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struggle, involving the principles and the designs
which had agitated the civilized world for centuries.
In
France,
Fleury, like
Walpole, desiring to adhere to
the policy of peace, was, like
Walpole, overruled by the selfishness of his rivals.
He looked anxiously upon
the commotions in
Europe, and saw no way of escape.
It appeared to him as if the end of the world was at hand; and it was so with regard to the world of feudalism and Catholic legitimacy.
He expressed his aversion to all wars; and when the king of
Spain—
whom natural melancholy, irritated by ill health and losses, prompted to abdicate the throne—obtained of Louis XV., under his own hand, a promise of fifty ships of the line, the prime minister explained his purposes:—‘I do not propose to begin a war with
England, or to seize or to annoy one British ship, or to take one foot of land possessed by
England in any part of the world.
Yet I must prevent
England from accomplishing its great purpose of appropriating to itself the entire commerce of the
West Indies.’
‘
France, though it has no treaty with
Spain, cannot consent that the
Spanish colonies should fall into English hands.’
‘It is our object,’ said the statesmen of
France, ‘not to make war on
England, but to induce it to consent to a peace.’
Such was the wise disposition of the aged
Fleury, when, by the death of Charles VI., the extinction of the male line of the house of Hapsburg raised a question tion on the Austrian succession.
The pragmatic sanction, to which
France was a party, secured the whole
Austrian dominions to
Maria Theresa, the eldest daughter of Charles VI.; while, from an eru<*> genealogy or previous marriages, the sovereign of
Spain, of
Saxony, and of
Bavaria, each derived a claim to the
