Four regiments were summoned to the capital in the expectation of a civil war. But the Jacobites were hopeless and unprepared; and on the death of Anne on the evening of the 10th of August, the Elector George of Hanover, who had become heir to the throne by his mother's death, was proclaimed as king of England without a show of opposition. CHAPTER IV THE HOUSE OF HANOVER 1714-1760 [Sidenote: England's European position.] The accession of George the First marked a change in the position of England as a member of the European Commonwealth. From the age of the Plantagenets to the age of the Revolution the country had stood apart from more than passing contact with the fortunes of the Continent; for if Wolsey had striven to make it an arbiter between France and the House of Austria the strain of the Reformation withdrew Henry and his successor from any effective interference in the strife across the Channel; and in spite of the conflict with the Armada Elizabeth aimed at the close as at the beginning of her reign mainly at keeping her realm as far as might be out of the struggle of western Europe against the ambition of Spain. Its attitude of isolation was yet more marked when England stood aloof from the Thirty Years' War, and after a fitful outbreak of energy under Cromwell looked idly on at the earlier efforts of Lewis the Fourteenth to become master of Europe. But with the Revolution this attitude became impossible. In driving out the Stuarts William had aimed mainly at enlisting England in the league against France; and France backed his effort by espousing the cause of the exiled king. To prevent the undoing of all that the Revolution had done England was forced to join the Great Alliance of the European peoples, and reluctantly as she was drawn into it she at once found herself its head. Political and military genius set William and Marlborough in the forefront of the struggle; Lewis reeled beneath the shock of Blenheim and Ramillies; and shameful as were some of its incidents the Peace of Utrecht left England the main barrier against the ambition of the House of Bourbon.