LOUIS MAKES ADVANCES TOWARDS A PEACE WITH HOLLAND.

The French had taken the field before the allied army could be assembled; but no transaction of consequence distinguished this campaign either upon the Rhine or in Flanders. The scheme of Louis was still defensive on the side of the Netherlands, while the active plans of king William were defeated by want of money. All the funds for this year proved defective: the land-bank failed, and the national bank sustained a rude shock in its credit. The loss of the nation upon the recoinage, amounted to two millions two hundred thousand pounds; and though the different mints were employed without interruption, they could not for some months supply the circulation, especially as great part of the new money was kept up by those who received it in payment, or disposed of it at an unreasonable advantage. The French king having exhausted the wealth and patience of his subjects, and greatly diminished their number in the course of this war, began to be diffident of his arms, and employed all the arts of private negotiation. While his minister D’Avaux pressed the king of Sweden to offer his mediation, he sent Callieres to Holland with proposals for settling the preliminaries of a treaty.

He took it for granted that as the Dutch were a trading people, whose commerce had greatly suffered in the war, they could not be averse to a pacification; and he instructed his emissaries to tamper with the malcontents of the republic, especially with the remains of the Louvestein faction, which had always opposed the schemes of the stadtholder. Callieres met with a favourable reception from the states, which began to treat with him about the preliminaries, though not without the consent and concurrence of king William and the rest of the allies. Louis, with a view to quicken the effect of this negotiation, pursued offensive measures in Catalonia, where his general the duke de Vendome attacked and worsted the Spaniards in their camp near Ostalrick, though the action was not decisive; for that general was obliged to retreat after having made vigorous efforts against their intrenchments. On the twentieth day of June, mareschal de Lorges passed the Rhine at Philips-burg and encamped within a league of Eppingen, where the Imperial troops were obliged to intrench themselves, under the command of the prince of Baden, as they were not yet joined by the auxiliary forces. The French general after having faced him about a month, thought proper to repass the river. Then he detached a body of horse to Flanders, and cantoned the rest of his troops at Spires, Franckendahl, Worms, and Ostofen. On the last day of August the prince of Baden retaliated the insult, by passing the Rhine at Mentz and Cocsheim. On the tenth he was joined by general Thungen, who commanded a separate body, together with the militia of Suabia and Franconia, and advanced to the camp of the enemy, who had reassembled; but they were posted in such a manner that he would not hazard an attack. Having therefore cannonaded them for some days, scoured the adjacent country by detached parties, and taken the little castle of Wiezengen, he repassed the river at Worms on the seventh day of October: the French likewise crossed at Philipsburgh in hopes of surprising general Thungen, who had taken post in the neighbourhood of Strasbourg; but he retired to Eppingen before their arrival, and in a little time both armies were distributed in winter quarters. Peter, the czar of Muscovy, carried on the siege of Azoph with such vigour, that the garrison was obliged to capitulate after the Russians had defeated a great convoy sent to its relief. The court of Vienna forthwith engaged in an alliance with the Muscovite emperor; but they did not exert themselves in taking advantage of the disaster which the Turks had undergone. The Imperial army, commanded by the elector of Saxony, continued inactive on the river Marosch till the nineteenth day of July, then they made a feint of attacking Temiswaer; but they inarched towards Betzkerch, in their route to Belgrade, on receiving advice that the grand seignor intended to besiege Titul. On the twenty-first day of August, the two armies were in sight of each other. The Turkish horse attacked the Imperialists in a plain near the river Begue, but were repulsed. The Germans next day made a show of retreating, in hopes of drawing the enemy from their intrenchments. The stratagem succeeded. On the twenty-sixth the Turkish army was in motion. A detachment of the Imperialists attacked them in flank as they marched through a wood. A very desperate action ensued, in which the generals Heusler and Poland, with many other gallant officers, lost their lives. At length the Ottoman horse were routed; but the Germans were so roughly handled, that on the second day after the engagement they retreated at midnight, and the Turks remained quiet in their intrenchments.

In Piedmont the face of affairs underwent a strange alteration. The duke of Savoy, who had for some time been engaged in a secret negotiation with France, at length embraced the offers of that crown, and privately signed a separate treaty of peace at Loretto, to which place he repaired on a pretended pilgrimage. The French king engaged to present him with four millions of livres by way of reparation for the damage he had sustained, to assist him with a certain number of auxiliaries against all his enemies, and to effect a marriage between the duke of Burgundy and the princess of Piedmont, as soon as the parties should be marriageable. The treaty was guaranteed by the pope and the Venetians, who were extremely desirous of seeing the Germans driven out of Italy. King William being apprized of this negotiation, communicated the intelligence to the earl of Galway, his ambassador at Turin, who expostulated with the duke upon this defection; but he persisted in denying any such correspondence, until the advance of the French army enabled him to avow it without fearing the resentment of the allies whom he had abandoned. Catinat marched into the plains of Turin at the head of fifty thousand men, an army greatly superior to that of the confederates. Then the duke imparted to the ministers of the allies the proposals which France had made; represented the superior strength of her army; the danger to which he was exposed; and, finally, his inclination to embrace her offers. On the twelfth of July a truce was concluded for a month, and afterwards prolonged till the fifteenth of September. He wrote to all the powers engaged in the confederacy, except King William, expatiating on the same topics, and soliciting their consent. Though each in particular refused to concur, he on the twenty-third day of August signed the treaty in public which he had before concluded in private. The emperor was no sooner informed of his design, than he took every step which he thought could divert him from his purpose. He sent the count Mansfeldt to Turin with proposals for a match between the king of the Romans and the princess of Savoy, as well as with offers to augment his forces and his subsidy; but the duke had already settled his terms with France, from which he would not recede. Prince Eugene, though his kinsman, expressed great indignation at his conduct. The young prince de Commercy was so provoked at his defection that he challenged him to single combat, and the duke accepted of his challenge; but the quarrel was compromised by the intervention of friends, and they parted in an amicable manner. He had concealed the treaty until he should receive the remaining part of the subsidies due to him from the confederates. A considerable sum had been remitted from England to Genoa for his use; but lord Galway no sooner received intimation of his new engagement, than he put a stop to the payment of this money, which he employed in the Milanese for the subsistence of those troops that were in the British service. King William was encamped at Gemblours when the duke’s envoy notified the separate peace which his master had concluded with the king of France. Though he was extremely chagrined at the information, he dissembled his anger and listened to the minister without the least emotion. One of the conditions of this treaty was, that within a limited time the allies should evacuate the duke’s dominions, otherwise they should be expelled by the joint forces of France and Savoy. A neutrality was offered to the confederates; and this being rejected, the contracting powers resolved to attack the Milanese. Accordingly when the truce expired, the duke, as generalissimo of the French king, entered that duchy and undertook the siege of Valentia; so that in one campaign he commanded two contending armies. The garrison of Valentia, consisting of seven thousand men, Germans, Spaniards, and French protestants, made an obstinate defence; and the duke of Savoy prosecuted the siege with uncommon impetuosity. But after the trenches had been open for thirteen days, a courier arrived from Madrid with an account of his catholic majesty’s having agreed to the neutrality for Italy. This agreement imported that there should be a suspension of arms until a general peace could be effected; and that the Imperial and French troops should return to their respective countries. Christendom had well nigh been embroiled anew by the death of John Sobieski, king of Poland, who died at the age of seventy in the course of this summer, after having survived his faculties and reputation. As the crown was elective, a competition arose for the succession. The kingdom was divided by factions; and the different powers of Europe interested themselves warmly in the contention.