by Edmund Burke
Spain is not a substantive Power:
That she must lean on France, or on England.
That it is as much for the interest of Great Britain to prevent the predominancy of a French interest in that kingdom, as if Spain were a province of the Crown of Great Britain, or a State actually dependent on it; full as much so as ever Portugal was reputed to be. This is a dependency of much greater value: and it’s destruction, or it’s being carried to any other dependency, of much more serious misfortune.
One of these two things must happen. Either Spain must submit to circumstances, and take such conditions as France will impose; or she must engage in hostilities along with the Emperor, and the King of Sardinia.
If Spain should be forced or awed into a treaty with the Republick of France, she must open her ports and her commerce, as well as the land communication for the French labourers, who were accustomed annually to gather in the harvest in Spain. Indeed she must grant a free communication for travellers and traders through her whole country. In that case it is not conjectural, it is certain, the Clubs will give law in the Provinces; Bourgoing, or some such miscreant, will give law at Madrid.
In this England may acquiesee if she pleases; and France will conclude a triumphant peace, with Spain under her absolute dependence, with a broad highway into that, and into every State of Europe. She actually invites Great Britain to divide with her the spoils of the new world, and to make a partition of the Spanish Monarchy. Clearly it is better to do so, than to suffer France to possess those spoils, and that territory alone; which, without doubt, unresisted by us, she is altogether as able, as she is willing to do.
This plan is proposed by the French, in the way in which they propose all their plans; and in the only way in which indeed they can propose them, where there is no regular communication between his Majesty and their Republick.
What they propose is a plan. It is a plan also to resist their predatory project. To remain quiet, and to suffer them to make their own use of a naval power before our face, so as to awe and bully Spain into a submissive peace, or to drive them into a ruinous war, without any measure on our part, I fear is no plan at all.
However, if the plan of co-operation which France desires, and which her affiliated societies here ardently wish and are constantly writing up, should not be adopted, and the war between the Emperor and France should continue, I think it not at all likely that Spain should not be drawn into the quarrel. In that case, the neutrality of England will be a thing absolutely impossible. The time is only the subject of deliberation.
Then the question will be, whether we are to defer putting ourselves into a posture for the common defence, either by armament, or negotiation, or both, until Spain is actually attacked; that is, whether our Court will take a decided part for Spain, whilst Spain on her side, is yet in a condition to act with whatever degree of vigour she may have; whilst that vigour is yet unexhausted; — or whether we shall connect ourselves with her broken fortunes; after she shall have received material blows, and when we shall have the whole slow length of that always unwieldy, and all constructed, and then wounded and crippled body, to drag after us, rather than to aid us. Whilst our disposition is uncertain, Spain will not dare to put herself in such a state of defence as will make her hostility formidable, or her neutrality respectable.
If the decision is such as the solution of this question (I take it to be the true question) conducts to — no time is to be lost. But the measures though prompt, ought not to be rash and indigested. They ought to be well chosen, well combined, and well pursued. The system must be general: but it must be executed, not successively, or with interruption, but all together, uno flatu, in one melting, and one mould.
For this purpose, we must put Europe before us, which plainly is, just now, in all it’s parts, in a state of dismay, derangement and confusion; and very possibly amongst all it’s Sovereigns, full of secret heart-burning, distrust, and mutual accusation. Perhaps it may labour under worse evils. There is no vigour any where, except the distempered vigour and energy of France. That country has but too much life in it, when every thing around is so disposed to tameness and languor. The very vices of the French system at home tend to give force to foreign exertions. The Generals must join the armies. They must lead them to enterprize, or they are likely to perish by their hands. Thus without law or government of her own, France gives law to all the Governments in Europe.
This great mass of political matter must, have been always under the view of thinkers for the publick, whether they act in office or not. Amongst events, even the late calamitous events were in the book of contingency. Of course, they must have been in design, at least, provided for. A plan which takes in as many as possible of the States concerned, will rather facilitate and simplify a rational scheme for preserving Spain, (if that were our sole, as I think it ought to be our principal object) than to delay and perplex it.
If we should think that a provident policy (perhaps now more than provident, urgent and necessary) should lead us to act, we cannot take measures as if nothing had been done. We must see the faults, if any, which have conducted to the present misfortunes; not for the sake of criticism, military or political, or from the common motives of blaming persons and counsels which have not been successful; but in order, if we can, to administer some remedy to these disasters, by the adoption of plans, more bottomed in principle, and built on with more discretion. Mistakes may be lessons.
There seem indeed to have been several mistakes in the political principles on which the War was entered into, as well as in the plans upon which it was conducted; some of them very fundamental, and not only visibly, but I may say, palpably erroneous; and I think him to have less than the discernment of a very ordinary Statesman. who could not foresee from the very beginning, unpleasant consequences from those plans, though not the unparalleled disgraces and disasters which really did attend them: for they were, both principles and measures, wholly new and out of the common course, without any thing apparently very grand in the conception, to justify this total departure from all rule.
For, in the first place, the united Sovereigns very much injured their cause by admitting, that they had nothing to do with the interiour arrangements of France; in contradiction to the whole tenour of the publick Law of Europe, and to the correspondent practice of all it’s States, from the time we have any history of them. In this particular, the two German Courts seem to have as little consulted the Publicists of Germany, as their own true interests, and those of all the Sovereigns of Germany and Europe. This admission of a false principle in the Law of Nations, brought them into an apparent contradiction, when they insisted on the re-establishment of the Royal Authority in France. But this confused and contradictory proceeding gave rise to a practical error of worse consequence. It was derived from one and the same root; namely, that the person of the Monarch of France was every thing; and the Monarchy, and the intermediate orders of the State, by which the Monarchy was upheld, were nothing. So that, if the united Potentates had succeeded so far, as to re-establish the authority of that King, and that he should be so ill-advised as to confirm all the confiseations, and to recognize as a lawful body, and to class himself with, that rabble of murderers (and there wanted not persons who would so have advised him) there was nothing in the principle, or in the proceeding of the United Powers, to prevent such an arrangement.
An expedition to free a brother Sovereign from prison, was undoubtedly a generous and chivalrous undertaking. But the spirit and generosity would not have been less, if the policy had been more profound, and more comprehensive; that is, if it had taken in those considerations, and those persons, by whom, and, in some measure, for whom, Monarchy exists. This would become a bottom for a system of solid and permanent policy, and of operations conformable to that system.
The same fruitful error was the cause why nothing was done to impress the people of France (so far as we can at all consider the inhabitants of France as a people) with an idea tha
t the Government was ever to be really French, or indeed any thing else than the nominal government of a Monarch, a Monarch absolute as over them, but whose sole support was to arise from foreign Potentates, and who was to be kept on his Throne by German forces; in short, that the King of France was to be a Viceroy to the Emperor and the King of Prussia.
It was the first time that foreign Powers interfering in the concerns of a nation divided into parties, have thought proper to thrust wholly out of their councils, to postpone, to discountenance, to reject, and in a manner to disgrace the party whom those Powers came to support. The single person of a King cannot be a party. Woe to the King who is himself his party! The Royal party with the King or his Representatives at it’s head, is the Royal cause. Foreign Powers have hitherto chosen to give to such wars as this, the appearance of a civil contest, and not that of an hostile invasion. When the Spaniards, in the sixteenth century, sent aids to the chiefs of the League, they appeared as Allies to that League, and to the imprisoned King (the Cardinal de Bourbon) which that League had set up. When the Germans came to the aid of the Protestant Princes, in the same series of civil wars, they came as Allies. When the English came to the aid of Henry the Fourth, they appeared as Allies to that Prince. So did the French always when they intermeddled in the affairs of Germany. They came to aid a party there. When the English and Dutch intermeddled in the succession of Spain, they appeared as Allies to the Emperor Charles the Sixth. In short, the policy has been as uniform as it’s principles were obvious to an ordinary eye.
According to all the old principles of law and policy, a regency ought to have been appointed by the French Princes of the Blood, Nobles, and Parliaments, and then recognized by the combined Powers. Fundamental law and antient usage, as well as the clear reason of the thing, have always ordained it during an imprisonment of the King of France; as in the case of John, and of Francis the First. A Monarchy ought not to be left a moment without a Representative, having an interest in the succession. The orders of the State, ought also to have been recognized in those amongst whom alone they existed in freedom, that is, in the Emigrants.
Thus laying down a firm foundation on the recognition of the authorities of the Kingdom of France, according to nature and to it’s fundamental laws, and not according to the novel and inconsiderate principles of the usurpation which the United Powers were come to extirpate. The King of Prussia and the Emperor, as Allies of the antient Kingdom of France, would have proceeded with dignity, first, to free the Monarch, if possible; if not, to secure the Monarchy as principal in the design; and in order to avoid all risques to that great object (the object of other ages than the present, and of other countries than that of France) they would of course avoid proceeding with more haste, or in a different manner than what the nature of such an object required.
Adopting this, the only rational system, the rational mode of proceeding upon it, was to commence with an effective siege of Lisle, which the French Generals must have seen taken before their faces, or be forced to fight. A plentiful country of friends, from whence to draw supplies, would have been behind them; a plentiful country of enemies, from whence to force supplies, would have been before them. Good towns were always within reach to deposit their hospitals and magazines. The March from Lisle to Paris, is through a less defensible country, and the distance is hardly so great as from Longwy to Paris.
If the old politick and military ideas had governed, the advanced guard would have been formed of those who best knew the country, and had some interest in it, supported by some of the best light troops and light artillery, whilst the grand solid body of an army disciplined to perfection, proceeded leisurely, and in close connexion with all it’s stores, provisions, and heavy cannon, to support the expedite body in case of misadventure, or to improve and compleat it’s success.
The direct contrary of all this was put in practice. In consequence of the original sin of this project, the army of the French Princes was every where thrown into the rear, and no part of it brought forward to the last moment, the time of the commencement of the secret negotiation. This naturally made an ill impression on the people, and furnished an occasion for the rebels at Paris to give out that the faithful subjects of the King were distrusted, despised, and abhorred by his allies. The march was directed through a skirt of Lorraine, and thence into a part of Champagne, the Duke of Brunswick leaving all the strongest places behind him; leaving also behind him, the strength of his artillery; and by this means giving a superiority to the French, in the only way in which the present France is able to oppose a German force.
In consequence of the adoption of those false politicks, which turned every thing on the King’s sole and single person, the whole plan of the war was reduced to nothing but a coup de main, in order to set that Prince at liberty. If that failed, every thing was to be given up.
The scheme of a coup de main, might (under favourable circumstances) be very fit for a partizan at the head of a light corps, by whose failure nothing material would be deranged. But for a royal army of eighty thousand men, headed by a King in person, who was to march an hundred and fifty miles through an enemy’s country — surely this was a plan unheard of.
Although this plan was not well chosen, and proceeded upon principles altogether ill judged and impolitick, the superiority of the military force, might in a great degree have supplied the defects, and furnished a corrective to the mistakes. The greater probability was that the Duke of Brunswick would make his way to Paris, over the bellies of the rabble of drunkards, robbers, assassins, rioters, mutineers, and half-grown boys, under the ill-obeyed command of a theatrical, vapouring, reduced Captain of cavalry, who opposed that great Commander and great army. But — Diis aliter visum — He began to treat, the winds blew, and the rains beat, the house fell — because it was built upon sand — and great was the fall thereof. This march was not an exact copy of either of the two marches made by the Duke of Parma into France.
There is some secret. Sickness and weather may defeat an army pursuing a wrong plan; not that I believe the sickness to have been so great as it has been reported: but there is a great deal of superfluous humiliation in this business, a perfect prodigality of disgrace. Some advantage, real or imaginary, must compensate to a great Sovereign, and to a great General, for so immense a loss of reputation. Longwy, situated as it is, might (one should think) be evacuated without a capitulation with a Republick just proclaimed by the King of Prussia as an usurping and rebellious body. He was not far from Luxembourg. He might have taken away the obnoxious French in his flight. It does not appear to have been necessary that those Magistrates who declared for their own King, on the faith, and under the immediate protection of the King of Prussia, should be delivered over to the gallows. It was not necessary that the emigrant Nobility and Gentry who served with the King of Prussia’s army, under his immediate command, should be excluded from the cartel, and given up to be hanged as rebels. Never was so gross, and so cruel a breach of the public faith, not with an enemy, but with a friend. Dumourier, has dropped very singular hints. Custine, has spoken out more broadly. These accounts have never been contradicted. They tend to make an eternal rupture between the Powers. The French have given out, that the Duke of Brunswick endeavoured to negotiate some name and place for the captive King, amongst the murderers and proscribers of those who have lost their all for his cause. Even this has not been denied.
It is singular, and indeed, a thing, under all it’s circumstances, inconceivable, that every thing should by the Emperor be abandoned to the King of Prussia. That Monarch was considered as principal. In the nature of things, as well as in his position with regard to the war, he was only an ally; and a new ally, with crossing interests in many particulars, and of a policy rather uncertain. At best, and supposing him to act with the greatest fidelity, the Emperor, and the Empire, to him must be but secondary objects. Countries out of Germany, must affect him in a still more remote manner. France, other than from the fear of it’s doctrinal pri
nciples, can to him be no object at all. Accordingly, the Rhine, Sardinia, and the Swiss, are left to their fate. The King of Prussia has no direct and immediate concern with France; consequentially, to be sure, a great deal; but the Emperor touches France directly in many parts: he is a near neighbour to Sardinia, by his Milanese territories; he borders on Switzerland; Cologne, possessed by his uncle, is between Mentz and Treves, the King of Prussia’s territories on the Lower Rhine. The Emperor is the natural guardian of Italy and Germany; the natural balance against the ambition of France, whether Republican or Monarchical. His Ministers and his Generals, therefore, ought to have had their full share in every material consultation, which I suspect they had not. If he has no Minister capable of plans of policy, which comprehend the superintendancy of a war, or no General with the least of a political head, things have been as they must be. However, in all the parts of this strange proceeding, there must be a secret.
It is probably known to Ministers. I do not mean to penetrate into it. My speculations on this head must be only conjectural. If the King of Prussia, under the pretext, or on the reality of some information relative to ill practice on the part of the Court of Vienna, takes advantage of his being admitted into the heart of the Emperor’s dominions in the character of an ally, afterwards to join the common enemy, and to enable France to seize the Netherlands, and to reduce and humble the Empire, I cannot conceive, upon every principle, any thing more alarming for this country, separately, and as a part of the general system. After all, we may be looking in vain in the regions of politicks, for what is only the operation of temper and character upon accidental circumstances — But I never knew accidents to decide the whole of any great business; and I never knew temper to act, but that some system of politicks, agreeable to it’s peculiar spirit, was blended with it, strengthened it, and got strength from it. Therefore the politicks can hardly be put out of the question.