The Rising Storm

by Dennis Wheatley

  “For a long time past our relations with that country have been far from good, and I do not see how they can be permanently bettered as long as present conditions maintain in South American waters. Spain has ever sought to keep her rich possessions overseas as a closed province from all other nations, whereas being ourselves a race of traders we have striven by fair means and foul to get a footing on the southern continent. Despite numerous formal prohibitions we have winked the eye at many illegal acts by enterprising ship-owners in the West Indies. The smuggling carried on from the Spanish main to our islands there has assumed enormous proportions, and skirmishes between our people and the Spanish guarda costa vessels have long occurred with considerable frequency. That naturally gives great cause for offence to the haughty Dons, and scarcely a month passes without our receiving heated remonstrances from Madrid, or bitter complaints from the governors of our islands that British seamen have been seized, maltreated and falsely imprisoned while going about their lawful business.”

  The handsome Duke of Leeds made a wry grimace. “I know it well, and have an entire drawer stuffed with such papers at the Foreign Office. But Spain will never bring herself to the point of fighting on that account.”

  “I would not wager upon it,” contended Pitt. “There is always the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

  “Nay. The Dons may bluster, but the days of Spain’s greatness are gone; and without the succour that she draws from her Empire in the Americas she would face total ruin. Did she declare openly against Britain our fleets would swiftly cut her off from that Eldorado, and she would even risk its permanent loss.”

  “There I agree, should she have the temerity to challenge us alone,” Pitt replied. “But Your Grace has left out of your calculations the Family Compact. In ’79, when we were fully engaged against France, the Court of Versailles called upon the Court of Madrid to honour that treaty and King Carlos III entered the war against us. What guarantee have we that his successor, should he consider himself provoked beyond endurance, will not also invoke the treaty, and King Louis, however reluctantly, in turn feel obliged to abide by his obligations? I regard all wars as regrettable, and although we could look to the outcome of one against Spain alone with reasonable equanimity, if we were called on again to face France and Spain in combination it might well go exceeding hard with Britain.”

  The Duke shrugged. “I regard the chances of Spain pushing her grievances about the depredations of our privateers to the point of war as exceeding slender; so I think such a situation most unlikely to arise.”

  “Yet, should it do so,” Malmesbury put in persistently, “Your Grace must admit that we would find ourselves in a pretty pickle; for it should not be forgotten that the French Queen is a Habsburg. The influence she exerts has enabled her to draw the Courts of Versailles and Vienna much closer together than they were formerly, and in the event of war she might well succeed in inducing her brothers to come to the assistance of France. Then we would find Spain, France, Austria, Tuscany and the Two Sicilies all leagued in arms simultaneously for the purpose of our destruction.”

  “Indeed, my lord Malmesbury is right,” declared Pitt. “The nightmare spectacle he calls up could only too easily become a terrible reality did Spain ever invoke that damnable Family Compact. The danger at the moment fortunately appears remote; but it is the one possibility that above all others we should spare no pains to render still more unlikely, or, far better, impossible.”

  He had turned, then, to Roger, and said: “I trust you will bear this conversation in mind, Mr. Brook. Previous to it your new mission called for no more than that you should act as a general observer; but in addition I now request that, should you succeed in becoming persona grata at the French Court, you will pay special regard to all that concerns Franco-Spanish relations; and, should opportunity offer, use your utmost exertions to weaken the goodwill that at present exists between the two nations. ’Tis too much to expect that any personal endeavour on your part could lead to the annulling of this long-standing treaty, but you have shown considerable shrewdness in the past, and you could render no greater service to your country than by suggesting to me some line of policy that would later enable me to bring about the breaking of it.”

  That night, when Roger had got back to Amesbury House, in Arlington Street—where he had a standing invitation to stay when in London with the Marquess of Amesbury’s younger son, Lord Edward Fitz-Deverel—he and his tall, foppish friend, who, from his perpetual stoop, was known to his intimates as “Droopy Ned”, had spent an hour in the fine library, delving into a score of leather-bound volumes to find out all they could about the Family Compact.

  Both of them knew well that it was one of the major instruments that had governed European relations for several generations, but Roger was anxious to secure details of its origin and Droopy, being a born bookworm, was the very man to help him. In due course their researches produced the following information.

  King Carlos II of Spain, who had died in the year 1700, was the last male descendant in the direct line of the Houses of Castile and Aragon; so the succession had reverted to the descendants of his eldest aunt. This princess—known to the world owing to her Imperial descent as Anne of Austria, but nevertheless of Spanish blood—had married the head of the House of Bourbon, Louis XIII of France. In consequence, theoretically, the Spanish throne devolved upon her son Louis XIV. But as the two countries were not prepared to unite and the Spaniards were determined to have a King of their own, the immediate heirs to France were ruled out, and Louis XIV’s second grandson, the Duke of Anjou, had been selected. The choice had been strongly opposed by the late King Carlos’s close relatives in Bavaria and Austria, which had resulted in the War of the Spanish Succession, but France had emerged triumphant and the Duke D’Anjou had ascended the Spanish throne as Philip V. Since then a branch of the Bourbon family had ruled in Spain; and more recently relatives of the Spanish Kings had also reigned in both Naples and Parma.

  In 1733 the first Family Compact had been signed at the Escurial; and it was shortly after this that Don Carlos, Philip V’s son by his second marriage, had conquered Naples from the Austrians. Thereafter the interests of France and Spain had tended to diverge somewhat, but in 1743 they had renewed the treaty at Fontainebleau and, moreover, entered into a secret agreement to use their best endeavours to restore the Stuart Pretender to the British throne. Having failed in this their friendship cooled a little, but Don Carlos was fervidly pro-French, and soon after coming to the Spanish throne as King Carlos III he engaged his country, in 1761, in a third treaty which committed its signatories more deeply than ever before. This last Family Compact had been confirmed in 1765, had been put into active operation by Spain coming to the assistance of France in her war against Britain, in 1779, and was still valid.

  The earlier treaties had contained the statement in their preambles that the alliance was “eternal and irrevocable” and the last, in addition, declared specifically that “any country that should become the enemy of the one or the other of the two Crowns would be regarded as the enemy of both”. It further contained a clause that the two contracting parties should also afford full protection to the dominions of the two Bourbon princes who ruled the Two Sicilies and the Duchy of Parma, who were at that date Carlos III’s younger son, as King of Naples, and his younger brother.

  Having got so far Roger and Droopy looked up the House of Habsburg-Lorraine to find out the ramifications of Madame Marie Antoinette’s family. It emerged that she had been one of the sixteen children of the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa, and that her surviving brothers and sisters included Joseph II, Emperor of Austria, the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, the Elector of Cologne and the Queen of Naples. It was therefore clear that Lord Malmesbury had not been overstating the case when he had said that if the powers concerned in the Family Compact together with Marie Antoinette’s relatives combined against Britain she would be in “a pretty pickle”.

  As Roger recal
led these scenes he felt that there was now very little hope of his being allowed to remain at Court, and so having even a chance of being able to furnish Mr. Pitt with data which might help him to put a spoke in the wheel of the Family Compact. But he did feel that owing to his having had the luck to meet so many of the Queen’s gentlemen the previous evening, he could count on several of them speaking to her on his behalf; so there was a fair prospect that instead of sending him for trial she might give him his freedom, and that would at least allow him to continue with the less intricate part of his general mission.

  It would be bitterly disappointing to have got so near the Queen only to be banished from her presence, but he could make a tour of the provincial cities or develop the acquaintance of men such as the Comte de Mirabeau, M. Mounier, the Abbé Sieyés and the Comte de Lally-Tollendal, who were in the forefront of the agitation for reform, and thus still procure a certain amount of quite useful information for his Government. The thing that mattered above all else was to regain his freedom; with some anxiety, but a reasonable hope of doing so, he got up and dressed.

  Finding that M. de Vaudreuil had already gone out, he spent the morning browsing through his host’s books until, shortly after midday, the Count returned. As soon as they had exchanged greetings Roger said:

  “Comfortable as you have made me here, Monsieur le Comte, I must confess to being on tenterhooks to learn my fate. If you have seen Her Majesty this morning, pray tell me if aught was said about my affair and if she persists in her determination to send me before a magistrate.”

  “Why do you suppose she ever intended to do that, Monsieur?” asked the Count in some surprise.

  Roger’s face showed even greater astonishment. “But you were present, Monsieur le Comte, when she declared her intention in no uncertain terms of seeing to it that justice took its course.”

  “I was indeed, but that did not imply that the services of a magistrate are called for.”

  “Sacré nom!” Roger exclaimed in swift dismay. “Surely you do not infer that I am to be condemned without a trial?”

  De Vaudreuil shrugged. “Her Majesty will no doubt discuss your affair with the King, and His Majesty being the chief magistrate in France, no other is required. A lettre de cachet will be issued and His Majesty’s Lieutenant General of Police will carry out whatever order it may contain.”

  Roger endeavoured to hide his sudden panic. It had never occurred to him that he might be thrown into prison for an unspecified period and perhaps forgotten there, or even executed, without a trial; although he was well aware that judicial procedure was very different in France from what it was in England.

  In France there had never been any equivalent of Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights. There was no law of Habeas Corpus to protect people from being detained in prison without ever having been brought before a court; and even in the courts there was no such thing as trial by jury. The old feudal system of dispensing justice remained unaltered. The nobles still possessed powers little short of life and death over the peasants on their estates, and had the right of appointing anyone they chose to act for them in their absence.

  In the towns, courts of all kinds had grown up in higgledy-piggledy confusion. There were those of the King’s Intendants in the provincial capitals and of the Sub-Intendants in lesser places; those of the clergy, who had special jurisdiction over certain matters; those for cases in which the nobility were concerned; those of the merchants, who could be tried by their own Guilds; and others which dealt with petty crime and the litigation of the common people. In addition there were the Parliaments which still functioned in some of the great cities, dealing with appeals and matters of outstanding moment, such as accusations against highly placed persons that the King might choose to refer to them. And above all these there remained the absolute power of the King to pronounce sentences of death, imprisonment, mutilation and banishment by lettres de cachet, against which there was no appeal.

  During the past century the lettre de cachet had become mainly an instrument for disciplining the younger nobility. If a young man defied the parental will and was on the point of making an unsatisfactory marriage, got heavily in debt, or was leading a glaringly immoral life, it had become customary for his father to apply to the King for a lettre de cachet and get the recalcitrant youth sent to cool his heels in prison until he thought better of his insubordination. Lettres de cachet were also used quite arbitrarily by the greater nobility to imprison servants who they believed had robbed them and writers who had libelled them by publishing accounts of their extravagances and follies. So widespread had this practice become under Louis XV that his mistresses and Ministers regularly secured from him sheaves of signed blanks, which they gave to any of their friends who asked for them, so that the King no longer had the faintest idea who or for what people were being imprisoned in his name.

  The mild and conscientious Louis XVI had endeavoured to check this glaring abuse, and it was no longer easy to secure a lettre de cachet without providing a good reason for its use; but the King continued to use them freely himself in his capacity of Supreme Magistrate, and Roger had good cause to feel extremely perturbed by de Vaudreuil’s pronouncement.

  “Monsieur le Comte,” he said hurriedly, “if I am to have no opportunity of defending myself, I beg you most earnestly to entreat Her Majesty to grant me an audience before she speaks to the King. Or at least that you and your friends will take the first possible opportunity of recounting my story to her as I told it to you last night, and beseeching her clemency towards me.”

  “Alas, my poor Chevalier,” replied de Vaudreuil, with a sad shake of his head. “De Coigny, de Ligne and myself have already done our best for you with Her Majesty this morning; but she would not listen to us. Indeed, she berated us soundly on the score that we were seeking to protect you because, contrary to the King’s will, we nobles continue to regard duelling as the only recourse of a man of honour who considers himself aggrieved. I am distressed beyond words to dash your hopes, but she proved unshakable in her opinion that you had committed a very serious crime and must be suitably punished for it.

  Chapter IV

  The Lady from Spain

  As a further means of showing sympathy for his prisoner, de Vaudreuil suggested that a little fresh air and exercise might serve to distract Roger’s thoughts; and told him that, since he had his parole, he had no objection to his going out unaccompanied, provided that he remained within the precincts of the Palace. Then he picked up a riding-crop he had come to fetch and went out himself.

  Roger, now as pessimistic about his prospects as he had previously been sanguine, felt no inclination for a walk, so remained where he was, plunged in gloomy speculations.

  If he were not to be given any form of trial it now seemed improbable that the original documents referring to the case would be produced; and if they were not the recommendation to mercy that the Comte d’Adhémar had promised to send in would never come to light. Presumably the Queen regarded his own confession, that he had been the man who had forced a duel without provocation on the Count de Caylus, and killed him, amply sufficient for the King to sentence him to anything that, in their mood of the moment, they considered to be his deserts. He thought it very unlikely that they would impose the death sentence, but in his vivid imagination he already saw the black bulk of the Bastille yawning to engulf him; and once inside that vast stone fortress it would prove exceedingly difficult to get out again.

  The only line of escape which now seemed to offer was an appeal to the British Ambassador, the Duke of Dorset. It was part of His Grace’s function to protect the interests of all British subjects resident or travelling in France. He could take the matter up with the King, through his Foreign Minister, soliciting a cancellation of the lettre de cachet, or at least a further investigation of the case, if there were reasonable grounds for supposing that there had been a miscarriage of justice.

  But Roger realised with most distressing clarity that although he m
ight plead a miscarriage of justice in the event of his being condemned for murder, he certainly could not do so if he were imprisoned for duelling; and it was entirely outside any Ambassador’s sphere to seek to protect any of his nationals who had admittedly broken the laws of the country to which he was accredited.

  There was still one way out. Via the Ambassador, he could send a letter to Mr. Pitt, begging his intervention. If the Prime Minister chose to do so he could instruct the Ambassador to use his own discretion as to the means he should employ to secure the prisoner’s release. The Duke of Dorset, and his extremely able First Secretary, Mr. Daniel Hailes, both knew that Roger was a secret agent, and they would then resort to extreme measures. Dorset could declare that Roger was a new member of his staff who had just been sent out to him, and had not yet been officially presented owing to his recent arrival in France. He would then claim for him diplomatic status with its accompanying immunities. These did not cover arrest for felony, but duelling had never been regarded in the same light as other crimes. There was little doubt that the King would surrender Roger to the Ambassador rather than give umbrage to the Court of St. James; but at the same time it was certain that Dorset would be informed that this new member of his staff was non persona grata at Versailles and must be sent back to England forthwith.

  The thought of the humiliation entailed made Roger’s bronzed face flush. How would he ever be able to face Mr. Pitt after having bungled matters so badly? That his arrest was not altogether his own fault would prove no excuse, for he had laid himself open to it originally; and the Prime Minister had every right to expect that any agent he employed should have wit enough to get out of trouble without raising an annoying diplomatic issue. He would be sent on no more missions, never again be let into the fascinating secrets of high policy, or enjoy the travelling as a rich English milor’ that he had so come to love. Instead he would be, as his father, Admiral Brook, would have put it, “on the beach” at twenty-one, with an income quite inadequate to support the habits he had acquired and entirely untrained for any profession or profitable occupation.