ngress, were Buys and Vanderdussen; the
French king granted his powers to the mareschal D'Uxelles, the abbot
(afterwards cardinal) de Polignac, and Menager, who had been in
England. The ministers of the emperor and Savoy likewise assisted at
the conferences, to which the empire and the other allies likewise sent
their plenipotentiaries, though not without reluctance. As all these
powers, except France, entertained sentiments very different from those
of her Britannic majesty, the conferences seemed calculated rather to
retard than accelerate a pacification. The queen of England had foreseen
and provided against these difficulties. Her great end was to free her
subjects from the miseries attending an unprofitable war, and to restore
peace to Europe; and this aim she was resolved to accomplish in spite of
all opposition. She had also determined to procure reasonable terms of
accommodation for her allies, without, however, continuing to lavish
the blood and treasure of her people in supporting their extravagant
demands. The emperor obstinately insisted upon his claim to the
whole Spanish monarchy, refusing to give up the least tittle of his
pretensions; and the Dutch adhered to the old preliminaries which Louis
had formerly rejected. The queen saw that the liberties of Europe would
be exposed to much greater danger from an actual union of the Imperial
and Spanish crowns in one head of the house of Austria, than from a bare
possibility of Spain's being united with France in one branch of the
house of Bourbon. She knew by experience the difficulty of dethroning
Philip, rooted as he was in the affections of a brave and loyal people;
and that a prosecution of this design would serve no purpose but to
protract the war, and augment the grievances of the British nation.
She was well acquainted with the distresses of the French, which she
considered as pledges of their monarch's sincerity. She sought not the
total ruin of that people, already reduced to the brink of despair. The
dictates of true policy dissuaded her from contributing to her further
conquest in that kingdom, which would have proved the source of
contention among the allies, depressed the house of Bourbon below the
standard of importance which the balance of Europe required it should
maintain, and aggrandize the states-general at the expense of Great
Britain. As she had borne the chief burden of the war, she had a right
to take the lead, and dictate a plan of pacifica