Page:EB1911 - Volume 10.djvu/867

Rh His son, François Michel le Tellier, marquis de Louvois, had one sole merit, that of being his father’s pupil. A parvenu of the middle classes, he was brutal in his treatment of the lower orders and a sycophant in his behaviour towards the powerful; prodigiously active, ill-obeyed—as was the custom—but much dreaded. From 1677 onwards he did but finish perfecting Louis XIV.’s army in accordance with the suggestions left by his father, and made no fundamental changes: neither the definite abandonment of the feudal arrière-ban and of recruiting—sources of disorder and insubordination—nor the creation of the militia, which allowed the nation to penetrate into all the ranks of the army, nor the adoption of the gun with the bayonet,—which was to become the ultima ratio of peoples as the cannon was that of sovereigns—nor yet the uniform, intended to strengthen esprit de corps, were due to him. He maintained the institutions of the day, though seeking to diminish their abuse, and he perfected material details; but misfortune would have it that instead of remaining a great military administrator he flattered Louis XIV.’s megalomania, and thus caused his perdition.

Under his orders Turenne conquered Flanders (June-August 1667); and as the queen-mother of Spain would not give in, Condé occupied Franche Comté in fourteen days (February 1668). But Europe rose up in wrath; the United Provinces and England, jealous and disquieted

by this near neighbourhood, formed with Sweden the triple alliance of the Hague (January 1668), ostensibly to offer their mediation, though in reality to prevent the occupation of the Netherlands. Following the advice of Colbert and de Lionne, Louis XIV. appeared to accede, and by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle he preserved his conquests in Flanders (May 1668).

This peace was neither sufficient nor definite enough for Louis XIV.; and during four years he employed all his diplomacy to isolate the republic of the United Provinces in Europe, as he had done for Spain. He wanted to ruin this nation both in a military and an economic sense,

in order to annex to French Flanders the rest of the Catholic Netherlands allotted to him by a secret treaty for partitioning the Spanish possessions, signed with his brother-in-law the emperor Leopold on the 19th of January 1668. Colbert—very envious of Holland’s wealth—prepared the finances, le Tellier the army and de Lionne the alliances. In vain did the grand-pensionary of the province of Holland, Jan de Witt, offer concessions of all kinds; both England, bound by the secret treaty of Dover (January 1670), and France had need of this war. Avoiding the Spanish Netherlands, Louis XIV. effected the passage of the Rhine in June 1672; and the disarmed United Provinces, which had on their side only Brandenburg and Spain, were occupied in a few days. The brothers de Witt, in consequence of their fresh offer to treat at any price, were assassinated; the broken dykes of Muiden arrested the victorious march of Condé and Turenne; while the popular and military party, directed by the stadtholder William of Orange, took the upper hand and preached resistance to the death. “The war is over,” said the new secretary of state for foreign affairs, Arnauld de Pomponne; but Louvois and Louis XIV. said no. The latter wished not only to take possession of the Netherlands, which were to be given up to him with half of the United Provinces and their colonial empire; he wanted “to play the Charlemagne,” to re-establish Catholicism in that country as Philip II. had formerly attempted to do, to occupy all the territory as far as the Lech, and to exact an annual oath of fealty. But the patriotism and the religious fanaticism of the Dutch revolted against this insupportable tyranny. Power had passed from the hands of the burghers of Amsterdam into those of William of Orange, who on the 30th

of August 1673, profiting by the arrest of the army brought about by the inundation and by the fears of Europe, joined in a coalition with the emperor, the king of Spain, the duke of Lorraine, many of the princes of the Empire, and with England, now at last enlightened as to the projects of Catholic restoration which Louis XIV. was planning with Charles II. It was necessary to evacuate and then to settle with the United Provinces, and to turn against Spain. After fighting for five years against the whole of Europe by land and by sea, the efforts of Turenne, Condé and Duquesne culminated at Nijmwegen in fresh acquisitions (1678). Spain had to cede to Louis XIV., Franche Comté, Dunkirk and half of Flanders. This was another natural and glorious result of the treaty of the Pyrenees. The Spanish monarchy was disarmed.

But Louis XIV. had already manifested that unmeasured and restless passion for glory, that claim to be the exclusive arbiter of western Europe, that blind and narrow insistence, which were to bear out his motto “Seul contre tous.” Whilst all Europe was disarming he

kept his troops, and used peace as a means of conquest. Under orders from Colbert de Croissy the jurists came upon the scene once more, and their unjust decrees were sustained by force of arms. The Chambres de Réunion sought for and joined to the kingdom those lands which were not actually dependent upon his new conquests, but which had formerly been so: such as Saarbrücken, Deux Ponts (Zweibrücken) and Montbéliard in 1680, Strassburg and Casale in 1681. The power of the house of Habsburg was paralysed by an invasion of the Turks, and Louis XIV. sent 35,000 men into Belgium; while Luxemburg was occupied by Créqui and Vauban. The truce of Ratisbon (Regensburg) imposed upon Spain completed the work of the peace of Nijmwegen (1684); and thenceforward Louis XIV.’s terrified allies avoided his clutches while making ready to fight him.

This was the moment chosen by Louis XIV.’s implacable enemy, William of Orange, to resume the war. His surprise of Marshal Luxembourg near Mons, after the signature of the peace of Nijmwegen, had proved that in his eyes

war was the basis, of his authority in Holland and in Europe. His sole arm of support amidst all his allies was not the English monarchy, sold to Louis XIV., but Protestant England, jealous of France and uneasy about her independence. Being the husband of the duke of York’s daughter, he had an understanding in this country with Sunderland, Godolphin and Temple—a party whose success was retarded for several years by the intrigues of Shaftesbury. But Louis XIV. added mistake to mistake; and the revocation of the edict of Nantes added religious hatreds to political jealousies. At the same time the

Catholic powers responded by the league of Augsburg (July 1686) to his policy of unlimited aggrandisement. The unsuccessful attempts of Louis XIV. to force his partisan Cardinal Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg (see bombardment of Genoa; the humiliation of the pope in Rome itself by the marquis de Lavardin; the seizure of the Huguenot emigrants at Mannheim, and their imprisonment at Vincennes under pretext of a plot, precipitated the conflict. The question of the succession in the Palatinate, where Louis XIV. supported the claims of his sister-in-law the duchess of Orleans, gave the signal for a general war. The French armies devastated the Palatinate instead of attacking William of Orange in the Netherlands, leaving him free to disembark at Torbay, usurp the throne of England, and construct the Grand Alliance of 1689.
 * House) into the electoral see of Cologne; the

Far from reserving all his forces for an important struggle elsewhere, foreshadowed by the approaching death of Charles II. of Spain, Louis XIV., isolated in his turn, committed the error of wasting it for a space of ten years in a war of conquest, by which he alienated all that remained

to him of European sympathy. The French armies, notwithstanding the disappearance of Condé and Turenne, had still glorious days before them with Luxembourg at Fleurus, at Steenkirk and at Neerwinden (1690–1693), and with Catinat in Piedmont, at Staffarda, and at Marsaglia; but these successes alternated with reverses. Tourville’s fleet, victorious at Beachy Head, came to grief at La Hogue (1692); and though the expeditions to Ireland in favour of James II. were unsuccessful, thanks to the Huguenot Schomberg, Jean Bart and