CHAP. them, their ambitions travelled no farther than the fortified towns of French Flanders and of Hainault. They fought for safety and profit, not for idle glory. IV. That the success of Ramillies was to be utilised by the reduction of fortified towns was adopted, therefore, as common ground between the maritime powers. Ouwerkerk undertook the siege of Ostend, while Marlborough with an army at Roselaere, where he could threaten Ypres and Menin, covered the operations. On July 6, after a bombardment by sea and land, Ostend capitulated; and a place which in the preceding century had held out for three years and cost Spinola 80,000 men was acquired at the sacrifice of 500 lives. Leaving Nieuport and Dunkirk, a step by which, if he disappointed his own countrymen, he gratified the Dutch, Marlborough, reinforced by Ouwerkerk, moved eastwards, surprised Courtray and established a fortified camp at Helchen, on the Upper Schelde, whence he could threaten the line of fortresses of the northern frontier of France. Vendôme, who in August had replaced Villeroy, could do no more than intrench his demoralised troops and watch the allies. One after another the fortresses fell, until by November, when the army went into winter quarters, none of the Belgian fortified towns remained to France save Mons, Charleroi, Namur, and Luxembourg. By a clause in the treaty of the Grand Alliance it was stipulated that the acquisitions made in the Spanish Netherlands should be utilised as a “barrier" between the United Provinces and France. As it was not proposed to withdraw the towns of the barrier from the sovereignty of Spain, which was unable to defend them, a strong barrier was nominally advantageous to that crown as well as to the republic. But while the Dutch were willing to concede to the house of Austria, as succeeding to the rights of Charles II. of Spain, the honour of sovereignty, the burden of judicial responsibility, and a joint scheme of defence, their real object was to make the barrier fortresses dependent on the United Provinces, contributory to their expenditure, and useful to their trade. The wholesale surrenders which followed the battle of Ramillies brought this matter to a crisis. Marlborough was conscious that Dutch annexation on a large scale would excite jealousy in England, and that it "would certainly set the 1706 NEGOTIATIONS AS TO THE BARRIER. 83 IV. whole country (ie. the Spanish Netherlands) against them". CHAP. He insisted that the occupation of the Belgian provinces should be in the name of Charles III. To prevent the change of masters proving merely a substitution of Dutch for French officialism, he encouraged the revival of the States of Flanders and Brabant, proclaiming in the name of Charles III. the restoration of the ancient liberties and privileges suppressed by the French. The policy of this treatment, contrasted with the harsh absolutism of their late masters, so rallied the population to his support that he found himself able to enlist a Belgian army corps in the joint service of the maritime powers. These liberal measures ill accorded with the traditional policy of the court of Vienna; but the emperor's interference having been repudiated by the Dutch, he affected to accept the situation and nominated Marlborough, on behalf of Charles III., governor of the Netherlands. The bait was gilded with a promised salary of £60,000 a year. Fortunate it was, wrote Heinsius, that Marlborough had subjected his acceptance to the approval of the Dutch. The effect of the proposal upon them was to awaken bitter resentment against Austria, suspicion against England, and a determination to force the allies to a prompt settlement of the barrier. Whatever selection they might make in the Spanish Netherlands of towns to receive their garrisons should be recognised as their barrier, and as such guaranteed to them in possession by England. "By that proposal," wrote Halifax, the British special envoy, to Portland, "the Dutch have desired the whole Spanish Netherlands." He returned indignant to England, and the management of negotiations was entrusted to the calmer diplomacy of Marlborough. The Dutch determined to meet the advent of peace with accomplished facts. Despite Marlborough's protests they endeavoured to obliterate the signs of English condominium in Belgium, and treated the occupied provinces as their own. In September, after repeated expostulations and warnings, the duke insisted that side by side with a Dutch commissioner a special English commissioner should be entrusted with the administration of the Spanish Netherlands. He proposed George Stepney, who, after a quarrel with the imperial minister Count n. I. 1 September 24-October 5, 1706, Heinsius' Archives, Von Noorden, ii., 350, CHAP. Wratislaw, had recently been recalled from Vienna. The States-general had no choice but to accept the nomination. IV. The French, who were well informed of the course of events in Holland, judged the moment of tension between Marlborough and the Dutch to be favourable to their project of disintegrating the Alliance. In the middle of August, a clearly formulated offer of terms was unofficially put before the leading Dutch politicians by an agent of the war minister Chamillart. The Dutch could take possession of the entire Spanish Netherlands and enjoy a preferential tariff at the French custom houses. In England the anticipation of a separate accommodation of Holland with France aroused general irritation. The Dutch plea of financial pressure was met by Godolphin with the observation that Holland like England could "borrow money at four or five per cent., whereas the finances of France are so much more exhausted that they are forced to give twenty and twenty-five per cent. for every penny they send out of the kingdom, unless they send it in specie, by which means they have neither money nor credit". Whig merchants were jealous that the Dutch should secure a most-favoured-nation treaty. Whig politicians feared that with the cessation of the military successes which had helped them to a majority at the general election of May, 1705, the tory party would revive and the protestant succession be placed in jeopardy. On September 14, Godolphin sent Buys a dispatch upon the French proposals. He insisted that the Dutch should "specify the particular towns which they propose to have for their barrier ". It was not in the power of France to concede them. As England had the power, so she would control the terms of a general peace. Perceiving the failure of his attempt to lure the Dutch from the alliance by golden promises, Louis XIV. next endeavoured to approach Marlborough through the Elector of Bavaria. The elector wrote to the duke and the Dutch field-deputies proposing public conferences on the terms of a peace. The English 1 Godolphin to Marlborough, October 4-15, 1706, Coxe, Memoirs of Marlborough, i., 486. A few days after this letter was written the government received from one of their spies in Paris, Captain John Ogilvie, a report which justifies Godolphin's view. Paris, November 19-30, 1706, Portland MSS., iv., 1705 THE WAR IN THE PENINSULA. 85 IV. cabinet and the States-general replied through Marlborough CHAP. that conferences at large were futile until the allies had concerted among themselves the preliminaries of their demands. At the head of these they agreed to set the renunciation by the Duke of Anjou (Philip V.) of the entire Spanish inheritance. That the States-general should have consented to this condition was another Ramillies won by the duke in the field of diplomacy. With a sarcastic comment from Torcy1 the French ministers retired discomfited. During the winter of 1704-5 Methuen and Galway made preparations for a campaign on the western frontier of Spain. The forces at the disposal of the allies numbered 2,300 Dutch, 12,000 Portuguese, and 2,700 English. The evils of a mixed army made themselves apparent from the outset. Galway desired an assault upon the capital fortress of Badajoz before Tessé could march with his troops from Gibraltar. He was overruled by the Portuguese, who preferred the investment of the minor stronghold of Valenza. The allies having captured Valenza and Albuquerque, encamped before Badajoz in June, 1705. By that time Tessé had arrived with reinforcements. Months were spent in futile disputes between the generals. Galway, the most enterprising of them, lost his right arm by a cannon shot. In October the Dutch general, Fagel, having been surprised by Tessé, the allies abandoned the siege. The ancient kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia and the province of Catalonia had long borne with impatience the Castilian supremacy established by Philip II. For them Madrid was the common enemy. Aware of the prevalence of this feeling, which was greatly exaggerated by the Austrian party in Spain, the English ministry in 1705 resolved on another expedition to its eastern coasts. The commander nominated was Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough. It was a surprising selection in that age, for he was not a soldier of experience, having for five years enjoyed a sinecure colonelcy of foot as a reward for political services. He had, however, in 1687 held the command of a small Dutch squadron in the West Indies, and had been nominated commander-in-chief of 1 Torcy to Hennequin, a Dutch intermediary, December 5, 1706, G. G. Vreede, Correspondance diplomatique et militaire de Marlborough, Heinsius, etc., Amsterdam, 1850, p. 182, IV. CHAP. a projected Dutch and English expedition to Jamaica in December, 1702. This enterprise having been abandoned, owing to the reluctance of the Dutch, his present nomination was in the nature of a compensation to him. He owed it to his adroitness in paying court to the Duchess of Marlborough. Mindful of the mischiefs which had attended the divided command of the naval and military forces by Rooke and the Duke of Ormonde in the Cadiz expedition, Peterborough secured, in addition to his commission as general, a commission with Sir Clowdisley Shovell as joint admiral of the fleet. Including Leake's squadron at Lisbon, the fleet consisted of sixty-six sail of the line, of which fourteen were Dutch. The land force was made up of three English, three Irish, and four Dutch regiments, and numbered 6,500 men. Prince George of HesseDarmstadt was on board the fleet, together with the candidate of the allies for the crown of Spain, the Archduke Charles. The army disembarked near Barcelona on August 24, 1705, and was joined by 1,200 Catalan volunteers locally known as "miquelets". The influence which Prince George's acquaintance with the country and the people naturally gave him was regarded by Peterborough, a man intoxicated by vanity, with an insane jealousy. He convened a council of English and Dutch generals on August 27, declared that the capture of Barcelona was impracticable, and proposed a march upon Valencia. But the allied expedition now numbered nearly 10,000 soldiers, besides 3,000 miquelets, and a fleet of 24,000 seamen. Barcelona was held by a garrison of Spaniards and Neapolitans, of whom the Spaniards were known to be disaffected to Philip V.; nor had it any prospect of relief. The archduke and Shovell therefore supported Prince George. After many councils of war it was determined that the attempt on Barcelona should be relinquished, and that the army should march on Valencia. But on August 13, the day after this decision was arrived at, Peterborough consented to an attempt by Prince George1 1 According to Lord Stanhope, the credit of the inception of this enterprise belongs to Peterborough. But Stanhope founds his narrative upon Carleton's (as to which, see App. ii.). He has also himself detracted from the probability of his version by the admission that Peterborough was adverse to a stay at Barcelona; and lastly, the journal, which Stanhope does not appear to have seen, of Major-General John Richards, who was at the conferences between Darm |