Page:EB1911 - Volume 25.djvu/620

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SPANISH SUCCESSION, WAR OF THE
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made in 1881 and published in a revised form in 1889) cannot really justify the claim made on its behalf as a “revised Mozarabic rite”: it contains indeed many beautiful prayers from the Mozarabic and other offices, but its doctrinal teaching is more unambiguously “Protestant” than that of the English Prayer-book. The Church possessed in 1906 ten congregations with some dozen clergy.

Lusitanian Church.—A similar movement began in Lisbon in 1867, owing to the work of a Spanish priest there, Señor Mora; and at first its success was even greater than the movement in Spain, in spite of the fact that Portuguese priests who left the Roman communion had either to leave Portugal or to become subjects of another power. In 1875 the adherents of this movement threw in their lot with their Spanish brethren, and when Bishop Riley visited them in 1878 the Portuguese members organized themselves as the “Lusitanian Church,” and the Rev. T. Godfrey Pope, D.D. (d. 1902), the English chaplain at Lisbon, was subsequently chosen by them as president of the synod. A request made to the Irish bishops in 1897 for the consecration of Canon Pope as their bishop led to an examination of the Lusitanian Prayer-book, which was found to be even more defective from the Anglican point of view than that of the Spanish Reformed Church. Consequently no action was taken. In 1906 the Church had only some 500 adherents with five clergy.

Authorities.—H. E. Noyes, Church Reform in Spain and Portugal (London, 1897); F. D. How, Life of Archbishop Plunket (London, 1900) ; A. C. Benson, Life of Archbishop Benson, vol. ii. (London, 1899); Officios divinos, &c. en la iglesia española reformada (Madrid, 1898; Eng. trans., Dublin, 1889; new ed., 1894); Divine Offices and other Formularies of the Reformed Episcopal Churches of Spain and Portugal (London, 1882); Church Quarterly Review, xxxviii. 283 (July 1894), art. “The Proposed Episcopate for Spanish Protestants.”

SPANISH SUCCESSION, WAR OF THE, the name given to the general European war which began in 1701 and ended with the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt in 1713–14. The war in its ensemble is the typical “war with limited aim,” carried out by professional armies in the interests of sovereigns and their cabinets and (except in the last stages of the war in northern France) enlisting no more than the platonic sympathies of the various peoples whose rulers were at war. Nevertheless, its monotonous round of marches and sieges is now and then quickened by the genius of three great soldiers, Marlborough, Eugene and Villars, and Peterborough and Galway, Catinat and Vendôme, though less highly gifted, were men of unusual and conspicuous ability. As usual in these wars, manœuvres, threats and feints played the principal part in field warfare. The soldiers of those days were too Costly to be squandered on indecisive battles, and few generals of the time either knew how to make a battle a means of definitively settling the quarrel or had the influence and force of character to extort from their sovereigns permission to play for high stakes. The tangible assets, at the conclusion of peace, were fortresses and provinces; and the effective seizure of fortresses and provinces, “here a little, there a little,” was in most cases the principal object with which kings and princes made war. Nevertheless, at the time of the Spanish Succession War the generals had not yet wholly reconciled themselves to their new position of superior chess-players. Moreover, the object of the war, at least in the case of England and Holland, was less to add a few cities and districts to their own domains than to cripple the power of Louis XIV. The ambition of the Grand Monarque had stepped beyond these narrow limits, and by placing on the throne of Spain his grandson Philip he had brought into politics the fear not merely of a disturbance but of an entire overthrow of the “balance of power.” Thus the instrument of his ambition, his magnificent army, was (above all for England) an object in itself and not merely an obstacle to the attainment of other objects. Many of the allies, however, had good reason to fear for their own possessions, and others entered the alliance with at least the hope of acquiring a few material gains at small expense. On the side of the allies therefore, throughout the war, there was a perpetual struggle between offensive activity and defensive passivity, and within the category of “activity” two very different forms of offensive alternately prevailed, the decision of the main question b) r the sword and the seizure of a minor object by stratagem. Were it not for the existence of this struggle, indeed, the war would be devoid of interest. Later in the 18th century there was, as a rule, no such struggle, for the grander form of offensive died out completely, and the feebler form was easily reconciled with the requirements of passive defence. But in 1700 the true spirit of war—in a leader of the greatness of Marlborough at least—was not yet entirely smothered by chicane.

The action of Louis XIV. in the matter of the Spanish succession was foreseen, and William III. of England had devoted his last years to providing against the emergency by the formation of a coalition to deal with it, and the production of a claimant for the Spanish throne, the archduke Charles. The coalition naturally grew out of the Grand Alliance (see Grand Alliance, War or the), and consisted of Austria, some of the German states, Great Britain, Holland, Denmark and Portugal. On the other side Louis XIV. was supported by Spain—where Philip, recognized as heir by the dying Charles II., had been promptly installed—Bavaria and Cologne. A doubtful ally was the duke of Savoy, whose policy was to secure and aggrandise himself by adhering at each moment to the stronger party. The alliance of Louis with the discontented prince of Hungary and Transylvania Rakocsy was rather an impediment to his enemy than a direct assistance to himself.

The war began, to all intents and purposes, with the handing over of the fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands to the French in March 1701. England and Holland at once began their preparations, but neither state was able to put an army in the field in the year—England because her peace-time army was absolutely insignificant, and Holland because she dared not act alone. In Italy, however, the emperor took the initiative, and an Austrian army under Prince Eugene, intended to overrun the Spanish possessions in the Peninsula, assembled in Tirol in^the early summer, while the opposing army (French, Spaniards and Piedmontese), commanded by Marshal Catinat, was slowly drawing together between the Chiese and the Adige. But supply difficulties hampered Eugene, and the French were able to occupy the strong positions of the Rivoli defile above Verona. There Catinat thought himself secure, as all the country to the east was Venetian and neutral. But Eugene, while making ostentatious preparations to enter Italy by the Adige or Lake Garda or the Brescia road, secretly reconnoitred passages over the mountains between Roveredo and the Vicenza district. On the 27th of May, taking infinite precautions as to secrecy, and requesting the Venetian authorities to offer Carpi and
Chiari
no opposition so long as his troops behaved well, Eugene began his march by paths that no army had used since Charles V.’s time, and on the 28th his army was on the plains. His first object was to cross the Adige without fighting, and also by ravaging the duke of Mantua’s private estates (sparing the possessions of the common people) to induce that prince to change sides. Catinat was completely surprised, for he had counted upon Venetian neutrality, and when in the search for a passage over the lower Adige, Eugene’s army spread to Legnago and beyond, he made the mistake of supposing that the Austrians intended to invade the Spanish possessions south of the Po. His first dispositions had, of course, been for the defence of the Rivoli approaches, but he now thinned out his line until it reached to the Po, and after five weeks’ cautious manœuvring on both sides, Eugene found an unguarded spot. With the usual precautions of secrecy (deceiving even his own army), he crossed the lower Adige in the night of the 8th–9th of July, and overpowered the small cavalry corps that alone was encountered at Carpi (July 9). Catinat at once concentrated his scattered army backwards on the Mincio, while Eugene turned northward and regained touch with his old line of supply, Roveredo-Rivoli. For some time Eugene was in great difficulties for supplies, as the Venetians would not allow his barges to descend the Adige. At last, however, he made his preparations to cross the Mincio close to Peschiera and well beyond Catinat’s left, with the intention