3/68 had adopted this young prince; the child died suddenly at Madrid in 1699. For a long time past King Louis XIV. had been secretly negotiating for the partition of the King of Spain's dominions, not--with the emperor, who still hoped to obtain from Charles II. a will in favor of his second son, the Archduke Charles, but with England and Holland, deeply interested as they were in maintaining the equilibrium between the two kingly houses which divided Europe. |