, almost as much to the alarm of Europe as Napoleon had caused
when he left Elba and landed on the southern shore of France. The King
of Denmark shuddered at the prospect of a struggle with Charles, and in
order to secure some part of his spoils he entered into a treaty with
the Elector of Hanover, by virtue of which he handed over Bremen and
Verden to George, on condition that George should pay him a handsome
sum of money, and join him in resisting Sweden.

Nothing could be less justifiable, or indeed more nefarious, than these
arrangements. They were discreditable to George the First, and they
were disgraceful to the King of Denmark. Yet the general policy of
that time seems to have approved of the whole transaction, and regarded
it merely as a good stroke of business for Hanover and for England.
Alberoni, having secured the help of Sweden, got together great forces
both by sea and by land, and prepared for a reconquest of the lost
Italian provinces. He occupied Sardinia, and made an attempt on
Sicily. But this was going a little too far and too fast. Alberoni
frightened the great States of Europe into activity against him.
England, France, and Holland formed a triple alliance, the basis of
which was that the House of Hanover should be guaranteed in England,
and the House of Orleans in France, should the young King, Louis the
Fifteenth, die without issue. Not long after, the triple alliance was
expanded into a quadruple alliance, the Emperor of Germany becoming one
of its members. An English fleet appeared in the Straits of Messina,
and a sea-fight took place in which the Spaniards lost almost all their
vessels. Alberoni tried to get up another fleet under the Duke of
Ormond for the purpose of making a landing in Scotland, with a view to
a great Jacobite rising. But the seas and skies seem always to have
been fatal to Spanish projects against England, and {162} the
expedition under Ormond was as much of a failure as the far greater
expedition under Alexander of Parma. The fleet was wrecked in the Bay
of Biscay. The French were invading the northern provinces of Spain,
and the King of Spain was compelled not only to get rid of Alberoni,
but to renounce once more any claim to the French throne, and to
abandon his attempts on Sardinia and Sicily. Another danger was
removed from England by the death of Charles the Twelfth. "A petty
fortress and a dubious hand" brought about the end of him who had,
"like the