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Updated: May 20, 2025
Nothing could be more civil than the words of Alberoni, but nothing could be more dry, more negative, or more absolute than their signification.
Louville having returned, it was necessary to send word to the King of England of all he had done in Spain; and this business came to nothing, except that it set Alberoni against the Regent for trying to execute a secret commission without his knowledge; and that it set the Regent against Alberoni for frustrating a project so openly, and for showing the full force of his power.
Alberoni was the only person admitted to their privacy. This second marriage of the King of Spain, entirely brought about by Madame des Ursins, was very distasteful to the Spaniards, who detested that personage most warmly, and were in consequence predisposed to look unfavourably upon anyone she favoured.
Not satisfied with this reward to her favorite, she, after a few years, induced the Pope to grant him a cardinal’s hat and Philip to make him a grandee of Spain. The gardener’s son had, by ability and shrewdness, reached the highest summit to which his ambition could aspire. From the greatest height one may make the most rapid fall. The power of Alberoni was destined quickly to reach its end.
Nothing could be more civil than the words of Alberoni, but nothing could be more dry, more negative, or more absolute than their signification.
Nobles and clergy flocked to his house in such numbers that the king became alarmed at this sudden popularity, and ordered him to shorten the time of his departure. Alberoni sought refuge in Rome, but here the enmity of France and England pursued him, and Philip accused him of misdemeanors in office, for which he demanded a trial by the Pope and cardinals.
The duke concluded an alliance with England and Germany, the former enemies of France. Philip, exasperated at seeing himself thus thwarted, declared war against the German emperor, despite all that Alberoni could do to prevent, and sent an expedition against Sardinia, which captured that island. Sicily was also invaded.
The King of England could not be ignorant with what care and with what jealousy the Queen and Alberoni kept the King of Spain locked up, inaccessible to everybody and that the certain way to fail, was to try to speak to him without their knowledge, in spite of them, or unaided by them. However, my opinion upon this point was not asked, and accordingly was not given.
It was not thus with Alberoni; his was one of those extraordinary fortunes which one sees, always with new astonishment, spring up around the throne; one of those caprices of destiny which chance raises and destroys; like a gigantic waterspout, which advances on the ocean, threatening to annihilate everything, but which is dispersed by a stone thrown from the hand of a sailor; or an avalanche, which threatens to swallow towns, and fill up valleys, because a bird in its flight has detached a flake of snow on the summit of the mountain.
The regent declared war against Spain on the twenty-ninth day of December; and an army of six-and-thirty thousand men began its march towards that kingdom in January, under the command of the duke of Berwick. Cardinal Alberoni had likewise formed a scheme in favour of the pretender.
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