Early in May, 1706, the armies of Austria and France, each about seventy thousand strong, met in the Netherlands.  Marlborough led the allied Austrian troops; the Duke of Bavaria was in command of the French.  The French were again routed, almost as disastrously as at Blenheim, losing thirteen thousand men and fifty pieces of artillery.  On the Rhine and in Italy the French arms were also in disgrace.  Throughout the summer battle succeeded battle, and siege followed siege.  When the snows of another winter whitened the plains of Europe, the armies again retired to winter quarters, the Austrian party having made very decided progress as the result of the campaign.  Marlborough was in possession of most of the Netherlands, and was threatening France with invasion.  Eugene had driven the French out of Italy, and had brought many of the Italian provinces under the dominion of Austria.

In Spain, also, the warfare was fiercely raging.  Charles III., who had been crowned in Vienna King of Spain, and who, as we have mentioned, had been conveyed to Lisbon by a British fleet, joined by the King of Portugal, and at the head of an allied army, marched towards the frontiers of Spain.  The Spaniards, though they disliked the French, hated virulently the English and the Dutch, both of whom they considered heretics.  Their national pride was roused in seeing England, Holland and Portugal marching upon them to place over Spain an Austrian king.  The populace rose, and after a few sanguinary conflicts drove the invaders from their borders.  December’s storms separated the two armies, compelling them to seek winter quarters, with only the frontier line between them.  It was in one of the campaigns of this war, in 1704, that the English took the rock of Gibraltar, which they have held from that day till this.

The British people began to remonstrate bitterly against this boundless expenditure of blood and treasure merely to remove a Bourbon prince, and place a Hapsburg prince upon the throne of Spain.  Both were alike despotic in character, and Europe had as much to fear from the aggressions of the house of Austria as from the ambition of the King of France.  The Emperor Joseph was very apprehensive that the English court might be induced to withdraw from the alliance, and fearing that they might sacrifice, as the price of accommodation, his conquests in Italy, he privately concluded with France a treaty of neutrality for Italy.  This secured to him what he had already acquired there, and saved France and Spain from the danger of losing any more Italian States.

Though the allies were indignant, and remonstrated against this transaction, they did not see fit to abandon the war.  Immense preparations were made to invade France from the Netherlands and from Piedmont, in the opening of the spring of 1707.  Both efforts were only successful in spreading far and wide conflagration and blood.  The invaders were driven from the kingdom with heavy loss.  The campaign in Spain,