made prisoners.  Stahrenberg retraced his steps; on the 10th of December fighting began near Villaviciosa; the advantage was for a long time undecided and disputed; night came; the Austrian general spiked his guns and retreated by forced marches; the Spaniards bivouacked on the battle-field, the king slept on a bed made of the enemy’s flags; the allies had taken refuge in Catalonia; Spain had won back her independence and her king.  There was great joy at Versailles, greater than in the kingdom; the sole aspiration was for peace.

An unexpected assistance was at hand.  Queen Anne, wearied with the cupidity and haughtiness of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, had given them notice to quit; the friends of the duke had shared his fall, and the Tories succeeded the Whigs in power.  The chancellor of the exchequer, Harley, soon afterwards Earl of Oxford, and the secretary of state, St. John, who became Lord Bolingbroke, were inclined to peace.  Advances were made to France.  A French priest, Abbe Gautier, living in obscurity in England, arrived in Paris during January, 1711; he went to see M. de Torcy at Versailles.  “Do you want peace?” said he.  “I have come to bring you the means of treating for it, and concluding independently of the Hollanders, unworthy of the king’s kindnesses and of the honor he has so often done them of applying to them to pacificate Europe.”  “To ask just then one of his Majesty’s ministers if he desired peace,” says Torcy, “was to ask a sick man suffering from a long and dangerous disease if he wants to be cured.”  Negotiations were secretly opened with the English cabinet.  The Emperor Joseph had just died (April 17, 1711).  He left none but daughters.  From that moment Archduke Charles inherited the domains of the house of Austria, and aspired to the imperial crown; by giving him Spain, Europe re-established the monarchy of Charles V.; she saw the dangers into which she was being drawn by the resentments or short-sighted ambition of the triumvirate; she fell back upon the wise projects of William III.  Holland had abandoned them; to England fell the honor of making them triumphant.  She has often made war upon the Continent with indomitable obstinacy and perseverance; but at bottom and by the very force of circumstances England remains, as regards the affairs of Europe, an essentially pacific power.  War brings her no advantage; she cannot pretend to any territorial aggrandizement in Europe; it is the equilibrium between the continental powers that makes her strength, and her first interest was always to maintain it.

The campaign of 1711 was everywhere insignificant.  Negotiations were still going on with England, secretly and through subordinate agents:  Manager, member of the Board of Trade, for France; and, for England, the poet Prior, strongly attached to Harley.  On the 29th of January, 1712, the general conferences were opened at Utrecht.  The French had been anxious to avoid the Hague, dreading the obstinacy