William, to whose diplomacy the peace was owing, as the war had been owing to his indomitable energy, was at the very zenith of his reputation at home and abroad. He avoided the pageants, processions, triumphal arches, and general laudations, both from a natural modesty and a cynical perception of their hollowness, which was but too well justified, for the first act of the Parliament was to inflict cruel mortification on him by disbanding, at the instance of the Tory agitator, Robert Harley, the army which had done such magnificent service. Sunderland’s utmost arts could only retain ten thousand men, including the King’s beloved Dutch Guards. This action was, to William, the worst of policy, besides a personal slight that he could not but feel that he had ill deserved. The peace was to him but an armed truce before the inevitable struggle for the Spanish possessions, and the part that he was to play in that struggle was considerably weakened by the disbanding of the troops which made England, save for her Navy, powerless again in Europe. The English Parliament, profoundly ignorant of continental affairs, and not in the least understanding the spacious policy of the King, thought only of the power a standing army put in the hands of the Crown, and were not to be moved from their resolve. William, driven back, as he had so often been, on his own innate statesmanship, endeavoured to accomplish by wit what he was now powerless to accomplish by arms, and secretly framed with Louis the Partition Treaty, by which the vast dominions of the imbecile and dying King of Spain were to be divided between Louis’ grandson Phillippe d’Anjou, and William’s candidate, the infant son of the Elector of Bavaria, who derived his claim through his dead mother, Maria Antonia. The King had disdained to consult the English ministers until he had completed this treaty, and then only curtly demanded the necessary signatures; from the nation it was a profound secret.