The war began in 1702 in Italy, and Marlborough opened his first campaign in Brabant also in that year.  For several succeeding years the confederates pursued a career of brilliant success, the details of which do not properly belong to this work.  A mere chronology of celebrated battles would be of little interest, and the pages of English history abound in records of those deeds.  Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, are names that speak for themselves, and tell their own tale of glory.  The utter humiliation of France was the result of events, in which the undying fame of England for inflexible perseverance and unbounded generosity was joined in the strictest union with that of Holland; and the impetuous valor of the worthy successor to the title of Prince of Orange was, on many occasions, particularly at Malplaquet, supported by the devotion and gallantry of the Dutch contingent in the allied armies.  The naval affairs of Holland offered nothing very remarkable.  The states had always a fleet ready to support the English in their enterprises; but no eminent admiral arose to rival the renown of Rooke, Byng, Benbow, and others of their allies.  The first of those admirals took Gibraltar, which has ever since remained in the possession of England.  The great earl of Peterborough carried on the war with splendid success in Portugal and Spain, supported occasionally by the English fleet under Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and that of Holland under Admirals Allemonde and Wapenaer.

During the progress of the war, the haughty and longtime imperial Louis was reduced to a state of humiliation that excited a compassion so profound as to prevent its own open expression—­the most galling of all sentiments to a proud mind.  In the year 1709 he solicited peace on terms of most abject submission.  The states-general, under the influence of the duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, rejected all his supplications, retorting unsparingly the insolent harshness with which he had formerly received similar proposals from them.  France, roused to renewed exertions by the insulting treatment experienced by her humiliated but still haughty despot, made prodigious but vain efforts to repair her ruinous losses.  In the following year Louis renewed his attempts to obtain some tolerable conditions; offering to renounce his grandson, and to comply with all the former demands of the confederates.  Even these overtures were rejected; Holland and England appearing satisfied with nothing short of—­what was after all impracticable—­the total destruction of the great power which Louis had so long proved to be incompatible with their welfare.