Always we have to remember, in considering the action of our story at this period, that there was this menace from the Turk pressing in on the side of Austria and Hungary. The power of Russia was rising, but she was continuously engaged in wars farther north--with Sweden and with Poland. The fortunes of these wars went variously, and to no decisive result. At one time we do indeed see Poland and Russia in alliance against the Turk; but no decision was reached in that war either. Peter the Great, well named for the greatness to which he brought his country, came to the Russian throne in 1682. But great Russia was as yet only in process of establishing herself and was beset by enemies. She was soon to be a very prominent actor in the world's story, but her time had not then come. {99} Turkey was fighting on all her land borders, and carrying on an indecisive naval war with the Venetians the while. The Venetians gained part of Greece from the Turks; the Austrians took Belgrade from them; several of the Balkan States maintained their independence. Evidently the fighting force of the Turks was not as powerful as it had been. By the end of the century they were more concerned with keeping the large empire that they had won than in adding to it by further conquests; and they made peace, for the time being, with Russia, Poland, Austria, and Venice. As yet there was no Italian nation to play a part in the contest which had now ended in the transference to France of the overmastering power in the world which had been Spain's. [Sidenote: The Spanish Succession] We have noticed how a secret pact had been made between England, France, and Holland for partitioning the domains of Spain. But the King of Spain, dying in 1700, gave, by will, the whole of his possessions to Philip of Aragon, grandson of Louis XIV. The inheritor was an infant. The Grand Monarque did not hesitate, in spite of the secret pact, to accept the inheritance on his grandson's behalf. It was an arrangement which would have given his family more power than even the house of Habsburg had possessed. It menaced the liberty of England, of Holland, and of all Europe. The War of the Spanish Succession, which occupied the first years of the eighteenth century, was waged to oppose it. England's portion in that war in the Netherlands is commonly known to Englishmen as the Wars of Marlborough, from the great leader, the Duke of Marlborough, who commanded in them.