Meanwhile the King of Spain, Charles II., dying as he was, was regularly besieged at Madrid by the queen, his second wife, Mary Anne of Neuburg, sister of the empress, as well as by his minister, Cardinal Porto-Carrero.  The competitors for the succession were numerous; the King of France and the emperor claimed their rights in the name of their mothers and wives, daughters of Philip III. and Philip IV.; the Elector of Bavaria put up the claims of his son by right of his mother, Mary Antoinette of Austria, daughter of the emperor; for a short time Charles II. had adopted this young prince; the child died suddenly at Madrid in 1699.  For a long time past King Louis XIV. had been secretly negotiating for the partition of the King of Spain’s dominions, not—­with the emperor, who still hoped to obtain from Charles II. a will in favor of his second son, the Archduke Charles, but with England and Holland, deeply interested as they were in maintaining the equilibrium between the two kingly houses which divided Europe.  William III. considered himself certain to obtain the acceptance by the emperor of the conditions subscribed by his allies.  On the 13th and 15th of May, 1700, after long hesitation and a stubborn resistance on the part of the city of Amsterdam, the treaty of partition was signed in London and at the Hague.  “King William is honorable in all this business,” said a letter to the king from his ambassador, Count de Tallard; “his conduct is sincere; he is proud—­none can be more so than he; but he has a modest manner, though none can be more jealous in all that concerns his rank.”

The treaty of partition secured to the dauphin all the possessions of Spain in Italy, save Milaness, which was to indemnify the Duke of Lorraine, whose duchy passed to France; Spain, the Indies, and the Low Countries were to belong to Archduke Charles.  Great was the wrath at Vienna when it was known that the treaty was signed.  “Happily,” said the minister, Von Kaunitz, to the Marquis of Villars, ambassador of France, “there is One on high who will work for us in these partitions.”  “That One,” replied M. de Villars, “will approve of their justice.”  “It is something new, however, for the King of England and for Holland to partition the monarchy of Spain,” continued the count.  “Allow me,” replied M. de Villars, “to excuse them in your eyes; those two powers have quite recently come out of a war which cost them a great deal, and the emperor nothing; for, in fact, you have been at no expense but against the Turks.  You had some troops in Italy, and in the empire two regiments only of hussars which were not on its pay-list; England and Holland alone bore all the burden.”  William III. was still negotiating with the emperor and the German princes to make them accept the treaty of partition, when it all at once became known in Europe that Charles II. had breathed his last at Madrid on the 1st of November, 1700, and that, by a will dated October 2, he disposed of the Spanish monarchy in favor of the Duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV.