thousand strong, met in the Netherlands. Marlborough led the allied
Austrian troops; the Duke of Bavaria was in command of the French. The
French were again routed, almost as disastrously as at Blenheim, losing
thirteen thousand men and fifty pieces of artillery. On the Rhine and in
Italy the French arms were also in disgrace. Throughout the summer
battle succeeded battle, and siege followed siege. When the snows of
another winter whitened the plains of Europe, the armies again retired
to winter quarters, the Austrian party having made very decided progress
as the result of the campaign. Marlborough was in possession of most of
the Netherlands, and was threatening France with invasion. Eugene had
driven the French out of Italy, and had brought many of the Italian
provinces under the dominion of Austria.

In Spain, also, the warfare was fiercely raging. Charles III., who had
been crowned in Vienna King of Spain, and who, as we have mentioned, had
been conveyed to Lisbon by a British fleet, joined by the King of
Portugal, and at the head of an allied army, marched towards the
frontiers of Spain. The Spaniards, though they disliked the French,
hated virulently the English and the Dutch, both of whom they considered
heretics. Their national pride was roused in seeing England, Holland and
Portugal marching upon them to place over Spain an Austrian king. The
populace rose, and after a few sanguinary conflicts drove the invaders
from their borders. December's storms separated the two armies,
compelling them to seek winter quarters, with only the frontier line
between them. It was in one of the campaigns of this war, in 1704, that
the English took the rock of Gibraltar, which they have held from that
day till this.

The British people began to remonstrate bitterly against this boundless
expenditure of blood and treasure merely to remove a Bourbon prince, and
place a Hapsburg prince upon the throne of Spain. Both were alike
despotic in character, and Europe had as much to fear from the
aggressions of the house of Austria as from the ambition of the King of
France. The Emperor Joseph was very apprehensive that the English court
might be induced to withdraw from the alliance, and fearing that they
might sacrifice, as the price of accommodation, his conquests in Italy,
he privately concluded with France a treaty of neutrality for Italy.
This secured to him what he had already acquired there, and saved France
and Spain from the da