occasion: That character has often
more to do in great transactions, than prudence and sound policy; for
Lewis the Fourteenth gratified his personal pride, by giving a Bourbon
King to Spain, at the expense of the true interest of France; which would
have acquired much more solid and permanent strength by the addition of
Naples, Sicily, and Lorraine, upon the footing of the second partition
treaty; and I think it was fortunate for Europe that he preferred the
will. It is true, he might hope to influence his Bourbon posterity in
Spain; he knew too well how weak the ties of blood are among men, and how
much weaker still they are among princes. The Memoirs of Count Harrach,
and of Las Torres, give a good deal of light into the transactions of the
Court of Spain, previous to the death of that weak King; and the Letters
of the Marachal d'Harcourt, then the French Ambassador in Spain, of which
I have authentic copies in manuscript, from the year 1698 to 1701, have
cleared up that whole affair to me. I keep that book for you. It appears
by those letters, that the impudent conduct of the House of Austria, with
regard to the King and Queen of Spain, and Madame Berlips, her favorite,
together with the knowledge of the partition treaty, which incensed all
Spain, were the true and only reasons of the will, in favor of the Duke
of Anjou. Cardinal Portocarrero, nor any of the Grandees, were bribed by
France, as was generally reported and believed at that time; which
confirms Voltaire's anecdote upon that subject. Then opens a new scene
and a new century; Lewis the Fourteenth's good fortune forsakes him, till
the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene make him amends for all the
mischief they had done him, by making the allies refuse the terms of
peace offered by him at Gertruydenberg. How the disadvantageous peace of
Utrecht was afterward brought on, you have lately read; and you cannot
inform yourself too minutely of all those circumstances, that treaty
'being the freshest source from whence the late transactions of Europe
have flowed. The alterations that have since happened, whether by wars or
treaties, are so recent, that all the written accounts are to be helped
out, proved, or contradicted, by the oral ones of almost every informed
person, of a certain age or rank in life. For the facts, dates, and
original pieces of this century, you will find them in Lamberti, till the
year 1715, and after that time in Rousset's 'Recueil'.

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