The
Treaty of Utrecht had been a humiliation for France even more than for
Spain. It had marked the failure of those dreams of European supremacy
which the House of Bourbon had nursed ever since the close of the
sixteenth century, and which Lewis the Fourteenth had all but turned
from dreams into realities. Beaten and impoverished, France had bowed to
the need of peace; but her strange powers of recovery had shown
themselves in the years of tranquillity that peace secured; and with
reviving wealth and the upgrowth of a new generation which had known
nothing of the woes that followed Blenheim and Ramillies the old
ambition started again into life.

[Sidenote: Its union with Spain.]

It was fired to action by a new rivalry. The naval supremacy of Britain
was growing into an empire of the sea; and not only was such an empire
in itself a challenge to France, but it was fatal to the aspirations
after a colonial dominion, after aggrandizement in America, and the
upbuilding of a French power in the East, which were already vaguely
stirring in the breasts of her statesmen. And to this new rivalry was
added the temptation of a new chance of success. On the Continent the
mightiest foe of France had ever been the House of Austria; but that
House was now paralyzed by a question of succession. It was almost
certain that the quarrels which must follow the death of the Emperor
would break the strength of Germany, and it was probable that they might
be so managed as to destroy for ever that of the House of Hapsburg.
While the main obstacle to her ambition was thus weakened or removed,
France won a new and invaluable aid to it in the friendship of Spain.
Accident had hindered for a while the realization of the forebodings
which led Marlborough and Somers so fiercely to oppose a recognition of
the union of the two countries under the same royal house in the Peace
of Utrecht. The age and death of Lewis the Fourteenth, the minority of
his successor, the hostility between Philip of Spain and the Duke of
Orleans, the personal quarrel between the two Crowns which broke out
after the Duke's death, had long held the Bourbon powers apart. France
had in fact been thrown on the alliance of England, and had been forced
to play a chief part in opposing Spain and in maintaining the European
settlement. But at the death of George the First this temporary
severance was already passing away. The birth of children to Lewis the
Fifteenth settled all qu