The peace was not definitively signed until the 11th of April, 1713; and France obtained far better conditions than those which were refused her a few years previously. The Belgian provinces were given to the new emperor, and must henceforth be called the Austrian instead of the Spanish Netherlands. The gold and the blood of Holland had been profusely expended during this contest; it might seem for no positive results; but the exhaustion produced to every one of the other belligerents was a source of peace and prosperity to the republic. Its commerce was re-established; its financial resources recovered their level; and altogether we must fix on the epoch now before us as that of its utmost point of influence and greatness. France, on the contrary, was now reduced from its palmy state of almost European sovereignty to one of the deepest misery; and its monarch, in his old age, found little left of his former power but those records of poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture which tell posterity of his magnificence, and the splendor of which throw his faults and his misfortunes into the shade. The great object now to be accomplished by the United Provinces was the regulation of a distinct and guaranteed line of frontier between the republic and France. This object had become by degrees, ever since the peace of Munster, a fundamental maxim of their politics. The interposition of the Belgian provinces between the republic and France was of serious inconvenience to the former in this point of view. It was made the subject of a special article in "the grand alliance." In the year 1707 it was particularly discussed between England and the States, to the great discontent of the emperor, who was far from wishing its definitive settlement. But it was now become an indispensable item in the total of important measures whose accomplishment was called for by the peace of Utrecht. Conferences were opened on this sole question at Antwerp in the year 1714; and, after protracted and difficult discussions, the treaty of the Barrier was concluded on the 15th of November, 1715. This treaty was looked on with an evil eye in the Austrian Netherlands. The clamor was great and general; jealousy of the commercial prosperity of Holland being the real motive. Long negotiations took place on the subject of the treaty; and in December, 1718, the republic consented to modify some of the articles. The Pragmatic Sanction, published at Vienna in 1713 by Charles VI., regulated the succession to all the imperial hereditary possessions; and, among the rest, the provinces of the Netherlands. But this arrangement, though guaranteed by the chief powers of Europe, was, in the sequel, little respected, and but indifferently executed. CHAPTER XXI FROM THE PEACE OF UTRECHT TO THE INCORPORATION OF BELGIUM WITH THE FRENCH REPUBLIC A.D. 1713--1795