More concerned for their woes than for his own glory, he employed, to terminate them, means which might have induced France to submit to the hardest conditions before obtaining a peace that had become necessary, if God, protecting the king, had not, after humiliating him, struck his foes with blindness." There are regions to which superior minds alone ascend, and which are not attained by the men, however distinguished, who succeed them.

William III.

was no longer at the head of affairs in Europe; and the triumvirate of Heinsius, Marlborough, and Prince Eugene did not view the aggregate of things from a sufficiently calm height to free themselves from the hatreds and, bitternesses of the strife, when the proposals of Louis XIV.
arrived at the Hague.

"Amidst the sufferings caused to commerce by the war, there was room to hope," says Torcy, "that the grand pensionary, thinking chiefly of his country's interest, would desire the end of a war of which he felt all the burdensomeness.

Clothed with authority in his own republic, he had no reason to fear either secret design or cabals to displace him from a post which he filled to the satisfaction of his masters, and in which he conducted himself with moderation.