He returned to England; and his efforts induced the House of Lords to denounce the contemplated peace; but the support of the Commons and the Queen, and the general hatred of the war among the people, enabled Harley to ride down all resistance. At the opening of 1712 the Whig majority in the House of Lords was swamped by the creation of twelve Tory peers. Marlborough was dismissed from his command, charged with peculation, and condemned as guilty by a vote of the House of Commons. The Duke at once withdrew from England, and with his withdrawal all opposition to the peace was at an end. His flight was in fact followed by the conclusion of a Treaty at Utrecht between France, England, and the Dutch; and the desertion of his allies forced even the Emperor at last to make peace at Rastadt. By these treaties the original aim of the war, that of preventing the possession of France and Spain at once by the House of Bourbon, was silently abandoned. No precaution was in fact taken against the dangers it involved to the balance of power, save by a provision that the two crowns should never be united on a single head, and by Philip's renunciation of all right of succession to the throne of France. The principle on which the Treaties were based was in fact that of the earlier Treaties of Partition. Spain was stripped of even more than William had proposed to take from her. Philip retained Spain and the Indies: but he ceded his possessions in Italy and the Netherlands with the island of Sardinia to Charles of Austria, who had now become Emperor, in satisfaction of his claims; while he handed over Sicily to the Duke of Savoy. To England he gave up not only Minorca but Gibraltar, two positions which secured her the command of the Mediterranean. France purchased peace by less costly concessions. She had to consent to the re-establishment of the Dutch barrier on a greater scale than before; to pacify the English resentment against the French privateers by the dismantling of Dunkirk; and not only to recognize the right of Anne to the crown, and the Protestant succession in the House of Hanover, but to consent to the expulsion of the Pretender from her soil. [Sidenote: Harley and Bolingbroke.]