g and Queen, by
inspiring the Duchess of Burgundy's sister with the duteous affection of
the elder for her _aunt_, Madame des Ursins rendered the Marquise de
Maintenon the only service the latter cared for, and the only one, to
speak the truth, which could add anything to her importance.

The motives of Louis XIV. were of a very different kind, and his politic
mind did not hesitate to sacrifice to them his grievances, however
legitimate they might be. Far from pacifying the Court of Spain, the
departure of the Princess des Ursins had been the signal for an outburst
of the most complete anarchy. To the rule exercised by the Queen had
succeeded an entire absence of direction, and matters were conducted
with an incoherence so shocking, that M. de Torcy having exhausted both
his advice and his patience, opened with perfect terror the despatches
drawn from that Pandora's box. The accord--at least apparent, which the
preponderance of Madame des Ursins had maintained among the members of
the _despacho_ by the intervention of the Duke de Montellano, her
creature, was abruptly broken up, and the Austrian party gathered
strength from the effect of that disorder and that universal
dissolution. The Archduke, proclaimed King of Spain by the Emperor under
the name of Charles III. and recognised in that quality by England and
Holland, had just landed at Lisbon; the campaign opened against the
Portuguese had ended, after some ephemeral successes, by a sort of
disbanding of the Spanish army, through want of clothing, pay, and
provisions, in the supply of which nothing was done after Orry's
departure, recalled to France from the same motives as the Princess.
Gibraltar, the defence of which had been confided by an inexplicable
negligence to fifty men, was torn away for ever by a handful of British
seamen from the crown of the Catholic kings; Catalonia, Arragon, the
kingdom of Valentia, made ripe for insurrection by the Prince of
Darmstadt, were on the eve of escaping from their allegiance. At the
beginning of 1705, the armies of Philip V. were composed of five or six
thousand men in rags, their tottering fidelity daily tampered with, and
the little band of French auxiliaries exhausted itself in fruitless
efforts to retake Gibraltar, which, covered as it was by the English
fleet, remained mistress of the Straits, after the first disaster
inflicted on the French marine in that war which was destined to cost it
its last vessel.

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