The Greatest Story in the World, Period 3 by Horace G. Hutchinson

In the last, short, chapter I tried to tell the story of the early / years of the eighteenth century up to the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. / Principally it is the story of the humbling of France, and of the / checking of the ambition of Louis XIV. to unite in his descendants, / together with the Crown of France, all that was included in the / monarchy of Spain. That ambitious design was checked, and from now / onward we shall see that a great motive in the story is the / preservation of what became known as "the balance of power in / Europe"; so that no one nation should have too preponderant a / superiority over the rest.

The purpose of the present chapter is to carry forward the story to / the middle of the century, or, more precisely, to another very / important peace treaty, that between England and France, signed at / Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748.