ened at Breda, but interrupted almost as soon
as commenced. Hostilities were renewed. The memorable battle of
Fontenoy was offered and gloriously fought by the allies; accepted
and splendidly won by the French. Never did the English and Dutch
troops act more nobly in concert than on this remarkable occasion.
The valor of the French was not less conspicuous; and the success
of the day was in a great measure decided by the Irish battalions,
sent, by the lamentable politics of those and much later days,
to swell the ranks and gain the battles of England's enemies.
Marshal Saxe followed up his advantage the following year, taking
Brussels and many other towns. Almost the whole of the Austrian
Netherlands being now in the power of Louis XV., and the United
Provinces again exposed to invasion and threatened with danger,
they had once more recourse to the old expedient of the elevation
of the House of Orange, which in times of imminent peril seemed
to present a never-failing palladium. Zealand was the first to
give the impulsion; the other provinces soon followed the example;
and William IV. was proclaimed stadtholder and captain-general,
amid the almost unanimous rejoicings of all. These dignities
were soon after declared hereditary both in the male and female
line of succession of the House of Orange Nassau.

The year 1748 saw the termination of the brilliant campaigns of
Louis XV. during this bloody war of eight years' continuance.
The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, definitively signed on the 18th of
October, put an end to hostilities; Maria Theresa was established
in her rights and power; and Europe saw a fair balance of the
nations, which gave promise of security and peace. But the United
Provinces, when scarcely recovering from struggles which had so
checked their prosperity, were employed in new and universal
grief and anxiety by the death of their young stadtholder, which
happened at The Hague, October 13, 1751. He had long been kept
out of the government, though by no means deficient in the talents
suited to his station. His son, William V., aged but three years
and a half, succeeded him, under the guardianship of his mother,
Anne of England, daughter of George II., a princess represented
to be of a proud and ambitious temper, who immediately assumed
a high tone of authority in the state.

The war of seven years, which agitated the north of Europe, and
deluged its plains with blood, was almost the only one in which the