Diplomacy in the War of the Spanish Succession 1702-1714

2022·5.8 MB·English

by  Jean-Claude Castex

This book is dedicated to all the unfortunate young Germans
sold to England over the centuries by the Princes of the
Holy Roman-Germanic Empire, who shed their blood
to build the British Empire.

Diplomacy in the war Of
the Spanish Succession
1702-1714

Jean C Castex

Lulu
Jean Claude Castex, 1941-

Title: Diplomacy in the War of the Spanish Succession
1702-1714.

Lulu Publishing
1. War of the Spanish Succession, 1702-1714. 2. France —
Relations — Great Britain. 3. Great Britain — Relations-
France.
Cover: Philip V de Bourbon painted by Hyacinthe Rigaud.
Philippe V, known as el Animoso in Spanish, that is to say "the
Brave", born on December 19th, 1683, in Versailles and died
on July 9th, 1746, in Madrid, was King of Spain and India on
the death of Charles Habsburg.

©All rights reserved for all countries, Canada, 2022
ISBN 978-1-6781-53649
:

Legal Deposit: National Library and Archives, Ottawa.
Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec, Montréal

Background
On December 31st, 1700, the XVII Century was fi-
nally on the verge of giving up his soul after a hundred
years of religious wars, cruel, atrocious, ruthless. The
Christians of Europe had tortured themselves in the name
of God and passionately killed. Sectarian conflicts had
succeeded one another with desperate regularity: Thirty
Years War, civil wars of religion in England and Ireland,
Guerre de Religions wars in France, and finally, after the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the War of the Augs-
burg League1. Nations had torn each other apart with fury
in Germany, France, England, and elsewhere. O tempora
o mores2!
The Century that was coming to an end in Canada
had been no less trying. Canadians had written with their
blood the most beautiful pages of the History of France in
seventy war actions3. By winter or summer raids, covering
unimaginable distances on snowshoes, in Siberian colds,
they had expelled their enemies from Hudson Bay and
Newfoundland4. These eternal wars against the English
had made French Canadians a warrior people, as com-
bative —it has been said— as the Trojans of Antiquity5.
That was necessary because their distant Motherland only

1 To which had been added the wars of the Fronde in France, the three Anglo-Dutch wars, the War
of Devolution, the War of Holland…
2 O times, O morals ! as exclaimed famous character.
3 During the Thirty Years' War and the League of Augsburg, in New France only.
4 Territories that Louis XIV will return to England with a simple stroke of a pen in 1714.
5 Quebec has sometimes been nicknamed the Troy of America. Quebec historian René Boulanger in
Action Nationale, Revue mensuelle d’avril 2007, writes “La Nouvelle-France was a military society
which, despite its small population, mobilized in much greater proportions than the Thirteen Colo-
nies and France itself.”
7
Diplomacy in the War of the Spanish Succession
brought them derisory help. The French of New-France
were returning blows to the English of New England,
whose largest fur trader (the mayor of Albany, the colonel
Peter Schuyler) encouraged the Iroquois Indians to come
and harass Canada and Acadia. In addition to this aspect
of inter-religious warfare between two factions of the
same Christian religion, this destructive conflict was actu-
ally just a trade war because Peter Schuyler was an essen-
tial competitor of the French in his trade with the Indians.
In April 1691, an Indian raid against Pointe-aux-
Trembles6 turned out detrimental to the Iroquois who were
captured, tried as simple marauding robbers, condemned
to death, and executed by the Justice of New France. The
result of the latter event was that the Iroquois refused to
launch new raids against New-France unless the English
joined them in person. Peter Schuyler was caught on his
own trap. He wanted to arm the Indians but refused to take
personal risks. In July 1691, as a result of this Iroquois de-
cision which put the English credibility in doubt, an essen-
tial expedition including some 1400 regular and Indian
warriors advanced towards Canada to Rivière-au-Bois7
There, the English hesitated, stopped, then, claiming that
other Indian reinforcements did not arrive, turned back and
went home. In August 1691, to repair the decline in pres-
tige in the eyes of the Iroquois after the failure of July,
Colonel Peter Schuyler, at the head of a commando of 150
English volunteers and 300 Iroquois, launched a raid
against Montreal; but at La Prairie they encountered a
troop of Canadians who routed them. Schuyler gave up his

6 In which 30 Canadian houses were burnt.
7 Today Whitehall, New York.
8
Diplomacy during the War of the Spanish Succession

troop to flee faster. Most of his men were killed or cap-
tured. Faced with such behaviour, Indian tribes showed
their willingness to make peace with the French.
At the end of the sixteenth Century, therefore, a great
event was being prepared in Montreal. Thirty-nine North-
eastern Indian Nations from Northeast and Mid-West had
been invited to Montreal by Callières8 for signing with
France, on August 4th, 1701, the Great Peace of Montréal.
On July 21st, 1701, a flotilla of 200 Iroquois canoes ap-
peared in front of Montreal: representatives of the Nations
Onneyouts, Onontagués, Goyogouins and Tsonnontouans.
The delegations of the Agniers Nations arrived a little
later. The next day July 22nd, 700 or 800 Allied Indians
arrived: the Ottawa, Saulteux, Algonquins from the North
of the Great Lakes and the Miamis, Illinois, Renards, Mas-
coutens, Folles-Avoines who came from countries as far
away as western Lake Michigan. The French presence had
then gained these regions inhabited by various Illinois
groups, including the Péorias, Monisgouenars, Tapoua-
rouas and Kouéras. Some of the delegates from Indian Na-
tions had crossed up to 1500 kilometres in canoes, cut off
from dozens of exhausting portages! These came mainly
from the Great Lakes region, called les Pays-d'en-Haut9
by the French population of the Saint-Laurent Valley.
More than 1200 Indians belonging to 39 Nations were

8 Louis Hector de Callière or Callières, Knight, a captain in France, Governor of Montreal, Gover-
nor-General of New-France, Knight of the Order of Saint-Louis, born in Thongny-sur-Vire, Nor-
mandy, on November 12th, 1648; d. May 26th, 1703, at Quebec. Canadian Biography Online Dic-
tionary.
9 Indeed the Great Lakes are higher upstream than the “St.Lawrence Valley”. At the beginning of
the Twentieth Century, the Pays-d’en-Haut will be the Laurentians, a Precambrian mountainous
region located north of Montreal, southern edge of the Canadian Shield, newly colonized by the
Government of Quebec and its Minister of Colonization, Antoine Labelle, to avoid the hemorrhagia
to the United States of the surplus of population.
9