overthrew the French, under Vendôme at Oudenarde, where George II. and James Stuart fought on opposite sides; and forming the siege of Lille, under wonderful disadvantages, they took it in defiance of the gallant defence of marshal the duke of Boufflers for four months against prince Eugene, who, when he at length took that place, said to the marshal, “I am very proud of having taken Lille, but I should be still more proud of defending it as you have." Ghent and Bruges fell afterwards, and, with the exception of one or two towns, the frontiers of France lay completely open. A party of Dutch troops advancing as far Versailles, carried off upon the bridge of Sevres the equerry of the king, whom they mistook for the dauphin.

This was a terrible moment for France. The year 1709 commenced by one of the most rigorous winters ever known. The strongest elixirs, Hungary water for example, the Eau de Cologne of that day, froze, and broke the bottles in which they were kept, though in the warmest rooms of the palace. From this a judgment may be formed of its effects on vegetation. All fruit trees perished, olives and vines. The sown corn was destroyed. The tokens were certain of a general famine. The populace began to clamour under present sufferings, and with the prospect of still greater. Seeing the disastrous and disturbed state of the population, the parliament thought proper to assemble in the great chamber, to consider the state of things. It was proposed to appoint deputies to visit the provinces, buy corn, and watch over the public peace. It was a bold attempt under Louis XIV., whose choler was extreme on the occasion. He reprimanded the parliament, and told them they had as little to do with corn as with taxation. The magistrates obeyed, and were silent. Reverses so numerous entailed extreme miseries on the population of France, credit was annihilated, the public debt increased, and loans, anticipation of revenue, and imports were exhausted. Government found difficulty in borrowing at four hundred per cent. The king's lacqueys begged at the gates of Versailles. Louis XIV., and the great men, sent their services of plate to the mint, and many illustrious families at Versailles stinted themselves to the use of oat bread, Madame de Maintenon setting the example. The peasants threw off the restraint of order, and even carried by assault the town of Cahors, while smugglers encountered the officers of the customs in open day. Louis XIV. now humbly demanded peace of that Holland he had so arrogantly invaded forty years before. The Dutch repaid the king all his past insults and pride. His envoys and his offers were slighted, yet the last were sufficiently ample. He could obtain no better terms than that he should himself join the allies in pulling down Philip V. from the throne of Spain. Any less stringent demand would have transferred the seat of war to a distance, and have afforded time for France to have recovered her strength; on the other hand Louis for the first time addressed himself to his people; he published the terms prescribed to him, and cried, "If I am to fight, I had rather do so with my enemies than with my own family." The people made a supreme effort to save the honour of France. Villars, with an army of recruits in a state of starvation and nudity, marched against the army of Eugene and Marlborough, and encountered it at Malplaquet. "Send us bread, for heaven's sake!" wrote Villars to the minister; "send us bread, we will dɔ VOL. II,

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without coats or shirts;" and when the bread arrived, the soldiers, who had not tasted food the entire day, threw it away on hearing the drums of the enemy. This battle of Malplaquet was the most terrible of all. It was remarkable in this, that the French only lost eight thousand, whilst upwards of thirty thousand remained on the field of battle. The battle however remained undecided, and could not save Mons, which surrendered immediately after (1709).

Whilst the allies were besetting France on all sides, the youthful Philip V. was disputing in his own kingdom the crown with the archduke. Marshal Berwick had reopened to him, at Almanza, the road to his capital (1707). The battle of Villa Viciosa, gained by the French over the Austrian party, revived the hopes of Louis XIV. (1710). The disgrace of Marlborough, however, served him better than a victory. The conqueror of Ramillies was recalled to London. England began to be weary of the war. She was ruining herself in order to ruin France. Finally the death of the emperor Joseph (1711), which called the archduke Charles to the throne of Austria, rendering it impolitic any longer to contend for his claims in Spain, altered the aspect of affairs. The English withdrew their troops. The brilliant victory gained by Villars over Eugene at Denain, accelerated the termination of the peace. It was signed at Utrecht in 1712, accepted the following year by the emperor, and completed in 1715 by a treaty with Holland.

The Treaties of Utrecht, Baden, and Bavaria.-France saved at least its honour from the wrecks of this disastrous war. Her frontiers remained intact. And though she was obliged to guarantee the protestant succession to the throne of England, she made Europe recognise the grandson of Louis XIV. as the successor of the king of Spain. Nevertheless, her interests were hardly dealt with. Her greatest sacrifices were not the cession to England of some of her American colonies, nor the giving up to the duke of Savoy and the emperor a portion of her possessions in Spain, the two Sicilies, the Milanese, and the Spanish Netherlands. She was compelled to let England take a footing in Gibraltar and Minorca, that is to say, to divide with her the empire of the Mediterranean. She was further compelled to submit to a disadvantageous treaty of commerce. Finally she consented to the destruction of the harbour of Dunkirk. Death of Louis XIV.-Louis XIV. outlived his grandeur; his last years were mournful and gloomy; he had seen nearly all his children die one after another; there now only remained, in the cloister-like solitude of Versailles, formerly peopled by a magnificent court, an old man with one foot in the grave and a child in leading strings. The successor of Père la Chaise, the jesuit Letellier, one of the most wicked men of the age, soured the mind of this old king bent down by misfortune. Religious persecutions occupied his last moments; death found him meditating the assemblage of a national council to cause one portion of his clergy to be proscribed by the other; dissipating enormous sums in his useless constructions at Marly, and endeavouring, in defiance of his word, to make a last effort in favour of the son of James II. Nevertheless, before expiring, he took a retrospect of his past career. "My dear child," he said amongst other things to the little duke of Anjou, "you are about to become the king of a great kingdom; endeavour to preserve peace with your neighbours; I have been too fond of war, do not imitate me in this,

nor in the great expenditure which I have indulged in. Take counsel in "everything, and endeavour to know which is the best, in order always to follow it. Relieve your people as soon as possible, and do what I have had the misfortune of not being able to do myself." On the 1st of September, 1715, Louis XIV. breathed his last, after a reign extending to the unparalleled duration of seventy-two years, leaving for his successor, his great-grandson, a child of five years of age. The claim of Louis to the applause he has received has been questioned by many, yet no one can read his history without pronouncing it that of a great king; his talents were great, but his ambition was unbounded, and this blinded his eyes to the real interests of his people; he was certainly a generous man, and his manners were dignified and amiable, but his susceptibility to flattery was at once amusing and disagreeable.

III. FRANCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

REGENCY OF PHILIP OF ORLEANS.

The Regent.-Immediately after the death of Louis XIV., by a sudden reaction against the despotism of his reign, the parliament assembled, and by a decree annulled his will, which appointed a council of regeney, consisting of the old ministers; and preserved to Orleans the name of president of this council, in which the majority, governed by the duke du Maine, would completely dominate. Moreover, the latter was to have the care of the young king's person. The parliament without hesitation declared these provisions null, broke the testament of Louis XIV. as he was cold in his coffin, and proclaimed the duke of Orleans regent. obviate all suspicion, however, the care of the young king was left to the duke du Maine, and to his father's friend the marshal de Villeroy.

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The duke of Orleans entered upon his high office with a deserved reputation for a corrupt private life, and much unmerited suspicion of having dealt unfairly with the princes of the royal house, who fell so rapidly before the arrows of death towards the close of the last reign; his administration was deeply embarrassed by the growing financial difficulties of the kingdom, and his choice of ministers did not tend to relieve the pressure. The wicked abbé Dubois, notorious for his ambition and his vices, who had been the teacher of atheism to the duke of Orleans, and the pander to his passions, became his prime minister.

The most pressing subject of consideration was finance. The expenditure, which, in the year 1670, amounted to eighty millions of livres, had, in the last year of the war, reached two hundred and sixty millions. Every means were used to meet this enormous outlay. The royal tenth on all property, planned by Vauban, was laid on in 1710. The capitation was raised. Paper money was issued at an enormous discount; Louis giving thirty-two millions in paper for eight millions in specie. Vanity seemed the national commodity most productive when taxed; and offices of all absurd kinds were created for sale, such as comptrollersgeneral for piling wood and trying butter, and royal counsellors' inspectors of wigs. Despite of all these ways and means, Louis left a debt in bills, demanding immediate payment, that amounted to upwards of seven hundred millions of livres, besides a funded debt, of which the yearly interest was ninety-six millions. These financial difficulties were not alleviated, but aggravated, by the devices adopted by the regency. Prosecutions were indiscriminately commenced against all who had benefited by the collection of the revenue, and pursued to a mischievous excess; the loans contracted in times past were reduced to one-half: offices, formerly sold, were pitilessly suppressed; and the coin was

debased by a new issue. National bankruptcy appeared imminent, when an adventurer of genius, a Scotchman named Law, promised to revive commerce and to open inexhaustible resources to the state, whilst diminishing its burdens. He established a bank (1716) on the basis of an issue of paper money, and its operations were conducted with regularity and punctuality; the government accepted its notes as cash, and soon discovering the advantages of the system, desired to become a participator of the profits. The bank (1718) became the royal bank; it acquired the privileges of the India company, with vast possessions in Louisiana, and the exclusive commerce to Africa and Asia; the monopoly of tobacco, the right of coining money, and the collection of the revenue. Speculation to a fearful extent was carried on in the shares of the bank, and its notes were issued at the instance of the government to an enormous amount; when all at once it was discovered that this paper money was the representative, not of real effects, but of imaginary advantages which might never be realised. Then came the downfall of the whole scheme; edicts reducing the notes to one-half only ruined all confidence. Law was called upon to give in a statement of accounts, and baffled his enemies by the clearness with which he did so; his efforts to restore affairs to an equilibrium were defeated. The liquidation, with which the unfortunate scheme closed, increased the national debt by nearly onehalf. As for Law, its author, he contrived to escape to Venice, far from the wreck of so much wealth. He had purchased some of the first estates in the kingdom, which were of course confiscated. An operation called the visa was next resorted to; it quashed one-third of the public debt, and reduced the interest of the remainder; all scrip not submitted to the visa was totally annulled. At the end of all these violent measures the kingdom was more deeply pledged than at the death of Louis XIV., and a prejudice remained against all new schemes and projects for amelioration. Intrigues of Alberoni.—In_the_midst of this fever of speculation European policy was active. The Spanish prime minister, Alberoni, who cherished the notion of overthrowing the established order of things in all the chief nations of Europe, worked upon everybody, from the illegitimate children of Louis XIV. to the Turks. He wished to restore to Spain what she had lost, to give the regency of France to Philip V., to re-establish the pretender in England, and to restore everywhere the old principles. Spain rose again under his government; she had an army, a navy, arsenals, and finance. The king of Sweden, Charles XII., was in her pay; the Turks were driven by her against the emperor; her ambassador conspired in France. There was nothing wanting to the great projects but the slightest degree of success. Eugene defeated the Turks; the English under admiral Byng (lord Torrington) destroyed the Spanish fleet; Charles XII. was killed at the siege of Frederickshall; the fleet which bore the pretender was destroyed by a tempest; Spain was defeated in Sicily by the Austrians, and at home by Berwick (1718). Spain was obliged to yield to the quadruple alliance formed by France, England, Holland, and the emperor. The duke of Savoy had Sardinia in exchange of Sicily: Spain obtained Tuscany, Parma, and Placentia. Alberoni's disgrace was at the same time stipulated, and Philip V. only granted the flighty statesman twenty-four hours to quit Madrid, and a fortnight to leave Spain,