3rd of January, when Portland was about to start for France, William expressed his surprise as to the real meaning of "something that was proposed to be done by the Republic, France, and England, towards the maintenance of the peace," and imagined it might relate to their position with the emperor. However, he added, "the carl of Portland will readily be able to get at the bottom of this affair in France, and that is another reason for hastening his departure as much as possible."
Portland was scarcely settled in his diplomatic position in Paris when the scheme was broached to him, but at first cautiously. On the 15th of March he wrote to William that the ministers, Pomponne and De Torey, had communicated to him, but in the profoundest secrecy, that the king their master desired to make him the medium of a most important negotiation with the king of England. That the impending death of the king of Spain was likely to throw the whole of Europe into war again, unless this was prevented by engagements entered into by the kings of France and England to prevent it. That if the emperor were allowed to succeed to Spain with all its dependencies, Flanders, Italy, and the colonies, he would become so powerful that he would be dangerous to all Europe. Portland declared that he could give no opinion, nor could the king his master give an answer, so far as he could see, until he had the full views of the king of France on the subject. That the naval and maritime interests of England and Holland might be greatly affected by any arrangement regarding the succession of the Spanish territories. The French ministers said it would be easy to order matters regarding the low countries to the satisfaction of England and Holland, and that France would guarantee that the crown of Spain should not be annexed to that of France; but as to the Indies, or the security of our trade in the Mediterranean, Portland could draw nothing from them. The views of France were so far not very clear; but Portland added the important piece of information that the count de Tallard was at that very moment setting out for London, ostensibly to congratulate William, but really to prosecute this negotiation.
Accordingly, Tallard arrived in London on the 19th of March; and he and William, in strict secrecy, admitting no one else to their confidence, discussed this profoundly Machiavellian scheme of Louis. This was no other than that the crown of Spain, with the Spanish Netherlands and colonies, should not be allowed to pass to the emperor, but should be settled on the electoral prince of Bavaria; that Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, the province Guipuzcoa on the French side of the Pyrenees, Fontarabia, St. Sebastian, Ferrol, and other towns on the Tuscan coast, then owned by Spain, and called Presidii, should be settled by a mutual treaty betwixt them on the Dauphin, and that Milan should be settled on the archduke Charles, the second son of the emperor.
It is now necessary to ask by what right these two kings, namely, of France and England, undertook to divide and give away the Spanish monarchy? Were they the direct heirs to the crown? Not at all. Their only right was that which had led to all the robberies and partitions of kingdoms since the foundation of the world. The kingdom of Spain was expressly bequeathed, in case the present king had an issue, by Philip IV., the present king's father, to the emperor of Germany, who claimed the throne, both in right of his mother Maria, who was a daughter of Philip III., and as the true male heir of Ferdinand and Isabella, the founders of the monarchy. This was an undoubtedly valid claim; but as the union of two such empires as those of Germany and Spain might well alarm the rest of Europe, the emperor had already pledged himself to renounce his own right and that of his eldest son, in favour of his second son, the archduke Charles. Thus, the bugbear of the union of the crowns of Germany and Spain which Louis had conjured up to alarm William, was a mere phantom: the prospect of any such union did not exist. The monarchs of Europe had therefore nothing to do, to secure the even and due balance of the continent, but to see that this proposal was reduced to a formal international compact. But nothing was farther from Louis's intentions than any such simple and righteous arrangement. He laid claim to the throne of Spain himself in the right of his wife, the infanta Maria Theresa, the aunt of the present king of Spain, and for the dauphin, who was the son of the said Maria Theresa. There were only two circumstances against this claim, but they were fatal ones. The crown of Spain was already confirmed by the will of Philip IV. to the true heir, the emperor; and Louis and the infanta Maria Theresa, at the time of their marriage, had most solemnly, and by the most binding documents, surrendered all right to the throne of Spain, both for themselves and their posterity.
This, in a condition of things in which kings paid any regard to their oaths and engagements, would have been final; but kings in general hold the opinion of Hudibras that
Oaths are but words,
And words are wind;
and Louis XIV. of France especially cared no more for an oath or for justice than he did for any other moral obligation. He was resolved to set up a claim to Spain — aye, the whole of it; but this he did not yet let William know. It was his business at present to drag William into the dirt of diplomatic crime, to leave his character for justice irremediably damaged, and his hands so befouled that he could never again stand up like an honest man to oppose his most villanous designs. To effect this, he set himself first to frighten him by holding before him the position of Holland if the emperor of Germany should become possessor of Spain. Immense power would then fall into his hands, and Holland would lie directly betwixt his territories of Germany and Flanders. Now William knew as well as Louis himself that the emperor was ready to bind himself and his eldest son not to take Spain, but to let it pass to his second son as a distinct kingdom; and his answer, had he been the high-principled man which some modern historians have laboured hard to represent him, should have been that what Louis professed to fear never would take place, since the emperor was ready to bind himself to the contrary. But what really terrified William was, not that the crowns of Germany and Spain should become united, but those of France and Spain. He knew that Louis had been steadily keeping his eye on the Spanish monarchy for the last thirty years, resolving to seize upon it the moment the present king should expire. He saw, therefore, in imagination, Holland, not lying
