the view of Pitt's resignation here taken and for the event connected with it are the Revue cPHistoire Diplomatique (1887-98), Von Ruville's Chatham and Bute and Seeley's House of Bourbon. 108 Chatham : His Work and its Results game by leaving the field open to Bute, already his rival and now his assured successor. For some time before this dramatic denouement, real progress had been made towards the conclusion of a general peace. With Austria and Russia, France had already come to terms. How successfully the French ambassador Bussy had done his work of throw- ing dust in the eyes of the London court and cabinet has been already seen. While he had been thus engaged on the Thames, the English peace party had in Paris a representative after their own heart in the chargk d'affaires, Hans Stanley, a vivacious and clear- headed diplomatist, of whom little is now known beyond the fact that he united a good character with eccentric habits, that he committed suicide in 1780, and that he appears in Reynolds' portrait of him as a young man with a long face and dark hair. Stanley occasion- ally left his diplomatic work in Paris for short visits to London. On one of these occasions he presented himself at Pitt's house in St James's Square that mansion which during four eventful years was the central bureau of British Imperial policy, civil or military, and beneath whose roof both the English diplomacy of modern times and the British Empire as it exists to-day were born. Pitt, however, never received this visitor, deep as he was in the confidence of his rivals. The man whom Stanley did see, Bute, lived in the Mayfair palace, known to-day as Lansdowne House. This had recently come into the possession of Lord Bute, Pitt's supplanter, and there were discussed and arranged the English conditions for the settlement between England, France, Spain and Portugal constituting the Peace of Paris (1763). Upon 109 The Story of British Diplomacy terms compromising neither his own honour nor his country's Imperial position, Pitt, had his health held out and his temper subordinated itself to his judg- ment, might himself have arranged a treaty. The conventional criticisms of his foreign statesmanship on the ground of its expense are to some extent disposed of by the immense increase in the distance from London of his military and naval operations. This fact alone prohibits a comparison between the cost of English warfare in the times of Marl bo rough and of Chatham respectively. As regards Pitt him- self, his policy and foresight had been vindicated by everything that had happened since he stalked out of the memorable cabinet in the October of 1761, in- dignantly refusing to be the associate of men who were the willing dupes of Continental knaves, crowned or uncrowned. The charge against him of prolonging the war against the wish as well as against the interests of his country is on the face of it absurd. If the nation had desired that hostilities should cease, had really thought enough, and more than enough, to satisfy the honour of Britain had been gained, it could at any moment have stopped supplies. Even Pitt's nominal supporters in diplomacy and Parliament numbered some who were waiting an opportunity to turn against him. The king's friends, joining with the malcontent Pittites, could have brought down the edifice of foreign statesmanship he was constructing. When he had gone, nothing occurred which he had not predicted. Each day furnished some fresh proof of the enduring reality of mutual obligations of France and Spain, created by the Family Compact which Bussy had fooled the English Parliament and people no Chatham : His Work and its Results into discrediting, and whose disclosure had followed on the happy accidents already related that conspired to confirm Pitt's success and to justify his judgment. Even as it was, the command of India, secured to England by the treaty and the disestablishment of the military power of France, might not have satisfied the country, had not the great ally obtained by Chatham for England, Frederick the Great, been adding success to success in Germany while the Anglo-French negotia- tions were going forward. Diplomatically, the peace of 1763 so irritated Prussia that England found herself once more completely isolated. Unlike Pitt, Bute did not even endeavour to stamp his personality in enduring characters on foreign policy. Pitt himself was still to propound another scheme of European combinations very different from anything he had yet suggested. Notwithstanding Pitt's rupture with the Whigs, the king's uncle, the old Duke of Cumberland, persisted in regarding him as the only head of the Whig party. In that capacity the retired minister was induced to come forth from his seclusion. The conditions of European policy on which he insisted were now to balance the Family Compact by an English alliance with the Protestant Powers of the Continent. The professional diplomatist, Hans Stanley, against whom the doors of Pitt's house had previously been closed, now received his instructions directly from Pitt himself. This envoy was started off to Berlin and St Petersburg to negotiate an alliance against the Bourbon dynasty and its vast designs. The mission, however, proved fruitless. Stanley had no sooner reached the Prussian capital than Frederick unmistakably showed his indifference alike to European in The Story of British Diplomacy Protestantism and English welfare. British states- manship, the Prussian monarch complained, as regards external relations, so entirely lacked continuity, was so fluctuating, so liable to be upset by party necessities or intrigues at home, that he could not risk the welfare of his realm by entering into any fresh arrangements with the Government of King George. The truth of course was, first, that Frederick had already got out of England all he specially wanted, and that he was now bent upon his iniquitous project of dismembering Poland. Moreover, the great Commoner, whom he had before so extravagantly eulogised, had ceased to be the idol of the country, had indeed destroyed his own identity by becoming Lord Chatham. The administration which, as Lord Privy Seal, Chatham directed, was manifestly doomed when Chatham him- self went as an invalid to Bath. The Chatham administration came to an end in December 1767. The chief events of English inter- national concern between that date and Chatham's death in the following May were the partition of Poland and the outbreak of the war that ended in the creation of the United States. Both these episodes placed a severe and continuous strain on the diplo- matic machinery and resources of England. Both, however, form portions of the national annals, too familiar, and in most of their details too accessible, to be dwelt upon at any length here. The close of Chatham's parliamentary career, roughly speaking, coincided with the opening of a period in our inter- national relations, not indeed of graver moment, but of perhaps greater complexity than even that with which he had dealt. By converting his private residence in 112 Chatham : His Work and its Results St James's Square into the Foreign Office of the country he had, when nominally Secretary of State for the Southern Department, anticipated by five years the concentration of the external affairs of the country in the hands of one responsible minister beneath a single roof. On the 3 205, 207, 226, 234, 236, 239, 240, 245-7, 256, 372, 387. Alexander II., 323, 325, 329, 344, 390, 393. 405 Alexandrian Library, 273 Alfred, King, 8 Alfred, Prince, 309 Algeria, French occupation of, 285 Alien Act, 139, 140 Alison, Sir A., 219, 223 Ally Croker, 122 Alphonso of Castile, 10 Alsace, 56, 142 Althorp, 266 American Wars, 222-4, 34^ Amicus, 381 Amiens, Peace of, 159-160, 168-9, 170 i, 176, 208 Anderson, 350 Andrassy Note, 330 Anglo-French alliance, 9-10, 28, 51-3, 56, 63, 65, 67, 72-3 Anglo-French Convention, 298-9 Anglo-French entente, 340-4, 406 Anglo-Portuguese alliance, 207, 251 Anglo-Prussian alliance, 120-2 Anglo - Russian - Neapolitan coalition, 173 Anglo-Russian Convention, 392 Anglo- Spanish alliance, 10-11, 17, 28, 63 Anglo-Turkish Convention, 392 Anne, Queen, 19, 39, 40, 45, 51-2 Anti-Corn Law League, 373 Antwerp, 66 Apodaca, Admiral J. R. de, 212 Archangel, 126 Aristophanes, 1 86 Armada, II Armed Neutrality, 165, 199, 328 Arthur, Prince of Wales, 1 3 Ash bur ton, Lord, 287, 303 Ashburton Treaty, 287-8 Assiento, 61 Aston, 292 Auckland, Lord, 119, 122-3, I2 5> *33 149 Auckland Papers, 147 Augustine, 8 Austrian Succession, war of the, 45, 149 Austro-English Treaty, 317-8, 336 Austro-Spanish alliance, 74 Avignon massacres, 126 BACON, 5 Baden, 56 Bagot, Sir Chas., 261 Baltic, attempt to close, 201-2 Baring, Sir F., 183 Baring Co. , 287 Barnave, 130 Barnes & Co., 183 Barrere, Camille, 398-9 Barrier Treaty, 65 Bartenstein, Treaty of, 193, 195 Barthelemy, 134, 137 Basle Treaties, 151-2 Bath, Lord, 315 Bathurst, 3rd Earl, 219 Battye & Co. , 183 Bavaria, Elector of, 56, 83 409 The Story of British Diplomacy Bavaria, Prince of, 41 Baylen, 216, 244 Beaconsfield, Lord, 36, 180, 246, 297- 8, 330-1, 333-5, 381, 389, 391, 393-4 Beaufort, Duke of, 381 Bedford, Duke of, 119 Behemoth, 5 Behring Straits trouble, 397 Belgian Treaty, 256-7, 278 Belleisle, 84 Bellingham, 168 Benckendorff, 289 Benedetti, 356-7 Bengal Convention, 125, 335 Benoliel, 252 Benson. 296, 334 Bentinck, Lord Wm., 254 Berbice, 242 Berg, Duchy of, 81 Berlin, Congress of, 37, 246, 390-2, 398 Berlin Decree, 190, 196, 199, 207, 223 Bernadotte, 227 Bernard, Montague, 353 Bernis, Abbe, 87 Bernstorff, 201 Bertha, 8 Bertie, 368 Besika Bay, 317 Bestuchoff, 88 Beust, Count, 358 Bible, free use of, 28 Bignon, 194 Bintinaye, Chevalier de la, 130-1 Biography of Prince Consort ', 334 Birinus, 8 Biron, Due de, 136 Bismarck, Prince, 188, 355-7, 359, 384> 405 Blachford, Lord. 363 Black Sea, 322, 327, 329, 381, 384, 389 1 39> 406 Blowitz, Baron, 380-1 Blucher, Marshal, 235 Blunt, W. S., 392 Boleyn, Anne, 22 Bolingbroke, Viscount, 35, 40, 44, 47- 52, 56-64, 71, 75, 88, 92, 103, 191. 250, 393- Bombay, dowry of, 29 Bonaparte, Joseph, 169 Bonaparte (see Napoleon) Bourbons, the, 76, 79, 104, in, 120, 124, 126-8, 132, 148, 157, 195, 207, 209, 236, 242, 255-7, 272-3, 290, 374, 388 Bouverie, Mrs, 176 Braganza, 195, 207 Brandenburg, Duke of, 24 Brandenburg, Electors of, 40 Breslau, Treaty of, 84 Bresson, 291, 302 Breteuil, Due de, 210 Bridgeman, F. O., 377 Bright, Dr F., xi Bright, John, 333, 335, 352 Brisach, 56 Brissot, 142 Bristol. 106 Bristol, Bishop of, 55 Brodie, Wm. D., 187 Broglio, Marshal, 113 Brook's Club, 129 Brougham, Lord, 218, 220, 259, 325 Browning, Oscar, 147 Brunnow, Baron, 161, 296, 316, 325, 327, 329 Brunswick, Duke of, 147. 149 Bryce, James, 39, 368 Buckingham, Duke of, 23, 25-6 Buckley, Victor, 367 Budberg, General, 194 Bulwer, Henry (see Dalling, Lord) Bunsen, 366 Buol, Count, 319, 322 Burges, J. B., 178, 180-2, 187, 215 Burgundy, Duke of, 13, 28 Burgundy, Treaty with, 13-4 Burke, 133-4, 210 Burleigh, Lord, 20-1, 240 Burnet, 40 Bussy, 109, no Bute, 109,' i ii Byron, 145. 186, 268 Byron, Lady, 178 CADIZ, Duke of, 289-291 Calais, 20 Callieres, 53 Calonne, 127 Calvin, 4, 6 Calvo, Balthazar, 211 Cambrai, Congress at, 74 Cambray, League of, 15 Cambridge, Earl of, 10 Campbell, Sir F., 377 Campo Formio, Peace of, 153, 155 Campuzano, Chevalier, 212 Canning, George, 40,^170, 173, 176-8, 186-7, J 89, 190-205, 207-210, 212- 220, 222, 224, 227, 234, 238-9, 241, 245, 247-260, 263-6, 271-2, 274, 278-9, 294, 299, 310, 339, 391, 400 Canning, Sir Stratford (see de Redcliffe, Lord S. ) Canterbury, Archbishop of, 123 Canterbury and Rome, 19 Canute, 9 Canynges, 191 410 Index Cape of Good Hope, 155, 176, 242 Carlist War, 289 Carlos, Don (see Charles III.) Carmarthen, Lord (see Leeds, Duke of) Carnarvon, Lord, 170 Caroline, 287 Caroline, Queen, 73 Carrero, Cardinal Porto, 42-3 Carteret, Lord, 79, 82-4, 91-4 Castlereagh, 193, 205, 212, 216-220, 222, 224, 226-9, 233-5, 237-251, 254-5, 259, 268 Catalans, 53, 56 Catalonia, 56 Cathcart, Lord, 233-4 Catherine of Russia, Il8-I2l, 147-8, 152, 160, 163, 165-6, 314 Cato, 59, 60 Caulaincourt, 232-4, 236 Cavour, 4, 311, 326, 336, 339 Cecil (see Burleigh, Lord) Cecil, Lord, 23-4 Ceylon, 169 Chamberlain, Joseph, 377, 408 Charlemagne, 190 Charles, Archduke, 42, 54, 153 Charles I. (England), 23-5 Charles II. (England), 28-33, 45, 53, 385 Charles II. (France, " The Bald"), 8-9 Charles II. (Spain), 41-3 Charles III. (Spain), 68, 77, 127 Charles V. (Spain), 17-9 Charles VI. (Austria), 70, 81 Charles X. (France), 273-4 Charles XII. (Sweden), 65-8, 72 Charles XIII. (Sweden), 227, 387 Charles Edward Stuart, 84, 211 Charlotte, Princess, 276 Chateaubriand, 243, 401 Chateau d'Eu, 290, 405 Chatillon, Congress of, 233-7 Chaumont, Treaty of, 236-7 Chauvelin, Marquis de, 137-140, 142-5 Chenery, Thomas, 324 Chesapeake, 223 Chesterfield, 81-2, 98 Choiseul, 124 Christchurch, Dean of (see Aldrich) Christian IX., 341 Christina, Queen of Spain, 289, 292-3 Churchill, Lord R., 373 Civil Service Commission, 367 Clarendon, Earl of, 28, 29, 45, 312, 317, 319, 321, 323, 325-6, 337-8, 352, 355, 376 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 337-8 Clement VII., Pope, 18 Clement XL, Pope, 69 Clerfayt, 153 Clerk, G. R., 377 Cleveland Row, 113, 116, 119 Cleves, Duchy of, 24 Circello, Marquis, 185 Clinton, Viscount, 207 Coalition, First, 208 Cobden, Richard, 211, 295, 303, 332-6, 371, 400 Cobenzel, 148 Coburg, Prince of, 152 Cockburn, Sir A., 354 Coke, 277 Coleridge, S. T., 126 Coletti, 286 Collett, C. Dobson, 373 Collier, Sir Robt., 352 Cologne, Elector of, 56 Columbia River littoral, 288 Commercial Treaty, 125 Compton, Spencer (see Wilmington, Lord) Coningsby, 375 Conspiracy to murder Bill, 332-3, 352 Constance of Spain, 10 Constantinople Conference, 391 Consular Service, 377-8 Copenhagen, bombardment of, 199, 201, 206 Copenhagen Mission, x, 344-6 Cornwallis, Lord, 169 Corsica, 146 Corti, Count, 393 Cotton trade, 209 Country Girl, 123 Cour, De la, 315 Coutts, Thomas, 182 Covent Garden, 60 Cowen, Joseph, 372, 375 Cowley, Lord (see Wellesley, Marquis of) Crescent and the Cross, 375 Crimea acquired by Russia, 121 Crimean invasion, 78 Crimean war, preliminaries, 312 Cromer, Lord, 309, 334, 368 Cromwell, Oliver, 27-8, 72, 385 Cromwell, Thomas, 5 Crowe, Eyre, 377 Crowe, Sir Joseph, 377 Crown, descent of, 7 Cumberland, Duke of, ill Currie, Lord, xi, 178, 364-5 Cyprus, 392-3 Czartoriski, 174 Czernowitz, 260-1 DALLING, Lord, 280-1, 291, 302 Dalrymple, Lord, 119 The Story of British Diplomacy Danby, Lord, 32-4 Danton, 220 D'Antraigues, Count, 198 Danube Conference, 397-9 Dardanelles, blockade of, 270-1 Daru, 194 Davis, Bancroft, 354 Davis, Jefferson, 348-351 Dean, 13 Deane, Silas, 113 De Borgo, Pozzo, 209, 233-4 De Bourquency, 320 Declaration of Independence, 113 De Grey, Lord (see Ripon, Marquis of) D'Herbois, Count, 212 Delane, J. T... 324, 342, 381 De Lessart, 135 De Lesseps, 330-1 Delmonico's, 380 Demerara, 242 Denmark, Crown Prince of, 200-1 Derby, I4th Earl of, 307, 375 Derby, I5th Earl of, 298, 309, 333, 352, 363, 382, 389-391 De Redcliffe, Lord S. ,260, 3 14-6, 318-9 Dervish Pasha, 396 De Souza, Chev. Couttinho (see Funchal) Devonshire, Duke of, 129, 350 Dilke, Sir Charles, xi Dinol, 124 Diplomatic Review, 373 Directory, establishment of the, 154-5 Disraeli (see Beaconsfield, Lord) D'Orsay, 220 Dover, Treaty of, 30 Dowbiggin, Colonel M. ("Take care of Dowb."), 324 Dowbiggin, W. H., 324 Drake, Sir F., n Dresden, Treaty of, 85 Drouyn de 1'Huys, 321-2 Drury Lane, 116, 123 Du Barry, Madame, 124 Dubois, Abbe, 65-7, 69, 72 Dudley, Lord, 264-7 Duff, Sir M. E. Grant, 366, 374 Dufferin, Marquis of, xi, 347-8, 366, 368 Dumont, 139, 143-5 Dumouriez, 139 Dunbar, Captain, 199 Dundas, 137 Dunkirk, 28, 66 Dupont, General, 216 Durand, Sir Mortimer, 39 Durham, Lord, 277 Dursley, Lord, 40 Dutch war, 30, 32 Dutens, Lewis, 107-8 EBARTS, 354 Eden (see Auckland, Lord) Eden, Eleanor, 123 Edinburgh Review, 291 Edward I., 9, 10 Edward III., 7, 10 Edward VI., 18 Edward VII., 401, 404, 406, 408 Elba, blockade of, 173 ; Napoleon's escape from, 242 Eleanor of Castile, 10 Eleanor Plantagenet, 10 Elgin, Earl of, 145, 373 Elizabeth, Queen of England, 5, n, 20-1, 72, 240, 368, 385 Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain, 98 Elizabeth of Parma, 77 Elizabeth of Russia, 88 Elizabeth of York, 13 Elliot, Sir Gilbert, 123 Eltchi, 260, 315, 317, 319 Endymion t 381 Eothen, 375 Epicurus, 6 Erskine, 223 Esdaile& Co., 183 Esher, Lord, 296, 334 Espartero, 292 Essequibo, 242 Estaples, Treaty of, 14 Ethelbert, 8 Ethelwulf, 8-9 Essex, 3rd Earl of, 99-100 Eugenie, ex-Empress, 359 European Concert, 389, 390, 396 Euxine, 322 Ewart, Joseph, 119, I2O-2, 131 Exmouth, Lord 242 Eylau, 193 FAMILY compacts, 76, 104-5, Io8 ? no, in, 124, 127, 148, 195, 257, 290 Fane, Julian, 325 " Favoured Nation" clause, 336-7 Favre, Jules, 358 Fawkener, Sir E., 97, 162-3 Fawkener, W. A., 163 Ferdinand of Austria, 25 Ferdinand of Naples, 247, 249, 252-5, 300 Ferdinand of Prussia, 113 Ferdinand of Spain, 13, 68, 247, 252, 254 257 Fernanda, Princess (Spain), 288-91 Field of the Cloth of Gold, 17 Fish, 354 Fitzherbert, Alleyne (see St Helens, Lord) 412 Index Fitzmaurice, Lord, xi, 168, 306, 358- 9, 364. 397 Fitzpatrick, 126 Fleury, Cardinal, 72-3, 78, 84, 93-4 Fox, C. J., 30, 113, 115-9, 121-6, 128- 9, 130-2, 144, 154, 158, 162, 172, 176-7, 189, 191-2, 202, 214, 269, 277, 294, 304, 386-7 Fox, Henry, 86 France et les Etats Unis, 124 Francis I. (Austria), 228, 230, 245 Francis I. (France), 85 Francis II., 134 Franche-Comte, 29 Franco- Prussian war, 57, 355-7, 405 Franco-Spanish alliance, 29, 70 Franco- Spanish war, 17 Frankfort, Treaty of, 56 Franklin, 113 Frederick the Great, 4, 57, 81, 84-6, 89, 91, 103-4, 1 1 1-2, 128 Frederick William I. (Prussia), 57 Frederick William II. (Prussia), 120, 132 Frederick, Elector Palatine, 23,25, 26,30 Free Trade, 57, 125-6 French Convention, 139-40, 142, 180 French Empire, fall of, 357 French Revolution, 118, 129-132 Frere, J. H., 40, 170, 186, 212-3, 216- 7, 219 Fribourg, 56 Friedland, 194-5 Froude, J. A., 382 Fuessen, Treaty of, 85 Funchal, Conde de, 207, 2IO, 251, 339 GAMBETTA, 395, 398 Garibaldi, 310 Garlike, 197 Gaul tier, Abbe, 51, 58 Geneva arbitration, 348, 354, 389 George I., 63, 65, 69, 72, 82, 92-3, 95-6, 120, 387 George II. , 73, 80-2, 87, 99, 104-6 George III., 10, 83, 116-7, I3> J 34, 138, 140, 146, 156-7, 170, I79> 182, 200-2, 276, 334, 387, 401 George IV. (as regent), 246 ; (as king), 262, 264 German Protestant Union, 24 Gertruydenberg Congress, 53 Ghent, Treaty of, 224-6 Gibbon, 118 Gibraltar, 54-7, 64, 75, 77, 106 Gibson, Milner, 335 Girondin ministry, 134, 137, 139 Gladstone, W. E., 195, 310, 351-2, 364-5> 375, 382, 385, 389, 393-5, 403 Glatz, 87 Globe, 392 Godwin, 9 Goertz, 65 Goldsmid & Solomans, 183 Gondomar, 23 Goodall, 220 Goodrich government, 265-6 Gordon, Sir R., 271 Gorst, Sir John, 373 Gortschakoff, 324, 343, 391 Gower, Lord Leveson (see Granville, ist Earl of) Goya, 220 Grseco-Turkish war, 396 Grafton Street, 117 Grand Alliance, 36, 45 Granville, 1st Earl of, 131, 163, 167, 276, 302 Granville, 2nd Earl of, ix, x, 304-6, 308, 317, 321, 33i> 333-4> 353-36o, 363-5, 38o, 385, 389, 393-5, 397, 399, 400, 403 Great Intercourse, 13, 14 Greenwood, F., 330 Grenville, Lord, 117, 122, 131, 134, 137, 139, H2, 144* 15' J 54, J 56, 158-9, 160, 162, 168, 170, 178, 185, 193, 196, 202, 221 Grey, Earl, 176, 189, 200, 221, 262, 274, 277-9, 298, 304 Grey, Sir Edward, 189, 196, 388, 402, 404 Grosvenor, Lord Hugh, 366 Guienne, 9 Guizot, 279, 283-6, 288-9, 290-1 Gunhild, Princess, 9 Gunnersbury, 381 Gustavus IV. (Sweden), 201-2 HAGUE Congress, 40, 187, 377 Hague Peace Conference, 406-8 Hamilton, Sir Wm., 184 Hammond, George, 178, 221, 317, 355, 363-4, 373, 376 Hammond, J. L. Le B., 126 Handel, 60 Hanover, conference at, 67, 7 2 Hanover, Electorate of, 175-6 Hanover, Treaty of, 85 Hapsburg family, 240, 403 Harcourt, 42 Hardenberg, 238-9, 244 Hardinge, Sir Arthur, 365 Hardinge, Sir Charles, 365, 376 Harley, 50-1 Harrington, Lord, 95 Harrowby, ist Earl, 172-3, 178-9, l8 2, 214 413 The Story of British Diplomacy Hatzfeldt, 327 Haugwitz, 161 Hawkesbury, Lord (see Liverpool, Earl of) Hazlitt, 120 Heligoland, cession of, 396 Helsinborg, Convention of, 174 Henley, Lord, 185 Henrietta Marie, 24 Henry II. (England), 9-10 Henry II. (France), 19 Henry III. (England), 9 Henry IV. (France), 72, 240, 385 Henry V. (England), 1 1 Henry VI. (England), 14 Henry VII. (England), 12-13, 34 Henry VIII. (England), 5, 11, 14-8, 27, 83, 91 Henry the Lion (Saxony), 10 Herat secured by England, 303 Herbert, Sir M. S., 365 Herbert, Sir Robt., 363 Herbert, Sidney, 162 Hertslet, Sir Edward, 361 Hertzberg, 141 Hervey, 56 Heytesbury, Lord, 270 Hirsinger, 134-5, 137 Hobbes, Thomas, 5 Hoche, 149 Holdernesse, 4th Earl of, 85, 99 Holland, Lord, 115, 117 Holy Alliance, 245-6, 248, 250, 259, 3i, 338 Holy League, 16 Hospodar of Moldavia, 338 Houghton, 1st Lord, 366 Howick (see Grey, Earl) Hubener, 327 Humboldt, Baron, 233 Hundred Years' War, 385 Hurlbert, W. H., 380 Huskisson, 265-7, 294 Huxelles, Marquis de, 55 IGNATIEFF, General, 391 Independence, Declaration of, 123 Infantado, Duke of, 212 Isabel of Spain, 1 1 Isabella of Spain, 288-9. 291-2, 296 Itajuba, Viscount, 354 Ivica, 56 JACKSON, 200 facob & D. Ricardo, 183 Jamaica, 28 fames I. (England), n, 22, 26, 30 fames II. (England), 31, 39, 43, 55, 385 James IV. (Scotland), 13 James Stuart (Pretender), 51, 63, 66 Java, 241-2 [efferson, President, 221, 223 fenkin's ear, 77 [ersey, Earl of, 49, 53 [ohn VI. (Portugal), 252-3 [ohn of Gaunt, 10 Johnson, Reverdy, 352-3 Johnstone, H. A. Butler, 374 Jordan, Mrs, 123 Joseph, Emperor, 119, 120 Judith, 9 Juliers, Duchy of, 24, 81 Julius II., Pope, 16 Juntas, 216 Jusserand, 366 KATCHOUBEY, 168 Katharine of Aragon, n, 13, 18, 45 Katharine of Braganza, 29 Kaunitz, 87, 141, 146, 150, 161 Keene, Benjamin, 95-6, 98 Kehl, 56 Keith, Sir R. M., 86, 87, 119, 131 Kendal, Duchess of, 92 Keppel, Lady Caroline, 277 Kimberley, Lord, ix, x, 344, 346, 396 King, A. T., 183 King's Messengers, 378-9 Kinglake, A. W., 340, 375, 380, 382 Kinnoull, Lord, 97 Kolnische Zeitung, 382 Kossuth, 301 Kutchuk-Kainardji, Treaty of, 314, 319- LABOUCHERE, H., 374 La Croix, 155 Lafitte, 276 Lancaster, Duchy of, 267 Langley, Walter, 377 Lansdowne, Lord, 294, 312, 317, 388, 402, 404 Lauderdale, Lord, 176, 204 Lauriston, Colonel, 169 Lavalette, 215 Layard, A. H., 308 Laybach Congress, 249, 254-5 Leake, 64 Lee, Sir H. A., xi Leeds, Duke of, 119, 120, 122, 178-9,, 180, 214 Leeds, Dukedom of, 34 Leghorn, 68 Leipzig, 244 Lennox, Lord Henry, 374, 394 Leo, Pope, 190 Leoben preliminaries, 153, 155, 159 Leopold, Archduke, 24 414 Index Leopold, Emperor (Austria), 41, 131, 132, 134-5 Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, 276, 290, 296 Lesage, Chas., 331 Lever, Chas., 378, 380 Leviathan^ 5 Lewis, Sir George and Lady, 382 Liberty riots, 277 Lieven, Princess, 262 Ligne, Prince de, 242 Lille Conference, 171, 199 Lincoln, Abraham, 348-9 Lisakievitch, 164 Liverpool, 2nd Earl of, 168-9, I 7 2 > ^o, 190, 221-2, 234, 248, 294 Lombardy, 297, 301, 310 London Conference, 281 London, Treaty of, 262, 266-9, 2 7O, 34 1 388 Long, 129, 130 Loo Convention, 141, 160 Lorcha Arrow affair, 295 Lorraine, 41, 76 Lorrainej Duke of, 76 Louis XIV., 4, 28, 29, 31-3, 36, 41-4, 46, 50-4, 70, 124, 385 Louis XV., 67, 81, 86-8, 91, 93, 124, 292 Louis XVI., 124, 126-7, 142, 210, 280 Louis XVIII. , 198, 236, 248, 257-8 Louis Napoleon, 300, 302-3, 308, 313, 3I5> 323, 344, 346, 384 Louis Philippe, 272-6, 280-3, 285, 288- 9, 290-1, 293, 297, 405 Lowenheim, 238 Lucy, H. W. , 392 Luneville, Peace of, 153, 159 Luxemburg, 38, 241, 275-6, 356-7 Lyons, Lord Edmund, 286-7, 355> 35$ Lytton, Lord, 302 MACDONALD of Clanronald, 119 Macdonald, Sir Claude, 376 Macdonald, Sir John, 353 Machiavelli, 2-5, 22, 67, 125 Mackenzie, Sir J. S., 107, 198-9, 200 Mackintosh, Sir James, 172, 205 M'Leod, 287 Madeira, 202 Madison, President, 223 Magenta, 310 Maine, boundary of, 225, 303 Majorca, 56 Mallet-du-Pan, 210-11, 335 Mallet, Sir Louis, 211, 335-6, 377, 400 Malmesbury, Lord, 154-5, 167, 170-1, 173, 187, 199, 307-9, 310, 312, 315, 326, 363, 407 Malortie, Baron, 380 Malouet, 210 Malplaquet, 98 Malta, 163-4, 166, 169, 176 Marat, 180 Marathon, 355 Mardyke, 66 Margaret of Savoy, 1 3 Margaret Tudor, 13 Maria, Donna, 272 Maria Theresa, 29, 70, 76, 80, 84, 86-7, 91, loo, 104, 150 Marie Antoinette, 132 Marie Louise of Austria, 222, 234-5 Maritime League, 195, 200 Marlborough, Duke of, 47-8, 52, 60-1, 70, 1 10 Marriages, diplomatic, IO, 13, 19, 2O, 23-5, 34, 75, 93, I2 2, 289-293 Marriott, Sir Wm., 373 Martin, Sir Theodore, 296, 334 Martinique, 169 Mary of Modena, 55 Mary, Princess, 31-2 Mary, Queen, n, 19-20 Mary II., 34 Mary Stuart, 22 Mason, J. M., 350 Mavrocardato, 286 Maximilian, Emperor, 17, 258 Mazarin, 385 Mazzini, Joseph, 372 Meade, Sir Robt., 381 Medici, Catherine de, 4 Mehemet Ali, 272, 279, 280-2, 288, 299, 347, 386-7 Mehemed Djemil, 327 Melbourne, Lord, 277-8 Memoirs of an Ex- Minister ^ 315, 326 Meneval, 243 Menschikoff, Prince, 313-4, 316 Mercure Britannique, 211 Mercure de France , 21 1 Merivale, Herman, 363 Mesnager, Nicolas, 51, 55 Methuen, Sir Paul, 46-7 Methuen Treaty, 47-8, 57 Metternich, x, 222, 226, 228-232, 234-5 239-240, 242-7, 253-4, 261-3, 268, 271-2, 281, 292, 346 Meunier, 289 Milan Decree, 223 Milan, Duchy of, 68 Milbanke, Lady, 178 Minorca, 54-7, 64. 100 Minto, 2nd Earl of, 146-150, 159, 185, 300 Mirabeau, 167, 210 Mollivitz, 83 Monroe Doctrine, 258, 402 415 The Story of British Diplomacy Montagu, Spencer (see Rokeby, Lord) Montellano, Duke of, 212 Montespan, Madame de, 135 Montgomery, Alfred, 170, 205 Montmorin, 127 Montpensier, Due de, 289-291 Moorish piracy, 242 More, Arthur, 58, 71 Morea, 174, 269 Morfontaine, Treaty of, 223 Morley, John, 5, 82, 333 Morning Herald^ 280 Morocco, trouble in, 285-6 Morton, 13 Mosquito Islands, 338 Mulgrave, Lord, 214 Mttnchengratz, League of, 301 "Mango?; 365 Murray, Sir John, 147 NAPIER AND ETTRICK, Lord, 99 Naples, 76 Naples, King of, 185 Naples, Queen of, 13 Napoleon I., 66, 117, 156-9, 168, 170-3, 175-6, 189, 190-3, 195-7, 199, 201-9, 210-11, 215-6, 219, 225-237, 241-3, 247, 251-2, 270, 280, 388 Napoleon III., 4, 302, 307-11, 313, 323, 325-6, 329, 332, 336, 339, 343- 4, 351, 356-7, 405 Napoleon, Prince, 312 Navarino, battle of, 266 Neapolitan Letters, 310 Nemours, Due de, 276 Nesselrode, 238-9, 244-5, 261-2, 289, 324 Netherlands, kingdom founded, 241 Neuburg, Duke of, 24 Ntuchatel, Mr, 381 Neumann, Baron, 381 New Brunswick, boundary of, 225 Newcastle, Duke of, 76-7, 80, 82, 86, 94-6, 129 Newfoundland, cession of, 54 ; fisheries, 401 Newnham, Everett & Co., 183 Nicholas, Czar, 259, 261, 270-1, 279, 280-1, 295, 297, 301, 303, 313, 315- 7, 319, 3 2 o Niemen, raft of, 195-8 Niger negotiations, 377 Nimeguen, Treaty of, 53 Noailles, 19 Non-intercourse Act, 223 Nootka Sound, 127, 132, 166 Norman Conquest, 9 Norris, Sir John, 98 Northcote, Sir Stafford, 353-4 Notten, Van, 136 Novara, 76 Novikoff, Madame, 381-2 Novosiltzow, 172-4 Nymphenberg, Treaty of, 84 Oceana, 5 O'Connel, 280 Oczakow, 119, 120-1, 141, 162, 192, 271, 372, 387 O'Dowd Papers, 378 Oliphant, Laurence, 373 Omar Pasha, 273, 316 O'Meara, 204, 247 " One-hundred-and-one" 80 Oppenheim, Henry, 331 Orders in Council, 196, 200, 203, 223-4, 337, 367 Oregon Treaty, 389 Orleans, Due d', 65, 125 Orloff, Count, 325 Otto, 228, 231 Ottoman Bank, 375 Otway, Sir Arthur, 374, 381 Oxenstern, 2 Oxford, impeachment of, 69 PAGEOT, 293 Pahlen, Count, 164 Palgrave, W. G., 375 Pallain, 398 Pall Mall Gazette, 330 Palmer, Roundell, 354 Palmerston, Lord, ix, 118, 199, 215, 219, 269, 274-282, 284-5, 287. 289, 290-2, 294-304, 307, 309, 312, 321-3, 329, 330, 332-3, 337, 339-348, 352, 359, 361-3. 371-2, 379-381, 386-7, 389, 391, 400, 404 Panine, Count Nikita Petrovitch, 166 Panmure, Lord, 324 Paris Congress, 225, 324, 326, 329, 337, 385, 390 Paris, Treaties of, 109, 171, 205, 237, 240, 253, 244-5, 3 2 8-9, 347, 397, 400 Partition Treaty, 41-3 Passarowitz, Peace of, 67 Past and Present of Russia, 372 Paul I. (Russia), 161, 163, 165-6, 172, J 75 Pauncefote, Lord, 354, 364, 399 Pedro, Don, 251 Peel, Sir Robert, 282, 284, 296, 298-9, 303, 3i6, 333, 340 Pelham, 84, 88, 96 Peltier, 172 Pembroke, nth Earl of, 162 Pembroke, I3th Earl of, 365 Perceval, Spencer, 1 68, 219, 221, 294 416 Index Perier, Casimir, 276 Persigny, 311 Peter the Great, 65, 67, 72, 88, 395 Peter II., 45 Peter's Pence, 46 Peterborough, 69 Petty, Lord Henry (see Lansdowne, Lord) Philip III., 19, 26 Philip IV., 25 Philip V., 53-4, 56, 62, 66, 68, 70, 77, 98 Pichegru, 149 Piedmont, King of, 301 Pierrepoint, 201 Pike, L. O.,x, 91 Pillars of Hercules, 372 Pilnitz declaration, 131, 133, 148 Piscatory, Mr, 286 Pitt, Wm. (Lord Chatham), 77, 80, 89-91, 98, 100-1, 106-113, 115-130, 148, 188-9, I9i 257, 290, 387 Pitt, Wm. (younger), 78, 126-137, 139- 142, 144-5, !47 149-162, 166, 169- 171, i73-4 176, 180-2, 186, 189, 191, 197, 201, 203, 209, 211, 214, 218- 221, 234, 238-241, 250, 254-5, 263, 266, 372, 386-7, 391 Pius IX., Pope, 311 Placentia, 68 Poland, 14 Pole, Cardinal, 5, 19-20 Polignac, 259 Polish Succession, 75 Pompadour, Madame de, 87 Ponsonby, Lord, 277 Pope (poet), 40 Person, 220 Port Mahon, 169 Porte, Treaty with the, 312 Portland, Duchess of, 191 Portland, Duke of, 123, 158, 189, 196, 216, 219, 224 Portland, Earl, 41 Portugal, King of, 251, 290 Pragmatic Sanction, 81 Pretender, The (see James Stuart) Priest of Bacchus, 48 Priestly, Sir W. O. and Lady, 382 Primrose League, 373 Prior, Matthew, 39, 40-1, 51 Pritchard, 284 Protocol, explanation of, 327 Provence, Comte de, 130 Puisaye, Count A. de, 211 Pultney, 75 Punch, 394 QUADRILATERAL Treaty, 281, 310 Quadruple Alliance, 67-8 Quadruple Treaty, 281, 310 Quai d'Orsay, 302 Quarterly Review \ 80, 121, 331 Queen's Prime Ministers, The, 299 Queen Victoria's Letters, 334 Quiberon, 147, 211 RADCLIFFE, Dr, 48 Raglan, Lord, 324 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 22, 26 Rastadt, 56 Razumoffski, Count, 233 Recollections of the Old Foreign Office, 361 Reding, General, 216 Reeve Memoirs, 291 Reichenbach, Treaty of, 120-1 Reinach, Joseph, 398 Renard, 2 Report of the Finances, 194 Restoration, the, 5 Reynolds, 109 Rice, Cecil Spring, 366 Richmond, Duke of, 394 Rico, Jean, 211 Ripon, Marquis of, 353-4 Ripperda, 51, 69, 70, 74 Rist, 200 Rivals, The, 116, 118 Roberts, Curtis & Co., 183 Robespierre, 212 Robinson, Crabb, 117 Robinson, John, 55 Robinson, Sir Thomas, 84, 86, 87, 95 Rockingham, 113, 115, 123 Rogers, Sir Frederick, 363 Rokeby, Lord, x, 83, 268, 291, 293 Romana, General, 202 Romanes Lecture, 5 Romanzoff, 226 Rome, King of, 222 Rooke, 64 Roosevelt, President, 365-6 Rose, Colonel, 315 Rose, George, 203, 224 Rosebery, Lord, 140-1, 157, 182, 401 Roskilde, 201 Rosslyn, 204 Rothschild, 136, 181-2, 328, 381 Rothschild, Lionel, 331 Rothschild, Nathan Meyer, 181 Rouille, 86-7 Royal Commission (1890), 365 Rudolph, Emperor, 24 Rugen, capitulation of, 207 Rumbold, Sir H., 329, 355 Rush, 258 Russell, Lord Arthur, 380, 382 417 The Story of British Diplomacy Russell, Lord John, 91, 266, 269, 304, 311-2, 319, 321-2, 326, 335, 337-9, 34i-3> 347-354, 361, 363, 374 Russo-Turkish war, 175 Ryder, Dudley (see Harrowby, Lord) Ryswick, Treaty of, 35, 37-41, 43-4, 49, 51-3, 56, 171 ST BARTHOLOMEW, Massacre of, 4 St Helen's, Lord, 166-7 St John (see Bolingbroke, Viscount) St Petersburg, Treaty of, 173-4, 192 St Vincent, 208 Salamis, 315 Salisbury Circular, 392 Salisbury, Lord, ix, 309, 333, 374, 376, 389> 392-3, 396, 401-3 Salvandy, De, 292 San Carlos. Duke of, 212 San Domingo, 152 San facintO) 351 San Juan settlement, 389 San Stefano, Treaty of, 390-2 Sanderson, Lord, 365, 376 Sandwich, Lord, 345 Sardinia, 75 Sardinia; King of, 100, 108, 300, 339 Savoy and Nice discussions, 339-340 Savoy, Duke of, 39 Savoy, King of, 57, 108 Saxony, Electors of, 40 Schaub, Sir Luke, 93-4 Scheldt, 141-2 Schlesinger, Max, 382 Schleswig-Holstein, 340-2, 347 Schoell, 238 Schonbrunn, Treaty of, 190 School for Scandal, 116 Sclopis, Count, 354 Scott, Sir Wm. (see Stowell, Lord) Sebastiani, 276 Seeley, T. R., 80, 105, 108 Serpents, Isle of, 326-7, 337 Servetus, 4 Servia, constitution of, 329 Seven Years' War, 85, 88, 89, 90, 387 Seville, Treaty of, 74-5 Seward, 350 Seymour, Sir H., 316 Shelburne, 115-6, 118, 123-6 Sheridan, R. B., 116, 118-9, 177-8, 214 Sicily, 60, 76, 176 Sicily, King of, 10 Silesia, 81, 84, 85, 87-8 Slidell, 350-1 Smith (Foreign Secretary), 223 Smith, Adam, 174 Smith, Payne & Smiths, 182 Smith, Sir Sydney, 252 Smythe, George, 375 Smythe, Percy (see Strangford, Lord) Soissons, congress at, 74 Solferino, 310 Somerset, Lady Augusta, 38 Somerset, Protector, 18 South Sea Company, 98 Southey, 126 Souza (see Funchal) Spain, war with, 76-9 Spanish Succession, war of, 45-6 Spectator^ 349 Spencer, 2nd Earl, 146-8, 158, 170, 172 Stackberg, 231 Stadion, Count, 148, 233 Staempfli, J., 354 Stanhope, Earl of, ix, x, 62-70, 72, 83, 91 > 95, 98 Stanhope, Wm. (see Harrington, Lord) Stanley, Hans, 109, in Stanley, Lord (see Derby, Earl of) Stanyan, Abraham, 97 Steele, 39 Steers & Mortimer, 183 Stein, 226, 238, 244 Stepney, George, 39 Stepney, Sir J., 119 Stewart, Sir Chas., 167, 233 Stowell, Lord, 175 ,, Eai Strange, 213 Strafford, Thos., Earl of, 55 Strangford, 6th Viscount, 207, 252-3, 261 Strangford, 8th Viscount, 375 Strasburg, 38 Straton, 147-8 Strogonoff, Baron, 205 Stuart, Lord, of Rothesay, 251, 272-3 Suez Canal, 330-1, 399 Sully, Due de, 35, 240 Sunderland, 82 Sutherland, Dr, 121 Swift, Benjamin, 40 Syria, outbreak in, 347-8 TAHITI, 284-5 "Talents" ministry, 176, 192-3 Tallard, Marshal, 51 Talleyrand, 11 g, 135-6, 138-9, 169, 171, 175-6, 181, I 9 4, 199, 201,204-5, 209 233, 236, 238 .9, 240. 244, 275-6, 278, 283, 300 "Tamarang," 307 Tarruch, 227 Taunton, 211 Tauroggen, Convention of, 226 Taxation War, 71 Taylor, Brook, 197, 200 Index Taylor, Sir Henry, 363 Tchernitcheff, 289 Tchihatchef, Baron, 325 Temperley, H. W. V., 199 Temple, Sir Wm. , 6, 30-1, 33 Tencin, Cardinal, 84 Tenniel, Sir J., 394 Tenterden, Lord (see Pauncefote, Lord) The Prince, 6 Thibaudeau, 204 Thiers, Adolphe, 279-283, 358-9 Thirty Years' War, 24-5, 142 Thornton, Conway, 366 Thornton, Sir Edward, 353 Thugut, Baron, 146, 149-50, 152-3 Tickell, 39 Ticknor, 401 Tierney, 218 Tilsit, Peace of, 162, 195-8, 200, 204-8. 226, 231-2, 234, 236, 372-3 Times, The, 299, 342, 349, 356, 380-1, 400, 407 Tipper, 117 Tobago, 137-8 Tocqueville, De, 349 Toledo, Archbishop of, 42-3 Toplitz, Treaty of, 267 Torcy, De, 49, 50, 52 Tortona, 76 Toulon, 152 Townshend, Lord, 78, 92-4 Trafalgar, 208 Treaty-making, 183-5 TVro/afiair, 225, 338, 351 Trinidad, 169, 208 Triple Alliance, 29, 66-7, 188 Troppeau, congress at, 249, 254-5 Truefit, 394 Tufton, Chas., 377 Tunis, 393 Turgot, 124 Turin, 107 Turkey, attempt to coerce, 395-6 Tuscany, 68, 76 Tyrawley, Lord, 98 UNKIAR SKELESSI, Treaty of, 279-80, 282 Urquhart, David, 371-3 Utrecht, Peace of, 35, 45, 48-9, 51-7, 59-61, 66-7, 71, 79 106, 128, 136, 171, 320 VALENCAYE, 300 Valencia, 211 Vaudois, 28 Vaughan, Chas. R., 213 Vendee, La, 21 1 Vend6me, Due de, 62 Venetia, 297, 301 Venezuelan dispute, 397, 402 Venice, 15 Vergennes, 124-5 Verona Congress, 255, 259, 260 Versailles, Peace of, 87, 123, 125, 171 Victor Emmanuel (Italy), 57 Victoria, Queen, 187, 288-291, 295, 297-8, 300, 305-7, 312, 323, 343, 354, 386, 404-5 Vienna, Bank of, 149 Vienna, definitive Peace of, 76 Vienna, Treaties of, 74-5, 141, 227-8, 236-9 253, 274-5, 308, 320-1, 329, 347, 376 Vienna Note, 318-9, 321 Villafranca, Peace of, 310-11 Villamarina, 327 Villiers, Chas. , 292, 335 Villiers, Sir Edward (see Jersey, Earl of) Voisins, 378 Vourla, 315 Vrilliere, La, 93 WALCHEREN expedition, 217 Waldegrave, Lord, 96, 100 Walewski, 327, 345 Wall, General, 105-7 Wallace, Sir Mackenzie, 382 Walmer Castle, 380-1 Walpole, Horace, 73, 94 Walpole, Sir Robert, 69, 70-81, 82, 92- 4, 99, 129, 250 Walpole, Sir S. , xi Warbeck, Perkin, 14 Warburton, Eliot, 375 Ward, Samuel, 380 Warham, 13 Warren, Admiral Sir J. B., 165-6 Wartensleben, 120 Washington, George, 222-3 Washington, Treaty of, 354 Waterfield, H. O., 375 Waterloo, battle of, 244 Watford, Urquhart's house at, 371 Wealth of Nations, 174 Wellesley, Sir A. (see Wellington, Duke of) Wellesley, Marquis of, 212, 219-221, 302, 308, 311,323, 327 Wellesley, Victor, 377 Wellington, Duke of, 201, 213, 217, 220, 222, 227, 244, 246-7, 255-6, 267, 269, 272-3, 296, 299, 303, 312, 387-8 Wentworth, Thos. (see Strafford, Earl of) Wessingberg, 230 West Indies, 28, 155, 198 419 The Story of British Diplomacy Westminster Gazette, 392 Westminster, Treaty of, 86-8 Westphalia, Peace of, 26-8, 35, 128, 142, 267 Weyer, S. Van de, 277, 307, 381 Whately, Archbishop of, 273 White, Lydia, 205 Whitworth, Earl, 161, 164 Wickham, 154 Wikoff, Chevalier, 380 Wilberforce, Wm. 5 154, 294 Wilkes, Captain, 351 Wilkes Riots, 277 William I. (England), 9 William II. (Germany), 405 William III., 27, 31-2, 34, 36-9, 41-2, 44-5, 53' 75, 79 William IV., 403-4 William of Orange, 127 Williams, C. H., 122 Wilmington, Lord, 73 Wilson, Sir Chas. Rivers, 398-9 Windham, 158 Woburn, 119 Wodehouse, Lord (see Kimberley, Lord) Wolff, Sir H. Drummond, 309, 331, 407 Wolsey, Cardinal, 13, 15, 16-18 Wordsworth, 126 Woronzow, Count, 160-2, 164, 166, 172 Wotton, Sir Henry, 31 Wraxall, Nathaniel, 121 YANCEY, W. L., 350 Yarmouth, Lord, 176, 204 York, Duke of, 122, 262 York, General, 226, 229 ZOLLVEREIN, 336 Zurich Treaties, 339 COLSTON AND CO. LTD., PRINTERS, EDINBURGH QCTJLLL UNIV. OF CALiF., /feral Library Aity of California / Berkeley I U m UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY