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The allies supported the
elector of Saxony; France supported a Pole, the father-in-law of Louis
XV, Stanislaus Leszczinski. France was defeated and Louis XV had to
content himself with securing the duchy of Lorraine for his father-in-
law. Thus, family ambition merely added to the economic distress of the
French people.
It was during the War of the Polish Election, however, that the Bourbon
king of Spain, perceiving his rivals engaged elsewhere, seized the
kingdom of the Two Sicilies from Austria and put a member of his own
family on its throne. Thus, in the eighteenth century, the Bourbons
dominated France, Spain, and southern Italy.
[Illustration: THE SPANISH SUCCESSION]
[Illustration: THE BOURBON FAMILY, 1589-1915 KINGS OF FRANCE, SPAIN,
AND NAPLES]

ADDITIONAL READING

GENERAL. Brief accounts: J. H. Robinson and C. A. Beard, _The
Development of Modern Europe_, Vol. I (1907), ch. i-iii; H. O. Wakeman,
_The Ascendancy of France, 1598-1715_ (1894), ch. ix-xi, xiv, xv; A. H.
Johnson, _The Age of the Enlightened Despot, 1660-1789_ (1910), ch i-
iii, vi; J.


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