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 VI 11.] POWER OF THE CROWN. 147 perseverance, and the perfect order he was able to keep up in a retreat, made these victories of little benefit to the French. Lewis seemed always on the point of conquering Flanders, but he never succeeded, and the attempts made to restore James II. to the throne of England were in vain. The French and Irish army was defeated at the Boyiie, and the French navy at Cape la Hague, in 1691. The war continued till 1697, when the peace of Ryswick was concluded. By this Lewis was obliged to give up the cities which he had taken in the Netherlands, and all his possessions and conquests beyond the Rhine, and to acknowledge William of Orange as King of Eng- land. He thus gave up Freiburg and Breisach, but kept Strassburg. He also made peace with Savoy, marrying his eldest grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, to Adelaide, the daughter of Victor Amad eus. / 20. The Spanish Succession, 1700. — The seeds of another war were even then sown. The last of the house of Austria in Spain, Charles II., a man utterly feeble in mind and body, was dying at thirty-eight. It was very doubtful who was the lawful heir, especially as those princesses among whose descendants the heir had to be looked for had in several cases renounced their claim. The heir in ordinary course would have been the Dau- phin, as son of Queen Maria Theresa ; but she had re- nounced her claim, and the Spanish Cortes or Parliament had confirmed the renunciation. After the children of the Queen of France came the electoral Prince of Bavaria, grandson of another sister, who had also renounced her claim, but whose renunciation was deemed invalid because it had not been confirmed by the Cortes. The reigning Emperor Leopold was further off than either the French or the Bavarian prince, but his mother, through whom he claimed, had made no renunciation. Soon after the peace of Ryswick this question of the Spanish suc- cession began to occupy the mind of Europe, for it was naturally held to be dangerous if all the Spanish do- minions should be added to the possessions either of France or of Austria. The great wish of the Spaniards and their king was to keep the whole Spanish dominions undivided, while the statesmen of other nations proposed to divide them among the several claimants. Two treaties of partition were made to this effect, the first by Fngland and France only, the second between England, France, and the United Provinces. In these treaties it was agreed L 2