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A40459
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The French intrigues discovered with the methods and arts to retrench the potency of France by land and sea and to confine that monarch within his antient dominions and territories : humbly submitted to the consideration of the princes and states of Europe, especially of England / written in a letter from a person of quality abroad to his corrsepondent here.
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Person of quality abroad.
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1681
(1681)
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Wing F2185; ESTC R9404
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35,025
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34
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famous in the world for your Traffick must become Higlers and petty Chapmen under him Your Men of War which are now a Terrour to your Neighbours will be of no use to you but to make your Slavery the greater Your gallant Commanders and Sea-men as the Romans served the Britans when they had conquered them will be sent into foreign Dominions to advance their Empire And if he shall suffer any of you by his favour to grow rich and full it 's onely like Spunges to be squeezed You must like the Camel down upon your knees and receive what burthens he shall please to lay upon your backs You are now a flourishing and well Crested People you have your Liberty and Freedoms which you ought to value above a Crown but if you come within the power of France you will be such Slaves as you will not be capable of a Jubile Suppose the Most Christian King should be so kind and merciful unto you as to observe his Alliance with you tell he hath reduced all other Princes and States under his Obedience yet you cannot but expect Poliphemus Curtesie to be the last which shall be eaten up Whereas if we all associate and unite and act potently against that aspiring Prince we are freed of all fears and jealousies and it 's not possible for him to be other than the French King And then instead of an Universal Monarchy which is the desigue of France there will be established in Europe an Universal Peace of which his Majesty of Great Britain will have the honour for by the power of his Arms it 's onely to be effected A timely War is less dangerous than an uncertain Peace and such is your condition with France A War will fall upon you and it 's a great oversight to have been so modest as to abide the taking of the first blow Wisdom teacheth us that in Warlike actions the having of the start and to strike first is a great advantage it puts the Enemy to the defensive which is no other than fighting for his own stake The Romans as long as they were Defendants were miserable and Antiochus refusing Hannibal's counsel to invade Italy was put to the defensive wherein he lost his Life and Crown The charge of the invading Prince is certainly known if he like not the Attempt he may desist at pleasure Whereas the invaded is not onely at the charge to maintain Armies but his Territories are instantly impoverished his Revenues deminished Trade and Commerce laid aside his good Subjects with fear amazed the Ill-affected who desirous of change apt to run to the Enemy and many other Mischiefs will fall upon you whereof you cannot be eased but at the pleasure of the Invader Besides the Money to be disbursed for the War offensive especial with you in Great Britain where Victuals Arms Shipping and other Habiliments for the War abound runs into the Subjects purse and the Realm is little or nothing impoverished by it But to forbid and attend the descents of the Invader if we be on the defensive part your Fleet must necessarily be divided the consequence whereof considering the Potency of their Naval power I am afraid will prove that you will be too weak in either Squadrons of your shattered Navy I should be sorry to see Great Britain become a Province to the French Monarchy and be made a Theatre where the Tragedy of Monieurs perseention shall be acted and the good Protestants there suffer the same Calamities Banishment and Miseries for the Liberty of their Conscience as the poor Hugonots have done in France for the exercise of their Religion I do assure you Sir you cannot expect better terms than the Hugonots now have in France With what Infelicities pressures in Gonscience and inquietude of Mind and how precariously they do possess but not enjoy their Estates gotten with Sweat and kept by Care I need not tell you It was not the method of Christ to force Belief by Slaughters or instruct mens Consciences by the Sword yet these are the Arguments which they apply to convince those unhappy Souls Sir there is no safety in depending upon the Charity of France I must tell you again the onely security of all Christian Princes and States in Europe is their impuissance to do hurt The end of War is Peace but a Peace with France seems to me to be the beginning of War And though War be a great Evil yet from all appearances I dread the consequences of a Peace more If the Most Christian King shall disband his Forces it 's far from being any security since he may raise them again at his pleasure nor is it to be imagined that he will so do since that were to give his People an opportunity of rebelling for which he is sensible they are sufficiently prepared and onely want Domestick Heads and Partisans or foreign Assistance to rescue them from Tyranny and Oppression And whiles so potent a Monarch is in Arms all Princes and States will be obliged for their own safety to keep up standing Armies which Charges will assuredly undo them for it 's a declared Maxime in their Counsels That there is no better way to ruine the Princes and States of Europe than to oblige them to keep Armies on Foot For those require great expences which will impoverish them and by consequence precipitate their Ruine Just Fears are a just cause of War and a preventive War is a true defensive as well as a War upon an actual Invasion though offensively acted Hence the Lacedemonians as Thucydides tell us armed against the Athenians by reason of their over-growing Greatness And Antiochus upon this principle invited Prussias King of Bithinia at that time in League with the Romans to joyn with him in War against them setting before him a just fear of the over-spreading Greatness of the Romans and that their designe was to reduce all Kings and Princes under their Obedience and to make the State of Rome an Universal Monarchy that Philip and Nabis were already ruinated and it was his turn to be assaulted next So that those Princes or States which do desire too great Monarchies and seek to enlarge their Dominions do give a just fear to their Neighbours That War is just which is necessary and then Arms are deemed pious when they are the last Refuge of those which use them In elder time it passed for an Oracle of Wisdom Decreseat Hispania non Crescat Gallia If we do make a War against that great Disturber of the Peace of Europe as it 's our Safety so it is Prudence to make it speedily and powerfully for if we do not make it powerfully we shall be like the poor woman who bought Coals sufficient to roast her Pig but laying them on one by one her Coals were wasted and her Pig unroasted And if we do not make it speedily we shall imitate that Emperick who gave Physick to a dead man The Latines prayed in aid of the
hath taken notice of it They are in continual acquests of Dominion by force or fraud and what they get by fraud they keep by force for the Sword with them is ever better than half the Title to any Dominion They do not onely pursue but commonly wound their Adversary before they declare him such or give him leisure to draw They first invade a Princes Territories and after set up their Title and Cause of War They are not concerned that all the world observe their pretence to be false and trifling vain and unjust warranted by no other reason than that of absolute and unbounded Will which are the foundation and conclusion of all the Actions of the Most Christian King and Wars abroad as well as of his Laws and Edicts at home expressed in these imperious words Tel est Nostre Plaiser It 's a prime Maxime of the French Cabal That that Prince which wars for his Glory and avows Power to be the Rule and Strength the Law of Justice may without Right enter upon any Princes Dominions and may in Honour and Justice detain them so they be of conveniency to him to keep them The Dukes of Lorrain Deux-ponts and Mewthelward and the ten free Towns in Alsatia sufficiently prove the truth thereof They have erected at Metz a Court where his Most Christian Majesty as Judge and Party cites the most August and Illustrious Houses of the Empire which he hath nothing to do withal to make their appearance and to give him an account by what Right they possess that which their Predecessors have for three or four hundred years peaceably enjoyed His pretentions are to the greatest part of Lorrain the whole Dukedom of Deux-ponts and the best part of Alsatia as far as Lauterburg These as ancient Dependencies of the Bishopricks of Metz Toul and Verdun and Thersow must be reunited to that Crown because they are of conveniency for him By this all Kings Princes and States may see what they are to expect if they come within the despotical power of France All Princes and States which may give them any jealousie they keep employed and designe to depress all Powers which are capable of obstructing the Torrent of their Ambition All Europe is sensible thereof to their grief They have engaged the Swedes to embroil the Empire which they did to the loss of all their Territories and Dominions in Germany And they brought the Turks upon the Muscovites whereby the Swedish Army in Livonia was let loose upon the Confederate Princes They worked the Messinesses to form a Rebellion against his Catholick Majesty their Soveraign Prince in Sicily and had gotten Messina into their power where they had a potent Fleet of Men of War thereby to give Law to all which should pass upon the Mediterranean But afterwards because they could not keep it did most perfidiously desert them whereby those poor people were exposed to the displeasure of an inraged Prince and to the greatest miseries and calamities imaginable A fair warning to all ambitious and discontented persons who shall quit their Allegiance which they owe to their natural Prince They are continually brooding of Mischief and labouring to enlarge their Empire herein imitating the Grand Seignior of Asia who first subdued Asia Minor then he passed over into Europe and conquered all Greece next he falls upon Syria Egypt and Armenia till at last he came as far as Moldavia and Hungary And doth not the French Cabal observe the same method conquering or surprizing one Dominion after another by Arms endeavouring to reduce the Seventeen Provinces under his Obedience and also Germany labouring some of the Princes thereof to stand Neutral working others to their Party by proposals of Matches and other Artifices and will in short time if not prevented shake hands with the other Grand Seignior of Asia They have now in designe by the power of their Arms to procure the Dauphin to be elected King of the Romans Are not the persons and Estates of the three Ecclesiastical Electors and of the Prince Palatine of the Rhine every hour exposed to the Violences and Irruptions of the Arms of the French It may easily be foreseen without the help of Galileas Prospective whether by force or promises which will never be kept they may not give their Suffrages for that ambitious Crown and how far the Marquess of Brandenburg may be prevailed with by reason of that dishonourable Peace patched up at the Congress at Nimmeguen a little time will discover But if the Dauphin shall be advanced to the Imperial Dignity will not Germany become a Province to the French Monarchy the fatal consequences whereof let Europe soberly consider Can the Princes thereof expect better terms than they have given to the Duke of Lorrain For certain the Protestants will be sure of the same usage and infelicities which the poor Hugonots are now under in France For Fire and Fagot must be prooemial to his Universal Monarchy Dissimulation is the best support of the French Interest and the first step to their Grandeur And to deal plainly with you that Prince which will lay the foundation of Empire by Cruelty must build the Superstructures by dissimulation The whole Globe of Miseries Calamities and Infelicities which Europe hath suffered for many years we must own to the unlucky contrivance and ambitious designes of the French Cabal If there be not a Retrenchment of the Grandeur and Potency of that aspiring Monarch I have so much of an Astrologer in me that I can foretel what will be the fate of Europe France like a perpetual Aetna will fling Fire and Flames Bloud and Confusion into the Dominions of the Kings and Princes of Europe and will be more dreadful to his Neighbours than the Indian Hurricanes are to the Natives there The common Inscription of his Cannon Ratio ultima Regum is by him inverted to a contrary sence and made a publick Warning to mankind That he designes as God did of old to give Law to the world in Thunder and Lightning To scatter by the flames of his Artillery all those Clouds of Confederate Forces that shall eclipse the Majesty of his Glory He makes the power of his Arms his first and last reason His Device the Sun in its Meridian with this Motto Non pluribus impar sufficiently shews his intentions for the Universal Monarchy and the haughty opinion he conceives of his being the onely person qualified for the government of more Worlds than one declares his resolutions of admitting no Rivals in Soveraignty looking upon all other Princes but as so many smaller Stars or wandring Planets compared with him the Sun from whom they are to receive their borrowed light or power as it shall please his Mightiness to dispence So that crowned heads Princes and Republicks as well as their Subjects are to expect the same meat of Slavery and though that be not sweat yet the Sawce will be four Poinant to all though perhaps a little differenced