lishment. The French regime disquieted
interests too numerous and prejudices too powerful throughout the
Peninsula not to explode at the first difficulty which it might
encounter on its path.

Thunderstruck by the unforeseen will of Charles II., Europe, which at
the first moment had seemed indisposed to contest its dispositions, had
not long deferred their reconsideration. Persuaded that the
aggrandisement of his family was equivalent in the eyes of Louis XIV. to
an aggrandisement of territory, England, Holland, and Portugal, taking
in hand the successorial pretentions of the house of Austria, out of
which those cabinets had made such a good bargain in two treaties of
partition, sent fleets into every sea, whilst awaiting the moment to
carry into the heart of Spain, hostilities which the emperor had already
commenced in Italy. An implacable coalition, of which the Peace of
Ryswick had suspended the effects without modifying the causes of it,
was formed to snatch the two peninsulas from the domination of France.
The latter power resolutely accepted the struggle this time for a just
and honest cause; but the war was scarcely begun ere the certitude was
acquired that in doubling the dangers of France, Spain would add nothing
to its resources. With what contemptuous bitterness did Spain, in fact,
watch the long train of disasters which from the pinnacle of power
brought Louis XIV. to the brink of an abyss by one of those vicissitudes
the effect of which is never more rapid upon the popular mind than when
fortune deserts men who have been long powerful and flourishing!

Such was the theatre upon which Providence had placed a timid and ailing
prince, but which event threatened to endanger even the very existence
of the French monarchy itself. Louis XIV. seemed to have attained his
object in the guidance of his grandson, who followed the great monarch's
injunctions with filial docility. The Queen governed Philip V., and
Madame des Ursins governed the Queen. Saint Simon thus explains this
ascendancy:--"She guided the Queen," says he, "who had placed in her all
the affection and all the confidence of a young person who knew no other
adviser, who depended wholly upon her for her particular daily conduct,
and for her amusements, and who found in her graciousness, gentleness,
and complaisance, combined with every possible resource. For the rest,
such empire was not that which weakness and incapacity yields to genius
and strength."