DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.47347#0055
THE SPANISH SUCCESSION.
39
been to live and die with my dear and faithful Spaniards.
My sentiments are already known to the powers interested,
who all assent to and approve them 1.”
These important documents confirm in an authentic man-
ner what we have already said concerning the cause of the
Spanish succession war, and the fundamental conditions of
the re-establishment of a general peace. It was not the
legal question—the question whether the archduke Charles
or the duke of Anjou had the better right to the crown of
Spain, which had caused the great powers, especially Eng-
land, to take arms; it was solely the political question, the
maintenance of the European balance of power, the favourite
idea of the age. They would not suffer the same prince to
reign over France and Spain also, and thus to acquire a
preponderance formidable to the rest of Europe. But for
this political interest of the great powers, but for the appre-
hensions excited in them by the ambition of France, the
claims of Austria to the throne of Spain would never have
been listened to; she could never have supported them by
great alliances and by force of arms. Accordingly, the
very moment the house of Bourbon gave the great powers
the so ardently desired guarantee of the irrevocable separa-
tion of the two crowns of Spain and France, the moment
the political question was resolved, and the interests of the
powers secured, we see the war terminate, and the rights of
Austria thenceforward classed among unwarrantable pre-
tensions. If we examine the negociations of Utrecht2, we
shall see that at this congress, as at that of the Hague, there
was no question whatever about the right of succession to
the crown of Spain, and that, without considering in a legal
1 Dumont, 1. c. t. viii. part. i. p. 305.
2 See, in addition to the Memoirs of Lamberty, Horace Walpole’s Letters to
an English Nobleman, in which the author gives a correct idea of the political
state of Europe from 1648 to 1712.
39
been to live and die with my dear and faithful Spaniards.
My sentiments are already known to the powers interested,
who all assent to and approve them 1.”
These important documents confirm in an authentic man-
ner what we have already said concerning the cause of the
Spanish succession war, and the fundamental conditions of
the re-establishment of a general peace. It was not the
legal question—the question whether the archduke Charles
or the duke of Anjou had the better right to the crown of
Spain, which had caused the great powers, especially Eng-
land, to take arms; it was solely the political question, the
maintenance of the European balance of power, the favourite
idea of the age. They would not suffer the same prince to
reign over France and Spain also, and thus to acquire a
preponderance formidable to the rest of Europe. But for
this political interest of the great powers, but for the appre-
hensions excited in them by the ambition of France, the
claims of Austria to the throne of Spain would never have
been listened to; she could never have supported them by
great alliances and by force of arms. Accordingly, the
very moment the house of Bourbon gave the great powers
the so ardently desired guarantee of the irrevocable separa-
tion of the two crowns of Spain and France, the moment
the political question was resolved, and the interests of the
powers secured, we see the war terminate, and the rights of
Austria thenceforward classed among unwarrantable pre-
tensions. If we examine the negociations of Utrecht2, we
shall see that at this congress, as at that of the Hague, there
was no question whatever about the right of succession to
the crown of Spain, and that, without considering in a legal
1 Dumont, 1. c. t. viii. part. i. p. 305.
2 See, in addition to the Memoirs of Lamberty, Horace Walpole’s Letters to
an English Nobleman, in which the author gives a correct idea of the political
state of Europe from 1648 to 1712.