1703 FRANCE AND SAVOY. 17 I. regulars and several thousand militia. Opposed to the army CHAP. of Villars was Louis, Margrave of Baden. At the head of no more than 10,000 men the margrave was unable to offer effective resistance to the advance of Villars at the end of February, 1703, and could only look on from behind his intrenchments when that general took possession of Kehl, the key to Southern Germany. Even in April reinforcements, among them 6,000 Dutch, had only brought up his army to 20,000 troops. Villars, with 70,000 French and Bavarians, proposed to march on Vienna, a daring enterprise that had many prospects of success. But the Elector of Bavaria, like the Dutch, was careful for his own frontier. After ceaseless recriminations between the two, Villars threw up his command in the middle of October, 1703. His successor was Count Marsin. The French army of the Middle Rhine under Marshal Tallard had lain inactive during the summer, ready to furnish reinforcements as they might be needed, either on the west or east. With the surrender of Landau to the French on November 17, their position on the Middle Rhine greatly improved. The campaign of 1703 closed in this neighbourhood under circumstances of great depression for the allies. Despite the heavy subsidies of the maritime powers, the margrave's army was reported by the English representative, Davenant, to be holding its intrenchments with no more than three rounds a man.1 The South German princes shewed signs of wavering; the Duke of Würtemberg began to talk of a reconciliation with victorious France. The Duchy of Savoy, including Piedmont, occupied a position between two great powers, France on the one side, on the other Austria, in respect to the imperial possessions in North Italy. The policy of the dukes had, therefore, necessarily been a continual balancing. At the opening of the war of the Spanish succession the reigning duke, Victor Amadeus II., appeared doubly committed to France. His eldest daughter, Marie Adelaide, had married the Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV.'s grandson. His second daughter had recently (1701) become the wife of Philip, Duke of Anjou, the Bourbon candidate for the throne of Spain. But though Victor Amadeus 1 It had been reduced to one round per man. Davenant to the Secretary of State, January 20, 1704, R.O., MS., Von Noorden, i., 451. VOL. IX. 2 CHAP. had by treaty strengthened these ties, he had been alienated L by the menaces and insolence of the French generals during the Italian campaign of 1701, which finally drove him into the arms of the allies. By a treaty signed at Turin on October 25, 1703, the duke came into the Grand Alliance on the terms of an extension of territory at the expense of Milan and Mantua, the assistance of 20,000 imperial troops, to be under his command, and the maintenance of the Piedmontese army by the maritime powers. In England the adhesion of the duke was acclaimed both as a blow to Louis XIV. from within his own family circle and because it facilitated projects long under consideration of invading the south of France. The tories had continued to insist on the doctrine that England should play only a subordinate part by land. They still hoped that their favourite commander, Rooke, might eclipse the struggling fortunes of Marlborough. The country had made great efforts. A total of 256 ships of war had been equipped, among them 94 of the line with 64 to 100 guns. But, with the exception of the affair at Vigo, the performances of the navy had hitherto been ineffective. The most recent failure was that of Vice-Admiral Graydon, who, having at the beginning of 1703 been dispatched with five ships to reduce the French colony of Placentia in Newfoundland, had returned home without attacking either the place or a French squadron of four ships which he had passed on the way The unreadiness of the Dutch naval preparations also involved England in difficulties. The emperor's dominant wish was to secure Naples for the house of Habsburg before attempting Spain. In the spring of 1702 England, to whom the Spanish succession was the paramount interest, had refused a fleet for this purpose. But the importance of effecting a diversion in Italy was presently perceived and the co-operation of a fleet was promised for the following year. May, 1703, came and Stepney was still pledging his word to the impatient 1 G. Stepney to Shrewsbury, May 1-12, 1703: "We shall never bring these people seriously to think of Spain before we are masters of Naples and Sicily". Buccleuch MSS., ii., 2, 657. 2 April 19, 1702. Home Office Admiralty, 10. J. S. Corbett, England in the Mediterranean (1904), ii., 201. * Stepney to the Emperor, April 7-18, 1703: "Verso la fine del mese di Maggio" Buccleuch MSS., ii., 2, 655. These repeated delays must have been 1703 SHOVELL'S EXPEDITION. 19 I. emperor that the allied fleet should appear in the Mediter- CHAP. ranean by the end of June. But the Dutch had again failed to keep their promises, and without reinforcements no sufficient force could be spared for so distant a service. When the Dutch fleet arrived in England at the end of June, Rooke was offered the chief command. On his declining it as "too small for his character," Sir Clowdisley Shovell, an admiral belonging to the whig party, which, since Prince George of Denmark had been at the head of the admiralty, had been largely excluded from promotion, was nominated to the command of the division of the fleet destined for the Mediterranean. Rooke with the main fleet was to clear the Channel. Something, the government felt, must be done to redeem the series of naval miscarriages which had followed Vigo. But there was little time to effect anything. English and Dutch admirals alike were nervous about bringing a first-class fleet into the Channel late in the year. The instructions of the admiralty to Shovell were that he was to be on his way home, westwards of the Straits of Gibraltar, by the end of September. Within that time he was to convoy a number of merchant vessels to Portugal, to induce the Barbary states to commit hostilities upon the French marine, to supply arms and munitions of war to the insurgents in Languedoc, to rouse the east of Spain to declare against the Bourbon claimant, Philip V., to exact satisfaction from the Grand Duke of Tuscany for alleged injuries to English merchants at Leghorn, to excite an insurrection in Sicily, and to protect the communications of Prince Eugene by clearing the Adriatic of a French squadron. He protested, as well he might, that impossibilities were asked of him. Stepney had pledged himself to the emperor that the fleet should spend two months at Naples alone. The admiralty, however, refused to vary their orders, and Shovell set sail from St. Helen's in the Isle of Wight on July 1, 1703, with a fleet of thirty-five English and seventeen Dutch men-of-war. The Dutch were commanded by Van Almonde, the hero of Vigo. the more galling to Stepney after he had roundly taken the emperor to task on the subject of preparations at the end of April. Buccleuch MSS., ii., 657. 1 G. Stepney to the Emperor, April 7-18, 1703: "Per secondare durante due mesi intieri li dissegni della vostra Augustissima: Casa sopra quel Regno". Ibid., p. 655. I. CHAP. Shovell did his best to fulfil as many of his multifarious instructions as he reasonably could hope, but was obliged to put back by storms, and it was the middle of July before he had finally left England. Having discharged his convoy at Lisbon, he sailed to the Barbary coast, where he met with hostility. Thence he made Altea, on the coast of Valencia in Spain, where he was well received by the population. Here the fleet distributed proclamations in favour of the Archduke Charles, by the title of Charles III., and proceeded to Leghorn, where it arrived on September 26-October 6, 1703.2 The Dutch were reluctant to go so far, and in a hurry to start homewards. All that Shovell could do was to deliver an ultimatum 1 to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and after a week's stay set sail for home (October 2-13). On his way westwards he endeavoured to fulfil another item of his instructions, that of supplying arms and munitions to the insurgents of the Cevennes, whose heroic resistance to religious persecution had excited a warm sympathy in Holland and England. By July, 1703, the insurrection had, after twelve months, grown to such proportions that with substantial aid from the maritime powers the southeast of France might have been ablaze. That aid it was impossible to render for want of a naval base. The importance of the accession of Victor Amadeus to the Grand Alliance lay in this, that the capture of Toulon by the concerted attack of a Piedmontese army on the land side, and an English and Dutch fleet from the sea, would enable the combined fleet to winter in the Mediterranean, would maintain the communications between Vienna and the imperial armies in Italy, would decide Venice in favour of the allies, and would deprive France of her southern naval arsenal. Lastly, the success of the Cevennois would have had its effect upon the Spanish war. The coast of Languedoc was inhabited by a 1 Sir C. Shovell to Shrewsbury, September 29, O.S., 1703: "They seem to be unanimous for the house of Austria, and declared they don't believe that there are 100 men in the whole kingdom of Valencia that are for the Duke of Anjou's being their king". Buccleuch MSS., ii., 681. 2 Ibid., p. 679. 3 Sir C. Shovell to Shrewsbury, September 29, O.S., 1703, ibid., p. 681. 4 Sir C. Shovell to the Grand Duke, October 2-13, 1703, ibid., p. 682. "G. Stepney to Secretary Sir C. Hedges, October, 16-27, 1703, Vienna, ibid., pp. 685-86. 1703 "THE GREAT STORM.”. 21 I. Catalan population, and Catalonia was traditionally hostile to CHAP. Castile. For the present, despite all these fair prospects, there was little enough in Shovell's power to do. He detached two frigates "with a good quantity of arms, ammunition, and money". Their signals to the shore were not answered, for the envoys entrusted with the secret had been arrested on crossing the frontier.1 Shovell arrived in the Downs a few days before "the Great Storm" of November 26, 1703, in which four of his ships were driven from their anchors, though none of them was lost. It was a disastrous night for the navy, which sustained a total loss of seventeen ships, 618 guns and 1,500 seamen, including Rear-Admiral Beaumont. On shore many lost their lives, among them Richard Kidder, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and his wife, crushed by the fall of a stack of chimneys at the palace of Wells. Immense devastation was wrought in our woods. John Evelyn in his Sylva, records that the New Forest lost 4,000 large trees and he himself about 2,000. Observers abroad as well as the English ministry were deceived by the opposition shown by political parties in Spain to the supremacy of French influence. Well-disposed persons plied them with pleasing intelligence. Sir Lambert Blackwell, our minister at Florence, wrote to Shrewsbury that at the Spanish seaports "the people talk of a change, being all ripe for it". The Genoese envoy at Madrid declared that most Spaniards would welcome the intervention of the Portuguese.3 The Aragonese and Catalans, reported Blackwell, were demanding confirmation of their privileges and were "ripe for rebellion". This last information was true enough, save that they were not for rebellion in the Austrian interest so much as against the pompous misgovernment of Castile. The emperor's correspondents confirmed the delusion. Towards the end of October, 1702, an event occurred which strengthened these prepossessions. The Duke of Riosecco, great admiral of Castile, foremost in rank and wealth among the Spanish 1 Anonymous to Sir Lambert Blackwell, Genoa, November 6-17, 1703, Buccleuch MSS., ii., 688. *July 13-24, 1703, Florence, ibid., p. 667. Blackwell to Shrewsbury, August 10-21, 1703, Florence, ibid., p. 672. |