the Turks the preparations he was making against Italy; he had formed an
alliance between Charles XII. and the czar, intending to sustain, by
their united forces, the attempts of the Jacobites in England. His first
enterprise, at sea, made him master of Sardinia within a few days; the
Spanish troops landed in Sicily. The emperor and Victor Amadeo were in
commotion; the pope, overwhelmed with reproaches by those princes, wept,
after his fashion, saying that he had damned himself by raising Alberoni
to the Roman purple; Dubois profited by the disquietude excited in Europe
by the bellicose attitude of the Spanish minister to finally draw the
emperor into the alliance between France and England. He was to renounce
his pretensions to Spain and the Indies, and give up Sardinia to Savoy,
which was to surrender Sicily to him. The succession to the duchies of
Parma and Tuscany was to be secured to the children of the Queen of
Spain. "Every difficulty would be removed if there were an appearance of
more equality," wrote the Regent to Dubois on the 24th of January, 1718.
"I am quite aware that my personal interest does not suffer from this
inequality, and that it is a species of touchstone for discovering my
friends as well at home as abroad. But I am Regent of France, and I
ought to so behave myself that none may be able to reproach me with
having thought of nothing but myself. I also owe some consideration to
the Spaniards, whom I should completely disgust by making with the
emperor an unequal arrangement, about which their glory and the honor of
their monarchy would render them very sensitive. I should thereby drive
them to union with Alberoni, whereas, if a war were necessary to carry
our point, we ought to be able to say what Count Grammont said to the
king: "At the time when we served your Majesty against Cardinal Mazarin.
Then the Spaniards themselves would help us." In the result, France and
England left Holland and Savoy free to accede to the treaty; but, if
Spain refused to do so voluntarily within a specified time, the allies
engaged to force her thereto by arms.