increased the general outcry against Walpole, who
resigned early in 1742. England under the new ministry became the open
ally of Austria; and Parliament voted not only a subsidy to the
empress-queen, but also a body of troops to be sent as auxiliaries to
the Austrian Netherlands. At the same time Holland, under English
influence, and bound like England by previous treaties to support the
succession of Maria Theresa, also voted a subsidy. Here occurs again
that curious view of international relations before mentioned. Both of
these powers thus entered the war against France, but only as
auxiliaries to the empress, not as principals; as nations, except the
troops actually in the field, they were considered to be still at
peace. Such an equivocal situation could in the end have only one
result. On the sea France had already assumed the same position of
auxiliary to Spain, in virtue of the defensive alliance between the
two kingdoms, while affecting still to be at peace with England; and
it is curious to see the gravity with which French writers complain of
assaults upon French by English ships, upon the plea that there was no
open war between the two States. It has already been mentioned that in
1740 a French squadron supported a division of Spanish ships on their
way to America. In 1741, Spain, having now entered the continental war
as an enemy of Austria, sent a body of fifteen thousand troops from
Barcelona to attack the Austrian possessions in Italy. The English
admiral Haddock, in the Mediterranean, sought and found the Spanish
fleet; but with it was a division of twelve French sail-of-the-line,
whose commander informed Haddock that he was engaged in the same
expedition and had orders to fight, if the Spaniards, though formally
at war with England, were attacked. As the allies were nearly double
his force, the English admiral was obliged to go back to Port Mahon.
He was soon after relieved; and the new admiral, Matthews, held at
once the two positions of commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean and
English minister at Turin, the capital of the King of Sardinia. In the
course of the year 1742 an English captain in his fleet, chasing some
Spanish galleys, drove them into the French port of St. Tropez, and
following them into the harbor burned them, in spite of the so-called
neutrality of France. In the same year Matthews sent a division of
ships under Commodore Martin to Naples, to compel the Bourbon king to
withdraw his