Before the end of July every thing was settled, as far as France and England were concerned.  Meanwhile it was known to the ministers assembled at Ryswick that Boufflers and Portland had repeatedly met in Brabant, and that they were negotiating in a most irregular and indecorous manner, without credentials, or mediation, or notes, or protocols, without counting each other’s steps, and without calling each other Excellency.  So barbarously ignorant were they of the rudiments of the noble science of diplomacy that they had very nearly accomplished the work of restoring peace to Christendom while walking up and down an alley under some apple trees.  The English and Dutch loudly applauded William’s prudence and decision.  He had cut the knot which the Congress had only twisted and tangled.  He had done in a month what all the formalists and pedants assembled at the Hague would not have done in ten years.  Nor were the French plenipotentiaries ill pleased.  “It is curious,” said Harlay, a man of wit and sense, “that, while the Ambassadors are making war, the generals should be making peace."810 But Spain preserved the same air of arrogant listlessness; and the ministers of the Emperor, forgetting apparently that their master had, a few months before, concluded a treaty of neutrality for Italy without consulting William, seemed to think it most extraordinary that William should presume to negotiate without consulting their master.  It became daily more evident that the Court of Vienna was bent on prolonging the war.  On the tenth of July the French ministers again proposed fair and honourable terms of peace, but added that, if those terms were not accepted by the twenty-first of August, the Most Christian King would not consider himself bound by his offer.811 William in vain exhorted his allies to be reasonable.  The senseless pride of one branch of the House of Austria and the selfish policy of the other were proof to all argument.  The twenty-first of August came and passed; the treaty had not been signed.

France was at liberty to raise her demands; and she did so.  For just at this time news arrived of two great blows which had fallen on Spain, one in the Old and one in the New World.  A French army, commanded by Vendome, had taken Barcelona.  A French squadron had stolen out of Brest, had eluded the allied fleets, had crossed the Atlantic, had sacked Carthagena, and had returned to France laden with treasure.812 The Spanish government passed at once from haughty apathy to abject terror, and was ready to accept any conditions which the conqueror might dictate.  The French plenipotentiaries announced to the Congress that their master was determined to keep Strasburg, and that, unless the terms which he had offered, thus modified, were accepted by the tenth of September, he should hold himself at liberty to insist on further modifications.  Never had the temper of William been more severely tried.  He was provoked by the perverseness of his allies; he was provoked by