The first night we lay at Rottenburg, where is a strong castle above the town. Count Serini is still a close prisoner in this castle, who, as they told us in the town, had lost his senses by his long imprisonment and afflictions. The next day we dined at Kuff-stain, where there is a fortress on a high rock above the town, almost inaccessible on all sides: this being a frontier place on the duchy of Bavaria, where we entered, after about an hour's rowing from Kuff-stain." It was the pleasantest voyage in the world to follow the windings of the river Inn through such a variety of pleasing scenes as the course of it naturally led us. We had sometimes, on each side of us, a vast extent of naked rocks and mountains, broken into a thousand irregular steeps and precipices; in other places we saw a long forest of fir-trees, so thick set together, that it was impossible to discover any of the soil they grew upon, and rising up so regularly one above another, as to give us the view of a whole wood at once. The time of the year, that had given the leaves of the trees so many different colours, completed the beauty of the prospect. But as the materials of a fine landscape are not always the most profitable to the owner of them, we met with but very little corn or pasturage for the proportion of earth that we passed through, the lands of the Tirol not being able to feed the inhabitants. This long valley of the Tirol lies enclosed on all sides by the Alps, though its dominions shoot out into several branches that lie among the breaks and hollows of the mountains. It is governed by three councils residing at Inspruck; one sits upon life and death, the other is for taxes and impositions, and a third for the common distributions of justice. As these courts regulate themselves by the orders they receive from the imperial court, so, in many cases,

there are appeals from them to Vienna. The inhabitants of the Tirol have many particular privileges above those of the other hereditary countries of the emperor. For as they are naturally well fortified among their mountains, and, at the same time, border upon many different governments, as the Grisons, Venetians, Swiss, Bavarians, &c. a severe treatment might tempt them to set up for a republic, or at least throw themselves under the milder government of some of their neighbours: besides, that their country is poor, and that the emperor draws considerable incomes out of his mines of salt and metal. They are these mines that fill the country with greater numbers of people than it would be able to bear without the importation of corn from foreign parts. The emperor has forts and citadels at the entrance of all the passes that lead into the Tirol, which are so advantageously placed on rocks and mountains, that they command all the valleys and avenues that lie about them. Besides, that the country itself is cut into so many hills and inequalities, as would render it defensible, by a very little army, against a numerous enemy. It was, therefore, generally thought the duke of Bavaria would not attempt the cutting off any succours that were sent to Prince Eugene; or the forcing his way through the Tirol into Italy. The river Inn, that had hitherto been shut up among mountains, passes gene rally through a wide open country during all its course through Bavaria, which is a voyage of two days, after the rate of twenty leagues a day.

THE

PRESENT STATE

OF THE

WAR,

AND THE

NECESSITY OF AN AUGMENTATION,

CONSIDERED.

1

PREFACE.

THE author of the following essay has endeavoured to draw into one continued scheme, the whole state of the present war, and the methods that appear to him the most proper for bringing it to a happy conclusion.

After having considered that the French are the constant, and most dangerous, enemies to the British nation, and that the danger from them is now greater than ever, and will still increase, till their present union with Spain be broken, he sets forth the several advantages which this union has already given France, and taken from Great-Britain, in relation to the West-Indies, the woollen manufacture, the trade of the Levant, and the naval power of the two nations.

He shows how these advantages will still rise higher after a peace, notwithstanding our present conquests, with new additions, should be confirmed to us; as well because the monarchy of Spain would not be weakened by such concessions, as because no guarantee could be found sufficient to secure them to us. For which reason he lays it down as a fixed rule, that no peace is to be made without an entire disunion of the French and Spanish monarchies.

That this may be brought about, he endeavours to prove from the progress we have already made towards it, and the successes we have purchased in the present war, which are very considerable, if well pursued, but of no effect if we acquiesce in them.