the Silent, was made hereditary, though not royal. At independence it was occupied by his grandson William II. A young man with the Orange family truculence, he opposed the terms of independence at the Treaty of Münster because he believed there should be no dealing with Spain but only war to the bitter end. More significantly, he married the eldest daughter of Charles I of England, starting the succession by the Oranges of marriages to princesses of England that forged the connection with the English royal family in spite of past wars and future quarrels. Their son, William III of Orange, made the most noticeable of these alliances when he married Mary, daughter of James II of England. When her father was ousted in the overthrow called the Glorious Revolution of 1688, his Dutch son-in-law was invited to succeed him. Fitting neatly into the English numerical line, William accepted the invitation and became King of England as William III, ruling jointly with his consort as William and Mary. As England’s King and, in his Dutch capacity, as ally, William was the centerpiece and driving force of the European coalition to stem the advance of Louis XIV for the control of Europe. Louis, seeing him as his chief European enemy, hated him vengefully and set his mind to destroy him and regain the former French Netherlands along the frontier. In his insatiable lust for extending French territory, Louis XIV was the prime generator of the epidemic of wars that afflicted Europe during his mature reign (c. 1660–1715). His drive for supremacy, and the determination of his fellow-nations to contain him, was the source of ceaseless conflicts at every border, most famously represented by the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, and by its chief captain, the Duke of Marlborough. “But what they fought each other for, I could not well make out,” says the old grandfather in answer to the child’s question in Southey’s poem. With a greater perspective, we can suggest the answer. What they fought for was that bodiless yet weighty matter called the balance of power—essentially, that France should not gain supremacy in Europe by absorbing the dominions of the Hapsburg or Spanish empires.
Monarch since the age of five, Louis XIV had fed so long on autocratic command that his appetite grew by what it fed on and needed to be satisfied by continual increase. The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive. When exercised for the seizure of territory or suppression of liberties, it cannot be said to add to the welfare or happiness or improve the quality of life of those it rules, nor bring content to the ruler. What is it good for? As an inveterate activity of our species, it is largely a waste of time. Between Genghis Khan and Hitler, Louis XIV was its primary exponent, reflecting his era which, as Lord Acton, who had more than one thing to say about power, declared, was one of “abject idolatry of power, when laws both human and divine were made to yield to the intoxication of authority and the reign of will.” As the wars spread to the world outside Europe, Macaulay finds a different candidate for blame in Frederick the Great and his endless quarrels with Maria Theresa of Austria for possession of Silesia. A place that few could identify or locate, Silesia was like a magic stone that if rubbed, would cause wars to spring up. Frederick’s greed and deceit, wrote Macaulay, who teaches history through a gift for language, was “felt in lands where the name of Prussia was unknown,” where “in order that he [Frederick] might rob a neighbour … black men fought on the coast of Coromandel [India] and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.”
William III died childless in 1702, in a fall when his horse stumbled over a molehill, an obstacle that seems as if it should have some philosophical significance but, as far as can be seen, does not. William was succeeded in England by his wife’s sister Queen Anne, and in the Netherlands by a collateral cousin of the Nassau family designated William IV.