Mississippi, and built a fort on the bay of Biloxi. Communication was now
established between the Gulf of Mexico and Quebec. The English, through
the agency of a New Jerseyman named Coxe, and a forged journal of
exploration by Hennepin, tried to get a foothold on the great river, but
the attempt was fruitless. Fruitless, likewise, were French efforts to
find gold, or, indeed, to establish a substantial colony themselves in the
feverish Louisiana region. Iberville caught the yellow plague and never
fully recovered; and the desert-girded fort at Mobile seemed a small
result for so much exertion.

In truth, on both sides of the Atlantic, peace existed nowhere except on
the paper signed at Ryswick; and in 1702 William saw that he must either
fight again, or submit to a union between France and Spain, Louis XIV.
becoming, by the death without issue of the Spanish king, sovereign of
both countries, to the upsetting of the European balance of power. Spain
had become a nonentity; she had no money, no navy, no commerce, no
manufactures, and a population reduced by emigration, and by the expulsion
of Jews and Moors, to about seven millions: nothing remained to her but
that "pride" of which she was always so solicitous, based as it was upon
her achievements as a robber, a murderer, a despot and a bigot. She now
had no king, which was the least of her losses, but gave her the power of
disturbing Europe by lapsing to the French Bourbons.

William himself was close to death, and died before the opening year of
the war was over. Louis was alive, and was to remain alive for thirteen
years longer; but he was sixty-four, was becoming weary and discouraged,
and had lost his ministers and generals. On the English side was
Marlborough; and the battle of Blenheim, not to speak of the European
combination against France, showed how the game was going. But the peace
of Utrecht in 1713, though it lasted thirty years, was not based on