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Updated: May 20, 2025
He sent on his equipages to Pampeluna at a gentle pace, and placed in his carriage an intelligent valet de chambre and a waiting-woman, with orders to pass themselves off as the ambassador and ambassadress of France, and in case they were arrested to cry out a good deal. The arrest did not fail to happen. The people despatched by Alberoni soon came up with the carriage.
Alberoni, delivered of his Argus, and arrived in Italy, found himself in another trouble by the anger of the Emperor, who would suffer him nowhere, and by the indignation of the Court of Rome, which prevailed, on this occasion, over respect for the purple.
The former requires a less simple and a more enlarged policy. I fear the ambition of the Queen of Spain and the turbulent genius of her minion Alberoni. We must fortify ourselves by new forms of alliance, at various courts, which shall at once defend us and intimidate our enemies. We wish to employ some nobleman of ability and address, on a secret mission to Russia: will you be that person?
So much preparation had been made; so much of the treason train laid, that at last it became necessary to send to Alberoni a full and clear account of all that had been done, so as to paint exactly the position of affairs, and determine the measures that remained to be taken. But how to send such an account as this?
Malezieux pretends that it is a Spanish letter, addressed to the Duchess, and that he had translated it for her, with the assistance of the Cardinal de Polignac; and yet the letters of Alberoni to the Prince de Cellamara refer so directly to this projet that it is easy to see that they spring from the same source.
The next time it was M. de Vendome who asked the duke of Parma if he had nothing else to negotiate with him. Alberoni found means of persuading his sovereign that he would be more useful to him near Vendome than elsewhere, and he persuaded Vendome that he could not exist without "soupe au fromage" and macaroni.
How they did so is a curious fact, which, to my great regret, has never reached me. M. le Duc d'Orleans survived Dubois such a few months that many things I should have liked to have gained information upon, I had not the time to ask him about; and this was one. All I know is, that what Alberoni always dreaded, at last happened to him.
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."
While France was thus making overtures to England, Spain, under the guidance of another able churchman, was seeking the same alliance and at the same time developing her national strength with the hope of recovering her lost Italian States. The new minister, Cardinal Alberoni, promised Philip V. to put him in a position to reconquer Sicily and Naples, if granted five years of peace.
Everything leads us to infer, in fact, that it was Philip V. who, forgetting the long and faithful services of Madame des Ursins, and wearied of a domination from which he had not the courage to free himself, gave authority to his new consort to take everything upon herself; and the latter, who, like Alberoni, her crafty adviser, belonged to the intrepid race of political gamesters, did not hesitate for a single instant to commence her regal play with the execution of such a master-stroke.
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