petkum

Updated: May 9, 2025

Petkum, resident of the duke of Holstein at the Hague: he proposed to this minister, that the negotiation should be renewed; and demanded passes, by virtue of which the French plenipotentiaries might repair in safety to Holland.

T. (Tobias) Smollett - The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. : Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of George II.

The French king, seeing the misery of his people daily increase, and all his resources fail, humbled himself again before the allies, and by the means of Petkum, who still corresponded with his ministers, implored the states-general that the negotiation might be resumed.

T. (Tobias) Smollett - The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. : Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of George II.

Then Petkum wrote a letter to the marquis de Torcy, intimating, that the allies required his most christian majesty should declare, in plain and expressive terms, that he consented to all the preliminaries, except the thirty-seventh article, which stipulated a cessation of arms, in case the Spanish monarchy should be delivered to king Charles in the space of two months.

T. (Tobias) Smollett - The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. : Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of George II.

Petkum wrote to the French ministry, that if his majesty would resume the negotiation, in concert with the queen of Great Britain, he should certainly have reason to be satisfied with the conduct of the Dutch deputies. This proposal Louis declined, at the desire of the English ministers.

T. (Tobias) Smollett - The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. : Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of George II.

The states-general refused to grant passes to the French ministers; but they allowed Petkum to make a journey to Versailles. In the interim king Philip published a manifesto, protesting against all that should be transacted at the Hague to his prejudice.

T. (Tobias) Smollett - The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. : Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of George II.

Petkum brought back from Versailles a kind of memorial, importing, that those motives which influenced the French before the campaign was opened, no longer subsisted; that the winter season naturally produced a cessation of arms, during which he would treat of a general and reasonable peace, without restricting himself to the form of the preliminaries which the allies had pretended to impose; that, nevertheless, he would still treat on the foundation of those conditions to which he had consented, and send plenipotentiaries to begin the conference with those of the allies on the first day of January.

T. (Tobias) Smollett - The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. : Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of George II.