No man of sense, however, out of Castile, when he considered the nature of the inheritance and the situation of the claimants, could doubt that a partition was inevitable.  Among those claimants three stood preeminent, the Dauphin, the Emperor Leopold, and the Electoral Prince of Bavaria.

If the question had been simply one of pedigree, the right of the Dauphin would have been incontestable.  Lewis the Fourteeenth had married the Infanta Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip the Fourth and sister of Charles the Second.  Her eldest son, the Dauphin, would therefore, in the regular course of things, have been her brother’s successor.  But she had, at the time of her marriage, renounced, for herself and her posterity, all pretensions to the Spanish crown.

To that renunciation her husband had assented.  It had been made an article of the Treaty of the Pyrenees.  The Pope had been requested to give his apostolical sanction to an arrangement so important to the peace of Europe; and Lewis had sworn, by every thing that could bind a gentleman, a king, and a Christian, by his honour, by his royal word, by the canon of the Mass, by the Holy Gospels, by the Cross of Christ, that he would hold the renunciation sacred.11

The claim of the Emperor was derived from his mother Mary Anne, daughter of Philip the Third, and aunt of Charles the Second, and could not therefore, if nearness of blood alone were to be regarded, come into competition with the claim of the Dauphin.  But the claim of the Emperor was barred by no renunciation.  The rival pretensions of the great Houses of Bourbon and Habsburg furnished all Europe with an inexhaustible subject of discussion.  Plausible topics were not wanting to the supporters of either cause.  The partisans of the House of Austria dwelt on the sacredness of treaties; the partisans of France on the sacredness of birthright.  How, it was asked on one side, can a Christian king have the effrontery, the impiety, to insist on a claim which he has with such solemnity renounced in the face of heaven and earth?  How, it was asked on the other side, can the fundamental laws of a monarchy be annulled by any authority but that of the supreme legislature?  The only body which was competent to take away from the children of Maria Theresa their hereditary rights was the Comes.  The Comes had not ratified her renunciation.  That renunciation was therefore a nullity; and no swearing, no signing, no sealing, could turn that nullity into a reality.

Which of these two mighty competitors had the better case may perhaps be doubted.  What could not be doubted was that neither would obtain the prize without a struggle which would shake the world.  Nor can we justly blame either for refusing to give way to the other.  For, on this occasion, the chief motive which actuated them was, not greediness, but the fear of degradation and ruin.  Lewis, in resolving to put every thing to hazard rather than suffer the