21. Between June and September, twenty victims were hurried to their doom. Fifty-five others were tortured into the confession of falsehoods. A hundred and fifty lay in prison awaiting their fate. Two hundred were accused or suspected, and ruin seemed to impend over New England. But a reaction at last set in among the people. The court which Phipps had appointed to sit at Salem was dismissed. The prisons were opened, and the victims of superstition went forth free. In the beginning of the next year, a few persons were arrested and tried for witchcraft. Some were even convicted; but not another life was sacrificed. 22. Most of those who participated in these terrible scenes confessed the wrong which they had done; but confessions could not restore the dead. Mather, in a vain attempt to justify himself, wrote a book in which he expressed his thankfulness _that so many witches had met their just doom_; and the hypocritical pamphlet received the approbation of the president of Harvard College. [Sidenote: =Queen Anne's War.=] 23. In less than four years after the treaty of Ryswick, France and England were again involved in a war which soon extended to the American colonies. In the year 1700 Charles II., king of Spain, died, having named as his successor Philip of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV. This measure pointed to a union of the crowns of France and Spain. The jealousy of England, Holland, and Austria was aroused; the archduke Charles, of the latter country, was put forward as a candidate for the Spanish throne; and war was declared against Louis XIV. for supporting Philip. 24. In 1701 James II., the exiled king of Great Britain, died at the court of Louis, who now recognized the son of James as sovereign of England. This action was regarded as an insult to English nationality. King William prepared for war, but did not live to carry out his plans. In May of 1702 he died, leaving the crown to his sister-in-law, Anne, daughter of James II. From the fact of her sovereignty, the conflict with France is known in American history as QUEEN ANNE'S WAR; but a better name is the War of the Spanish Succession. This continued feebly through eleven years, and with many of the horrors incident to Indian warfare, as the Indians were leagued with the French against the English. 25. On the 11th of April, 1713, a treaty was concluded at Utrecht, a town of Holland. By it England obtained control of the fisheries of Newfoundland. Labrador, the Bay of Hudson, and Nova Scotia, were ceded to Great Britain. On the 13th of July a second treaty was concluded with the Indians, by which peace was secured throughout the colonies.