of all right at his marriage in favor of the second daughter.  Leopold, as the husband of the second daughter, claimed the crown, in the event, then impending, of the death of the imbecile and childless king.  This quarrel agitated Europe to its center, and deluged her fields with blood.  If the elective franchise is at times the source of agitation, the law of hereditary succession most certainly does not always confer tranquillity and peace.

CHAPTER XXI.

LEOPOLD I. AND THE SPANISH SUCCESSION.

From 1697 to 1710.

The Spanish Succession.—­The Impotence of Charles II.—­Appeal to the Pope.—­His Decision.—­Death of Charles II.—­Accession of Philip V.—­Indignation of Austria.—­The outbreak of War.—­Charles III. crowned.—­Insurrection in Hungary.—­Defection of Bavaria.—­The Battle of Blenheim.—­Death of Leopold I.—­Eleonora.—­Accession of Joseph I.—­Charles XII. of Sweden.—­Charles III. in Spain.—­Battle of Malplaquet.—­Charles at Barcelona.—­Charles at Madrid.

Charles II., King of Spain, was one of the most impotent of men, in both body and mind.  The law of hereditary descent had placed this semi-idiot upon the throne of Spain to control the destinies of twenty millions of people.  The same law, in the event of his death without heirs, would carry the crown across the Pyrenees to a little boy in the palace of Versailles, or two thousand miles, to the banks of the Danube, to another little boy in the gardens of Vienna.  Louis XIV. claimed the Spanish scepter in behalf of his wife, the Spanish princess Maria Theresa, and her son.  Leopold claimed it in behalf of his deceased wife, Margaret, and her child.  For many years before the death of Philip II. the envoys of France and Austria crowded the court of Spain, employing all the arts of intrigue and bribery to forward the interests of their several sovereigns.  The different courts of Europe espoused the claims of the one party or the other, accordingly as their interests would be promoted by the aggrandizement of the house of Bourbon or the house of Hapsburg.

Louis XIV. prepared to strike a sudden blow by gathering an army of one hundred thousand men in his fortresses near the Spanish frontier, in establishing immense magazines of military stores, and in filling the adjacent harbors with ships of war.  The sagacious French monarch had secured the cooeperation of the pope, and of some of the most influential Jesuits who surrounded the sick and dying monarch.  Charles II. had long been harassed by the importunities of both parties that he should give the influence of his voice in the decision.  Tortured by the incessant vacillations of his own mind, he was at last influenced, by the suggestions of his spiritual advisers, to refer the question to the pope.  He accordingly sent an embassage to the pontiff with a letter soliciting counsel.