Alpha Book

Two states also came into prominence
upon the continent of Europe--Prussia and Savoy--about which the new
German Empire and the unified Italian Kingdom were respectively to be
builded.
[Sidenote: Last Years of the Grand Monarch]
While France was shorn of none of her European conquests, nevertheless
the War of the Spanish Succession was exceedingly disastrous for that
country. In its wake came famine and pestilence, excessive imposts and
taxes, official debasement of the currency, and bankruptcy--a long line
of social and economic disorders. Louis XIV survived the treaty of
Utrecht but two years, and to such depths had his prestige and glory
fallen among his own people, that his corpse, as it passed along the
royal road to the stately tombs of the French kings at St. Denis, "was
saluted by the curses of a noisy crowd sitting in the wine-rooms,
celebrating his death by drinking more than their fill as a
compensation for having suffered too much from hunger during his
lifetime. Such was the coarse but true epitaph which popular opinion
accorded to the Grand Monarch.


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