Chapter XX: Louis Xiv, Spain, and Holland (2)

The 10th of June he arrived before Maestricht. He had reserved for himself the chief command, which he wished to share with no one. But Vauban was with him and alone conducted and directed the work of approach. This was begun on the 17th and on the 29th the miner was under the town. The next day the garrison, although strong and well commanded, was obliged to capitulate.

If the taking of Maestricht was a brilliant success, the king really sacrificed to it the campaign in the Netherlands, which had an unfortunate ending. The Anglo-French fleet had, on its side, appeared in the arena. It numbered 90 ships of the line of which 30 were French. Parliament had voted a subsidy, but as it suspected King Charles’ project of becoming a Catholic, it had made a condition that a declaration of conformity to the Anglican church should be imposed upon all officers of the crown. The duke of York was unwilling to submit to the obligation of the “test” and had been dismissed from the admiralty. De Ruyter took command of the Dutch fleet with Tromp second in command, and advanced against the enemy, giving two battles on the 7th and 14th of June which remained undecided. The Anglo-French fleet having put back into the Thames for repairs embarked the troops under Schomberg’s command and set sail for the shores of the Netherlands. De Ruyter on the 21st of August gave a more decisive battle, in that it prevented the landing of the forces, and compelled the fleet to retire.

The Dutch, emboldened by this success, raised little by little their tone and their claims at the congress of Cologne. They cut down greatly the concessions they were offering France and reduced to almost nothing those they consented to grant the king of England, the elector of Cologne, and the bishop of Münster. They intended to make no sacrifice essential to keeping their rank as a great power. Louis XIV held out for a long time and obtained nothing; finally, on the 30th of September, he reduced his claims to Aire, St. Omer, Cambray, Ypres, and their dependencies and the two castellanies of Bailleul and Cassel. As these places belonged to Spain, he demanded that Spain should be indemnified by the United Provinces, which would have recovered all that they had lost. This proposition was rejected like the others.

Holland was now counting on more important alliances than those of 1672. She no longer feared England, where the reawakening of the Protestant spirit would reduce Charles II to powerlessness. She had signed on the 30th of August three treaties, with Spain, with Austria, and with the duke of Lorraine. Spain had not declared war on Louis XIV, as she did not wish to enter the arena except with a European coalition; but now, having procured resources by extraordinary taxation and having succeeded in overcoming the irresolution of the court of Vienna, she made a twenty-five-years’ treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with the republic, promising to furnish 8,000 men.

Austria, assured of Spain and the military co-operation of several German states, among others Saxony, resolved to recommence her preceding campaign. She made a point of war of Turenne’s presence on the right bank of the Rhine and demanded the restitution of the places of the empire, that of Lorraine for Duke Charles IV, and the abandonment of France’s claims to the fiefs of Alsace and the Three Bishoprics. On Louis XIV’s refusal, Leopold addressed a declaration to the diet of Ratisbon, making known his intentions, and signed with Holland a ten-years’ treaty of offensive and defensive alliance, enjoining himself for a subsidy to furnish 30,000 men. As for the duke of Lorraine, he put, on consideration of a subsidy, his sword and his troops at the service of the Dutch. Thus the latter were paying for the war, and the war under these conditions was changing its character, becoming European, and little by little withdrawing from their territory.

Louis XIV recalled Condé to Flanders, where he left him with but few troops. He gave Luxemburg the supreme command of the Dutch garrisons, and he planned himself to lead the army which had taken Maestricht to the Rhine, to occupy the bridges, and to support Turenne. Up to the last minute he refused to believe in the coalition, but when he saw it an accomplished fact he resolved to face it. Treves was occupied August 26th; Louis XIV then visited Alsace and Lorraine, strengthening fortifications without taking into consideration the privileges the towns enjoyed from the Treaty of Münster. Montecuculi, at the head of the imperials, left Bohemia in September and marched towards the Rhine. Turenne tried without success to stop him at the Tauber and at the crossing of the Main. He turned north, crossed the Rhine on a bridge of boats near Mainz, and finally marched upon Bonn, before which he joined the 25,000 Spanish and Dutch troops led by the prince of Orange, at the end of October.

Orange had taken the offensive, and captured Naerden in six days (September), crossed the Spanish Netherlands, where Condé had not sufficient force to stop him, and gained the electorate of Cologne, to join hands with the imperials. [This juncture of imperial and Dutch troops constituted an important success for the coalition.] United they attacked Bonn and took it on November 12th.

The taking of Bonn detached Germany from Louis XIV. Louvois had already a few days before given Luxemburg orders to evacuate Utrecht and the more distant places, keeping only those on the Maas, Waal, and Rhine, to destroy as far as possible abandoned fortifications, to reduce garrisons to 20,000, and to send home 30,000; but these orders took time to execute, and their execution, being compulsory, was a fresh subject of triumph for Holland and Europe.

The winter stopped hostilities, without ending the reverses; for Louis XIV now saw himself abandoned by England and the whole empire aroused against him.[b]

_Defection of England and the Imperial Allies (1674 A.D.)_

[Sidenote: [1674-1675 A.D.]]

The Protestant inquietude of the English parliament had not yielded to the influence of the marquis de Ruvigny, French ambassador to London, and the nation wanted peace with the Dutch. Charles II yielded in appearance at least to the wishes of his people. On February 21st, 1674, he went to parliament to announce to the two houses that he had concluded with the United Provinces a prompt, honourable, and, he hoped, durable peace, as they had asked for. At the same time he wrote to Louis XIV asking him to pity rather than accuse him of a consent that had been dragged from him. The English and Irish regiments remained, without remark, in the service of France, and the king did not withdraw his subsidy from his royal pensioner.

Thus, link by link, the chain of alliance which Louis XIV had cast around Holland was coming apart. In her turn France was finding herself alone. The congress of Cologne had dissolved. None of the belligerents was looking for peace.[g]

The bishop of Münster, who could no longer count on the help of the French, had already secretly approached the emperor, and in April, 1674, agreed to defend by arms the decisions of the diet of Ratisbon, and restore all that he had taken from the Dutch. The electors of Treves and Mainz concluded an offensive pact with the emperor. So did the elector palatine, that eternal enemy of Austria. As early as January, Denmark, seeing Sweden inclined towards France, had thrown herself on the side of the emperor. The dukes of Brunswick and Lüneburg promised auxiliaries to Leopold for a subsidy. In May the elector of Cologne treated with the United Provinces, and then gave them back the places he had taken. Like the king of England, in abandoning France he at least left the soldiers he had furnished. On the 28th of May the Germanic diet finally pronounced against France and declared that the emperor’s war was a war of the empire. The great work of French politics was destroyed; Austria had regained, thanks to Louis XIV’s excesses, the supremacy and the direction of Germany against France.[c]

OPERATIONS IN FRANCHE-COMTÉ; TURENNE IN ALSACE (1674-1675 A.D.)

With the war thus become European, Louis XIV changed its object with a decision that did him honour. He abandoned Holland, which he was not strong enough to retain, and turned all his forces against Spain, the weakest of the states of the league. With 20,000 men and Vauban, he took the direction of Franche-Comté. The second conquest was almost as rapid as the first; Besançon was taken in nine days, and the entire province in six weeks (May, 1674).

The allies had planned for this year a double and formidable invasion of France by way of Lorraine and through the Netherlands. Turenne was to stop the one, Condé the other. But the enemy was so slow in beginning operations that the conquest of Franche-Comté was finished before they had decided on their movements. Turenne was thus enabled to take the offensive: he crossed the Rhine at Philippsburg with 20,000 men, destroyed with fire the whole Palatinate in order to prevent the enemy from subsisting there, and fought a number of unimportant engagements at Sinsheim and at Ladenburg in July, 1674, where he showed resources of tactics unheard of until then.[d] To this day numberless ruins of castles along the Rhine bear witness to the savage work of Turenne.[a]

The imperials numbered 40,000 men. Moreover it was known that the elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William, was coming with all haste at the head of 20,000 men to assist Bournonville [who replaced Montecuculi, who was ill, in the command of the imperial troops], and to crush the French by superiority of numbers. This juncture once effected, the French would be done for. Already in Germany they spoke of nothing less than marching on Paris itself. Many princesses accompanied the elector, saying they would “make the acquaintance of the French ladies, to learn manners from this polite nation.”

Fortunately Turenne was on the watch. To prevent the two armies joining, he began by attacking that which was nearer. He approached Bournonville by a forced march of forty hours, and, without even giving his soldiers time to rest, fell on the surprised imperialists at Enzheim and forced them to retire under the walls of Strasburg in the greatest disorder (October 4th, 1674). It was a great victory, but the numerical inferiority of his troops hindered his reaping its full fruits. Ten days after this victory the elector of Brandenburg in his turn passed the Kehl bridge and joined his 20,000 men to Bournonville’s army. Turenne received scarcely sufficient reinforcements to repair his losses at Enzheim. The situation became more and more serious. How could it be thought that the genius of a single man could compensate for such an overwhelming disparity of forces--how believe that 20,000 Frenchmen could hold their own against 60,000 Germans? No one doubted that the nation would soon be swallowed up in defeat. Fear gained ground in the northeast provinces; peasants abandoned their fields and flocked into the towns to seek shelter from the enemy. Even at Paris great anxiety prevailed. It seemed as if the capital of France would soon be at the mercy of the German army.

Alsace comprises the country between the Rhine and the Vosges, forming, from Hüningen or Belfort at the south, to Weissenburg on the Lauter at the north, a long band of territory of almost constant breadth. The river and mountain which serve for limits for this province in the east and west run nearly parallel one with the other. The Vosges separate Alsace from Lorraine. After the juncture of the two armies near Strasburg on the 14th of October, Turenne retired slowly in good order in the direction of the defiles which assured communication between Alsace and Lorraine. The Germans followed the same route in this retrograde march. By this time November had arrived with its cold and snow. The German generals, reassured by Turenne’s retreat, thought the campaign over. So they postponed military operations until the following spring, as well as the invasion of Lorraine or Franche-Comté, and thought of wintering quietly in Alsace. To get more supplies, they spread their troops all through the province and installed them in quarters separated one from the other. Seventy thousand imperials or Brandenburgers thus took up quarters from Strasburg to Belfort in upper and lower Alsace. Frederick William installed himself at Colmar, where his wife and court joined him. The only thought now was how to speed the cold and rainy season by the help of _fêtes_.

Meanwhile Turenne was quietly marching on Lorraine with his troops. On the 29th of November the last French soldier left Alsace by the defile of Lützelstein, in the north of Zabern. The news reached Paris. The court murmured; Louvois let loose his wrath against the marshal who had failed to save Alsace; the people, who had had a momentary hope after the success at Enzheim, gave themselves up again to despair.

Turenne, not condescending to reassure public opinion--an opinion clearly against him--began to put into execution the admirable plan he had conceived. He divided his army into many detachments, placed them under the direction of experienced officers, to whom his only instructions were that they should defile from north to south along the western slopes of the Vosges; and reunite on a given day in the neighbourhood of Belfort. Thus, while the enemy dispersed itself imprudently in its winter quarters, the French army, concealing its intention by means of the Vosges chain, concentrated itself in upper Alsace. Issuing from the province near Zabern in the north, it re-entered at forty leagues from there, near Belfort in the south. Success complete, unheard of, crowned this splendid stroke of genius. Such was the devotion of the French soldiers to their chief that they accepted without murmuring the necessity of marching in the depths of winter, in a country without roads, covered with snow and intersected with torrents. From the 5th to the 27th of December, the army, at the cost of incredible fatigue, marched from Lützelstein to the pass of Belfort. There the marshal reassumed in person the command of the troops, which he had divided up to facilitate the march. On the 29th of December he came upon the first body of the enemy, near Mülhausen, and destroyed it. Horrified at this sudden appearance, in upper Alsace, of an army they had thought to be encamped in Lorraine, near Nancy or Metz, the German generals realised the mistake they had made in dispersing their forces. They tried to repair the fault by sending orders for concentration in every direction.

It was too late. Turenne advanced with lightning speed. From Mülhausen, the place of his first victory, he went northwards. Near Colmar, by Türkheim, the imperials showed fight. He attacked them furiously on the 5th of January, 1675, and put them to flight. The remnant of the enemy retired on Schlettstadt. The marshal pursued them without giving them any rest. From Schlettstadt he pursued them at the sword’s point to Strasburg, making an immense number of prisoners and carrying off cannon and standards. On the 11th of January the small number of Germans who had not been put _hors de combat_, killed, or taken, during this terrible campaign, recrossed the bridge of Kehl in the greatest disorder (1675). Alsace was delivered. A formidable invasion was spared to France.[k]

This campaign prepared with such secrecy, executed with an adroitness so prudent, was ended in less than six weeks, and excited the enthusiasm of the whole of France; Louis XIV wrote to the marshal: “I hope you will soon return, as I am most impatient to see you to demonstrate to you by word of mouth how much I appreciate the great and important services you have rendered me, in the last victory you have gained over my enemies.” On the entire route the inhabitants whom Turenne had saved from the ravages of war turned out filled with admiration and gratitude, so that his return was a march of triumph until he reached St. Germain.

CONDÉ IN THE NETHERLANDS

While Turenne was victorious in foiling the invasion from the east, Condé arrested that of the north. He prevented 90,000 Spaniards and Dutch from invading Champagne. He entrenched himself at Charleroi, with the Sambre behind him, in a position where the prince of Orange dared not attack him. Condé, who did not voluntarily prolong the war of defence, pursued the enemy to his retreat and attacked the rearguard at Seneffe, near Mons (August, 1674), routing it completely, broke through the centre, and attacked and threw into disorder the remainder of the army, which was drawn up in a very strong position. When night came, he had had three horses shot under him, and the victory was still undecided. “He now,” says an eye-witness, La Fare,[l] “ordered new battalions to advance and cannon to be brought forward to attack the enemy at daybreak. All who heard this order trembled, and it was very evident that he was the only one who still desired to continue the battle.” The following day, the two armies separated with an equal loss of from seven to eight thousand men.

The prince of Orange, in order to prove that he had not been defeated, besieged Oudenarde. Condé proved himself the victor, and forced him to abandon this enterprise; but Grave, the last of the French conquests in Holland, opened its gates. Chamilly had defended it ninety-three days, and caused the loss of 16,000 men to the assailants.

LAST CAMPAIGNS OF TURENNE AND CONDÉ (1675 A.D.)

In the early summer (June, 1675) Turenne returned at the head of his army of the Rhine. He moved into the Palatinate. The emperor opposed him with Montecuculi, who passed for a consummate tactician. They took six weeks to follow and observe each other, and their reputations which had seemed to have reached their apogee were still more augmented by these actions. Finally they decided to come to battle near the village of Salzbach in a place chosen by Turenne; where he believed himself certain of victory, when the marshal on examining the position of a battery was struck by a stray shot, which also tore off the arm of Saint-Hilaire, lieutenant-general of the army (July 27th, 1675). The latter’s son burst into tears. “It is not for me that you should weep,” said Saint-Hilaire to him, “but for this great man.” Turenne’s death was truly a national calamity. Louis XIV, in order to show honour to the greatest military leader of his century, had him interred at St. Denis, in the royal sepulchre. But in time, the memory of the services of Turenne grew fainter, at least at court, and his reputation appeared overestimated. In 1710 in the midst of the distress of the War of the Succession, his family built a mausoleum for him in the chapel of St. Eustace. By order of the king, the ornamentations and armorial bearings were destroyed, under the pretext that they were not suitable to such a sacred spot.

[Sidenote: [1675-1676 A.D.]]

The death of Turenne undid the whole result of an able campaign. The French, discouraged and seemingly seized with a panic of terror, fled in the direction of the Rhine. Montecuculi penetrated into Alsace by the bridge of Strasburg. At the same time the duke of Lorraine, Charles IV, hastened to besiege the city of Treves with 20,000 men. Créqui tried to come to his assistance, but was beaten at Consarbrück. He rushed into the town, and after several weeks of heroic defence was obliged to capitulate through the cowardice of the garrison (September, 1675). “His misfortune,” says Condé, “made him a great general.” Condé was right.

After the death of Turenne, Condé was sent to Alsace to arrest the progress of Montecuculi and to reanimate the confidence of the troops. He forced the imperials to raise the sieges of Zabern and Hagenau, and to recross the Rhine. This was his last victory; he never again appeared at the head of the armies, but retired to Chantilly, where he lived thereafter in the society of men of letters and philosophers. During the campaign in Holland, he sought an interview with Spinoza, and when Malebranche published his _Recherche de la vérité_ he sought to meet the author. He enjoyed holding erudite conversations as much as fighting battles, taking part in them with intelligence, with ardour, and sometimes, says La Fontaine, took reason, like victory, by the throat! If in conversations on literature he was sustaining a good cause he spoke with much grace and gentleness, but if he upheld a bad one it was not wise to contradict him. Boileau was once so astonished, relates Louis Racine, by the fire of his eyes in a dispute of that nature, that he prudently yielded, and said in a low voice to his neighbour, “From now on I shall always agree with the prince whenever he is in the wrong.” Bossuet says, “What a charming picture is presented to us in the avenues of Chantilly, where the fountains play unceasingly by day and by night, and our greatest poets debate with one of our greatest warriors.”

EVENTS OF 1676; AFFAIRS IN SICILY

In the following year (1676) the same campaign of sieges of which Louis was so fond was recommenced. Condé and Bouchain were taken; Maestricht, besieged by the prince of Orange, was delivered; but the Germans re-entered Philippsburg, which Fay defended three months and did not give up until he ran out of powder. An unexpected victory, however, consoled France for these slight successes and reverses. The inhabitants of Messina, in Sicily, revolting against Spain, had placed themselves under the protection of Louis XIV in 1675. He sent them a fleet commanded by the duke de Vivonne, brother of Madame de Montespan, who had Duquesne under him. This illustrious sailor, born at Dieppe in 1610, had begun life as a privateer and pirate; after which he had entered the service of Sweden, where he acquired some reputation. Returning to France in order to enter the royal navy, he passed through all grades, became lieutenant-general, but could not rise any higher as he was a Protestant. On the coasts of Sicily his adversaries were De Ruyter and the Spanish. The first battle fought near the island of Stromboli was undecided (1676); a second combat off Syracuse was a complete victory; De Ruyter was killed there.

Louis XIV ordered military honours to be paid by all French ports to the vessel which transported to Holland the remains of that great naval hero. Finally Duquesne, Vivonne, and Tourville, in a last encounter at Palermo, crushed the hostile fleets. France had for a time the control of the Mediterranean (1676).

[Sidenote: [1676-1678 A.D.]]

The Dutch had taken Cayenne in that same year, and ravaged the French Antilles. The vice-admiral D’Estrées armed, at his own expense, eight ships with which the king intrusted him, in consideration of reserving half the prizes. He retook Cayenne and destroyed ten ships of the enemy in the harbour of Tobago where they had thought themselves to be in security. In 1678 he took the island itself and all the Dutch factories in Senegal. The French flag now floated over the Atlantic as it did over the Mediterranean.[d]

In spite of the sufferings of his kingdom Louis XIV persisted in 1676 in the conditions he wished to impose on England and the empire, and which these two powers were unwilling to accept. He was still flattering himself over being able to keep England in the neutrality [she had committed herself to by the treaty of peace with Holland in 1674]. England’s neutrality was indeed what concerned him most. He gave money to Charles II and gave orders to the ambassadors, Ruvigny and Courtin, to distribute more money, among such ministers, courtiers, and members of parliament as they could win over. But the English desired that, at any price, Louis should return his conquests or that Charles II should join the Dutch to crush him. Parliament demanded the recall of those English troops which Churchill was commanding in the army of the Rhine.

Charles himself was only desirous of satisfying public opinion, and of conciliating that satisfaction with what he had promised Louis. He believed he would do this by assuming the rôle of a mediator. He started the idea of a congress that it was difficult for the powers to reject, and which was particularly pleasing to Holland, overcome by the burden of maritime war. During the preliminary negotiations of the congress, for which the town of Nimeguen was chosen, Charles signed a new secret treaty with Louis XIV (February, 1676), the two kings reciprocally engaging to make no separate peace with the Dutch. Louis XIV on his side overwhelmed the prince of Orange with offers that would detach him from Spain. All was useless.

The campaign of 1677 was preceded like that of 1676 by several attempts at negotiations in England and Holland. Courtin, who had replaced Ruvigny in England, wrote to Louis XIV that it was absolutely necessary to detach the prince of Orange from his allies, which might be accomplished by the intervention of Charles II. In consequence the king renewed to Orange and the states-general his former offers. He proposed to abandon the places necessary to cover Ghent and Brussels, to make a commercial treaty with Holland, and to conclude with her an eight years’ truce which would give Spain the time to reflect. If, on the expiration of the delay, Spain persisted in sustaining other claims, France and Holland would divide the Netherlands between them. William did not absolutely repel these conditions, but replied that he could not abandon his allies without dishonour.

In order to have some faith placed in his pretended moderation, Louis signed with Charles II, on February 24th, a commercial treaty which offered some advantage to the English. Charles II insisted that France should make peace. He represented that Holland would not separate from her allies, that in the end he would be obliged to uphold her, and that he could not continually go against the sentiments and interests of his subjects.

The enterprises in Sicily had brought England’s uneasiness to a climax. She already saw the ruin of her trade with the Levant, and Charles II proposed a project of peace, the basis of which was that France should keep Franche-Comté and a part of the places conquered in the Netherlands; that she should grant the Dutch a barrier and a commercial treaty; that she should indemnify the duke of Lorraine and abandon Sicily; but it remained to come to an understanding on a number of particular points and on the determination of the places that should remain to Louis XIV. The latter wished to give up only three--Charleroi, Ath, Oudenarde; and he demanded that Spain should cede him Ypres, Charlemont, and Luxemburg in exchange. He was all the more obstinate because he knew the states-general were tired of war and the damage inflicted upon commerce. He hoped to separate them from the prince of Orange, through the establishment of a barrier and some tariff concessions, but these concessions were so weak that the Dutch only laughed at them. As for the congress of Nimeguen, where the discussion of the propositions between the plenipotentiaries of the various countries began on the 6th of May, 1677, it would necessarily take too much time to put a stop to military events.[b]

CAMPAIGN OF 1677; NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE

Créqui had succeeded Turenne in Germany, Luxemburg replaced Condé in the Netherlands. The former made amends for his defeat at Consarbrück by a campaign worthy of Turenne. By a succession of quick marches, which kept him constantly between the enemy and the French frontier, he covered Alsace and Lorraine against an adversary superior in numbers, defeated him at Kochersberg, between Strasburg and Zabern (October 7th, 1677), and took Freiburg from him, thus taking the war to the right bank of the Rhine. Luxemburg, who resembled more the victor of Rocroi, captured Valenciennes in conjunction with the king, where the musketeers raised formidable works in broad daylight, then Cambray, and with Monsieur, against the prince of Orange, fought the battle of Cassel, near St. Omer, which capitulated (April, 1677).[d]

The coalition was now seriously shaken. Orange was everywhere accused of small ability for leadership. At Brussels and at Ghent the people broke loose against the Dutch. Even in Holland the peace party began to be demonstrative. Louis XIV reduced his tariff by half, in October, 1677, in order to stimulate the pacific desires of the Dutch. The latter, exhausted and tired of continually paying useless subsidies to their allies, complained that the Spaniards were always behindhand in fulfilling their engagements, that the Germans never left Germany, and that the prince of Orange never found provisions or stores in Belgium.

William and his partisans replied to these complaints that the honour of the country was at stake, that the United Provinces could not abandon the allies to whom they owed their salvation, and he had still one resource. This was to force England, which according to him was alone capable of doing it, to call a halt to the armies of Louis XIV. He went to London, where Charles II not only authorised but desired his presence, believing that it would be a convincing response to the defiances and murmurs of the nation. Scarcely had the prince arrived when he asked the hand of Mary, daughter of the duke of York. The king, who had long judged this alliance necessary, hastened to grant it. The marriage was celebrated on the 15th of November.

Charles II believed that Louis XIV would now raise no obstacle to accepting the proposals of peace: but he was mistaken--Louis rejected them, as going too far beyond those he had proposed himself, and which he already considered too moderate. The other powers, Spain and the empire, also declined them and preferred to continue the war. Charles II, having signed a treaty with the states-general on January 10th, 1678, found himself compelled to go further than he wished. He was obliged to recall the English troops serving in the French army and to prepare armaments.

Louis XIV took little notice of these demonstrations, strengthened the remainder of his armies, and decided to strike a great blow in the Netherlands, where Vauban had just retaken St. Ghislain in the depths of winter.

At the opening of the campaign of 1678, France could count on 219,000 men under arms, of whom half, it is true, were only fit for garrison service. Louvois was resolved to capture Ghent, and deceived the enemy by false demonstrations on other places, which led them to reduce the garrison at Ghent. When this had been done, he suddenly appeared under the walls of the town on the 1st of March. In less than two days 70,000 men were assembled and the siege was begun. Louis XIV, who had gone on a journey to Metz and the borders of the Maas to outwit the Spaniards, suddenly changed his direction and arrived on the 4th. The queen and the court followed closely, but stopped at Tournay. Four marshals, Humières, Luxemburg, Schomberg, and Lorges, assisted the king, Vauban pressed the works. The town, in spite of its siege and the number of watercourses and canals protecting it, was promptly surrounded. The 500 men forming the garrison declined to defend it. It surrendered the 9th, and on the 11th the castle capitulated. The army now marched upon Ypres, which it took on the 25th after eight days of entrenchment and in spite of a bloody resistance. The king, after this rapid campaign and its two important acquisitions, returned to St. Germain on the 7th of April.

Louis XIV now believed himself secure in imposing his conditions. He sent them the 9th of April to Nimeguen and to London: they were the same as before the taking of Ghent and Ypres. He allowed his plenipotentiary a month to have them accepted, but this term was further extended to the 10th of August. The latest successes of the French had had the effect that Louis XIV hoped for, that of strengthening the peace party in Holland. Amsterdam and the large towns refused to prolong these sacrifices. Charles II hastened to approve the French conditions. The Dutch, ready to agree to Louis’ commercial stipulations, did not find his proposed restitution of places sufficient to form such an efficient barrier that they could oblige Spain to accept. Suddenly Villa-Hermosa (successor of Monterey in the governorship of the Spanish Netherlands) received the order from his court to lay down his arms. The Madrid cabinet, divided and exhausted, had resigned itself to the abandonment of that which had been lost, from fear of losing that which was still retained. This decision relieved the states of Holland of their last scruples. Louis XIV then put forward a condition which was nearly the ruin of everything. He declared that, in engaging to restore Maestricht and the other places on the Maas of which he was master, he intended to maintain garrisons in them until his ally Sweden should have recovered that which Denmark and Brandenburg had taken from her. This exigence aroused the Spaniards, disconcerted the Dutch, exasperated the English, and drove Charles II to despair. They gave up all hope of ending the war. On July 26th, Charles II signed a treaty of defensive alliance with the states-general.

Louis XIV realised the necessity of getting out of this hole, and as he did not wish to recede, he engaged Sweden to ask the withdrawal of this condition, which Charles XI generously did. The Dutch plenipotentiaries at Nimeguen, Van Beverningk, Odyk, and Van Haren asked on August 7th for a conference with the French plenipotentiaries, D’Estrades, D’Avaux, and Colbert. They debated together for more than twenty-four hours, and finally, before midnight on the 10th, they signed a treaty of peace and a treaty of commerce with France.[138]

LOUIS XIV SETTLES WITH THE COALITION (1678-1679 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1678-1679 A.D.]]

The first treaty returned to the states-general Maestricht and the little towns which Louis XIV had kept in the vicinity and in Limburg, on sole condition that free exercise of the Catholic religion should be allowed. The second re-established freedom of commerce and navigation between the two peoples.

D’Estrades brought in person the news of the treaty to Marshal de Luxemburg, encamped on the plateau of Casteaux not far from Mons, which a detachment of his troops was blockading. The prince of Orange, who had come face to face with the French army with almost equal forces (45,000 men), knew of the Peace of Nimeguen, but had not yet received official notice. He began a sharp attack upon Luxemburg, and the battle raged for six hours around the abbey of St. Denis. It was a hard fight. A regiment of French refugees fighting under the Dutch flag was literally hacked to pieces. The day remained undecisive; and on the next the courier announcing the peace arrived in the Dutch camp, and the two armies separated.

The Dutch having signed the peace were assailed with violent recriminations on the part of their German allies, especially the elector of Brandenburg, the king of Denmark, and the bishop of Münster. But the great point for them was to obtain the definite adhesion of Spain. The latter country, exhausted and ill-governed, had long shown a great repugnance to making peace. But as soon as Charles II had attained the age of fourteen, his majority, the great personages of the kingdom forced the queen to drive Valenzuela out; then they compelled her to accept exile herself. Don John took the title of prime minister and seized the government (June 20th, 1677). As the emperor insisted on the re-establishment of his sister, Maria Anna, Don John, almost embroiled with the court of Vienna, was compelled to lend his ear to pacific propositions.

The treaty between France and the court of Madrid was finally signed September 17th, 1678. Louis XIV restituted Courtrai, Oudenarde, Ath, and Charleroi, which the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had given him; also Binche, St. Ghislain, Ghent Leuw, and Puigcerda in Catalonia, which Marshal de Navailles had taken that same year. On his side he retained with definite title St. Omer, Cassel, Aire, Bailleul, Poperinghe, Ypres, Wervicq, Warneton, Cambray, Bouchain, Valenciennes, Condé, Bavay, Mauberge, and the whole of Franche-Comté. The treaty of 1668 had in reality only been a truce, giving France advance posts in the heart of Belgium and leaving Spain with other places, isolated spots in the midst of French possessions, particularly on the borders of the Schelde. The treaty of 1678 established a much more regular border, by assuring France a series of strongholds bound one to the other, and closing all avenues to the kingdom from Dunkirk to the Maas, and leaving the Spanish Netherlands another series of places which offered the same advantages though in a less degree. The Treaty of Nimeguen was, in spite of a few restitutions demanded by Europe as a guarantee of peace, one of the most glorious and most advantageous that France had ever signed.

The emperor and the empire remained to be reckoned with. They were left out of the Dutch and Spanish treaties. They began by protesting and continuing the war. The imperial army, without stopping at the negotiations of Nimeguen, undertook, under the duke of Lorraine, to retake Freiburg in Breisgau, and to penetrate into Alsace. In May it appeared on the Rhine between Offenburg and Wilstett. Créqui was again charged with protecting Freiburg; and conducted a campaign which was as fortunate as it was able, and which placed a seal upon his fame. The Germans, reduced to powerlessness at every turn, quickly ended the campaign. The emperor, abandoned by the Dutch and embroiled with the Spaniards, ended by desiring peace. The possession of Philippsburg indemnified him for the loss of Strasburg. The princes of the empire, with the exception of a few in the north, refused to pursue the now objectless war. The subsidies of Spain and Holland had ceased. Leopold consented to a treaty which was signed January 15th, 1679, between the emperor, the empire, and France. The whole difficulty centred around the allies, whom Austria refused to abandon and for whom she demanded satisfaction. The king made a few concessions; but he would not give up Lorraine to Duke Charles except in retaining Nancy and four military routes. The duke rejected these conditions. Louis XIV also reserved to himself the right of passage through eight towns of the empire, to join the duchy of Cleves, and to continue the struggle with the elector of Brandenburg.

The imperial princes, interested in keeping their conquests over the Swedes, were the only ones who would not lay down their arms. They did not have to wait long to see themselves forced to do so, for Louis XIV was not willing at any price to abandon unfortunate allies whose actions had been of service to him. Pecuniary indemnity served to interest the dukes of Brunswick, Lüneburg, and the bishop of Münster. The elector of Brandenburg refused this sort of compensation. Créqui entered the duchy of Cleves, occupied the county of Mark, [the two possessions of the elector by the Rhine] and the town of Lippstadt beyond the Rhine, and advanced as far as the Weser, whose passage he forced June 30th, near Minden. The elector, incapable of continuing this unequal struggle, had on the eve of that day made his submission. His envoy signed at St. Germain a treaty by which he restored to the Swedes that which he had taken from them, stipulating a rectification of the Pomeranian frontier, and an indemnity of 300,000 crowns which France paid. The king of Denmark was the last to treat. He restored the towns he had taken, but received no pecuniary indemnity. These successive treaties, consequent upon those of Nimeguen, re-established things in Germany almost upon the footing of the Treaty of Westphalia.

[Sidenote: [1680 A.D.]]

All the powers had been weakened in the eight years’ war. Holland alone escaped almost intact from the storm which had threatened to destroy her. As for Louis XIV, he emerged from the struggle aggrandised and triumphant. He triumphed all the more in that he owed nothing to anyone--not even to the king of England, who, having shown himself equally incapable of making war or peace, now raised against himself as much scorn in France as hatred in his own state. If France had suffered considerably from a prolonged struggle which demanded enormous sacrifices, she had displayed resources superior to those of any other power, although Holland had shown herself the richer in proportion. France had struggled single-handed against the empire. The king’s proud device, “_Nec pluribus impar_,” was justified. The courtiers and the soldiers were unanimous in granting him the title of Louis the Great; an equestrian statue representing him in the costume of a Roman emperor was raised a short time after in Paris in a square which was called the Place des Victoirés.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[127] [See Volumes X and XIII.]

[128] [Richelieu’s interference in Portuguese affairs will be recalled.]

[129] [The price paid was five millions.]

[130] [These 4,000 veterans under Marshal de Schomberg assisted in 1665, by the battle of Villaviciosa, to settle the house of Braganza on its throne.]

[131] [Louis aided the Venetians to defend Crete. Between 1665 and 1669 more than fifty thousand men went there at different times.[d]]

[132] [In 1650 a violent attempt of the young William II of Nassau against the states-general had failed and the stadholder died a few months after, leaving an unborn son who was to become the famous William III. The stadholdership had been abolished and the grand pensionary of the province of Holland became the first personage of the United Provinces, like the president of the states-general. Jan de Witt had been filling these high functions since 1653. Elected at the age of twenty-five, he showed at once the ripeness of a great statesman and the devotion of a great citizen. With a mind at once practical and philosophic, loving letters and the arts as much as affairs, a wise administrator and skilful diplomat, he was not unlike the last great men of Greece; and a contemporary--a very competent judge, the count d’Estrades--has compared his mind to that of Richelieu.[c]]

[133] [By these secret articles England and Holland agreed to make war on Louis XIV if he went back on his word, and they proposed to compel him to make peace without including Portugal, if Spain was determined on this point.]

[134] It was afterwards decided to defer the execution of the attack on Holland until 1672. A new treaty was signed at Dover, December 31st, 1670, modifying the first in several points.

[135] [The chevalier de Lorraine and a maître d’hôtel of Monsieur, Morel by name, were among those suspected of poison. We have seen in the preceding chapter how epidemic that crime became about that time. However, the theory of natural death, the result of an abscess of the liver, hastened by domestic troubles, is now generally accepted as the cause of Madame’s death. Dareste[b] says it was due to cholera morbus. Madame was only twenty-six years old.]

[136] [This was an important departure from the old policy of Francis I and of Richelieu, who, for political reasons, made Protestant alliances abroad, though upholding Catholicism at home.]

[137] Ruart means inspector of the dykes.

[138] [The commercial party (the old one of De Witt) was attracted by Louis’ offering commercial advantage, and thus forced the peace against the will of William of Orange.]