ce of England with his designs. In
spite of failure in both countries he resolved boldly on an attempt to
recover the Italian provinces which Philip had lost. He selected the
Duke of Savoy as the weakest of his opponents; and armaments greater
than Spain had seen for a century put to sea in 1717, and reduced the
island of Sardinia. The blow however was hardly needed to draw England
and France together. The Abbe Dubois, a confidant of the Regent, had
already met the English King with his Secretary, Lord Stanhope, at the
Hague; and entered into a compact, by which France guaranteed the
Hanoverian line in England, and England the succession of the house of
Orleans should Lewis the Fifteenth die without heirs. The two powers
were joined, though unwillingly, by Holland in an alliance, which was
concluded on the basis of this compact; and, as in William's time, the
existence of this alliance told on the whole aspect of European
politics. Though in the summer of 1718 a strong Spanish force landed in
Sicily, and made itself master of the island, the appearance of an
English squadron in the Straits of Messina was followed by an engagement
in which the Spanish fleet was all but destroyed. Alberoni strove to
avenge the blow by fitting out an armament of five thousand men, which
the Duke of Ormond was to command, for a revival of the Jacobite rising
in Scotland. But the ships were wrecked in the Bay of Biscay; and the
accession of Austria with Savoy to the Triple Alliance, with the death
of the king of Sweden, left Spain alone in the face of Europe. The
progress of the French armies in the north of Spain forced Philip at
last to give way. Alberoni was dismissed; and the Spanish forces were
withdrawn from Sardinia and Sicily. The last of these islands now passed
to the Emperor, Savoy being compensated for its loss by the acquisition
of Sardinia, from which its Duke took the title of King; while the work
of the Treaty of Utrecht was completed by the Emperor's renunciation of
his claims on the crown of Spain, and Philip's renunciation of his
claims on the Milanese and the Two Sicilies.

[Sidenote: Resignation of Townshend.]

Successful as the Ministry had been in its work of peace, the struggle
had disclosed the difficulties which the double position of its new
sovereign was to bring upon England. George was not only King of
England; he was Elector of Hanover; and in his own mind he cared far
more for the interests of his Electorate