laden with the treasures of America. In Castile was
ostentatiously displayed and lavishly spent great fortunes made
in remote provinces by oppression and corruption. In Castile were
the King and his Court. There stood the stately Escurial, once
the centre of the politics of the world, the place to which
distant potentates looked, some with hope and gratitude, some
with dread and hatred, but none without anxiety and awe. The
glory of the house had indeed departed. It was long since
couriers bearing orders big with the fate of kings and
commonwealths had ridden forth from those gloomy portals.
Military renown, maritime ascendency, the policy once reputed so
profound, the wealth once deemed inexhaustible, had passed away.
An undisciplined army, a rotting fleet, an incapable council, an
empty treasury, were all that remained of that which had been so
great. Yet the proudest of nations could not bear to part even
with the name and the shadow of a supremacy which was no more.
All, from the grandee of the first class to the peasant, looked
forward with dread to the day when God should be pleased to take
their king to himself. Some of them might have a predilection for
Germany; but such predilections were subordinate to a stronger
feeling. The paramount object was the integrity of the empire of
which Castile was the head; and the prince who should appear to
be most likely to preserve that integrity unviolated would have
the best right to the allegiance of every true Castilian.

No man of sense, however, out of Castile, when he considered the
nature of the inheritance and the situation of the claimants,
could doubt that a partition was inevitable. Among those
claimants three stood preeminent, the Dauphin, the Emperor
Leopold, and the Electoral Prince of Bavaria.