entire province of Franche Comtè was conquered by Condè in fifteen days, before the Spanish council at Brussels knew of its invasion. But the unscrupulous ambition and rapid conquests of Louis alarmed the other powers of Europe, and the triple alliance formed between England, Sardinia, and Holland forced the Grand Monarque to sign the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668, which allowed him to retain his conquests in the Low Countries on condition of his restoring Franche Comtè to the Spaniards. Among other flagitious and ambitious projects, Louis had for some time cherished the design of humbling and despoiling the Dutch, whom he heartily disliked as "mercantile plebeians, heretics, and republicans;" and having by liberal bribes detached England from the triple alliance, he suddenly on some paltry pretext proclaimed war against the United Provinces, and took the field at the head of one hundred thousand men, directed by Condè and Turenne. The Dutch were borne down by this overwhelming force. Fortress after fortress opened their gates; three of the seven provinces were occupied by the invaders; and Amsterdam was rescued from their grasp only by laying the country under water. But the exorbitant and insolent demands of Louis not only roused the courage of the Dutch to desperation, but alarmed the other continental powers, and induced them to make common cause against the public enemy. The ability and courage of Prince William of Nassau, the young stadtholder, saved his country from ruin; and the war, which lasted near seven years, was terminated in 1678 by the treaty of Nimeguen, which restored to Holland all that she had lost, but left France in possession of many important towns in Spanish Flanders, and of the province of Franche Comtè. The unscrupulous ambition of Louis excited him to constant encroachments on the rights of his neighbours, and on some frivolous pretext or other he took possession of various places on the Rhine and the free city of Strasburg, seized Dixmude and Courtray, and bombarded Luxemburg. In 1682 he grossly insulted and ill-treated the pope, and seized the papal town of Anjou. In the following year he sent a naval expedition against Algiers, which was bombarded and reduced to submission along with Tunis and Tripoli; and the Genoese, who had sold powder to the Algerines, were compelled to send an embassy to Versailles to implore the forgiveness of the French monarch. The power of France had now reached its highest point; and elated by these successes, and blinded by the gross adulation of his courtiers, Louis talked of himself as God's vicegerent on earth—as possessed of a nature more than human; arrogated to himself the heathen honours paid to the Roman emperors; and seemed to regard his most flagrant violations of the divine law as innocent indulgences, or at the worst mere venial offences. He actually made a royal progress through his dominions in 1674 with two of his avowed mistresses, De La Vallière and Madame de Montespan, in the state carriage with him and his consort. One favourite after another in succession ministered to his licentious pleasures, and his life for many years was a flagrant violation of the plainest precepts of morality. At length the ill-used queen died in 1683; and in the following year, or in 1685, he was secretly married to Madame de Maintenon, who had for some time obtained great ascendancy over him. During the remaining thirty years of his life her influence remained unshaken, and was on the whole judiciously exercised. She strove to introduce into his vain, callous, and corrupt heart the principles of piety and the feelings of humanity; she reformed his court, and induced him to pay at least external respect to his religious duties.
Meanwhile the policy of Louis had raised him up enemies on every side. His cruel and unprincipled treatment of the Huguenots had exasperated the protestants of Europe; and a new quarrel with the pope about the right of asylum, in which he displayed more than his usual injustice and insolence, had offended the Roman catholics. During the reign of Charles II., by means of lavish bribes to that worthless monarch and his equally worthless ministers, Louis had contrived to make England completely subservient to his designs. He kept a similar hold on James II.; and when the expedition of the prince of Orange was in preparation, endeavoured to rouse the English king to a sense of his danger, and proffered his assistance, but without success. On the expulsion of the Stewart dynasty and the accession to the throne of William III., the inveterate enemy of France, a new coalition was formed against the French king on the part of England, Spain, Holland, and Savoy, the empire and federation of Germany. Louis zealously supported the cause of James II., and sent a powerful expedition to Ireland to reinforce his adherents in that country; but the victory of William at the Boyne and the surrender of Limerick completely crushed the Stewart party, and James was compelled once more to take refuge in France, where he was treated with great kindness. Meanwhile Louis, at the instigation of his minister Louvois, had caused the palatinate to be laid waste, with circumstances of unparalleled atrocity. A population of half a million were driven from their homes in the depth of winter; a fertile province more than thirty miles in length was ravaged and plundered; its hamlets, villages, and towns were burnt to the ground; its palaces, churches, and monasteries laid in ruins, and the whole country was left a blackened waste. A cry of execration and vengeance resounded throughout Europe, and Louis found when too late that he had been guilty of a great blunder, as well as of an atrocious crime. At the commencement of the war Louis proved himself a match for the formidable coalition by which he was menaced. The allies were tardy in their movements, and divided by petty jealousies and quarrels. The French monarch was absolute master of a united, compact, and powerful kingdom, and was prompt as well as bold and skilful in his movements. The important fortresses of Mons (1691) and Namur (1692) were besieged and taken by Louis in person before the allies could take the field for their relief; and though these successes were counterbalanced by the great naval victory of La Hogue. yet on the whole the advantage remained with the French. They were victorious in the bloody battles of Steinkirk (1692) and Landon (1693) but Namur was retaken by William in 1695; and France was now suffering great distress in consequence of the faithless and merciless policy of its ruler. The miseries of this protracted war, which had now been raging during eight campaigns, were at length brought to a close in 1697 by the peace of Ryswick, by which Louis relinquished the conquests he had made in the course of the war, restored Lorraine to its own duke, gave back Luxemburg to Spain, and acknowledged William as king of Great Britain.
Peace, however, was not of long duration. The death of Charles II. of Spain without issue, in 1700, led to a renewal of hostilities between the French king and the allies. Two years before, in anticipation of the death of the Spanish king and the fierce contest to which it was likely to give rise, the celebrated partition treaty had been concluded between France, England, and Holland, by which Louis agreed to waive his claims on the Spanish crown, on condition that he should obtain the Milanese. Notwithstanding of this treaty, the French monarch, by his crafty intrigues and lavish bribes, succeeded in wringing from the imbecile king of Spain, shortly before his death, a will bequeathing his kingdom to Philip, duke of Anjou. As might have been expected, Louis at once broke through all the obligations of the partition treaty, and sent his grandson with all speed to take possession of the Spanish throne. At this critical juncture he roused the indignation of all parties in England by his imprudent conduct in acknowledging the prince of Wales, son of James II., as king of Great Britain and Ireland. The insult was indignantly resented by the nation, as well as by the government. Another grand alliance of the European princes against the house of Bourbon was formed, and on the 15th May, 1702, war was proclaimed by concert at Vienna, at London, and at the Hague. The contest for the Spanish succession, which convulsed all Europe, lasted twelve years, and broke the power and humbled the pride of the French monarch. His best generals were dead, and their successors were totally incapable of contending with Marlborough and Eugene. Fortress after fortress was captured, and his armies were defeated in a succession of great battles fought in Germany, in Italy, and in the Netherlands, and driven back from the Danube and the Po into their own country. A mighty force, flushed with victory, was on the borders of his kingdom. His finances were exhausted, his subjects worn out with war and heavy taxes, while he himself was broken down in health and spirits. "To be stripped of his hard-won conquests—to see the fabric of power raised in fifty toilsome and victorious years at last crumbled into dust—to hear the exulting acclamations which used to greet his presence transformed to indignant murmurs or mournful silence—to be deprived by a sudden and suspicious death of nearly all the princes of his race, and left with no other male descendant for his successor than an infant great-grandson—to be a prey to grasping bastards, and to the widow of a deformed buffoon—such
