During the progress of the war, the haughty and longtime imperial Louis was reduced to a state of humiliation that excited a compassion so profound as to prevent its own open expression--the most galling of all sentiments to a proud mind. In the year 1709 he solicited peace on terms of most abject submission. The states-general, under the influence of the duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, rejected all his supplications, retorting unsparingly the insolent harshness with which he had formerly received similar proposals from them. France, roused to renewed exertions by the insulting treatment experienced by her humiliated but still haughty despot, made prodigious but vain efforts to repair her ruinous losses. In the following year Louis renewed his attempts to obtain some tolerable conditions; offering to renounce his grandson, and to comply with all the former demands of the confederates. Even these overtures were rejected; Holland and England appearing satisfied with nothing short of--what was after all impracticable--the total destruction of the great power which Louis had so long proved to be incompatible with their welfare. The war still went on; and the taking of Bouchain on the 30th of August, 1711, closed the almost unrivalled military career of Marlborough, by the success of one of his boldest and best conducted exploits. Party intrigue had accomplished what, in court parlance, is called the disgrace, but which, in the language of common sense, means only the dismissal of this great man. The new ministry, who hated the Dutch, now entered seriously into negotiations with France. The queen acceded to these views, and sent special envoys to communicate with the court of Versailles. The states-general found it impossible to continue hostilities if England withdrew from the coalition; conferences were consequently opened at Utrecht in the month of January, 1712. England took the important station of arbiter in the great question there debated. The only essential conditions which she demanded individually were the renunciation of all claims to the crown of France by Philip V., and the demolition of the harbor of Dunkirk. The first of these was the more readily acceded to, as the great battles of Almanza and Villaviciosa, gained by Philip's generals, the dukes of Berwick and Vendome, had steadily fixed him on the throne of Spain--a point still more firmly secured by the death of the emperor Joseph I., son of Leopold, and the elevation of his brother Charles, Philip's competitor for the crown of Spain, to the imperial dignity, by the title of Charles VI.