Turin, and advanced
into Provence. Marlborough was likewise in full career of victory in the
Low Countries, and gained there the battle of Ramillies.

11. Peace of Utrecht.--Louis had outlived his good fortune. His great
generals and statesmen had passed away. The country was exhausted,
famine was preying on the wretched peasantry, supplies could not be
found, and one city after another, of those Louis had seized, was
retaken. New victories at Oudenarde and Malplaquet were gained over the
French armies; and, though Louis was as resolute and undaunted as ever,
his affairs were in a desperate state, when he was saved by a sudden
change of policy on the part of Queen Anne of England, who recalled her
army and left her allies to continue the contest alone. Eugene was not a
match for France without Marlborough, and the Archduke Charles, having
succeeded his brother the Emperor, gave up his pretensions to the crown
of Spain, so that it became possible to conclude a general peace at
Utrecht in 1713. By this time Louis was seventy-five years of age, and
had suffered grievous family losses--first by the death of his only son,
and then of his eldest grandson, a young man of much promise of
excellence, who, with his wife died of malignant measles, probably from
ignorant medical treatment, since their infant, whose illness was
concealed by his nurses, was the only one of the family who survived.
The old king, in spite of sorrow and reverse, toiled with indomitable
energy to the end of his reign, the longest on record, having lasted
seventy-two years, when he died in 1715. He had raised the French crown
to its greatest splendour, but had sacrificed the country to himself and
his false notions of greatness.

12. The Regency.--The crown now descended to _Louis XV._, a weakly
child of four years old. His great-grandfather had tried to provide for
his good by leaving the chief seat in the council of regency to his own
illegitimate son, the Duke of Maine, the most honest and conscientious
man then in the family, but, though clever, unwise and very unpopular.
His birth caused the appointment to be viewed as an outrage by the
nobility, and the king's will was set aside. The first prince of the
blood royal, Philip, Duke of Orleans, the late king's nephew, became
sole regent--a man of good ability, but of easy, indolent nature; and
who, in the enforced idleness of his life, had become dissipated and
vicious beyond all imagination or des