Thunderstruck by the unforeseen will of Charles II., Europe, which at the first moment had seemed indisposed to contest its dispositions, had not long deferred their reconsideration. Persuaded that the aggrandisement of his family was equivalent in the eyes of Louis XIV. to an aggrandisement of territory, England, Holland, and Portugal, taking in hand the successorial pretentions of the house of Austria, out of which those cabinets had made such a good bargain in two treaties of partition, sent fleets into every sea, whilst awaiting the moment to carry into the heart of Spain, hostilities which the emperor had already commenced in Italy. An implacable coalition, of which the Peace of Ryswick had suspended the effects without modifying the causes of it, was formed to snatch the two peninsulas from the domination of France. The latter power resolutely accepted the struggle this time for a just and honest cause; but the war was scarcely begun ere the certitude was acquired that in doubling the dangers of France, Spain would add nothing to its resources. With what contemptuous bitterness did Spain, in fact, watch the long train of disasters which from the pinnacle of power brought Louis XIV. to the brink of an abyss by one of those vicissitudes the effect of which is never more rapid upon the popular mind than when fortune deserts men who have been long powerful and flourishing! Such was the theatre upon which Providence had placed a timid and ailing prince, but which event threatened to endanger even the very existence of the French monarchy itself. Louis XIV. seemed to have attained his object in the guidance of his grandson, who followed the great monarch's injunctions with filial docility. The Queen governed Philip V., and Madame des Ursins governed the Queen. Saint Simon thus explains this ascendancy:--"She guided the Queen," says he, "who had placed in her all the affection and all the confidence of a young person who knew no other adviser, who depended wholly upon her for her particular daily conduct, and for her amusements, and who found in her graciousness, gentleness, and complaisance, combined with every possible resource. For the rest, such empire was not that which weakness and incapacity yields to genius and strength." Marie-Louise had not been less carefully brought up than her sister, the Duchess of Burgundy, nor less well instructed. She had innate talent, and, in her early youth showed intelligence, good sense, firmness, and was capable of being advised and restrained, and who later, when her character became more developed and formed, manifested a constancy and courage which the natural graces of that same intelligence infinitely enhanced. A lively sympathy between the two women alone determined the authority of the older over the younger, and if the King's confidence in the _camerara-mayor_ was a homage rendered to the real superiority of her intelligence, it might be said that a happy