occasional conformity, he ridiculed the idea of its being persecution to
suppress politic or state Dissenters, and maintained that the bill did
not concern true Dissenters at all. To this, however, we must refer
again in connexion with his celebrated tract, _The Shortest Way with
Dissenters_.

The troubles into which the European system was plunged by the death of
the childless King of Spain, and that most dramatic of historical
surprises, the bequest of his throne by a deathbed will to the Duke of
Anjou, the second grandson of Louis XIV., furnished Defoe with a great
opportunity for his controversial genius. In Charles II's will, if the
legacy was accepted, William saw the ruin of a life-long policy. Louis,
though he was doubly pledged against acknowledging the will, having
renounced all pretensions to the throne of Spain for himself and his
heirs in the Treaty of the Pyrenees, and consented in two successive
treaties of partition to a different plan of succession, did not long
hesitate; the news that he had saluted his grandson as King of Spain
followed close upon the news of Charles's death. The balance of the
great Catholic Powers which William had established by years of anxious
diplomacy and costly war, was toppled over by a stroke of the pen. With
Spain and Italy virtually added to his dominions, the French King would
now be supreme upon the Continent. Louis soon showed that this was his
view of what had happened, by saying that the Pyrenees had ceased to
exist. He gave a practical illustration of the same view by seizing,
with the authority of his grandson, the frontier towns of the Spanish
Netherlands, which were garrisoned under a special treaty by Dutch
troops. Though deeply enraged at the bad faith of the most Christian
King, William was not dismayed. The stone which he had rolled up the
hill with such effort had suddenly rolled down again, but he was eager
to renew his labours. Before, however, he could act, he found himself,