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In the same Treaty the King of Spain likewise agreed to a cession of which he had sought to delay as long as possible the formal acknowledgment. Yielding to the request of his Britannic Majesty," he agreed to abandon to the Duke of Savoy the kingdom of Sicily — his Britannic Majesty promising to use his best endeavours for its restoration to the Spanish Crown, in default of heirs male of the House of Savoy. It was not, however, as will be seen elsewhere, a deficiency of this sort which a few years later (in 1720) obliged Victor Amadeus II to exchange Sicily for Sardinia. The Anglo-Spanish Treaty contained two other clauses of moment, on which Englishmen cannot look back with the same sense of detachment. By Article XII Spain accorded to Great Britain and the British South Sea Company, whose history is summarised elsewhere, for a term of thirty years the sole right of importing negroes into Spanish America. England and her privileged Company were thus to enjoy the rights of the Asiento (or legal compact) under the conditions which in 1701 had been granted for the enjoyment of the same right for ten years by Philip V to the French Guinea Company; in other words, she undertook to furnish an annual supply of 4800 negroes to the Spanish colonies in America, paying certain dues on each imported slave and a sum in advance of 200,000 livres, to be repaid within the last ten years of the duration of the Treaty. But during its first five and twenty years as many negroes above the stipulated number of 4800 might be imported as was thought expedient, only half the dues fixed for those within that total being payable on account of those in excess of it. Certain other provisions favourable to the trading Company were reintroduced, besides the assignment of a share in the profits of the slave-trade to the sovereign; and a new provision was added (which was to prove of great political importance) granting British merchants the right of sending each year one vessel of five hundred tons' burden to trade with the Spanish colonies in America. The "ingenuity of British merchants" was thus enabled to evade the narrow bounds within which they were confined, and to secure for themselves (as the South Sea Company effectually did till the outbreak of the War with Spain in 1740) the greater part of the general commerce with these regions.

Finally, in Article XIII of this Treaty, the King of Spain declared that, by reason of his respect for the Queen of Great Britain, he accorded to the Catalans not only a complete amnesty, but also all the privileges at present enjoyed by the Castilians, "of all the peoples of Spain that which the King cherished most." The self-sacrificing loyalty of the Castilians might have warranted this expression of preference; but it must also be allowed that the Catalans, animated alike by an ardent attachment to their ancient fueros and by their bitter hatred of the Castilians, had done everything they could to intensify Philip's antipathy to themselves. In Peterborough's days (1706) the Catalans had both fought and suffered heroically for the cause of Charles III, which

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Abandonment of the Catalans

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Great Britain had made her own; it was among them that he had sojourned even after he had become Emperor, and to their care that on his departure he had confided his young wife. Yet at Utrecht they were, under cover of the hypocritical verbiage cited above, left to the mercy of Philip V, who barely took the trouble of concealing his very explicable — hatred of them. The privileges of which they were guaranteed" the enjoyment were those of the Castilians, not their own; and their "obstinacy," as Bolingbroke chose to call it, was requited by their being left out in the cold. The cynical indifference with which the rights of the Catalans were thus ignored was all the more impolitic as contrasting with the consideration shown to them by France in the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659). The result was that which had been foreseen, and concludes the one shameful episode connected with the Peace of Utrecht. In July, 1713, after the Catalans had refused unconditional submission and set up a provisional Government of their own, Philip V's troops invested Barcelona, whence after the departure of his consort the Emperor had, in accordance with a separate agreement concluded by him at Utrecht on March 14, 1713, in the same month withdrawn his troops under Starhemberg. His proposal of an independent Catalan republic was of course nugatory; and the real intentions of the British Government were revealed in August, by the dispatch into the Mediterranean of an English squadron under the Tory Admiral Sir James Wishart, with instructions to put an end, if necessary, to the "confusion" existing at Barcelona. He was also instructed to reduce the inhabitants of Majorca by force, should they refuse the terms offered them; and it is quite clear that the two designs were to be carried out on parallel lines. So late as March, 1714, an address to the Queen was proposed in the Lords by Cowper, and, notwithstanding Bolingbroke's sarcastic comment that her Majesty could not be held to be bound by her promises after Charles III had relinquished the Spanish throne, carried with an immaterial modification, urging the continuance of English interposition on behalf of the Catalans. It had at least the effect that Wishart was ordered not to appear off Barcelona for the present. The city gallantly held out against the attacks of its besiegers, who were reinforced by a French army under Berwick and a French fleet. At last on the night of September 11 a general assault began, and the fighting continued all next day in every street it might almost be said in every house of Barcelona. of Barcelona. The fall of Barcelona, which has been aptly compared to that of Numantia, forms the tragic ending of the story; the survivors, sick and wounded, were sold into slavery; and the very standards of the Catalans were by special order of King Philip burnt in the public market by the common hangman.

Among the remaining Treaties comprehended under the general name of the Peace of Utrecht, which may here be dealt with quite summarily, that between France and the States General, signed April 11,

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France and the United Provinces

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1713, may be noticed first. It has been sufficiently shown above how on the present occasion the hand of the Dutch had been forced by the preliminary agreement between France and Great Britain, as to which they had not been consulted, and which they were, as a matter of fact, powerless to resist. In the Treaty with the States General, France undertook to transfer to them so much of the "Spanish" Netherlands as still remained in her hands, to be by the Dutch handed over to the House of Austria, so soon as the Imperial Government should have concluded a satisfactory arrangement with them concerning their "Barrier.' A portion of Gelderland, surrendered to Prussia by France, was excepted from this arrangement; and a further exception of a minute and curious kind was made in the case of a petty district to be taken out of Luxemburg or Limburg, and settled on the Princess Orsini (des Ursins) and her heirs. This last provision, which had never been carried out, was omitted in the Peace of Rastatt; and an annual allowance of 40,000 livres from the French Government was the whole recompense ultimately received by this extraordinary woman for services which had materially contributed to bring about the Bourbon succession in Spain, to popularise King Philip and his Piedmontese consort, Marie-Louise, in their new kingdom, and to create those relations between the Spanish Bourbons and their people which long outlasted the War of the Succession. She had afterwards aroused the displeasure of Louis XIV, but had in the end gained both his goodwill and that of Madame de Maintenon (1705), and had returned to Madrid, with full powers, as it were, to sway the Spanish Court and monarchy as the most faithful friend and supporter of the French Crown. Her subsequent experiences belong to a later chapter of this work.

Article IX of this Treaty revoked Philip V's cession, ominous for the diplomatic history of the eighteenth century, of the Spanish Netherlands to Bavaria (made in pursuance of an agreement, concluded in 1702, between Louis XIV and the Elector Maximilian Emanuel); France undertaking to obtain from Bavaria a cession to the House of Austria of her claims to the Belgic Provinces. In return for the surrender to the States General for ultimate transfer to the House of Austria of certain places in French Flanders (they in fact included some of those forming part of the proposed Dutch" Barrier "), the States General undertook to obtain the restoration to France of Lille, on which she had during the negotiations set the utmost store, and of certain other of her former possessions.

In a Treaty of Commerce concluded with the States General on April 11, 1713, France granted the same important concession with regard to the rights of neutrals as that which had been made by England to the Dutch, who still held so much of the carrying-trade of the world. France also undertook to obtain for the United Provinces from Spain the rights which she had granted to them at Münster in 1648, when she first acknowledged their independence.

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Savoy.-Portugal.

Prussia

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The Peace between France and Savoy, signed April 11, 1713, restored to the latter Power Savoy and Nice, and in general any part of the Duke's dominions taken from him by the French arms. By means of a series of reciprocal cessions, the chain of the Alps became the boundaryline between the French and the ducal territory, while the plateau of these mountains was divided between the two Governments. The Duke of Savoy was acknowledged as the legitimate King of Sicily, its possession being guaranteed to him by the King of France, to whom this arrangement had been specially repugnant; the stipulations as to the succession in Spain of the male line of the House of Savoy, in default of posterity of Philip, either male or female, may be passed by as never having come into operation. On the same day was signed the Treaty between Spain and Savoy, of which only those provisions possess a wider interest which referred to the cession of Sicily by the King of Spain to the Duke of Savoy, and to the confirmation of certain cessions made to the latter in northern Italy by the Emperor Leopold I in the Peace of Turin (1703).

France and Portugal also concluded a Treaty on April 11, having, five months earlier, agreed to a suspension of arms. The historical importance of their agreement is colonial. The Portuguese settlements on the banks of the Amazon were now recognised as wholly appertaining to the State by which they had been established; while France renounced any right on the part of her colony of Cayenne to trade in the mouth of the river. As a matter of fact, however, the Brazilian trade had since the middle of the seventeenth century more and more fallen into English hands, the Portuguese acting for the most part as agents or factors only; so that these so-called Portuguese gains must be counted among the provisions of the Peace most profitable to Great Britain.

Finally, France and Prussia agreed to a separate Peace on the same date (April 11); though it is noticeable that as Elector of Brandenburg, King Frederick William I still continued at war with France. Through the diplomatic activity of France, Spain had in this instance once more been obliged to compensate a member of the Grand Alliance for his exertions against the Bourbon claimant to her throne. The bulk of Upper, or Spanish, Gelderland was ceded to France, in order by preconcerted arrangement to be made over by her to Prussia, on condition that the Catholic religion should be maintained there as it had been under the Spanish rule. Upper Gelders, the nucleus of the entire duchy, had remained with Spain when Lower Gelders had concurred in the Union of Utrecht (1579); but in the course of the War of the Spanish Succession the King of Prussia had laid claim to it as Duke of Cleves. This claim was to a large extent conceded in the Peace of Utrecht, though lesser portions of Upper Gelders went to the House of Austria, and to the Elector Palatine, as Duke of Jülich and Berg. A fresh division of Gelders into four parts was made in the Barrier Treaty of 1715, to be mentioned below, but it will be seen later

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Neuchâtel.

Orange

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that, before the century was out, they were alike swallowed up by France, and that it was not till the Vienna Treaties of 1814-5 that Upper Gelders was, in part at least, restored to Prussia.

At Utrecht the King of Prussia's sovereignty over Neuchâtel and Valengin was likewise acknowledged. Neuchâtel (Neuenburg) was an ancient countship, whose chief civic community had been connected with the Swiss Confederation by a series of treaties of alliance, and had at times been under the actual control of the Confederation itself. By right of inheritance the countship had been held by the ducal House of Longueville (a branch of the Orleans line) till its extinction in 1707, with the death of Marie de Longueville, Duchess of Nemours. Already during her lifetime Louis XIV, whose annexation of Franche Comté had made him the immediate neighbour of Neuchâtel, had put forward the claims of the Prince of Conti upon the inheritance. These claims had been strenuously opposed by the Swiss cantons - Bern, Luzern, Solothurn, and Freiburg-associated by written compact with Neuchâtel, where (whether or not with the intention of spiting France) a movement arose, headed by the former Chancellor, George de Montmollin, in support of Frederick I of Prussia's claims as representing the House of NassauOrange, which had formerly held sway at Neuchâtel. Bern, the most important of the members of the Swiss Confederation, and other cantons strongly supported these claims, which in 1707 were approved by the Estates of Neuchâtel, and in 1713 declared valid at Utrecht. The folly of the attempt to establish an intimate political connexion between two places so remote from each other as Berlin and Neuchâtel, especially at a time when all claims to Orange were renounced, was to avenge itself slowly, but surely. After undergoing the vicissitudes of the Napoleonic wars, Neuchâtel was not finally given up by Prussia to Switzerland, of which it is an organic part, till the precipitous changes of 1848.

As already observed, it was at this very time that an end was put to the political existence of the principality of Orange, which had come to be a mere archaic inconvenience. This principality, like the neighbouring city of Avignon and county of Venaissin, was a remnant of the old Burgundian kingdom. It passed successively under the sway of several dynasties, notably under that of the House of Nassau, René of Nassau having in 1530 become Prince of Orange as the nephew of the last Prince of the House of Châlons, and having, in 1544, been succeeded by his great cousin William. The little principality had then, in a series of wars, been seized by a succession of French kings, but had with the same regularity of sequence been restored to its owners at the pacifications ending these several conflicts. When, after the death of King William III, Frederick I of Prussia had on the strength of his kinship with the House of OrangeNassau displayed some intention of putting himself in possession of the principality, Louis XIV had at once anticipated him. Now, at Utrecht, Prussia gave up whatever claims she possessed, and in the Peace of Rastatt

C. M. H. V.

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