entered upon the war with masculine intrepidity, and maintained it with heroic energy.  Efforts were made by the English ministry and the states-general to mediate between the kings of Sweden and Poland.  But Charles XII., enamored of glory, and bent on the one great object of his designs against Russia, would listen to nothing that might lead him from his immediate career of victory.  Many other of the northern princes were withheld, by various motives, from entering into the contest with France, and its whole brunt devolved on the original members of the Grand Alliance.  The generals who carried it on were Marlborough and Prince Eugene.  The former, at its commencement an earl, and subsequently raised to the dignity of duke, was declared generalissimo of the Dutch and English forces.  He was a man of most powerful genius, both as warrior and politician.  A pupil of the great Turenne, his exploits left those of his master in the shade.  No commander ever possessed in a greater degree the faculty of forming vast designs, and of carrying them into effect with consummate skill; no one displayed more coolness and courage in action, saw with a keener eye the errors of the enemy, or knew better how to profit by success.  He never laid siege to a town that he did not take, and never fought a battle that he did not gain.

Prince Eugene joined to the highest order of personal bravery a profound judgment for the grand movements of war, and a capacity for the most minute of the minor details on which their successful issue so often depends.  United in the same cause, these two great generals pursued their course without the least misunderstanding.  At the close of each of those successive campaigns, in which they reaped such a full harvest of renown, they retired together to The Hague, to arrange, in the profoundest secrecy, the plans for the next year’s operations, with one other person, who formed the great point of union between them, and completed a triumvirate without a parallel in the history of political affairs.  This third was Heinsius, one of those great men produced by the republic whose names are tantamount to the most detailed eulogium for talent and patriotism.  Every enterprise projected by the confederates was deliberately examined, rejected, or approved by these three associates, whose strict union of purpose, disowning all petty rivalry, formed the centre of counsels and the source of circumstances finally so fatal to France.

Louis XIV., now sixty years of age, could no longer himself command his armies, or probably did not wish to risk the reputation he was conscious of having gained by the advice and services of Turenne, Conde, and Luxemburg.  Louvois, too, was dead; and Colbert no longer managed his finances.  A council of rash and ignorant ministers hung like a dead weight on the talent of the generals who succeeded the great men above mentioned.  Favor and not merit too often decided promotion, and lavished command.  Vendome, Villars, Boufflers, and Berwick were set aside, to make way for Villeroi, Tallard, and Marsin, men every way inferior.