Spanish Ambassador at the Hague, followed the trail with such
skill and perseverance that he discovered, if not the whole
truth, yet enough to furnish materials for a despatch which
produced much irritation and alarm at Madrid. A council was
summoned, and sate long in deliberation. The grandees of the
proudest of Courts could hardly fail to perceive that their next
sovereign, be he who he might, would find it impossible to avoid
sacrificing part of his defenceless and widely scattered empire
in order to preserve the rest; they could not bear to think that
a single fort, a single islet, in any of the four quarters of the
world was about to escape from the sullen domination of Castile.
To this sentiment all the passions and prejudices of the haughty
race were subordinate. "We are ready," such was the phrase then
in their mouths, "to go to any body, to go to the Dauphin, to go
to the Devil, so that we all go together." In the hope of
averting the threatened dismemberment, the Spanish ministers
advised their master to adopt as his heir the candidate whose
pretensions it was understood that France, England and Holland
were inclined to support. The advice was taken; and it was soon
every where known that His Catholic Majesty had solemnly
designated as his successor his nephew Francis Joseph, Electoral
Prince of Bavaria. France protested against this arrangement,
not, as far as can now be judged, because she meant to violate
the Treaty of Loo, but because it would have been difficult for
her, if she did not protest, to insist on the full execution of
that treaty. Had she silently acquiesced in the nomination of the
Electoral Prince, she would have appeared to admit that the
Dauphin's pretensions were unfounded; and, if she admitted the
Dauphin's pretensions to be unfounded, she could not, without
flagrant injustice, demand several provinces as the price in