inst Louis that its leaders determined with judgment to demand from
that monarch the very fullest and most humiliating terms.

Though various sections of the allies differed severally as to their
objects and requirements, their general purpose of completely destroying
the power of France for offence, of recapturing all her conquests, and in
particular of driving the Bourbons from the throne of Spain, was held in
common, and vigorously pursued.

Marlborough was as active as any in pushing the demands to the furthest
possible point; Eugene, the ruling politicians of the English, the Dutch,
and the German princes were agreed.

Louis naturally made every effort to lessen the blow, though he regarded
his acceptance of grave and permanent humiliation as inevitable. The
negotiations were undertaken at the Hague, and were protracted. They
occupied the late spring of 1709 and stretched into the beginning of
summer. The French king was prepared (as his instructions to his
negotiators show) to give up every point, though he strove to bargain for
what remained after each concession. He would lose the frontier
fortresses, which were the barrier of his kingdom in the north-east. He
would even consent to the abandonment of Spain to Austria.

Had that peace been declared for which the captains of Europe were
confidently preparing, the future history of our civilisation would have
proved materially different from what it has become. It is to be presumed
that a complete breakdown of the strength of France would have followed;
that the monarchy at Versailles would have sunk immediately into such
disrepute that the eighteenth century would have seen France divided and
possibly a prey to civil war, and one may even conclude that the great
events of a century later, the Revolution and the campaigns of Napoleon,
could not have sprung from so enfeebled a society.

It so happened, however, that one of those slight miscalculations which
are productive in history of its chief consequences, prevented the
complete humiliation of Louis XIV. The demands of the allies were pushed
in one last respect just beyond the line which it was worth the while of
the defeated party to accept, for it was required of the old king not only
that he should yield in every point, not only that he should abandon the
claims of his own grandson to the throne of Spain (which throne Louis
himself had now, after eight years of wise administration, singularly
strengthened)