He valued the crown of England only because it enlisted the power of England on his side against the great enemy. He was prepared to abdicate the moment he found that England was but half-hearted and insular in her views about the war. To die in the last ditch was in his mouth no empty or braggart boast. He would no more have dreamed of surrendering the religion and liberty of his country to Louis XIV. than would Leonidas of submitting to the Persians at Thermopylæ. He waged the military and diplomatic struggle of thirty years in the spirit of that declaration. He fought throughout not as a conqueror but as a defender, till he won for himself the position of the saviour of his country, and the champion of the liberty of Europe. Concentrating all his faculties on the personal duel in which he was engaged, he never fully realised the magnitude of the issues at stake, and the far-reaching effects of the policy which he had undertaken. To his successors fell the task of reaping the harvest prepared by his patient and painful husbandry, to resettle the map of Europe after the overthrow of the tyrant, and to lay down at Utrecht a new balance of power. Naturally he could not know that Steinkirk was but the prelude to Blenheim, and that la Hogue alone made possible the glories alike of Plassey and Quebec; yet if his spirit was permitted to follow the Maison du Roi in their flight from Ramillies, or a century later to brood over the shattered hulks amid the storms of Trafalgar, well might he proudly have claimed for himself his share in the wreaths of laurel which encircled the brows of Marlborough and of Nelson. [Sidenote: =Quarrel of Louis with the Papacy.=]