of Heinsius in favor of his former proposals.  Preliminary points were already settled with England; enormous advantages were secured in America to English commerce, to which was ceded Newfoundland and all that France still possessed in Acadia; the general proposals had been accepted by Queen Anne and her ministers.  In vain had the Hollanders and Prince Eugene made great efforts to modify them; St. John had dryly remarked that England had borne the greatest part in the burden of the war, and it was but just that she should direct the negotiations for peace.  For five years past the United Provinces, exhausted by the length of hostilities, had constantly been defaulters in their engagements; it was proved to Prince Eugene that the imperial army had not been increased by two regiments in consequence of the war the emperor’s ambassador, M. de Galas, displayed impertinence:  he was forbidden to come to the court; in spite of the reserve imposed upon the English ministers by the strife of parties in a free country, their desire for peace was evident.  The queen had just ordered the creation of new peers in order to secure a majority of the upper house in favor of a pacific policy.

[Illustration:  The Grand Dauphin——­505]

The bolts of Heaven were falling one after another upon the royal family of France.  On the 14th of April, 1711, Louis XIV. had lost by small-pox his son, the grand dauphin, a mediocre and submissive creature, ever the most humble subject of the king, at just fifty years of age.  His eldest son, the Duke of Burgundy, devout, austere, and capable, the hope of good men and the terror of intriguers, had taken the rank of dauphin, and was seriously commencing his apprenticeship in government, when he was carried off on the 18th of February, 1712, by spotted fever (rougeole pourpree), six days after his wife, the charming Mary Adelaide of Savoy, the idol of the whole court, supremely beloved by the king, and by Madame de Maintenon, who had brought her up; their son, the Duke of Brittany, four years old, died on the 8th of March; a child in the cradle, weakly and ill, the little Duke of Anjou, remained the only shoot of the elder branch of the Bourbons.  Dismay seized upon all France; poison was spoken of; the Duke of Orleans was accused; it was necessary to have a post mortem examination; only the hand of God had left its traces.  Europe in its turn was excited.  If the little Duke of Anjou were to die, the crown of France reverted to Philip V. The Hollanders and the ambassadors of the Emperor Charles VI. recently crowned at Frankfurt, insisted on the necessity of a formal renunciation.  In accord with the English ministers, Louis XIV. wrote to his grandson,—­