The enormous advantage gained by Louis XIV. by a simple alliance with the maritime powers, even if it only neutralised their opposition instead of securing their support, has hardly been sufficiently appreciated by historians. [Sidenote: =Advantages of an alliance with the maritime powers.=] The Austro-Spanish power was left by the Partition Treaties huge in bulk but impotent through division. It consisted of four great masses, all dependent upon one another, but unable to communicate with each other, except with the permission of foreign powers. The gold of the Indies was necessary for the payment of the very officials of the Madrid court and government, yet how could Spain pretend to guard her treasure-ships from the united fleets of England and France? The Netherlands depended for their governors and their armies upon Spain. What chance of escaping capture would a Spanish fleet of reinforcements have as it beat up the narrow channel in sight of the coasts of Kent and Picardy? Austria and Spain could not assist one another without first obtaining the mastery in the Mediterranean, and the Netherlands could only communicate with Vienna by permission of the princes of Germany. Had the Partition Treaty been carried out France would have become at a stroke, without bloodshed, incontestably the dominant power in Europe, liable only to be deposed from her pride of place by the rupture of the alliance with the maritime powers, and for that very reason the maritime powers would have held the fate of the world in their hands. [Sidenote: =Reception of the treaty by the contracting powers.=]