ht of William the
Third in his attempt to secure European peace by an alliance of the
three Western powers, France, Holland, and England, was justified by the
realization of his policy under George the First. The new triple
alliance was brought about by the practical advantages which it directly
offered to the rulers in both England and France, as well as by the
actual position of European politics. The landing of James in Scotland
had quickened the anxiety of King George for his removal to a more
distant refuge than Lorraine, and for the entire detachment of France
from his cause. In France on the other hand a political revolution had
been caused by the death of Lewis the Fourteenth, which took place in
September 1715, at the very hour of the Jacobite outbreak. From that
moment the country had been ruled by the Duke of Orleans as Regent for
the young King Lewis the Fifteenth. The boy's health was weak; and the
Duke stood next to him in the succession to the crown, if Philip of
Spain observed the renunciation of his rights which he had made in the
Treaty of Utrecht. It was well known however that Philip had no notion
of observing this renunciation, and that he was already intriguing with
a strong party in France against the hopes as well as the actual power
of the Duke. Nor was Spain more inclined to adhere to its own
renunciations in the Treaty than its king. The constant dream of every
Spaniard was to recover all that Spain had given up, to win back her
Italian dependencies, to win back Gibraltar where the English flag waved
upon Spanish soil, to win back, above all, that monopoly of commerce
with her dominions in America which England was now entitled to break in
upon by the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht.

[Sidenote: Their alliance against Spain.]

To attempt such a recovery was to defy Europe; for if the Treaty had
stripped Spain of its fairest dependencies, it had enriched almost every
European state with its spoils. Savoy had gained Sicily; the Emperor
held the Netherlands, with Naples and the Milanese; Holland looked on
the Barrier fortresses as vital to its own security; England, if as yet
indifferent to the value of Gibraltar, clung tenaciously to the American
Trade. But the boldness of Cardinal Alberoni, who was now the Spanish
Minister, accepted the risk; and while his master was intriguing against
the Regent in France, Alberoni promised aid to the Jacobite cause as a
means of preventing the interferen