have to force its way through the passes of the Alps, through
Piedmont, through Tuscany, and through the Pontifical States, in
opposition probably to great German armies. A French fleet would
run great risk of being intercepted and destroyed by the
squadrons of England and Holland. Of all this Lewis was perfectly
aware. He repeatedly declared that he should consider the kingdom
of the Two Sicilies as a source, not of strength, but of
weakness. He accepted it at last with murmurs; he seems to have
intended to make it over to one of his younger grandsons; and he
would beyond all doubt have gladly given it in exchange for a
thirtieth part of the same area in the Netherlands.15 But in the
Netherlands England and Holland were determined to allow him
nothing. What he really obtained in Italy was little more than a
splendid provision for a cadet of his house. Guipuscoa was then
in truth the price in consideration of which France consented
that the Electoral Prince of Bavaria should be King of Spain and
the Indies. Guipuscoa, though a small, was doubtless a valuable
province, and was in a military point of view highly important.
But Guipuscoa was not in the Netherlands. Guipuscoa would not
make Lewis a more formidable neighbour to England or to the
United Provinces. And, if the Treaty should be broken off, if the
vast Spanish empire should be struggled for and torn in pieces by
the rival races of Bourbon and Habsburg, was it not possible, was
it not probable, that France might lay her iron grasp, not on
Guipuscoa alone, but on Luxemburg and Namur, on Hainault, Brabant
and Antwerp, on Flanders East and West? Was it certain that the
united force of all her neighbours would be sufficient to compel
her to relinquish her prey? Was it not certain that the contest
would be long and terrible? And would not the English and Dutch
think themselves most fortunate if, after many bloody and costly