William Ii

Foreign Policy.

As king of England he concluded treaties of alliance with the members of the League of Augsburg and sent a large army to oppose the French in Flanders. (For the course of the war on sea and on land, both in Ireland and in Flanders see GRAND ALLIANCE, WAR OF.) William had assumed the duties of commander-in-chief too young to learn the full duties of a profes sional soldier himself, and his imperious will did not suffer others to direct him. Hence though often fertile in resource and ingenious in plan, he was always a brilliant amateur.

In diplomacy William was as uniformly successful as in war he was the reverse. His unity of aim and constancy of purpose make him one of the greatest of modern diplomatists. He held together his ill-assorted coalition, and finally concluded peace at Ryswick in September 1697. Louis restored all his acquisitions since 1678, except Strasbourg, and recognized William as king of England. During the subsequent years William tried to arrange a partition treaty with France, by which the domains of the childless Charles II. of Spain were to be divided at his death. But on the death of Charles in 1700 the whole heritage was left to France. William endeavoured to oppose this, and used Louis's recognition of James Edward the "Old Pretender" as king of England (Sept. 1701) to

set the English people in a flame. War was already declared in 1702, but William, who had long been ailing, died from the corn bined effects of a fall from his horse and a chill on March 8, 1702.

In viewing William's character as a whole one is struck by its entire absence of ostentation, a circumstance which reveals his mind and policy more clearly than would otherwise be the case. He had many faults, both in his public and private life, and both in England and in Holland his domestic administration was criti cised. His essential greatness lay in his European policy. The best proof of his real powers of statesmanship is that the peace of Utrecht was subsequently made on the broad lines which he had laid down as the only security for European peace nearly a dozen years before its conclusion. While he lacked in diplomacy the arts of a Louis XIV. or the graces of a Marlborough, he grasped the central problems of his time with more clearness, or advanced solutions with more ultimate success, than any other statesman of his age. Often baffled, but never despairing, William fought on to the end, and the ideas and the spirit of his policy continued to triumph long after the death of their author.