France yielded the barrier of the Rhine, with fortified places on the east bank of the river.

Austria received, as has been mentioned, Belgium, Sardinia, Naples, and the Spanish possessions in northern Italy; dissatisfied in other respects, Austria was especially discontented at her failure to obtain Sicily, and did not cease negotiating afterward, until she had secured that island.

A circumstance more important to Germany and to all Europe than this transitory acquisition of distant and alien countries by Austria was the rise of Prussia, which dates from this war as a Protestant and military kingdom destined to weigh in the balance against Austria.
Such were the leading results of the War of the Spanish Succession, "the vastest yet witnessed by Europe since the Crusades." It was a war whose chief military interest was on the land,--a war in which fought two of the greatest generals of all times, Marlborough and Prince Eugene, the names of whose battles, Blenheim, Ramillies, Malplaquet, Turin, are familiar to the most casual reader of history; while a multitude of able men distinguished themselves on the other theatres of the strife, in Flanders, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain.

On the sea only one great battle, and that scarcely worthy of the name, took place.

Yet looking only, for the moment, to immediate and evident results, who reaped the benefit?
Was it France, whose only gain was to seat a Bourbon on the Spanish throne?
Was it Spain, whose only gain was to have a Bourbon king instead of an Austrian, and thus a closer alliance with France?
Was it Holland, with its barrier of fortified towns, its ruined navy, and its exhausted people?
Was it, lastly, Austria, even though she had fought with the money of the sea powers, and gained such maritime States as the Netherlands and Naples?
Was it with these, who had waged war more and more exclusively by land, and set their eyes more and more on gains on the land, or was it not rather with England, who had indeed paid for that continental war and even backed it with her troops, but who meanwhile was building up her navy, strengthening, extending, and protecting her commerce, seizing maritime positions,--in a word, founding and rearing her sea power upon the ruins of that of her rivals, friend and foe alike?
It is not to depreciate the gains of others that the eye fixes on England's naval growth; their gains but bring out more clearly the immenseness of hers.