There are regions to which superior minds alone ascend, and which are not attained by the men, however distinguished, who succeed them.  William III. was no longer at the head of affairs in Europe; and the triumvirate of Heinsius, Marlborough, and Prince Eugene did not view the aggregate of things from a sufficiently calm height to free themselves from the hatreds and, bitternesses of the strife, when the proposals of Louis XIV. arrived at the Hague.  “Amidst the sufferings caused to commerce by the war, there was room to hope,” says Torcy, “that the grand pensionary, thinking chiefly of his country’s interest, would desire the end of a war of which he felt all the burdensomeness.  Clothed with authority in his own republic, he had no reason to fear either secret design or cabals to displace him from a post which he filled to the satisfaction of his masters, and in which he conducted himself with moderation.  Up to that time the United Provinces had borne the principal burden of the war.  The emperor alone reaped the fruit of it.  One would have said that the Hollanders kept the temple of peace, and that they had the keys of it in their hands.”

The king offered the Hollanders a very extended barrier in the Low Countries, and all the facilities they had long been asking for their commerce.  He accepted the abandonment of Spain to the archduke, and merely claimed to reserve to his grandson Naples, Sardinia, and Sicily.  This was what was secured to him by the second treaty of partition lately concluded between England, tine United Provinces, and France; he did not even demand Lothringen.  President Rouille, formerly French envoy to Lisbon, arrived disguised in Holland; conferences were opened secretly at Bodegraven.

The treaties of partition negotiated by William of Orange, as well as the wars which he had sustained against Louis XIV. with such persistent obstinacy, had but one sole end, the maintenance of the European equilibrium between the houses of Bourbon and Austria, which were alone powerful enough to serve as mutual counterpoise.  To despoil one to the profit of the other, to throw, all at once, into the balance on the side of the empire all the weight of the Spanish succession, was to destroy the work of William III.’s far-sighted wisdom.  Heinsius did not see it; but led on by his fidelity to the allies, distrustful and suspicious as regarded France, burning to avenge the wrongs put upon the republic, he, in concert with Marlborough and Prince Eugene, required conditions so hard that the French agent scarcely dared transmit them to Versailles.  What was demanded was the abdication, pure and simple, of Philip V.:  Holland merely promised her good offices to obtain in his favor Naples and Sicily; England claimed Dunkerque; Germany wanted Strasburg and the renewal of the peace of Westphalia; Victor-Amadeo aspired to recover Nice and Savoy; to the Dutch barrier stipulated for at Ryswick were to be added Lille, Conde, and Tournay.  In vain