rrender as null and void, and the interest at
stake, the most splendid inheritance on earth, was one that could not
be given up without a conflict. From the moment of the marriage the
main object of French policy was to make the succession secure, by
negotiation or force, and to take every advantage otherwise of Spanish
weakness.

All these plans were doomed to a terrible disappointment. In 1665
Philip of Spain died; but he had married again, and left a son, who
became king, in his cradle, under the name of Charles II. The new
king was sickly and backward, and it was expected that he would die
young, unmarried, and childless. Meantime, the fulfilment of French
hopes was postponed for a generation, and the Spanish succession was
opened, not at the beginning of Lewis's reign, but at the end. He
recovered from the blow by a device to acquire part of the Spanish
empire, no longer having a hope of the whole. The device was
suggested by Turenne. His experience in the Fronde taught him the
danger of having the Spaniards so near, in the valley of the
Somme. "Whenever there is trouble in France," he said, "the enemy can
be at Paris in four days." In self-defence, for security rather than
aggrandisement, the frontier must be pushed back. He caused his
secretary to compose a treatise, showing that, by the custom of
Brabant, that province devolved on the queen, Maria Theresa. It was
the custom there that the children of a first marriage should suffer
no loss if their father married again. What would have been their
estate, remained their estate. The fee simple passed to them. The
father enjoyed a life-interest only, without the power of disposal.
The French government argued that, by the analogy of the Salic Law,
the principle which applied to property applied to sovereignty, and
that what was good for a manor was good for a crown. And they assumed
that the custom of Brabant was the law of Belgium.

This is the right of Devolution, with which the king's aggressive
career began, and his first war was the war of Devolution, or, as
they say in France, the war for the rights of the queen. Those rights
consisted of consolation claims set up after the wreck of the dream of
universal empire. They presented abundant matter for dispute, but
they were worth disputing, even by the last argument of kings.

The Power most concerned was not Spain, but the Netherlands. For
Spain, the Belgic provinces were in outlying dependen