employed to bring it about, and with those which were employed to
traverse it. To adjust the pretensions and to settle the interests
of so many princes and states as were engaged in the late war would
appear, when considered simply and without any adventitious
difficulty, a work of prodigious extent. But this was not all.
Each of our Allies thought himself entitled to raise his demands to
the most extravagant height. They had been encouraged to this,
first, by the engagements which we had entered into with several of
them, with some to draw them into the war, with others to prevail on
them to continue it; and, secondly, by the manner in which we had
treated with France in 1709 and 1710. Those who intended to tie the
knot of the war as hard, and to render the coming at a peace as
impracticable as they could, had found no method so effectual as
that of leaving everyone at liberty to insist on all he could think
of, and leaving themselves at liberty, even if these concessions
should be made, to break the treaty by ulterior demands. That this
was the secret I can make no doubt after the confession of one of
the plenipotentiaries who transacted these matters, and who
communicated to me and to two others of the Queen's Ministers an
instance of the Duke of Marlborough's management at a critical
moment, when the French Ministers at Gertrudenberg seemed inclinable
to come into an expedient for explaining the thirty-seventh article
of the preliminaries, which could not have been refused. Certain it
is that the King of France was at that time in earnest to execute
the article of Philip's abdication, and therefore the expedients for
adjusting what related to this article would easily enough have been
found, if on our part there had been a real intention of concluding.
But there was no such intention, and the plan of those who meant to
prolong the war was established among the Allies as the plan which
ought to be followed whenever a peace came to be treated. The