Grand Alliance

He now sent 10,000 troops under Marlborough into the Netherlands, and shortly followed himself to negotiate an alliance between Holland, Austria, and England.

This alliance, known as the Grand Alliance, was concluded in September 1701.

The Confederates felt themselves too weak to hope to accomplish much, and did no more than pledge themselves to see what could be done during two months by peaceful negotiations, after which they would attempt to recover by force of arms Milan for Austria and the barrier fortresses for Holland.

But William soon found himself in a position to do more.

At the same time a bill of attainder was passed against the young Prince of Wales, declaring him guilty of high treason for assuming the title of King of England.

About this time William seems to have again taken the Earl of Marlborough into confidence.

He looked upon him as the man who would in reality rule England after him, and as the only Englishman capable of upholding the Grand Alliance and waging war against France with success.

He wished therefore to initiate him into his plans, and so be able to feel sure that the coalition against France would not fail for want of a head.

The Treaty of Utrecht came most opportunely for France.

The Grand Alliance had beaten her, and was preparing to follow up its series of victories by actual invasion of her territory.

Had the movements of the allied armies been governed by a single mind, terms of peace might have been dictated to her under the walls of Paris.

But diversity of counsel is the weakness of an alliance, and France profited by the vacillation and discord among her enemies.

The Elector of Saxony later became a king.

The other line divided and subdivided itself till it had become a heap of small separate states, all those namely that begin with the prefix Saxa, such as Saxa Weimar and Saxa Coburg.

Another elector, the Elector of Brunswick, was just about to become King of England, and the Elector of Brandenburg was the King of Prussia, having received the title from the Emperor in order that the Prussian troops might be secured to the side of the Emperor and the Grand Alliance in the Spanish Succession War.

It cannot be too often impressed upon learners that by the German title Elector, Kurfürst, is meant one who has a right to vote at the election of the Emperor of the so-called Holy Roman Empire.

The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was regarded as being merely a question of time, and a scramble for the inheritance of the sick man was considered to be one of the most probable events.

When it came, there would be an end of the Grand Alliance, and as a result of this, and of the additional circumstance that the issue of the scramble was felt to be extremely uncertain, even those who had but little ardent devotion to the ideal of a united Europe labored anxiously to postpone as long as possible the inevitable crisis.

As a matter of fact, their anxiety was to some extent needless, and the illness of the sick man, though real enough, was much exaggerated by his doctors.

This exaggeration was partly due to the character of Mahmud II, who was something of an enigma, and who was generally thought to be wholly incapable of doing anything to arrest the decline and fall of his empire.

In these circumstances the conference naturally failed.

A mere offer of mediation unsupported by threats of intervention was presented to the Porte and treated with the contempt which it deserved.

For the rest, the only result of the Petersburg conference was to show how dead was the Grand Alliance and to lead to an almost open rupture of the friendly relations between Alexander and Metternich.

The sensitive, high-strung nature of the Tsar was deeply pained by this failure, and he angrily announced to the Powers that he reserved to himself complete liberty of action in the Eastern question.