ole
country, which it could utilise immediately for interior development or
for a war--all this marked the youth and vigour of an oligarchic England,
which was for so long to be at once invulnerable and impregnable.

At what expense in morals, and therefore in ultimate strength and
happiness, such experiments are played, is no matter for discussion in a
military history. We must be content to remark what vigour her new
constitution gave to the efforts of England in the field, while yet that
constitution was young.

England, then, having thrown this great weight into the scale of the
Empire, and against France, the campaign of 1702 was entered upon with the
chances in favour of the former, and with the latter in an anxiety very
different from the pride which Louis XIV. had taken for granted in the
early part of his reign.

* * * * *

If the reader will consider the map of Western Europe, the effect of
England's joining the allies will be apparent.

The frontier between the Spanish Netherlands and Holland--that is, between
modern Belgium and Holland--was the frontier between the forces of Louis
XIV. and those of opponents upon the north. Thus Antwerp and Ostend were
in the hands of the Bourbon, for the Spanish Netherlands had passed into
the hands of the French king's grandson, and the French and Spanish forces
were combined. Further east, towards the Upper Rhine, a French force lay
in the district of Cleves, and all the fortresses on the Meuse, running in
a line south of that post, with the exception of Maestricht, were in
French hands.

French armies held or threatened the Middle Rhine. Upon the Upper Rhine
and upon the Danube an element of the highest moment in favour of France
had appeared when the Elector of Bavaria had declared for Louis XIV., and
against Austria.

Had not England intervened with the great weight of gold and that
considerable contingent of men (in all, eighteen of the new forty
thousand), France would have easily held her northern position upon the
frontier of Holland and the Lower Rhine, while the Elector of Bavaria,
joining forces with the French army upon the Upper Rhine, would have
marched upon Vienna.

The Emperor was harried by the rising of the Hungarians behind him; and as
the principal forces of the French king would not have been detained in
the north, the whole weight of France, combined with her new ally the
Elector of Bavaria, would have been thr