a practice of sacrificing all ties of honour and good faith to
the interest of his pride, vanity, and ambition, foresaw that he should
never be able to accomplish his designs upon the crown of Spain while
William was left at liberty to form another confederacy against them. He
therefore resolved to amuse him with a treaty, in which he would seem
to act as umpire in the concerns of Europe. He knew that William was too
much of a politician to be restricted by notions of private justice;
and that he would make no scruple to infringe the laws of particular
countries, or even the rights of a single nation, when the balance of
power was at stake. He judged right in this particular. The king of
England lent a willing ear to his proposals, and engaged in a plan for
dismembering a kingdom in despite of the natives, and in violation of
every law human or divine.

INTRIGUES OF FRANCE AT THE COURT OF MADRID.

While the French king cajoled William with this negotiation, the
marquis d'Harcourt, his ambassador to Spain, was engaged in a game of a
different nature at Madrid. The queen of Spain, suspecting the designs
of France, exerted all her interest in behalf of the king of the Romans,
to whom she was nearly related. She new-modelled the council, bestowed
the government of Milan on prince Vaudemont, and established the prince
of Hesse Darmstadt as viceroy of Catalonia. Notwithstanding all her
efforts, she could not prevent the French minister from acquiring some
influence in the Spanish councils. He was instructed to procure the
succession of the crown for one of the dauphin's sons, or at least to
hinder it from devolving upon the emperor's children. With a view to
give weight to his negotiations, the French king ordered an army of
sixty thousand men to advance towards the frontiers of Catalonia and
Navarre, while a great number of ships and galleys cruised along the
coast, and entered the harbours of Spain. Harcourt immediately began to
form his party; he represented that Philip IV. had no power to dispose
of his crown against the laws of nature and the constitution of the
realm; that, by the order of succession, the crown ought to descend to
the children of his daughter in preference to more distant relations;
that if the Spaniards would declare in favour of the dauphin's second
son, the duke of Anjou, they might train him up in the manners and
customs of their country. When he found them averse to this proposal,
he assure