In spite of the secrecy which enveloped the negotiations of Louis XIV., Van Witt was filled with disquietude; favorable as ever to the French alliance, he had sought to calm the irritation of France, which set down the Triple Alliance to the account of Holland. “I remarked,” says a letter in 1669, from M. de Pomponne, French ambassador at the Hague, “that it seemed to me a strange thing that, whereas this republic had two kings for its associates in the triple alliance, it affected in some sort to put itself at their head so as to do all the speaking, and that it was willing to become the seat of all the manoeuvres that were going on against France, which was very likely to render it suspected of some prepossession in favor of Spain.” John Van Witt defended his country with dignified modesty. “I know not whether to regard as a blessing or a curse,” said he, “the incidents which have for several years past brought it about that the most important affairs of Europe have been transacted in Holland. It must no doubt be attributed to the situation and condition of this state, which, whilst putting it after all the crowned heads, cause it to be readily agreed to as a place without consequence; but, as for the prepossession of which we are suspected in favor of Spain, it cannot surely be forgotten what aversion we have as it were sucked in with our milk towards that nation, the remnants that still remain of a hatred fed by so much blood and such long wars, which make it impossible, for my part, that my inclinations should ever turn towards that crown.”

Hatred to Spain was not so general in Holland as Van Witt represented; and internal dissensions amongst the Estates, sedulously fanned by France, were slowly ruining the authority of the aristocratic and republican party, only to increase the influence of those who favored the house of Nassau. In his far-sighted and sagacious patriotism, John van Witt had for a long time past foreseen the defeat of his cause, and he had carefully trained up the heir of the stadtholders, William of Nassau, the natural head of his adversaries. It was this young prince whom the policy of Louis XIV. at that time opposed to Van Witt in the councils of the United Provinces, thus strengthening in advance the indomitable foe who was to triumph over all his greatness and vanquish him by dint of defeats. The despatch of an ambassador to Spain, to form there an alliance offensive and defensive, was decided upon. “M. de Beverninck, who has charge of this mission, is without doubt a man of strength and ability,” said M. de Pomponne, “and there are many who put him on a par with M. de Witt; it is true that he is not on a par with the other the whole day long, and that with the sobriety of morning he often loses the desert and capacity that were his up to dinner-time.” The Spaniards at first gave but a cool reception to the overtures of the Hollanders. “They look at their monarchy through the spectacles of Philip II.,” said Beverninck, “and they take a pleasure in deceiving themselves whilst they flatter their vanity.” Fear of the encroachments of France carried the day, however. “They consider,” wrote M. de Lionne, “that, if they left the United Provinces to ruin, they would themselves have but the favor granted by the Cyclops, to be eaten last;” a defensive league was concluded between Spain and Holland, and all the efforts of France could not succeed in breaking it.

John van Witt was negotiating in every direction. The treaty of Charles II. with France had remained a profound secret, and the Hollanders believed that they might calculate upon the good-will of the English nation. The arms of England were effaced from the Royal Charles, a vessel taken by Van Tromp in 1667, and a curtain was put over a picture, in the town-hall of Dordrecht, of the victory at Chatham, representing the ruart [inspector of dikes] Cornelius van Witt leaning on a cannon. These concessions to the pride of England were not made without a struggle. “Some,” says M. de Pomponne, “thought it a piece of baseness to despoil themselves during peace, of tokens of the glory they had won in the war; others, less sensitive on this point of delicacy, and more affected by the danger of disobliging a crown which formed the first and at this date the most necessary of their connections, preferred the less spirited but safer to the honorable but more dangerous counsels.” Charles II. played with Boreel, ambassador of the United Provinces at the court of London; taking advantage of the Estates’ necessity in order to serve his nephew the Prince of Orange, he demanded for him the office of captain-general, which had been filled by his ancestors. Already the prince had been recognized as premier noble of Zealand, and he had obtained entrance to the council; John van Witt raised against him the vote of the Estates of Holland, still preponderant in the republic. “The grand pensionary soon appeased the murmurs and complaints that were being raised against him,” writes M. de Pomponne. “He prefers the greatest dangers to the re-establishment of the Prince of Orange, and to his re-establishment on the recommendation of the King of England; he would consider that the republic accepted a double yoke, both in the person of a chief who, from the post of captain general, might rise to all those which his fathers had filled, and in accepting him at the instance of a suspected crown.” The grand pensionary did not err. In the spring of 1672, in spite of the loss of M. de Lionne, who died September 1, 1671, all the negotiations of Louis XIV. had succeeded; his armaments were completed; he was at last about to crush that little power which had for so long a time past presented an obstacle to his designs. “The true way of arriving at the conquest of the Spanish Low Countries is to abase the Hollanders and annihilate them if it be possible,” said Louvois to the Prince of Conde on the 1st of November, 1671; and the king wrote in an unpublished memorandum, “In the midst of all my successes during my campaign of 1667, neither England nor the empire, convinced as they were of the justice of my cause, whatever interest they may have had in checking the rapidity of my conquests, offered any opposition. I found in my path only my good, faithful, and old friends the Hollanders, who, instead of interesting themselves in my fortune as the foundation of their dominion, wanted to impose laws upon me and oblige me to make peace, and even dared to use threats in case I refused to accept their mediation. I confess that their insolence touched me to the quick, and that, at the risk of whatever might happen to my conquests in the Spanish Low Countries, I was very near turning all my forces against this proud and ungrateful nation; but, having summoned prudence to my aid, and considered that I had neither number of troops nor quality of allies requisite for such an enterprise, I dissimulated, I concluded peace on honorable conditions, resolved to put off the punishment of such perfidy to another time.” The time had come; to the last attempt towards conciliation, made by Van Groot, son of the celebrated Grotius, in the name of the States General, the king replied with threatening haughtiness. “When I discovered that the United Provinces were trying to debauch my allies, and were soliciting kings, my relatives, to enter into offensive leagues against me, I made up my mind to put myself in a position to defend myself, and I levied some troops; but I intend to have more by the spring, and I shall make use of them at that time in the manner I shall consider most proper for the welfare of my dominions and for my own glory.”

“The king starts to-morrow, my dear daughter,” writes Madame de Sevigne to Madame de Grignan on the 27th of April “there will be a hundred thousand men out of Paris; the two armies will form a junction; the king will command Monsieur, Monsieur the prince, the prince M. de Turenne, and M. de Turenne the two marshals and even the army of Marshal Crequi. The king spoke to M. de Bellefonds and told him that his desire was that he should obey M. de Turenne without any fuss. The marshal, without asking for time (that was his mistake), said that he should not be worthy of the honor his Majesty had done him if he dishonored himself by an obedience without precedent. Marshal d’Humieres and Marshal Crequi said much the same. M. de la Rochefoucauld says that Bellefonds has spoilt everything because he has no joints in his mind. Marshal Crequi said to the king, ‘Sir, take from me my baton, for are you not master? Let me serve this campaign as Marquis of Crequi; perhaps I may deserve that your Majesty give me back the baton at the end of the war.’ The king was touched; but the result is, that they have all three been at their houses in the country planting cabbages (have ceased to serve).”

“You will permit me to tell you that there is nothing for it but to obey a master who says that he means to be obeyed,” wrote Louvois to M. de Crequi. The king wanted to have order and one sole command in his army: and he was right.

The Prince of Orange, who had at last been appointed captain-general for a single campaign, possessed neither the same forces nor the same authority; the violence of party-struggles had blinded patriotic sentiment and was hampering the preparations for defence. Out of sixty-four thousand troops inscribed on the registers of the Dutch army, a great number neglected the summons; in the towns, the burgesses rose up against the magistrates, refusing to allow the faubourgs to be pulled down, and the peasants threatened to defend the dikes and close the sluices. “When word was sent yesterday to the peasants to come and work on the Rhine at the redoubts and at piercing the dikes, not a man presented himself,” says a letter of June 28, from John van Witt to his brother Cornelius; “all is disorder and confusion here.” “I hope that, for the moment, we shall not lack gunpowder,” said Beverninck; “but as for guncarriages there is no help for it; a fortnight hence we shall not have more than seven.” Louvois had conceived the audacious idea of purchasing in Holland itself the supplies of powder and ball necessary for the French army and the commercial instincts of the Hollanders had prevailed over patriotic sentiment. Ruyter was short of munitions in the contest already commenced against the French and English fleet. “Out of thirty-two battles I have been in I never saw any like it,” said the Dutch admiral after the battle of Soultbay (Solebay) on the 7th of June. “Ruyter is admiral, captain, pilot, sailor, and soldier all in one,” exclaimed the English. Cornelius van Witt in the capacity of commissioner of the Estates had remained seated on the deck of the admiral’s vessel during the fight, indifferent to the bullets that rained around him. The issue of the battle was indecisive; Count d’Estrees, at the head of the French flotilla, had taken little part in the action.

It was not at sea and by the agency of his lieutenants that Louis XIV. aspired to gain the victory; he had already arrived at the banks of the Rhine, marching straight into the very heart of Holland. “I thought it more advantageous for my designs, and less common on the score of glory,” he wrote to Colbert on the 31st of May, “to attack four places at once on the Rhine, and to take the actual command in person at all four sieges... I chose, for that purpose, Rheinberg, Wesel, Burick, and Orsoy, and I hope that there will be no complaint of my having deceived public expectation.” The four places did not hold out four days. On the 12th of June, the king and the Prince of Conde appeared unexpectedly on the right bank of the intermediary branch of the Rhine, between the Wahal and the Yssel. The Hollanders were expecting the enemy at the ford of, the Yssel, being more easy to pass; they were taken by surprise; the king’s cuirassier regiment dashed into the river, and crossed it partly by fording and partly by swimming; the resistance was brief; meanwhile the Duke of Longueville was killed, and the Prince of Conde was wounded for the first time in his life. “I was present at the passage, which was bold, vigorous, full of brilliancy, and glorious for the nation,” writes Louis XIV. Arnheim and Deventer had just surrendered to Turenne and Luxembourg; Duisbourg resisted the king for a few days; Monsieur was besieging Zutphen. John van Witt was for evacuating the Hague and removing to Amsterdam the centre of government and resistance; the Prince of Orange had just abandoned the province of Utrecht, which was immediately occupied by the French; the defensive efforts were concentrated upon the province of Holland; already Naarden, three leagues from Amsterdam, was in the king’s hands. “We learn the surrender of towns before we have heard of their investment,” wrote Van Witt. A deputation from the States was sent on the 22d of June to the king’s headquarters to demand peace. Louis XIV. had just entered Utrecht, which, finding itself abandoned, opened its gates to him. On the same day, John van Witt received in a street of the Hague four stabs with a dagger from the hand of an assassin, whilst the city of Amsterdam, but lately resolved to surrender and prepared to send its magistrates as delegates to Louis XIV., suddenly decided upon resistance to the bitter end. “If we must perish, let us at any rate be the last to fall,” exclaimed the town-councillor Walkernier, “and let us not submit to the yoke it is desired to impose upon us until there remain no means of securing ourselves against it.” All the sluices were opened and the dikes cut. Amsterdam floated amidst the waters. “I thus found myself under the necessity of limiting my conquests, as regarded the province of Holland, to Naarden, Utrecht, and Werden,” writes Louis XIV. in his unpublished Memoire touching the campaign of 1672, and he adds, with rare impartiality, “the resolution to place the whole country under water was somewhat violent; but what would not one do to save one’s self from foreign domination? I cannot help admiring and commending the zeal and stout-heartedness of those who broke off the negotiation of Amsterdam, though their decision, salutary as it was for their country, was very prejudicial to my service; the proposals made to me by the deputies from the States General were very advantageous, but I could never prevail upon myself to accept them.”

Louis XIV. was as yet ignorant what can be done amongst a proud people by patriotism driven to despair; the States General offered him Maestricht, the places on the Rhine, Brabant and Dutch Flanders, with a war-indemnity of ten millions; it was an open door to the Spanish Low Countries, which became a patch enclosed by French possessions; but the king wanted to annihilate the Hollanders; he demanded Southern Gueldres, the Island of Bonmel, twenty-four millions, the restoration of Catholic worship, and, every year, an embassy commissioned to thank the king for having a second time given peace to the United Provinces. This was rather too much; and, whilst the deputies were negotiating with heavy hearts, the people of Holland had risen in wrath.

From the commencement of the war, the party of the house of Nassau had never ceased to gain ground. John van Witt was accused of all the misfortunes of the state; the people demanded with loud outcries the restoration of the stadtholderate, but lately abolished by a law voted by the States under the presumptuous title of perpetual edict. Dordrecht, the native place of the Van Witts, gave the signal of insurrection. Cornelius van Witt, who was confined to his house by illness, yielded to the prayers of his wife and children, and signed the municipal act which destroyed his brother’s work; the contagion spread from town to town, from province to province; on the 4th of July the States General appointed William of Orange stadtholder, captain-general, and admiral of the Union; the national instinct had divined the savior of the country, and with tumultuous acclamations placed in his hands the reins of the state.

William of Orange was barely two and twenty when the fate of revolutions suddenly put him at the head of a country invaded, devastated, half conquered; but his mind as well as his spirit were up to the level of his task. He loftily rejected at the assembly of the Estates the proposals brought forward in the king’s name by Peter van Groot. “To subscribe them would be suicide,” he said: “even to discuss them is dangerous; but, if the majority of this assembly decide otherwise, there remains but one course for the friends of Protestantism and liberty, and that is, to retire to the colonies in the West Indies, and there found a new country, where their consciences and their persons will be beyond the reach of tyranny and despotism.” The States General decided to “reject the hard and intolerable conditions proposed by their lordships the Kings of France and Great Britain, and to defend this state and its inhabitants with all their might.” The province of Holland in its entirety followed the example of Amsterdam; the dikes were everywhere broken down, at the same time that the troops of the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony were advancing to the aid of the United Provinces, and that the emperor was signing with those two princes a defensive alliance for the maintenance of the treaties of Westphalia, the Pyrenees, and Aix-la-Chapelle.

Louis XIV. could no longer fly from conquest to conquest; henceforth his troops had to remain on observation; care for his pleasures recalled him to France; he left the command-in-chief of his army to M. de Turenne, and set out for St. Germain, where he arrived on the 1st of August. Before leaving Holland, he had sent home almost without ransom twenty thousand prisoners of war, who before long entered the service of the States again. “It was an excess of clemency of which I had reason afterwards to repent,” says the king himself. His mistake was, that he did not understand either Holland or the new chief she had chosen.

Dispirited and beaten, like his country, John van Witt had just given in his resignation as councillor pensionary of Holland. He wrote to Ruyter on the 5th of August, as follows: “The capture of the towns on the Rhine in so short a time, the irruption of the enemy as far as the banks of the Yssel, and the total loss of the provinces of Gueldres, Utrecht, and Over-Yssel, almost without resistance and through unheard-of poltroonery, if not treason, on the part of certain people, have more and more convinced me of the truth of what was in olden times applied to the Roman republic: Successes are claimed by everybody, reverses are put down to one (Prospera omnes sibi vindicant, adversa uni imputantur). That is my own experience. The people of Holland have not only laid at my door all the disasters and calamities that have befallen our republic; they have not been content to see me fall unarmed and defenceless into the hands of four individuals whose design was to murder me; but when, by the agency of Divine Providence, I escaped the assassins’ blows and had recovered from my wounds, they conceived a violent hatred against such of their magistrates as they believed to have most to do with the direction of public affairs; it is against me chiefly that this hatred has manifested itself, although I was nothing but a servant of the state; it is this that has obliged me to demand my discharge from the office of councillor-pensionary.” He was at once succeeded by Gaspard van Fagel, passionately devoted to the Prince of Orange.

Popular passion is as unjust as it is violent in its excesses. Cornelius van Witt, but lately sharing with his brother the public confidence, had just been dragged, as a criminal, to the Hague, accused by a wretched barber of having planned the assassination of the Prince of Orange. In vain did the magistrates of the town of Dordrecht claim their right of jurisdiction over their fellow-citizen. Cornelius van Witt was put to the torture to make him confess his crime. “You will not force me to confess a thing I never even thought of,” he said, whilst the pulleys were dislocating his limbs. His baffled judges heard him repeating Horace’s ode: Just um et tenacem propositi virum. . . . At the end of three hours he was carried back to his cell, broken but indomitable. The court condemned him to banishment; his accuser, Tichelaer, was not satisfied.

Before long, at his instigation, the mob collected about the prison, uttering imprecations against the judges and their clemency. “They are traitors!” cried Tichelaer, “but let us first take vengeance on those whom we have.” John van Witt had been brought to the prison by a message supposed to have come from the ruart. In vain had his daughter conjured him not to respond to it. “What are you come here for?” exclaimed Cornelius, on seeing his brother enter. “Did you not send for me?” “No, certainly not.” “Then we are lost,” said John van Witt, calmly. The shouts of the crowd redoubled; a body of cavalry still preserved order; a rumor suddenly spread that the peasants from the environs were marching on the Hague to plunder it; the States of Holland sent orders to the Count of Tilly to move against them; the brave soldier demanded a written order. “I will obey,” he said, “but the two brothers are lost.”

The troops had scarcely withdrawn, and already the doors of the prison were forced; the ruart, exhausted by the torture, was stretched upon his bed, whilst his brother sat by his side reading the Bible aloud; the madmen rushed into the chamber, crying, “Traitors, prepare yourselves; you are going to die.” Cornelius van Witt started up, joining his hands in prayer; the blows aimed at him did not reach him. John was wounded. They were both dragged forth; they embraced one another; Cornelius, struck from behind, rolled to the bottom of the staircase; his brother would have defended him; as he went out into the street, he received a pike-thrust in the face; the ruart was dead already; the murderers vented their fury on John van Witt; he had lost nothing of his courage or his coolness, and, lifting his arms towards heaven, he was opening his mouth in prayer to God, when a last pistol-shot stretched him upon his back. “There’s the perpetual edict floored!” shouted the assassins, lavishing upon the two corpses insults and imprecations. It was only at night, and after having with difficulty recognized them, so disfigured had they been, that poor Jacob van Witt was able to have his sons’ bodies removed; he was before long to rejoin them in everlasting rest.

William of Orange arrived next day at the Hague, too late for his fame, and for the punishment of the obscure assassins, whom he allowed to escape. The compassers of the plot obtained before long appointments and rewards. “He one day assured me,” says Gourville, “that it was quite true he had not given any orders to have the Witts killed, but that, having heard of their death without having contributed to it, he had certainly felt a little relieved.” History and the human heart have mysteries which it is not well to probe to the bottom.

For twenty years John van Witt had, been the most noble exponent of his country’s traditional policy. Long faithful to the French alliance, he had desired to arrest Louis XIV. in his dangerous career of triumph; foreseeing the peril to come, he had forgotten the peril at hand; he had believed too much and too long in the influence of negotiations and the possibility of regaining the friendship of France. He died unhappy, in spite of his pious submission to the will of God; what he had desired for his country was slipping from him abroad as well as at home; Holland was crushed by France, and the aristocratic republic was vanquished by monarchical democracy. With the weakness characteristic of human views, he could not open his eyes to a vision of constitutional monarchy freely chosen, preserving to his country the independence, prosperity, and order which he had labored to secure for her. A politician as, bold as and more far-sighted than Admiral Coligny, twice struck down, like him, by assassins, John van Witt remained in history the unique model of a great republican chief, virtuous and able, proud and modest, up to the day at which other United Provinces, fighting like Holland for their liberty, presented a rival to the purity of his fame, when they chose for their governor General Washington.

For all their brutal ingratitude, the instinct of the people of Holland saw clearly into the situation. John van Witt would have failed in the struggle against France; William of Orange, prince, politician, and soldier, saved his country and Europe from the yoke of Louis XIV.

On quitting his army, the king had inscribed in his notebook, “My departure.—I do not mean to have anything more done.” The temperature favored his designs; it did not freeze, the country remained inundated and the towns unapproachable; the troops of the Elector of Brandenburg, together with a corps sent by the emperor, had put themselves in motion towards the Rhine; Turenne kept them in check in Germany. Conde covered Alsace; the Duke of Luxembourg, remaining in Holland, confined himself to burning two large villages—Bodegrave and Saammerdam. “There was a grill of all the Hollanders who were in those burghs,” wrote the marshal to the Prince of Conde, “not one of whom was let out of the houses. This morning we were visited by two of the enemy’s drummers, who came to claim a colonel of great note amongst them (I have him in cinders at this moment), as well as several officers that we have not, and that are demanded of us, who, I suppose, were killed at the approaches to the villages, where I saw some rather pretty little heaps.” The attempts of the Prince of Orange on Charleroi had failed, as well as those of Luxembourg on the Hague; the Swedes had offered their mediation, and negotiations were beginning at Cologne; on the 10th of June, 1673, Louis XIV. laid siege to Maestricht; Conde was commanding in Holland, with Luxembourg under his orders; Turenne was observing Germany. The king was alone with Vauban. Maestricht held out three weeks. “M. de Vauban, in this siege as in many others, saved a number of lives by his ingenuity,” wrote a young subaltern, the Count of Alligny. “In times past it was sheer butchery in the trenches, now he makes them in such a manner that one is as safe as if one were at home.” “I don’t know whether it ought to be called swagger, vanity, or carelessness, the way we have of showing ourselves unadvisedly and without cover,” Vauban used to say; “but it is an original sin of which the French will never purge themselves, if God, who is all-powerful, do not reform the whole race.” Maestricht taken, the king repaired to Elsass, where skilful negotiations delivered into his hands the towns that had remained independent: it was time to consolidate past conquests; the coalition of Europe was forming against France; the Hollanders held the sea against the hostile fleets; after three desperate fights, Ruyter had prevented all landing in Holland; the States no longer entertained the proposals they had but lately submitted to the king at Utrecht; the Prince of Orange had recovered Naarden, and just carried Bonn, with the aid of the Imperialists, commanded by Montecuculli; Luxembourg had already received orders to evacuate the province of Utrecht; at the end of the campaign of 1673, Gueldres and Over-Yssel were likewise delivered from the enemies who had oppressed and plundered them; Spain had come forth from her lethargy; and the emperor, resuming the political direction of Germany, had drawn nearly all the princes after him into the league against France. The Protestant qualms of the English Parliament had not yielded to the influence of the Marquis of Ruvigny, a man of note amongst the French Reformers, and at this time ambassador of France in London; the nation desired peace with the Hollanders; and Charles II. yielded, in appearance at least, to the wishes of his people.

On the 21st of February, 1674, he repaired to Parliament to announce to the two Houses that he had concluded with the United Provinces “a prompt peace, as they had prayed, honorable, and, as he hoped, durable.” He at the same time wrote to Louis XIV., to beg to be condoled with, rather than upbraided, for a consent which had been wrung from him. The regiments of English and Irish auxiliaries remained quietly in the service of France; and the king did not withdraw his subsidies from his royal pensioner.

Thus was being undone, link by link, the chain of alliances which Louis XIV. had but lately twisted round Holland. France, in her turn, was finding herself alone, with all Europe against her; scared, and, consequently, active and resolute; the congress of Cologne had broken up; not one of the belligerents desired peace; the Hollanders had just settled the heredity of the stadtholderate in the house of Orange. Louis XIV. saw the danger. “So many enemies,” says he in his Memoires, “obliged me to take care of myself, and think what I must do to maintain the reputation of my arms, the advantage of my dominions, and my personal glory.” It was in Franche-Comte that Louis XIV. went to seek these advantages. The whole province was reduced to submission in the month of June, 1674. Turenne had kept the Rhine against the Imperialists; the marshal alone escaped the tyranny of the king and Louvois, and presumed to conduct the campaign in his own way; when Louis XIV. sent him instructions, he was by this time careful to add, “You will not bind yourself down to what I send you hereby as to my intentions, save when you think that the good of my service will permit you, and you will give me of your news the oftenest you find it possible.” (30th of March, 1674.) Turenne did not always write, and it sometimes happened that he did not obey.

This redounded to his honor in the campaign of 1674. Conde had gained, on the 11th of August, the bloody victory of Seneffe over the Prince of Orange and the allied generals; the four squadrons of the king’s household, posted within range of the fire, had remained for eight hours in order of battle, without any movement but that of closing up as the men fell. Madame de Sevigne, to whom her son, standard-bearer in the dauphin’s gendarmes, had told the story, wrote to M. de Bussy-Rabutin, “But for the Te Deum, and some flags brought to Notre-Dame, we should have thought we had lost the battle.” The Prince of Orange, ever indomitable in his cold courage, had attacked Audenarde on the 15th of September; but he was not in force, and the, approach of Conde had obliged him to raise the siege; to make up, he had taken Grave, spite of the heroic resistance made by the Marquis of Chemilly, who had held out ninety-three days. Advantages remained balanced in Flanders; the result of the campaign depended on Turenne, who commanded on the Rhine. “If the king had taken the most important place in Flanders,” he wrote to Louvois, “and the emperor were master of Alsace, even without Philipsburg or Brisach, I think the king’s affairs would be in the worst plight in the world; we should see what armies we should have in Lorraine, in the Bishoprics, and in Champagne. I do assure you that, if I had the honor of commanding in Flanders, I would speak as I do.” On the 16th of June he engaged in battle, at Sinzheim, with the Duke of Lorraine, who was coming up with the advance-guard. “I never saw a more obstinate fight,” said Turenne: “those old regiments of the emperor’s did mighty well.” He subsequently entered the Palatinate, quartering his troops upon it, whilst the superintendents sent by Louvois were burning and plundering the country, crushed as it was under war-contributions. The king and Louvois were disquieted by the movement of the enemy’s troops, and wanted to get Turenne back into Lothringen. “An army like that of the enemy,” wrote the marshal to Louvois, on the 13th of September, “and at the season it is now, cannot have any idea but that of driving the king’s army from Alsace, having neither provisions nor means of getting into Lorraine, unless I be driven from the country.” On the 20th of September, the burgesses of the free city of Strasburg delivered up the bridge over the Rhine to the Imperialists who were in the heart of Elsass. The victory of Ensheim, the fights of Mulhausen and Turckheim, sufficed to drive them back; but it was only on the 22d of January, 1675, that Turenne was at last enabled to leave Elsass reconquered. “There is no longer in France an enemy that is not a prisoner,” he wrote to the king, whose thanks embarrassed him. “Everybody has remarked that M. de Turenne is a little more bashful than he was wont to be,” said Pellisson.

The coalition was proceeding slowly; the Prince of Orange was ill; the king made himself master of the citadel of Liege and some small places. Limburg surrendered to the Prince of Conde, without the allies having been able to relieve it; Turenne was posted with the Rhine in his rear, keeping Montecuculli in his front; he was preparing to hem him in, and hurl him back upon Black Mountain. His army was thirty thousand strong. “I never saw so many fine fellows,” Turenne would say, “nor better intentioned.” Spite of his modest reserve, he felt sure of victory. “This time I have them,” he kept saying; “they cannot escape me.”

On the 27th of June, 1675, in the morning, Turenne ordered an attack on the village of Salzbach. The young Count of St. Hilaire found him at the head of his infantry, seated at the foot of a tree, into which he had ordered an old soldier to climb, in order to have a better view of the enemy’s manoeuvres. The Count of Roye sent to conjure him to reconnoitre in person the German column that was advancing. “I shall remain where I am,” said Turenne, “unless something important occur;” and he sent off re-enforcements to M. de Roye; the latter repeated his entreaties; the marshal asked for his horse, and, at a hard gallop, reached the right of the army, along a hollow, in order to be under cover from two small pieces of cannon, which kept up an incessant fire. “I don’t at all want to be killed to-day,” he kept saying. He perceived M. de St. Hilaire, the father, coming to meet him, and asked him what column it was on account of which he had been sent for. “My father was pointing it out to him,” writes young St. Hilaire, “when, unhappily, the two little pieces fired: a ball, passing over the quarters of my father’s horse, carried away his left arm and the horse’s neck, and struck M. de Turenne in the left side; he still went forward about twenty paces on his horse’s neck, and fell dead. I ran to my father, who was down, and raised him up. ‘No need to weep for me,’ he said; ‘it is the death of that great man; you may, perhaps, lose your father, but neither your country nor you will ever have a general like that again. O, poor army, what is to become of you?’ Tears fell from his eyes; then, suddenly recovering himself, ‘Go, my son, and leave me,’ he said; ‘with me it will be as God pleases; time presses; go and do your duty.’” [Memoires du Marquis de St. Hilaire, t. i. p. 205.] They threw a cloak over the corpse of the great general, and bore it away. “The soldiers raised a cry that was heard two leagues off,” writes Madame de Sevigne; “no consideration could restrain them; they roared to be led to battle, they wanted to avenge the death of their father, with him they had feared nothing, but they would show how to avenge him, let it be left to them; they were frantic, let them be led to battle.” Montecuculli had for a moment halted. “Today a man has fallen who did honor to man,” said he, as he uncovered respectfully. He threw himself, however, on the rearguard of the French army, which was falling back upon Elsass, and recrossed the Rhine at Altenheim. The death of Turenne was equivalent to a defeat.

The Emperor Napoleon said of Turenne, “He is the only general whom experience ever made more daring.” He had been fighting for forty years, and his fame was still increasing, without effort or ostentation on his part. “M. de Turenne, from his youth up, possessed all good qualities,” wrote Cardinal de Retz, who knew him well, “and the great he acquired full early. He lacked none but those that he did not think about. He possessed nearly all virtues as it were by nature; he never possessed the glitter of any. He was believed to be more fitted for the head of an army than of a party, and so I think, because he was not naturally enterprising; but, however, who knows? He always had in everything, just as in his speech, certain obscurities, which were never cleared up save by circumstances, but never save to his glory.” He had said, when he set out, to this same Cardinal de Retz, then in retirement at Commercy, “Sir, I am no talker (diseur), but I beg you to believe that, if it were not for this business in which perhaps I may be required, I would go into retirement as you have gone, and I give you my word that, if I come back, I, like you, will put some space between life and death.” God did not leave him time. He summoned suddenly to Him this noble, grand, and simple soul. “I see that cannon loaded with all eternity,” says Madame de Sevigne: “I see all that leads M. de Turenne thither, and I see therein nothing gloomy for him. What does he lack? He dies in the meridian of his fame. Sometimes, by living on, the star pales. It is safer to cut to the quick, especially in the case of heroes whose actions are all so watched. M. de Turenne did not feel death: count you that for nothing?” Turenne was sixty-four; he had become a convert to Catholicism in 1668, seriously and sincerely, as he did everything. For him Bossuet had written his Exposition of faith. Heroic souls are rare, and those that are heroic and modest are rarer still: that was the distinctive feature of M. de Turenne. “When a man boasts that he has never made mistakes in war, he convinces me that he has not been long at it,” he would say. At his death, France considered herself lost. “The premier-president of the court of aids has an estate in Champagne, and the farmer of it came the other day to demand to have the contract dissolved; he was asked why: he answered that in M. de Turenne’s time one could gather in with safety, and count upon the lands in that district, but that, since his death, everybody was going away, believing that the enemy was about to enter Champagne.” [Lettres de Madame de Sevigne.] “I should very much like to have only two hours’ talk with the shade of M. de Turenne,” said the Prince of Conde, on setting out to take command of the army of the Rhine, after a check received by Marshal Crequi. “I would take the consequences of his plans if I could only get at his views, and make myself master of the knowledge he had of the country, and of Montecuculli’s tricks of feint.” “God preserves you for the sake of France, my lord,” people said to him; but the prince made no reply beyond a shrug of the shoulders.

It was his last campaign. The king had made eight marshals, “change for a Turenne.” Crequi began by getting beaten before Treves, which surrendered to the enemy. “Why did—the marshal give battle?” asked a courtier. The king turned round quickly. “I have heard,” said he, “that the Duke of Weimar, after the death of the great Gustavus, commanded the Swedish allies of France; one Parabere, an old blue ribbon, said to him, speaking of the last battle, which he had lost, ‘Sir, why did you give it?’ ‘Sir,’ answered Weimar, ‘because I thought I should win it.’ Then, leaning over towards somebody else, he asked, ‘Who is that fool with the blue ribbon?’” The Germans retired. Conde returned to Chantilly once more, never to go out of it again. Montecuculli, old and ill, refused to serve any longer. “A man who has had the honor of fighting against Mahomet Coprogli, against the prince, and against M. de Turenne, ought not to compromise his glory against people who are only just beginning to command armies,” said the, veteran general to the emperor on taking his retirement. The chiefs were disappearing from the scene, the heroic period of the war was over.

Europe demanded a general peace; England and Holland desired it passionately. “I am as anxious as you for an end to be put to the war,” said the Prince of Orange to the deputies from the Estates, “provided that I get out of it with honor.” He refused obstinately to separate from his allies. “It is not astonishing that the Prince of Orange does not at once give way even to things which he considers reasonable,” said Charles II., “he is the son of a father and mother whose obstinacy was carried to extremes; and he resembles them in that.” Meanwhile, William had just married (November 15, 1677), the Princess Mary, eldest daughter of the Duke of York and Anne Hyde. An alliance offensive and defensive between England and Holland was the price of this union, which struck Louis XIV. an unexpected blow. He had lately made a proposal to the Prince of Orange to marry one of his natural daughters. “The first notice I had of the marriage,” wrote the king, “was through the bonfires lighted in London.” “The loss of a decisive battle could not have scared the King of France more,” said the English ambassador, Lord Montagu. For more than a year past negotiations had been going on at Nimeguen; Louis XIV. resolved to deal one more great blow.

The campaign of 1676 had been insignificant, save at sea. John Bart, a corsair of Dunkerque, scoured the seas and made foreign commerce tremble; he took ships by boarding, and killed with his own hands the Dutch captain of the Neptune, who offered resistance. Messina, in revolt against the Spaniards, had given herself up to France; the Duke of Vivonne, brother of Madame de Montespan, who had been sent thither as governor, had extended his conquests; Duquesne, quite young still, had triumphantly maintained the glory of France against the great Ruyter, who had been mortally wounded off Catana; on the 21st of April. But already the possession of Sicily was becoming precarious, and these distant successes had paled before the brilliant campaign of 1677; the capture of Valenciennes, Cambrai, and St. Omer, the defence of Lorraine, the victory of Cassel, gained over the Prince of Orange, had confirmed the king in his intentions. “We have done all that we were able and bound to do,” wrote William of Orange to the Estates, on the 13th of April, 1677, “and we are very sorry to be obliged to tell your High Mightinesses that it has not pleased God to bless on this occasion the arms of the state under our guidance.”

“I was all impatience,” says Louis XIV. in his Memoires, “to commence the campaign of 1678, and greatly desirous of doing something therein as glorious as, and more useful than, what had already been done; but it was no easy matter to come by it, and to surpass the lustre conferred by the capture of three large places and the winning of a battle. I examined what was feasible, and Ghent being the most important of all I could attack, I fixed upon it to besiege.” The place was invested on the 1st of March, and capitulated on the 11th; Ypres, in its turn, succumbed on the 25th, after a vigorous resistance. On the 7th of April the king returned to St. Germain, “pretty content with what I had done,” he says, “and purposing to do better in the future, if the promise I had given not to undertake anything for two months were not followed by the conclusion of peace.” Louis XIV. sent his ultimatum to Nimeguen.

Holland had weight in congress as well as in war, and her influence was now enlisted on the side of peace. “Not only is it desired,” said the grand pensionary Fagel, “but it is absolutely indispensable, and I would not answer for it that the States General, if driven to extremity by the sluggishness of their allies, will not make a separate peace with France. I know nobody in Holland who is not of the same opinion.” The Prince of Orange flew out at such language. “Well, then, I know somebody,” said he, “and that is myself; I will oppose it to the best of my ability; but,” he added more slowly, upon reflection, “if I were not here, I know quite well that peace would be concluded within twenty-four hours.”

One man alone, though it were the Prince of Orange, cannot long withstand the wishes of a free people. The republican party, for a while cast down by the death of John van Witt, had taken courage again, and Louis XIV. secretly encouraged it. William of Orange had let out his desire of becoming Duke of Gueldres and Count of Zutphen: these foreshadowings of sovereignty had scared the province of Holland, which refused its consent; the influence of the stadtholder was weakened thereby; the Estates pronounced for peace, spite of the entreaties of the Prince of Orange. “I am always ready to obey the orders of the state,” said he, “but do not require me to give my assent to a peace which appears to me not only ruinous, but shameful as well.” Two deputies from the United Provinces set out for Brussels.

“It is better to throw one’s self out of the window than from the top of the roof,” said the Spanish plenipotentiary to the nuncio, when he had cognizance of the French proposals, and he accepted the treaty offered him. “The Duke of Villa Hermosa says that he will accept the conditions; for ourselves, we will do the same,” said the Prince of Orange, bitterly, “and so here is peace made, if France continues to desire it on this footing, which I very much doubt.”

At one moment, in fact, Louis XIV. raised fresh pretensions. He wished to keep the places on the Meuse, until the Swedes, almost invariably unfortunate in their hostilities with Denmark and Brandenburg, should have been enabled to win back what they had lost. This was to postpone peace indefinitely. The English Parliament and Holland were disgusted, and concluded a new alliance. The Spaniards were preparing to take up arms again. The king, who had returned to the army, all at once cut the knot. “The day I arrived at the camp,” writes Louis XIV., “I received news from London apprising me that the King of England would bind himself to join me in forcing my enemies to make peace, if I consented to add something to the conditions he had already proposed. I had a battle over this proposal, but the public good, joined to the glory of gaining a victory over myself, prevailed over the advantage I might have hoped for from war. I replied to the King of England that I was quite willing to make the treaty he proposed to me, and, at the same time, I wrote to the States General a letter, stronger than the first, being convinced that, since they were wavering, they ought not to have time given them to take counsel upon the subject of peace with their allies, who did not want it.” Beverninck went to visit the king at Ghent; and he showed so much ability that the special peace concluded by his pains received, in Holland, the name of Beverninck’s peace. “I settled more business in an hour with M. de Beverninck than the plenipotentiaries would have been able to conclude in several days,” said Louis XIV.; “the care I had taken to detach the allies one from another, overwhelmed them to such an extent, that they were constrained to submit to the conditions of which I had declared myself in favor at the commencement of my negotiations. I had resolved to make peace, but I wished to conclude one that would be glorious for me and advantageous for my kingdom. I wished to recompense myself, by means of the places that were essential, for the probable conquests I was losing, and to console myself for the conclusion of a war which I was carrying on with pleasure and success. Amidst such turmoil, then, I was quite tranquil, and saw nothing but advantage for myself, whether the war went on or peace were made.”

All difficulties were smoothed away Sweden had given up all stipulations for her advantage; the firm will of France had triumphed over the vacillations of Charles II. and the allies. “The behavior of the French in all this was admirable,” says Sir W. Temple, an experienced diplomatist, long versed in all the affairs of Europe, “whilst our own counsels and behavior resembled those floating islands which winds and tide drive from one side to the other.”

On the 10th of August, in the evening, the special peace between Holland and France was signed after twenty-four hours’ conference. The Prince of Orange had concentrated all his forces near Mons, confronting Marshal Luxembourg, who occupied the plateau of Casteau; he had no official news as yet from Nimeguen, and on the 14th he began the engagement outside the abbey of St. Denis. The affair was a very murderous one, and remained indecisive: it did more honor to the military skill of the Prince of Orange than to his loyalty. Holland had not lost an inch of her territory during this war; so long, so desperate, and notoriously undertaken in order to destroy her; she had spent much money, she had lost many men, she had shaken the confidence of her allies by treating alone and being the first to treat, but she had furnished a chief to the European coalition, and she had shown an example of indomitable resistance; the States General and the Prince of Orange alone, besides Louis XIV., came the greater out of the struggle. The King of England had lost all consideration both at home and abroad, and Spain paid all the expenses of the war.

Peace was concluded on the 17th of September, thanks to the energetic intervention of the Hollanders. The king restored Courtray, Audenarde, Ath, and Charleroi, which had been given him by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Ghent, Limburg, and St. Ghislain; but he kept by definitive right St. Omer, Cassel, Aire, Ypres, Cambray, Bouchain, Valenciennes, and all Franche-Comte; henceforth he possessed in the north of France a line of places extending from Dunkerque to the Meuse; the Spanish monarchy was disarmed.

It still required a successful campaign under Marshal Crequi to bring the emperor and the German princes over to peace; exchanges of territory and indemnities re-established the treaty of Westphalia on all essential points. The Duke of Lorraine refused the conditions on which the king proposed to restore to him his duchy; so Louis XIV. kept Lorraine.

The King of France was at the pinnacle of his greatness and power. “Singly against all,” as Louvois said, he had maintained the struggle against Europe, and he came out of it victorious; everywhere, with good reason, was displayed his proud device, Nec pluribus impar. “My will alone,” says Louis XIV. in his Memoires, “concluded this peace, so much desired by those on whom it did not depend; for, as to my enemies, they feared it as much as the public good made me desire it, and that prevailed on this occasion over the gain and personal glory I was likely to find in the continuation of the war. . . . I was in full enjoyment of my good fortune and the fruits of my good conduct, which had caused me to profit by all the occasions I had met with for extending the borders of my kingdom at the expense of my enemies.”

“Here is peace made,” wrote Madame de Sevigne to the Count of Bussy. “The king thought it handsomer to grant it this year to Spain and Holland than to take the rest of Flanders; he is keeping that for another time.”

The Prince of Orange thought as Madame de Seigne: he regarded the peace of Nimeguen as a truce, and a truce fraught with danger to Europe. For that reason did he soon seek to form alliances in order to secure the repose of the world against the insatiable ambition of King Louis XIV. Intoxicated by his successes and the adulation of his court, the King of France no longer brooked any objections to his will or any limits to his desires. The poison of absolute power had done its work. Louis XIV. considered the “office of king” grand, noble, delightful, “for he felt himself worthy of acquitting himself well in all matters in which he engaged.” “The ardor we feel for glory,” he used to say, “is not one of those feeble passions which grow dull by possession; its favors, which are never to be obtained without effort, never, on the other hand, cause disgust, and whoever can do without longing for fresh ones is unworthy of all he has received.”

Standing at the king’s side and exciting his pride and ambition, Louvois had little by little absorbed all the functions of prime minister without bearing the title. Colbert alone resisted him, and he, weary of the struggle, was about to succumb before long (1683), driven to desperation by the burdens that the wars and the king’s luxury caused to weigh heavily upon France. Peace had not yet led to disarmament; an army of a hundred and forty thousand men remained standing, ever ready to uphold the rights of France during the long discussions over the regulation of the frontiers. In old papers ancient titles were found, and by degrees the villages, Burghs, and even principalities, claimed by King Louis XIV. were re-united quietly to France; King Charles XI. was thus alienated, in consequence of the seizure of the countship of Deux-Ponts, to which Sweden laid claim. Strasburg was taken by a surprise. This free city had several times violated neutrality during the war; Louvois had kept up communications inside the place; suddenly he had the approaches and the passage over the Rhine occupied by thirty-five thousand men on the night between the 16th and 17th of September, 1681; the burgesses sent up to ask aid from the emperor, but the messengers were arrested; on the 30th Strasburg capitulated, and Louis XIV. made his triumphant entry there on the 24th of October. “Nobody,” says a letter of the day, “can recover from the consternation caused by the fact that the French have taken Strasburg without firing a single shot; everybody says it is one of the wheels of the chariot to be used for a drive into the empire, and that the door of Elsass is shut from this moment.”

The very day of the surrender of Strasburg (September 30, 1681), Catinat, with a corps of French troops, entered Casale, sold to Louis XIV. by the Duke of Mantua. The king thought to make sure of Piedmont by marrying his niece, Monsieur’s daughter, to the Duke of Savoy, Victor-Amadeo, quite a boy, delicate and taciturn, at loggerheads with his mother and with her favorites. Marie Louise d’Orleans, elder sister of the young Duchess of Savoy, had married the King of Spain, Charles II., a sickly creature of weak intellect. Louis XIV. felt the necessity of forming new alliances; the old supports of France had all gone over to the enemy. Sweden and Holland were already allied to the empire; the German princes joined the coalition. The Prince of Orange, with an ever-vigilant eye on the frequent infractions of the treaties which France permitted herself to commit, was quietly negotiating with his allies, and ready to take up arms to meet the common danger. “He was,” says Massillon, “a prince profound in his views, skilful in forming leagues and banding spirits together, more successful in exciting wars than on the battle-field, more to be feared in the privacy of the closet than at the head of armies, a prince and an enemy whom hatred of the French name rendered capable of conceiving great things and of executing them, one of those geniuses who seem born to move at their will both peoples and sovereigns.” French diplomacy was not in a condition to struggle with the Prince of Orange. M. de Pomponne had succeeded Lionne; he was disgraced in 1679. “I order his recall,” said the king, “because all that passes through his hands loses the grandeur and force which ought to be shown in executing the orders of a king who is no poor creature.” Colbert de Croissy, the minister’s brother, was from that time employed to manage with foreign countries all the business which Louvois did not reserve to himself.

Duquesne had bombarded Algiers in 1682; in 1684, he destroyed several districts of Genoa, which was accused of having failed in neutrality between France and Spain; and at the same time Marshals Humieres and Crequi occupied Audenarde, Courtray, and Dixmude, and made themselves masters of Luxemburg; the king reproached Spain with its delays in the regulation of the frontiers, and claimed to occupy the Low Countries pacifically; the diet of Ratisbonne intervened; the emperor, with the aid of Sobieski, King of Poland, was occupied in repelling the invasions of the Turks; a truce was concluded for twenty-four years; the empire and Spain acquiesced in the king’s new conquests. “It seemed to be established,” said the Marquis de la Fare, “that the empire of France was an evil not to be avoided by other nations.” Nobody was more convinced of this than King Louis XIV.

He was himself about to deal his own kingdom a blow more fatal than all those of foreign wars and of the European coalition. Intoxicated by so much success and so many victories, he fancied that consciences were to be bent like states, and he set about bringing all his subjects back to the Catholic faith. Himself returning to a regular life, under the influence of age and of Madame de Maintenon, he thought it a fine thing to establish in his kingdom that unity of religion which Henry IV. and Richelieu had not been able to bring about. He set at nought all the rights consecrated by edicts, and the long patience of those Protestants whom Mazarin called “the faithful flock;” in vain had persecution been tried for several years past; tyranny interfered, and the edict of Nantes was revoked on the 13th of October, 1685. Some years later, the Reformers, by hundreds of thousands, carried into foreign lands their industries, their wealth, and their bitter resentments. Protestant Europe, indignant, opened her doors to these martyrs to conscience, living witnesses of the injustice and arbitrary power of Louis XIV. All the princes felt themselves at the same time insulted and threatened in respect of their faith as well as of their puissance. In the early months of 1686, the league of Augsburg united all the German princes, Holland, and Sweden; Spain and the Duke of Savoy were not slow to join it. In 1687, the diet of Ratisbonne refused to convert the twenty years’ truce into a definitive peace. By his haughty pretensions the king gave to the coalition the support of Pope Innocent XI.; Louis XIV. was once more single-handed against all, when he invaded the electorate of Cologne in the month of August, 1686. Philipsburg, lost by France in 1676, was recovered on the 29th of October; at the end of the campaign, the king’s armies were masters of the Palatinate. In the month of January, 1689, war was officially declared against Holland, the emperor, and the empire. The commander-in-chief of the French forces was intrusted to the dauphin, then twenty-six years of age. “I give you an opportunity of making your merit known,” said Louis XIV. to his son: “exhibit it to all Europe, so that when I come to die it shall not be perceived that the king is dead.”

The dauphin was already tasting the pleasures of conquest, and the coalition had not stirred. They were awaiting their chief; William of Orange was fighting for them in the very act of taking possession of the kingdom of England. Weary of the narrow-minded and cruel tyranny of their king, James II., disquieted at his blind zeal for the Catholic religion, the English nation had summoned to their aid the champion of Protestantism; it was in the name of the political liberties and the religious creed of England that the Prince of Orange set sail on the 11th of November, 1688; on the flags of his vessels was inscribed the proud device of his house, I will maintain; below were the words, Pro libertate et Protestante religione. William landed without obstacle at Torbay, on the 15th of November; on the 4th of January, King James, abandoned by everybody, arrived in France, whither he had been preceded by his wife, Mary of Modena, and the little Prince of Wales; the convention of the two Houses in England proclaimed William and Mary kings (rois—? king and queen); the Prince of Orange had declined the modest part of mere husband of the queen. “I will never be tied to a woman’s apron-strings,” he had said.

By his personal qualities as well as by the defects and errors of his mind Louis XIV. was a predestined acquisition to the cause of James II.; he regarded the revolution in England as an insolent attack by the people upon the kingly majesty, and William of Orange was the most dangerous enemy of the crown of France. The king gave the fallen monarch a magnificent reception. “The king acts towards these majesties of England quite divinely,” writes Madame de Sevigne, on the 10th of January, 1689: “for is it not to be the image of the Almighty to support a king out-driven, betrayed, abandoned as he is? The king’s noble soul is delighted to play such a part as this. He went to meet the Queen of England with all his household and a hundred six-horse carriages; he escorted her to St. Germain, where she found herself supplied, like the queen, with all sorts of knick-knacks, amongst which was a very rich casket with six thousand louis d’or. The next day the King of England arrived late at St. Germain; the king was there waiting for him, and went to the end of the Guards’ hall to meet him; the King of England bent down very low, as if he meant to embrace his knees; the king prevented him, and embraced him three or four times over, very cordially. At parting, his Majesty would not be escorted back, but said to the King of England, ‘This is your house; when I come hither you shall do me the honors of it, as I will do you when you come to Versailles.’ The king subsequently sent the King of England ten thousand louis. The latter looked aged and worn, the queen thin and with eyes that have wept, but beautiful black ones; a fine complexion, rather pale, a large mouth, fine teeth, a fine figure and plenty of wits; all that makes up a very pleasing person. All she says is quite just and full of good sense. Her husband is not the same; he has plenty of spirit, but a common mind which relates all that has passed in England with a want of feeling which causes the same towards him. It is so extraordinary to have this court here that it is the subject of conversation incessantly. Attempts are being made to regulate ranks and prepare for permanently living with people so far from their restoration.”

In his pride and his kingly illusions, Louis XIV. had undertaken a burden which was to weigh heavily upon him to the very end of his reign.

Catholic Ireland had not acquiesced in the elevation of William of Orange to the throne of England; she invited over King James. Personally brave, and blinded by his hopes, he set out from St. Germain on the 25th of February, 1689. “Brother,” said the king to him on taking leave, “the best I can wish you is not to see you back.” He took with him a corps of French troops commanded by M. de Rosen, and the Count of Avaux as adviser. “It will be no easy matter to keep any secret with the King of England,” wrote Avaux to Louis XIV.; “he has said before the sailors of the St. Michael what he ought to have reserved for his greatest confidants. Another thing which may cause us trouble is his indecision, for he has frequent changes of opinion, and does not always determine upon the best. He lays great stress on little things, over which he spends all his time, and passes lightly by the most essential. Besides, he listens to everybody, and as much time has to be spent in destroying the impressions which bad advice has produced upon him as in inspiring him with good. It is said here that the Protestants of the north will intrench themselves in Londonderry, which is a pretty strong town for Ireland, and that it is a business which will probably last some days.”

The siege of Londonderry lasted a hundred and five days; most of the French officers fell there; the place had to be abandoned; the English army had just landed at Carrickfergus (August 25), under the orders of Marshal Schomberg. Like their leader, a portion of Schomberg’s men were French Protestants who had left their native country after the revocation of the edict of Nantes; they fought to the bitter end against the French regiments of Rosen. The Irish Parliament was beginning to have doubts about James II. “Too English,” it was said, “to render full justice to Ireland.” There was disorder everywhere, in the government as well as in the military operations; Schomberg held the Irish and French in check; at last William III. appeared.

He landed on the 14th of June, and at once took the road to Belfast; the Protestant opposition was cantoned in the province of Ulster, peopled to a great extent by Cromwell’s Scotch colonists; three parts of Ireland were still in the hands of the Catholics and King James. “I haven’t come hither to let the grass grow under my feet,” said William to those who counselled prudence. He had brought with him his old Dutch and German regiments, and numbered under his orders thirty-five thousand men; representatives from all the Protestant churches of Europe were there in arms against the enemies of their liberties.

The forces of King James were scarcely inferior to those of his son-in-law; Louis XIV. had sent him a re-enforcement of eight thousand men under the orders of the Duke of Lauzun. On the 1st of July the two armies met on the banks of the Boyne, near the town of Drogheda. William had been slightly wounded in the shoulder the evening before during a reconnaissance. “There’s no harm done,” said he at once to his terrified friends, “but, as it was, the ball struck quite high enough.” He was on horseback at the head of his troops; at daybreak the whole army plunged into the river; Marshal Schomberg commanded a division; he saw that the Huguenot regiments were staggered by the death of their leader, M. de Caillemotte, younger brother of the Marquis of Ruvigny. He rushed his horse into the river, shouting, “Forward, gentlemen; yonder are your persecutors.” He was killed, in his turn, as he touched the bank. King William himself had just entered the Boyne; his horse had taken to swimming, and he had difficulty in guiding it with his wounded arm; a ball struck his boot, another came and hit against the butt of his pistol; the Irish infantry, ignorant and undisciplined, everywhere took flight. “We were not beaten,” said a letter to Louvois from M. de la Hoguette, a French officer, “but the enemy drove the Irish troops, like sheep, before them, without their having attempted to fire a single musket-shot.” All the burden of the contest fell upon the troops of Louis XIV. and upon the Irish gentlemen, who fought furiously; William rallied around him the Protestants of Enniskillen, and led them back to the charge; the Irish gave way on all sides; King James had prudently remained at a distance, watching the battle from afar; he turned bridle, and hastily took the road back to Dublin. On the 3d of July he embarked at Waterford, himself carrying to St. Germain the news of his defeat. “Those who love the King of England must be very glad to see him in safety,” wrote Marshal Luxembourg to Louvois; “but those who love his glory have good reason to deplore the figure he made.” “I was in trouble to know what had become of the king my father,” wrote Queen Mary to William III.; “I dared not ask anybody but Lord Nottingham, and I had the satisfaction of learning that he was safe and sound. I know that I need not beg you to spare him, but to your tenderness add this, that for my sake the world may know that you would not have any harm happen to him. You will forgive me this.” The rumor had spread at Paris that King William was dead; the populace lighted bonfires in the streets; and the governor of the Bastille fired a salute. The anger and hatred of a people are perspicacious.

The insensate pride of king and nation was to be put to other trials; the campaign of 1689 had been without advantage or honor to the king’s arms. Disembarrassed of the great Conde, of Turenne, and even of Marshal Luxembourg, who was compromised in some distressing law proceedings, Louvois exercised undisputed command over generals and armies; his harsh and violent genius encountered no more obstacles. He had planned a defensive war which was to tire out the allies, all the while ravaging their territories. The Palatinate underwent all its horrors. Manheim, Heidelberg, Spires, Worms, Bingen, were destroyed and burned. “I don’t think,” wrote the Count of Tesse to Louvois, “that for a week past my heart has been in its usual place. I take the liberty of speaking to you naturally, but I did not foresee that it would cost so much to personally look to the burning of a town with a population, in proportion, like that of Orleans. You may rely upon it that nothing at all remains of the superb castle of Heidelberg. There were yesterday at noon, besides the castle, four hundred and thirty-two houses burned; and the fire was still going on. I merely caused to be set apart the family pictures of the Palatine House; that is, the fathers, mothers, grandmothers, and relatives of Madame; intending, if you order me or advise me so, to make her a present of them, and have them sent to her when she is somewhat distracted from the desolation of her native country; for, except herself, who can take any interest in them? Of the whole lot there is not a single copy worth a dozen livres.” The poor Princess Palatine, Monsieur’s second wife, was not yet distracted from her native country, and she wrote in March, 1689, “Should it cost me my life, it is impossible for me not to regret, not to deplore, having been, so to speak, the pretext for the destruction of my country. I cannot look on in cold blood and see the ruin at a single blow, in poor Manheim, of all that cost so much pains and trouble to the late prince-elector, my father. When I think of all the explosions that have taken place, I am so full of horror that every night, the moment I begin to go to sleep, I fancy myself at Heidelberg or Manheim, and an eye-witness of the ravages committed. I picture to myself how it all was in my time, and to what condition it has been reduced now, and I cannot refrain from weeping hot tears. What distresses me above all is, that the king waited to reveal his orders until the very moment of my intercession in favor of Heidelberg and Manheim. And yet it is thought bad taste for me to be afflicted!”