Louis at once put French garrisons in the border towns of the Spanish Netherlands, and he thus had a force ready at any moment to march across the frontier into Holland. Finally, on the death of the royal refugee, James II (S9491), which occurred shortly before King William's death, Louis XIV publicly acknowledged the exiled monarch's son, James Edward, the so-called "Old Pretender" (SS490, 491), as rightful sovereign of England, Scotland, and Ireland. This effectually roused the English people; they were prepared for hostilities when William's sudden death occurred (S504). Immediately after Anne came to the throne (1702) war with France was declared, and since it had grown out of Louis's designs on the crown of Spain, it was called the "War of the Spanish Succession." The contest was begun by England, mainly to prevent the French King from carrying out his threat of placing the so-called "Pretender," son of the late James II, on the English throne and so overturning the Bill of Rights (S497) and the Act of Settlement (S497), and thereby restoring the country to the Roman Catholic Stuarts. Later, the war came to have two other important objects. The first of these was to defend Holland, now a most valuable ally; the second was to protect the colonies of Virginia and New England against the power of France, which threatened, through its own American colonies and through the extensive Spanish possessions it expected to acquire, to get control of the whole of the New World.[1] [1] At this time England had twelve American colonies extending from New England to South Carolina, inclusive, with part of Newfoundland. France and Spain claimed all the rest of the continent. Thus England had three objects at stake: (1) The maintenance of Protestant government at home. (2) The maintenance of the Protestant power of Holland. (3) The retention of a large part of the American continent. For this reason the War of the Spanish Succession may be regarded as the beginning of a second Hundred Years' War between England and France (S237),[2] one destined to decide which was to build up the great empire of the future in the western hemisphere.[3] [2] During the next eighty years fighting was going on between England and France, directly or indirectly, for a great part of the time. [3] Seeley's "Expansion of England." 509. Marlborough; Blenheim, Gibraltar, and Other Victories (1702-1709). John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (S491), commanded the English and Dutch forces, and had for his ally Prince Eugene of Savoy, who led the German armies. The Duke, who was known in the enemy's camps by the flattering name of "the handsome Englishman," had risen from obscurity. He owed the beginning of his success to his good looks and a court intrigue. In politics he sympathized chiefly with the Tories (S479), but his interests in the war led him to support the Whigs (S479).