been left in peaceable possession, so far as the maritime Powers were concerned, of the splendid acquisition of the Spanish monarchy. But it was fated that, before the year was out, he should forfeit all the advantages of fortune by an act of strange folly. In the month of September, James II., who for twelve years had been living on the hospitality of his brother king, experienced a second stroke of paralysis, which laid him on his death-bed. Three days before he expired, Louis paid him a visit at St. Germains. He came, it seems, prepared to offer to the dying exile the comforting assurance that, if anything happened to him, he would acknowledge his eldest son as King of England; and in the presence of the weeping English, who surrounded the royal couch, and of some of his own courtiers, he made his determination public. Upon the death of James, civilities were exchanged between the courts of Versailles and St. Germains, and Louis paid to the Prince of Wales all the honours of royalty. Only four years had elapsed since, by the treaty of Ryswick, he had accorded the long-refused title of King of England to William, and had engaged to render no assistance to any attempts on the part of the late royal family to recover the throne. His bestowal of a mere empty title upon the Prince involved perhaps no positive infraction of the treaty; but as an act of folly it has been rarely surpassed. It was an insult to William and the English nation, and France had to atone for it by ten years of misery and humiliation.

Up to this time, England had shown a remarkable degree of indifference to the doings of the French king. His annexation. of the Netherlands might, it was thought, prove dangerous to the liberties of the Dutch; but, in behalf of the Republic, England was certainly not disposed to bestir herself. All at once a new set of impressions, compounded of terror and injured pride, seized upon the English mind. Since the banishment, or, to use the legal term, the abdication, of James, the prominent anxiety of at least nineteen out of every twenty Englishmen had been lest, by foreign arms or internal treachery, he or his son should regain the throne. That this country should again become the prey of a Popish sovereign was a calamity which appalled the imaginations of all the zealous Protestants of the island. In the first alarm with which the

news was received that Louis had recognised the Prince as King of England, no one thought of attributing his conduct to mere kindness or to a love of ostentation. He could only mean a threat. Before long the Prince would be on our shores with a French army. The City of London took the lead in expressing the general opinion by an address which was transmitted to William in Holland. It was plain, the Corporation said, that the design of the French king was to dethrone his Majesty, to extirpate the Protestant religion, and to invade the liberties and properties of the English people. The address was followed by other addresses from all parts of the country, in every key of patriotic indignation. The subscribers generally exhorted the King to continue his system of alliances, and assured him that, if he should see fit to call a new Parliament, such members should be chosen as would cordially support him.

William had been, during the summer, busily engaged in following the recommendation as to alliances which he had contrived to obtain from his Parliament. Those armies, however, which he was once more engaged in marshalling against his ancient enemy, he felt that he himself would be unable to lead. He had therefore destined for the command an officer whose genius for war surpassed that of any officer with whom he was acquainted. With the Earl of Marlborough he seemed, after a long period of coldness and suspicion, to have become thoroughly reconciled. Their interests indeed were now identical. The great object of William's life was to strike at the power of Louis: the great object of Marlborough was to be the richest subject in England, and this object he saw many ways of attaining if he had the command of great armies during a long war. All his talents as a diplomatist were therefore devoted to carrying out this system of alliances which William had devised. Heinsius, Grand Pensionary of Holland, whose influence over the States-general was exceedingly great, laboured in the same cause with equal determination. It was no easy task to bind together the discordant Powers of Europe, to induce the King of Sweden to withstand the offer of French gold, to make up matters between the King of Prussia and the Emperor, who refused to recognise his title, to get the angry

Imperial Ministers into a reasonable frame of mind, to satisfy the insatiable craving of a number of petty German princes for gold and dignities, and to keep the interests of the commercial Dutch from clashing with the interests of the commercial English. But bribery and flattery, persistence and good temper, effected marvels. Before the winter several important alliances had been contracted; and the understanding between the allied Powers was so good as even to admit of arranging a plan of operations against France in the ensuing year.

The conduct of Louis with regard to the Prince of Wales William at once resented in a manner worthy the sovereign of a great nation. Three messengers were dispatched from Loo in quick succession. One bore instructions to Manchester, at Paris, to retire from France without taking leave: another conveyed the King's commands to the Lords Justices to send the French resident out of England; and a third was dispatched to the King of Sweden, as guarantor of the treaty of Ryswick, to complain that his French Majesty had violated one of its articles. By the addresses which William received from his subjects, he was soon convinced that a great and salutary change had come over them. He had finished his work on the Continent he was anxious to return to England; but severe illness detained him at the Hague for more than a month. At length, on the fourth of November, he landed at Margate, and a few days after issued a proclamation dissolving the Parliament. He had decided to accept the advice which had been given him in the addresses, and to appeal to the country. The result of the elections exceeded his most sanguine anticipations. Not even in 1689, in the first ebullition of the national gratitude, had a Parliament met so favourably disposed to William as that which assembled on the thirtieth of December, 1701. He opened the session by a speech from the throne, which went right to the heart of the nation. It was translated into several foreign languages, was framed and hung up in almost every house in England and Holland, and, during the first years of the ensuing struggle with France, was reverentially regarded as his Majesty's last exhortation to his subjects and to all Protestants.

The owning of the pretended Prince of Wales, ran this

famous speech, was the highest indignity which could be offered to the sovereign and the nation of England. Such an action should make all men, who had any regard for the religion and tranquillity of their country, consider what further means could be taken to secure the succession of the crown in the Protestant line, and to extinguish the hopes of all pretenders and their open and secret abettors. The French king had, by placing his grandson on the throne of Spain, acquired a position from which to oppress the remainder of Europe. He had become the real master of the whole Spanish monarchy. He had made every part of it so dependent upon himself that he disposed of it as of his own dominions. He had so surrounded his neighbours that they had no resource but in war. In such a state of affairs the interests of England were concerned in the nearest and most sensible manner in respect of her trade, which would soon become precarious in every branch; in respect of her peace at home; and in respect of that lead which ought to be hers in preserving the liberties of Europe.

The treaties which William had already concluded with the Powers of the Continent were soon laid before the Commons. There was one treaty by which the King of Denmark engaged, for three hundred thousand crowns a year, to furnish four thousand horse and eight thousand foot soldiers for the service of the King of Great Britain and the States-general. No small amount of diplomacy had been employed in procuring this treaty from the King of Denmark. Under ordinary circumstances his Majesty would have been glad to replenish a scanty treasury by letting out his army to any belligerent who offered good terms for the use. But at this period the terror inspired through the north of Europe by Charles of Sweden was so great that the King had shown a very natural reluctance to parting Iwith his defenders. It had been necessary to overcome his scruples, by an engagement on the part of the Allies to assist him with their whole forces in case he were attacked. Marlborough had done his utmost to induce Charles himself to enter the alliance. The conqueror of Denmark, the victor of Narva, and the actual master of fifty thousand good soldiers, would have been no contemptible addition to the might of the Allies. But Louis had been beforehand in bidding for the hero, and it

was much that Marlborough succeeded in inducing him to resist the offers of France, and to abandon for money some old and inconvenient stipulations existing between England and Sweden. The important treaty, which formed the basis of the Grand Alliance, was dated the 7th of September, 1701, and was made between the Emperor, the King, and the States-general. It set forth that nothing could conduce more effectually for establishing the general peace than the procuring of satisfaction to the Emperor on the subject of the Spanish succession, and sufficient security for the dominions and commerce of the Allies. Two months, it was agreed, should be employed in endeavouring to obtain such satisfaction and security by amicable means. If those should fail, then the contracting parties engaged to assist each other with all their forces, according to a specification to be settled in a particular convention. Their objects in a war should be to recover the Spanish Netherlands for a barrier between Holland and France, and to place the Emperor in possession of the duchy of Milan, and of the Italian dominions of the Spanish crown. In favour of the maritime Powers the Emperor consented to their retaining whatever lands and cities they could seize belonging to the Spaniards in the Indies. The confederates should faithfully communicate to one another their designs, and no party should treat of peace or truce except jointly with the rest. To settle the quota of troops which each ally was to bring into the field was a work of some difficulty. The Emperor at length bound himself to furnish ninety thousand men, and the States-general ten thousand. William was of course unable to promise any specific number of men without previously obtaining the sanction of Parliament. He seems, however, to have engaged to use his best endeavours that forty thousand soldiers should be the quota of England.*

In the present temper of the House of Commons these treaties were received as evidence of the wisdom and energy of the sovereign, and a vote of supply was passed to aid in carrying them into effect. The feeling of the nation was known to run so violently in favour of war, that the most rancorous detractors

The treaties are set forth in the Mémoires de Lamberty and Tindal's continuation.