If the question had been simply one of pedigree, the right of the
Dauphin would have been incontestable. Lewis the Fourteeenth had
married the Infanta Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip the
Fourth and sister of Charles the Second. Her eldest son, the
Dauphin, would therefore, in the regular course of things, have
been her brother's successor. But she had, at the time of her
marriage, renounced, for herself and her posterity, all
pretensions to the Spanish crown.

To that renunciation her husband had assented. It had been made
an article of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The Pope had been
requested to give his apostolical sanction to an arrangement so
important to the peace of Europe; and Lewis had sworn, by every
thing that could bind a gentleman, a king, and a Christian, by
his honour, by his royal word, by the canon of the Mass, by the
Holy Gospels, by the Cross of Christ, that he would hold the
renunciation sacred.11

The claim of the Emperor was derived from his mother Mary Anne,
daughter of Philip the Third, and aunt of Charles the Second, and
could not therefore, if nearness of blood alone were to be
regarded, come into competition with the claim of the Dauphin.
But the claim of the Emperor was barred by no renunciation. The
rival pretensions of the great Houses of Bourbon and Habsburg
furnished all Europe with an inexhaustible subject of discussion.
Plausible topics were not wanting to the supporters of either
cause. The partisans of the House of Austria dwelt on the
sacredness of treaties; the partisans of France on the sacredness
of birthright. How, it was asked on one side, can a Christian