Gortz proposed, that Charles XII. should yield up several places to the czar, in order to be in a condition to recover all the others from his enemies, and that he might be at liberty to make a descent in Scotland, while the partisans of the Stuart family should make an effectual rising in England: after their former vain attempts to effect these views, it was necessary to deprive the king of England of his chief support, which at that time was the regent of France. It was certainly very extraordinary, to see France in league with England, against the grandson of Lewis XIV., whom she herself had placed on the throne of Spain, at the expence of her blood and treasure, notwithstanding the strong confederacy formed to oppose him; but it must be considered, that every thing was now out of its natural order, and the interests of the regent not those of the kingdom. Alberoni, at that time, was carrying on a confederacy in France against this very regent.[97] And the foundations of this grand project were laid almost as soon as the plan itself had been formed. Gortz was the first who was let into the secret, and was to have made a journey into Italy in disguise, to hold a conference with the pretender, in the neighbourhood of Rome; from thence he was to have hastened to the Hague, to have an interview with the czar, and then to have settled every thing with the king of Sweden. The author of this History is particularly well informed of every circumstance here advanced, for baron Gortz proposed to him to accompany him in these journies; and, notwithstanding he was very young at that time, he was one of the first witnesses to a great part of these intrigues. Gortz returned from Holland in the latter part of 1716, furnished with bills of exchange from cardinal Alberoni, and letters plenipotentiary from Charles XII. It is incontestable that the Jacobite party were to have made a rising in England, while Charles, in his return from Norway, was to make a descent in the north of Scotland. This prince, who had not been able to preserve his own dominions on the continent, was now going to invade and overrun those of his neighbours, and just escaped from his prison in Turkey, and from amidst the ruins of his own city of Stralsund, Europe might have beheld him placing the crown of Great Britain on the head of James III. in London, as he had before done that of Poland on Stanislaus at Warsaw.