Parma, and Piacenza by Swiss troops should remain, as it then was, a dead letter, and also to offer no opposition to the occupation of the towns by Spanish troops, and make common cause with Spain at the approaching congress of Cambray (State Papers, For., Spain, 167, Record Office). His jealousy of Austria was increased by the establishment by imperial letters patent (19 Dec. 1722, N.S.) of the Ostend East India Company, in which he saw not only a breach of the treaty of Münster, but a serious menace to English and Dutch commercial interests (Addit. MS. 15867, ff. 145, 156, 190, 206). As it became apparent that the congress of Cambray would accomplish nothing, he laboured to form an anti-Austrian confederation of the northern powers. Russia rejected his overtures, but Prussia was conciliated by a pledge of the recognition of her doubtful claims on the duchies of Jülich and Berg, and a defensive alliance between that power, England, and France was already in draft in December 1724 (ib. 32738 ff. 203 et seq., 32741 ff. 337, 405). The negotiation languished, however, until fresh life was infused into it by the new turn given to affairs by the treaties of Vienna (30 April–1 May 1725, N.S.). Of these, two were published and one was kept secret. By the published treaties Spain, in return for the concession of investiture to Don Carlos, guaranteed the pragmatic sanction, and placed the empire on the same footing with England in matters commercial. The secret treaty contained nothing offensive to England, unless an engagement by the emperor to use his good offices—and, if necessary, mediation—to secure the retrocession of Gibraltar and Minorca might be so deemed; but rumours were current of an Austro-Spanish coalition against England of a most formidable character. Ripperda undoubtedly dreamed not only of the recovery of Gibraltar and Minorca by force of arms, but also of the establishment, by means of the Ostend company, of Austro-Spanish preponderance in the East Indies (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. iv. 196–7). The Duke of Wharton undertook to push the cause of the pretender at Vienna; but there is no evidence that an invasion of England in his interest was seriously contemplated either there or at Madrid (State Papers, For., Germany, 231, Record Office, S. Saphorin to Townshend, 19, 26, 30 May 1725, N.S.; Addit. MS. 32744, ff. 17–23, 41). These rumours facilitated the completion of the negotiation for the northern confederacy, which took definitive shape in the defensive alliance between England and France and Prussia, concluded at Hanover on 3 Sept. 1725, N.S., and several subsidiary treaties by which the accession of Holland, Sweden, Denmark, and Hesse-Cassel was by degrees secured. The treaty of Hanover was extremely distasteful to George I by reason of the breach of fealty to the emperor and consequent risk to Hanover which it involved, and to Walpole hardly less so for financial reasons (Coxe, Walpole, ii. 471 et seq.). Ripperda's reply to it was the negotiation of an Austro-Spanish matrimonial compact and defensive and offensive alliance (signed at Vienna, 5 Nov. 1725, N.S.). In character it was exceedingly hostile to France and to England. The treaty was kept secret (see the text printed for the first time in Syveton, Une Cour et un Aventurier au XVIIIe Siècle, App. i., and cf. Armstrong, Elisabeth Farnese, p. 186), but a summary of its contents, with three spurious separate articles, providing for the succession of Don Philip to the throne of France in the event of the death of Louis XIV without issue, for the extirpation of the protestant religion, and for the restoration of the pretender, was transmitted to Townshend from Madrid with rumours of a design on Gibraltar, in time to determine the bellicose tone of the king's speech on 20 Jan. 1726–7 (Coxe, Walpole, ii. 606; State Papers, For., Germany, 232, 234, Record Office). Meanwhile the accession of the czarina to the earlier treaty of Vienna (6 Aug. 1726, N.S.) had been followed by that of the faithless king of Prussia, who had been detached from the Hanoverian league by a pledge of the imperial good offices for the perfecting of his still doubtful title to Jülich and Berg. Neither power, however, could be relied on for any offensive purpose; and when the Spaniards laid siege to Gibraltar the emperor, so far from cooperating, protested his pacific intentions through his chancellor, Count Sinzendorf (20 Feb.), his ambassador at London, Count Palm (2 March), who was forthwith dismissed, and once more in a manifesto to the diet (17 March, N.S.) (Addit. MS. 15867, ff. 231–5). He ended by capitulating (not without the secret concurrence of Spain) to the Hanoverian league (Preliminaries of Paris, 31 May 1727, N.S.). The terms were peace for seven years, and meanwhile a total suspension of the business of the Ostend company, the abandonment of the treaties of Vienna of 30 April–1 May 1725 (N.S.) so far as repugnant to the prior treaty rights of England and France; the submission of all matters at issue between the powers to the adjudication of a congress to be convened within four months of the signature of the preliminaries. A dispute about the
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