hat she gave satisfaction by
the withdrawal of her friends in deference to the popular
susceptibilities, the Princess earnestly implored that the Duke de
Vendome might be sent to take command of the Spanish forces; and Louis
XIV., on his part, at the moment that he was compelled to withdraw from
Spain the last French soldier, despatched thither the general who was
destined to save his grandson's crown.

Arriving in Spain sometime during the summer of 1710, Vendome displayed
an activity which did not seem to comport with his habits, in order to
reunite and arm the volunteers, who, from the summit of the Sierras,
descended in swarms upon the plains of the two Castiles at the summons
of a monarch become the personification of a patriot. He speedily
transformed into a powerful and well-trained army the undisciplined
_guerillas_ whose bravery had hitherto been useless; in a few months,
the Anglo-Austrian army, at the head of which the prince who called
himself Charles III. had been able to show himself for a few hours in
the deserted capital, was confronted by disciplined troops prepared to
retake territories which until then had not been seriously disputed.
Under the irresistible impulse of a noble patriotism which had at last
recovered itself, the English force of Lord Stanhope capitulated at
Brihuega after a terrible carnage, and Stahrenberg, crushed in his turn
at Villaviciosa, carried away by his flight the last hopes of the House
of Austria.

By the victory of Villaviciosa the House of Bourbon was definitively
seated on the throne of Charles the Fifth. Philip V. slept that night
(10th December, 1710) upon a couch of standards taken from the enemy:
the Austrian cause was lost; and Madame des Ursins, who, in spite of
Europe coalesced, in spite of Louis XIV. hesitating and disquieted, in
spite of so many disasters, had never trembled, received the title of
HIGHNESS, and saw her steadfast policy at length crowned by accomplished
facts.

Spain had thus solved by her own efforts solely the great question which
had kept Europe so long in arms. At the commencement of 1711, Philip V.
had acquired for his throne a security that Louis XIV. had not yet
obtained for the integrity of his own frontiers, and without mistaking
the influence of the victory of Denain, so wonderfully opportune, it is
just, we think, to allow a far larger share than is customary to the
thoroughly Spanish victory of Villaviciosa in the unhoped-for condit