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270 and Sardinia for Philip. As a security for Philip evacuating Spain, they offered to give up four cautionary towns in Flanders; to restore Strasburg and Brisac; to destroy all their fortifications on the Rhine from Basle to Philipsburg; to level all the fortifications of Dunkirk: and to surrender to the Dutch Mauberge, Condé, Furnes, Menin, Ypres, Tournai, and Lille.

Surely nothing could be more complete. By gaining all these advantages the allies gained everything they had been fighting for. They wanted not only an agreement for the surrender of Spain, but a sufficient guarantee for it; and this guarantee they demanded in the shape of an engagement that Louis should help them with actual money and arms to expel Philip from Spain if he refused to evacuate it, and really to put Austria into possession of it. This was certainly putting the sincerity of Louis to sufficient test, and Louis failed under it He contended that it would be monstrous and unnatural to take arms against his own grandson, but that he would contribute money for this purpose—which, to ordinary intellects, looks quite as monstrous. He offered, according to his able prime minister De Torcy, to pay five hundred thousand livres a month towards this object, or even to raise it to a million of money if the allies would not be satisfied with less. But as the allies, in the first place, knew that Louis had not money to meet the demands of his own government, and, in the second place, that Philip had sent an express declaration to the allies, when this question was mooted before, that he stood on his rightful claim through the will of Charles II., the late king of Spain, and would recognise no pretensions of any party to deal with his patrimony—they declined the offer, and declared they would be contented with nothing less than the actual possession of the country. They knew that at the very time that these negotiations were going on, Philip was making fresh and strenuous exertions to drive Charles from Spain; that he had appealed to Louis to send him the duke de Vendóme to take the command in that country, with which request Louis promptly complied. They knew that France had only to close the passes of the Pyrenees, and, under the pretence of protecting her own frontiers from the armies in Spain, shut out all attack on Philip, except by sea.



On this rock, therefore, the whole negotiation was wrecked. Louis had flattered himself that Malborough, distracted by the state of affairs in England, would be anxious to make peace, in order that he might be on the spot to resist the fall of the whig party at home, and with it of his influence. But the wiser De Torey reasoned very differently. He saw that the party of Marlborough was already ruined, and for him to return home would be to return to insignificance, mortification, and insult. His only safety and strength lay in the continuance of the war; on the chance of reaping new victories, and, therefore, new humiliation to his enemies. And in this De Torey was correct. Marlborough did not appear in the matter. Lord Townshend for England, and count Zinzendorff for the emporer, were consulted by the States-General on all the points of the treaty; but the pensionary Heinsius, the devoted friend of Marlborough and Eugene, kept them on fait OK the whole subject, and influenced the States-General as they dictated. The result was that, after the negotiation had continued from the 19th of March to the 21st of July, during which there was a rapid and frequent interchange of messages with Versailles, the conference broke up. The French ministers returned home, declaring that the demands made by the deputies were so utterly exorbitant and unreasonable, that the king, with all his desire for peace, could not comply with them; and they at the same time