strongly fortified lines.  This was a very meagre result, but Marlborough now felt his position to be so insecure that he dared not take any risks.  His wife, so long omnipotent at court, had been supplanted in the queen’s favour; Godolphin and the Whig party had been swept from power; and a Tory ministry bent upon peace had taken their place.  Marlborough knew that his period of dictatorship was at an end, and he would have resigned his command but for the pressing instances of Eugene, Heinsius and other leaders of the allies.

The desire of the Tory ministry to bring the long drawn-out hostilities to an end was accentuated by the death, on April 17, 1711, of the Emperor Joseph, an event which left his brother Charles heir to all the possessions of the Austrian Habsburgs.  The Grand Alliance had been formed and the war waged to maintain the balance of power in Europe.  But such a result would not be achieved by a revival of the empire of Charles V in the person of the man who had now become the head of the House of Austria.  Even had the Whigs remained in office, they could hardly have continued to give active support to the cause of the Habsburg claimant in Spain.

One of the consequences of the death of Joseph I, then, was to render the Tory minister, Henry St John, more anxious to enter into negotiations for peace; another was the paralysing of active operations in the field.  Eugene had been summoned to Germany to watch over the meeting of the Imperial Diet at Frankfort, and Marlborough was left with an army considerably inferior in numbers to that of his opponent Villars.  Thus the only fruit of the campaign was the capture of Bouchain.  Meanwhile the French minister Torcy entered into secret communications with St John, intimating that France was ready to negotiate directly with England, but at first without the cognisance of the States.  The English ministry on their part, under the influence of St John, showed themselves to be ready to throw over their allies, to abandon the Habsburg cause in Spain, and to come to an agreement with France on terms advantageous to England.  For French diplomacy, always alert and skilful, these proceedings were quite legitimate; but it was scarcely honourable for the English government, while the Grand Alliance was still in existence, to carry on these negotiations in profound secrecy.

In August matters had so far advanced that Mesnager was sent over from Paris to London entrusted with definite proposals.  In October the preliminaries of peace were virtually settled between the two powers.  Meanwhile the Dutch had been informed through Lord Strafford, the English envoy at the Hague, of what was going on; and the news aroused no small indignation and alarm.  But great pressure was brought to bear upon them; and, knowing that without England they could not continue the war, the States-General at last, in fear for their barrier, consented, on November 21, to send envoys to a peace congress to be held at