A FORMER TRIPLE ALLIANCE.* M. WIESENER'S book, though only the
first part of a pro- jected work, has quite enough interest and completeness to make it worth reading for itself. It is a minute account of the situation in Europe which led to the Treaty of the Hague, signed in January, 1717, between England, France, and Holland. Very great care and pains have evidently been -spent upon it. M. Wiesener, if not a great historian, is one of those pioneers whose work is invaluable as a foundation for the work of other people. The general reader, perhaps, may not be strongly attracted by a book which gives every minute detail of the secret intrigues, the long negotiations, the mere straws which indicated how the stream of politics was turning this way or that, keep- ing the Regent Orleans long suspended between alliance
• Le Regent, Abbe Dubois, at les Anglais d'aprjs leasources britannigues. Par Louis Wiesener. Paris 'Hachette et Cie. 1591.
with George I. and friendship with James Stuart, making George I. waver between Austria and France, calling out all the diplomatic talent of men like Lord Stair, James Stanhope, the Marquis de Chiteauneuf, the much abused and hated Abbe Dubois. But if a mere history of these political ups and downs, a large volume devoted to the preliminaries of one treaty, may seem and sound monotonous, it must also be said that the human interest of the book is strong enough to fascinate all minds that care at all to walk in the by-ways of history. M. Wiesener's own vivid realisa- tion of the men and the time is catching. The eager curiosity of his search after truth carries us away, and we find our- selves following him with real and deep interest through the ins and outs of his story. Such an example of how history is made has a private attraction of its own. The smallness of the canvas brings it nearer to biography ; the struggle of the characters in their narrow diplomatic field, the human nature that breaks forth with so much effect now and then, give it the excitement of a clever novel. But we cannot promise that all this will be found out by the general reader. Opening the book, he will say that it looks dull and dry, and full of minute and tiresome details. Only the real lover of history cares to go so far below the surface, to poke among the foundations, and to know bow history is made.
M. Wiesener's object, in this first part of his intended book, has been to explain and define the relations between the Duke of Orleans and the English, both while Louis XIV. still lived, and during the first two years of the Regency. Much of the material that he uses has been unpublished till now, lying unknown in the English Record Office, where Mr. Sainsbury has unearthed for him many curious particulars as to the Treaty of the Hague, and the negotiations which led to it. Here, also, has been discovered the account of Louis XIV.'s reception of Lord Stair in 1715, which, curiously enough, had escaped notice in the memoirs of the time; even the great authority, Saint-Simon, it seems, leaving it unmentioned. Much curious information, unexamined and unpublished till now, has also been found in the Stair Papers. M. Wiesener has made use of parts of the Stair archives which were laid aside by Mr. Graham when he published The Stair Annals, in 1875. They have served M. Wiesener to make a striking picture of the Ambassador in Paris, his difficulties with the King, the Duke, the Ministers, in promoting the cause of his master, George I., in a Court much inclined to favour the House of Stuart. In spite of the Treaty of Utrecht, which secured the Protestant Brunswick succession in England, and the succession of the House of Orleans in France, failing direct descendants of Louis XIV., and excluding Philip V. of Spain, the weight of the old Court party in France was in favour of the Stuarts and against the Duke of Orleans. No one, in fact, trusted the Duke of Orleans. He was a man of thoroughly bad character, and as cynical as he was dissipated. He had been supposed to meddle with the black art, and certain deaths in the Royal family were not men- tioned without dark whispers referring to him. Louis XIV.'s Ministers were most unwilling that he should be made Regent. They would have preferred Philip V. of Spain, in spite of all the dangers to France and to Europe in that quarter. Things stood thus, in the last months of Louis XIV.'s life, when George I. sent Lord Stair to Paris,—ostensibly to remonstrate on the action of the French Government as to the ports of Dunkirk and Mardyk, and as to their continued protection and encouragement of Prince James Stuart ; secretly to offer friendship and future alliance to the Duke of Orleans.
The Duke's becoming Regent seemed at first to promise George all that he wished,—an ally against the Jacobites, the fulfilment of the Treaty of Utrecht as regarded the ports of Dunkirk and Mardyk. All students of the history of that time will remember that Louis XIV. had not carried out thoroughly the provision of the Treaty that Dunkirk as a naval station should be destroyed, and also had proceeded to make a canal for large ships at Mardyk, which might easily become as great a source of danger as Dunkirk to the English. The demolition of these Mardyk works was the second great point on which George I. insisted in his proposed alliance with the Regent : the expulsion of James Stuart from France was the first great point. It seemed as if Lord Stair's task would be easy, considering the importance of an English alliance to the Regent; but it was far from being so. The Regent was un- willing to outrage French feeling by giving way in the matter
of Mardyk ; he was also carrying on secret intrigues with Bolingbroke and the Jacobites, and even dreamed of marrying one of his daughters to the Prince who. called himself James III. of England. Thus, until the great Jacobite failure in 1715 showed him plainly which side was favoured by fortune, he hovered between the Houses of Hanover and Stuart, making either by turns believe in his friendship. After the 1715 fiasco, he was even yet unwilling to go to extremes against the Jacobites, or to give way en- tirely about Mardyk. The more he temporised, the more obstinate the King of England became ; and thus the story is carried on to the time when the negotiations were transferred to Holland, passing out of the hands of Lord Stair into those of Stanhope, Walpole, Chateauneuf, and Dubois. The long and troublesome business was made still more lengthy and difficult by George I.'s absence from England at this time. His opinions, and those of Stanhope and of the Hanoverian Ministers, were generally opposed to those of the Prince of Wales and Lord Townshend. There seemed no way out of the labyrinth, though the Marquis de Chiteannenf did good service in winning over the States-General to the French side, and all the keen cleverness of the Abbe Dubois was brought to bear on the English Secretary, till George I. suddenly changed his mind, and softened his demands. Mecklenburg was in danger from the Czar ; and anxiety for his German possessions, dearer to him than Great Britain, suggested to George the spectre of an alliance between France and Russia. Thus, owing less to his own cleverness than to the favourable tarn events had taken, Dubois found his task made easy for him, and the Triple Alliance between England, France, and Holland was signed in January, 1717.
In this slight sketch it is impossible even to indicate the many points brought out by M. Wiesener, or to give any idea of the interest of the story as he tells it. In a style which, though long and minute, is never tiresome, he brings before us pictures of the political state of France, England, and Holland, plainly showing how the Treaty and all that went before it were the result of circumstances. But perhaps the newest and the most striking part of his book is his study of the character and history of the Abbe Dubois, on whose name historians have till now heaped nothing but abuse. M. Wiesener does not absolutely set himself to whitewash Dubois, but he attempts to clear him from certain accusations ; and here he seems to succeed. For instance, as to the accusa- tion that Dubois, when tutor to the young Prince, afterwards Duke of Orleans, did his best to corrupt his morals, and was responsible for many of the great faults which stained his character,—here, certainly, the letters of the Prince's mother, Charlotte Elizabeth, Duchess of Orleans, to Dubois, letters full of friendly confidence and anxiety for her son, bear witness in the Abbe's favour. Again, as to the accusation that Dubois sold himself to the English, M. Wiesener brings evidence to the contrary from the English State Papers themselves. Much of the hatred of the French Court, and of the writers of that time, for Dubois, may be explained by the fact that he was an upstart, a man of low birth, whose extreme clever- ness, and probably unscrupulousness, made him valuable to the Regent. Trusted with the most secret and important negotiations, writing to his master with a frank familiarity of style not much according with French Court etiquette, Dubois was an object of both envy and hatred to the old-fashioned courtiers and statesmen of France. They hated the Regent much, and his confidant more. All this is nothing new in history. But the character of Dubois, as studied in this book, and the extracts from his lively, excited letters, add life and flavour to the weary ins and outs of a long diplomatic struggle.
We heartily recommend M. Wiesener's book to all who care for the early eighteenth century, its politics, its manners, and its men.
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