me had no children, had been ready for
an equitable partition. But in 1689, when the Maritime Powers, that
is, when William III had urgent need of Austria in the coalition
against France, they promised the undivided monarchy of Spain to
Leopold's second son. That agreement was superseded by the peace of
Ryswick. And in the interval a new claimant was born, with evidently
better right than the young archduke. For the archduke was the son of
a second marriage. The emperor had only a daughter by his Spanish
wife, who married the elector Max Emmanuel of Bavaria, and gave birth
to a son in 1692. Under the will of Philip IV, the late King of
Spain, that prince was the lawful heir. He was not the imperial
candidate; for Leopold had required his own daughter to surrender her
claim, that his crowns might not pass from Habsburg to Wittelsbachs.

For the very reason that he was neither a Habsburg nor a Bourbon, the
electoral Prince of Bavaria became the candidate of William, and he
agreed with Lewis that he should inherit Spain and the Indies, Italy
and the Low Countries to be divided. By this, which is known as the
First Partition Treaty, though in reality it was the second, England
obtained nothing, except the prospect of peace through a friendly
understanding with France, and it alienated the emperor and outraged
Spain. That foreigners should dispose at their own convenience of the
empire which had been built up by Spanish hands was an intolerable
offence to Spaniards. They refused to be dismembered without even
having been consulted. With all her dominions, with the united crowns
of twenty-two kingdoms, Spain was unprosperous and insecure. Her
vitality was kept up by her foreign possessions. Brabant, the
Milanese, Campania, Apulia, were the richest portions of Europe, and
neither France, nor the empire, nor England possessed the like.
Deprived of these, the monarchy would decline quickly; for with all
her pride, and her fame, and her unsetting sun, Spain was visibly
going down. It was their policy and their resolution that the crown,
though it must pass away to strangers, should pass undiminished. That
it was about to pass away, all men knew.

On 19th September, three weeks before Lewis and William concluded
their treaty, the primate assured the French ambassador that they must
proceed as if the king was a dead man. The king himself knew his
danger. His wife was a sister of the empress, and they were in the