g series of campaigns
as successful as the campaign of 1695. Yet in a long series of
campaigns, as successful as that of 1695, the allies would hardly be
able to retake all that he now professed himself ready to restore.
William, who took, as usual, a clear and statesmanlike view of the whole
situation, now gave his voice as decidedly for concluding peace as he
had in former years given it for vigorously prosecuting the war; and he
was backed by the public opinion both of England and of Holland. But,
unhappily, just at the time when the two powers which alone, among
the members of the coalition, had manfully done their duty in the long
struggle, were beginning to rejoice in the near prospect of repose, some
of those governments which had never furnished their full contingents,
which had never been ready in time, which had been constantly sending
excuses in return for subsidies, began to raise difficulties such as
seemed likely to make the miseries of Europe eternal.

Spain had, as William, in the bitterness of his spirit, wrote to
Heinsius, contributed nothing to the common cause but rodomontades. She
had made no vigorous effort even to defend her own territories against
invasion. She would have lost Flanders and Brabant but for the English
and Dutch armies. She would have lost Catalonia but for the English
and Dutch fleets. The Milanese she had saved, not by arms, but by
concluding, in spite of the remonstrances of the English and Dutch
governments, an ignominious treaty of neutrality. She had not a ship of
war able to weather a gale. She had not a regiment that was not ill paid
and ill disciplined, ragged and famished. Yet repeatedly, within the
last two years, she had treated both William and the States General with
an impertinence which showed that she was altogether ignorant of her
place among states. She now became punctilious, demanded from Lewis
concessions which the events of the war gave her no right to expect, and
seemed to think it hard that allies, whom she was constantly treating
with indignity, were not willing to lavish their blood and treasure for
her during eight years more.

The conduct of Spain is to be attributed merely to arrogance and folly.
But the unwillingness of the Emperor to consent even to the fairest
terms of accommodation was the effect of selfish ambition. The Catholic
King was childless; he was sickly; his life was not worth three years'
purchase; and when he died, his dominions would