om the
alliance of the two crowns; and the affair of Vigo, happening so near
his own frontiers, impressed him with a sense of the power of the
allied navies. In truth, Portugal is nearer to the sea than to Spain,
and must fall naturally under the influence of the power controlling
the sea. Inducements were offered,--by the Emperor of Austria a
cession of Spanish territory, by the sea powers a subsidy; but the
king was not willing to declare himself until the Austrian claimant
should have landed at Lisbon, fairly committing the coalition to a
peninsular as well as a continental war. The emperor transferred his
claims to his second son, Charles; and the latter, after being
proclaimed in Vienna and acknowledged by England and Holland, was
taken by the allied fleets to Lisbon, where he landed in March, 1704.
This necessitated the important change in the plans of the sea powers.
Pledged to the support of Carlos, their fleets were thenceforth tied
to the shores of the peninsula and the protection of commerce; while
the war in the West Indies, becoming a side issue on a small scale,
led to no results. From this time on, Portugal was the faithful ally
of England, whose sea power during this war gained its vast
preponderance over all rivals. Her ports were the refuge and support
of English fleets, and on Portugal was based in later days the
Peninsular war with Napoleon. In and through all, Portugal, for a
hundred years, had more to gain and more to fear from England than
from any other power.

Great as were the effects of the maritime supremacy of the two sea
powers upon the general result of the war, and especially upon that
undisputed empire of the seas which England held for a century after,
the contest is marked by no one naval action of military interest.
Once only did great fleets meet, and then with results that were
indecisive; after which the French gave up the struggle at sea,
confining themselves wholly to a commerce-destroying warfare. This
feature of the War of the Spanish Succession characterizes nearly the
whole of the eighteenth century, with the exception of the American
Revolutionary struggle. The noiseless, steady, exhausting pressure
with which sea power acts, cutting off the resources of the enemy
while maintaining its own, supporting war in scenes where it does not
appear itself, or appears only in the background, and striking open
blows at rare intervals, though lost to most, is emphasized to the
careful