“All the English,” says Torcy, in his Memoires, “unanimously regard it as a mortal affront on the part of France, that she should pretend to arrogate to herself the right of giving them a king, to the prejudice of him whom they had themselves invited and recognized for many years past.”

Voltaire declares, in the “Siecle de Louis XIV.,_ that M. de Torcy attributed the recognition of the Prince of Wales by Louis XIV. to the influence of Madame de Maintenon, who was touched by the tears of the queen, Mary of Modena.  “He had not,” he said, “inserted the fact in his Memoires, because he did not think it to his master’s honor that two women should have made him change a resolution to the contrary taken in his council.”  Perhaps the deplorable state of William III.’s health, and the inclination supposed to be felt by Princess Anne of Denmark to restore the Stuarts to the throne, since she herself had lost the Duke of Gloucester, the last survivor of her seventeen children, might have influenced the unfortunate resolution of Louis XIV.  His kingly magnanimity and illusions might have bound him to support James II., dethroned and fugitive; but no obligation of that sort existed in the case of a prince who had left England at his nurse’s, breast, and who had grown up in exile.  In the Athalie of Racine, Joad (Jehoiada) invokes upon the impious queen: 

              “That spirit of infatuation and error
               The fatal avant-courier of the fall of kings.”

The recognition of the Prince of Wales as King of England was, in the case of Louis XIV., the most indisputable token of that fatal blindness.

William III. had paid dear for the honor of being called to the throne of England.  More than once he had been on the point of abandonhig the ungrateful nation which so ill requited his great services; he had thought of returning to live in the midst of his Hollanders, affectionately attached to his family as well as to his person.  The insult of the King of France restored to his already dying adversary all the popularity he had lost.  When William returned from Holland to open a new Parliament, on the 10th of January, 1702, manifestations of sympathy were lavished upon him on all sides of the house.  “I have no doubt,” said he, “that the late proceedings of his Most Christian Majesty and the dangers which threaten all the powers of Europe have excited your most lively resentment.  All the world have their eyes fixed upon England; there is still time, she may save her religion and her liberty, but let her profit by every moment, let her arm by land and sea, let her lend her allies all the assistance in her power, and swear to show her enemies, the foes of her religion, her liberty, her government, and the king of her choice, all the hatred they deserve.”