of the
Spanish Succession, 1702-1713. England's aim in this war was to
acquire some of the Spanish colonies in America and to prevent
any loss of trading privileges hitherto enjoyed by the English
and the Dutch. But as it turned out nothing of importance was
accomplished in the western hemisphere except by the terms of peace.
The French and Spanish attempted no major operations by sea. But
the English navy captured Minorca, with its important harbor of
Port Mahon, and Rooke, with more initiative than he had ever shown
before in his career, took Gibraltar (August 4, 1704). These two
prizes made Great Britain for the first time a Mediterranean power,
and the fact that she held the gateway to the inland sea was of
great importance in subsequent naval history.

In addition to these captures the terms of peace (the Treaty of
Utrecht) yielded to England from the French Newfoundland, the Hudson
Bay territory, and Nova Scotia. All that the French had left on the
eastern coast of Canada was Cape Breton Island, with Louisburg,
which was the key to the St. Lawrence. As for commercial privileges,
England had gained from the Portuguese, who had been allies in
the war, a practical monopoly of their carrying trade; and from
France she had taken the entire monopoly of the slave trade to
the Spanish American colonies which had been formerly granted by
Spain to France. Holland got nothing out of the war as affecting
her interests at sea,--not even a trading post. Her alliance with
Great Britain had become as some one has called it, that of "the
giant and the dwarf." At the conclusion of the War of the Spanish
Succession, to quote the words of Mahan, "England was _the_ sea
power; there was no second."

In this war as in the preceding, French privateersmen made great
inroads on British commerce, and some of these privateering operations
were conducted on a grand scale. For example, Du Guay Trouin took
a squadron of six ships of the line and two frigates, together
with 2000 troops, across the Atlantic and attacked Rio Janeiro.
He had little difficulty in forcing its submission and extorting
a ransom of $400,000. The activities of the privateers led to a
clause in the treaty of peace requiring the French to destroy the
fortifications of the port of Dunkirk, which was notorious as the
nest of these corsairs.

The War of the Austrian Succession, 1740-1748, was another of the
dynastic quarrels of this age, with France and Spain arrayed aga