A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.

by Carlton J. H. Hayes

EXTENSION OF FRENCH FRONTIERS

Louis XIV was not a soldier himself. He never appeared in military uniform or rode at the head of his troops. What he lacked, however, in personal genius as a great military commander, he compensated for in a genuine fondness for war and in remarkable personal gifts of diplomacy. He was one of the greatest diplomats of his age, and, as we have seen, he possessed large loyal armies and able generals that he could employ in prosecuting the traditional foreign policy of France.

[Sidenote: Traditional Foreign Policy of France]

This foreign policy, which had been pursued by Francis I, Henry II, Henry IV, Richelieu, and Mazarin, had for its goal the humiliation of the powerful Habsburgs, whether of Austria or of Spain. Although France had gained materially at their expense in the treaties of Westphalia and of the Pyrenees, much remained to be done by Louis XIV. When the Grand Monarch assumed direct control of affairs in 1661, the Spanish Habsburgs still ruled not only the peninsular kingdom south of France, but the Belgian Netherlands to the north, Franche Comte to the east, and Milan in northern Italy, while their kinsmen of Austria maintained shadowy imperial government over the rich Rhenish provinces on the northeastern boundary of France. France was still almost completely encircled by Habsburg holdings.

[Sidebar: Doctrine of "Natural Boundaries">[

To justify his subsequent aggressions, Louis XIV propounded the doctrine of "natural boundaries." Every country, he maintained, should secure such frontiers as nature had obviously provided—mountains, lakes, or rivers; and France was naturally provided with the frontiers of ancient Gaul—the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine River, and the Ocean. Any foreign monarch or state that claimed power within such frontiers was an interloper and should be expelled.

[Sidenote: The Wars of Louis XIV]

For many years, and in three great wars, Louis XIV endeavored, with some success, to reach the Rhine. These three wars—the War of Devolution, the Dutch War, and the War of the League of Augsburg—we shall now discuss. A fourth great war, directed toward the acquisition of the Spanish throne by the Bourbon family, will be treated separately on account of the wide and varied interests involved.

[Sidenote: The "War of Devolution">[

The War of Devolution was an attempt of Louis to gain the Spanish or Belgian Netherlands. It will be remembered that in accordance with the peace of the Pyrenees, Louis had married Maria Theresa, the eldest daughter of Philip IV of Spain. Now by a subsequent marriage Philip IV had had a son, a weak-bodied, half-witted prince, who came to the throne in 1665 as Charles II. Louis XIV at once took advantage of this turn of affairs to assert in behalf of his wife a claim to a portion of the Spanish inheritance. The claim was based on a curious custom which had prevailed in the inheritance of private property in the Netherlands, to the effect that children of a first marriage should inherit to the exclusion of those of a subsequent marriage. Louis insisted that this custom, called "devolution," should be applied not only to private property but also to sovereignty and that his wife should be recognized, therefore, as sovereign of the Belgian Netherlands. In reality the claim was a pure invention, but the French king thought it would be a sufficient apology for the robbery of a weak brother-in-law.

Before opening hostilities, Louis XIV made use of his diplomatic wiles in order to guard himself against assistance which other states might render to Spain. In the first place, he obtained promises of friendly neutrality from Holland, Sweden, and the Protestant states of Germany which had been allied with France during the Thirty Years' War. In the second place, he threatened to stir up another civil war in the Holy Roman Empire if the Austrian Habsburgs should help their Spanish kinsman. Finally, he had no fear of England because that country was in the midst of a peculiarly bitter trade war with the Dutch. [Footnote: It was on the eve of this second trade war between England and Holland (1665-1667) that the English took New Amsterdam from the Dutch (1664) and rechristened it New York, and during this struggle that the remarkable Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, burned the English fleet and shipping on the Thames (June, 1667).]

[Sidenote: The "Balance of Power">[

The War of Devolution lasted from 1667 to 1668. The well-disciplined and splendidly generaled armies of Louis XIV had no difficulty in occupying the border fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands. The whole territory would undoubtedly have fallen to France, had not a change unexpectedly occurred in international affairs. The trade war between England and Holland came to a speedy end, and the two former rivals now joined with Sweden in forming the Triple Alliance to arrest the war and to put a stop to the French advance. The "balance of power" demanded, said the allies, that the other European states should combine in order to prevent any one state from becoming too powerful. This plea for the "balance of power" was the reply to the French king's plea for "natural boundaries."

[Sidenote: Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1668]

The threats of the Triple Alliance caused Louis XIV to negotiate the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, by which Spain surrendered to France an important section of territory in Flanders, including the fortified cities of Charleroi, Tournai, and Lille, but still retained the greater part of the Belgian Netherlands. The taste of the Grand Monarch was thereby whetted, but his appetite hardly appeased.

[Sidenote: Franco-Dutch Rivalry]

Louis blamed the Dutch for his rebuff. He was thoroughly alive to the fact that Holland would never take kindly to having powerful France as a near neighbor, and that French acquisition of the Belgian Netherlands, therefore, would always be opposed by the Dutch. Nor were wounded vanity and political considerations the only motives for the Grand Monarch's second war, that against the Dutch. France, as well as England, was now becoming a commercial and colonial rival of Holland, and it seemed both to Louis XIV and to Colbert that the French middle class would be greatly benefited by breaking the trade monopolies of the Dutch. Louis's second war was quite as much a trade war as a political conflict.

[Sidenote: Civil Strife in Holland]

First, Louis bent his energies to breaking up the Triple Alliance and isolating Holland. He took advantage of the political situation in England to arrange (1670) the secret treaty of Dover with Charles II, the king of that country: in return for a large pension, which should free him from reliance upon Parliament, the English king undertook to declare himself a Roman Catholic and to withdraw from the Triple Alliance. Liberal pensions likewise bought off the Swedish government. It seemed now as if Holland, alone and friendless, would have to endure a war with her powerful enemy. Nor was Holland in shape for a successful resistance. Ever since she had gained formal recognition of her independence (1648), she had been torn by civil strife. On one side, the head of the Orange family, who bore the title of stadholder, supported by the country districts, the nobles, the Calvinistic clergy, and the peasantry, hoped to consolidate the state and to establish an hereditary monarchy. On the other side, the aristocratic burghers and religious liberals, the townsfolk generally, found an able leader in the celebrated Grand Pensionary, John DeWitt (1625-1672), who sought to preserve the republic and the rights of the several provinces. For over twenty years, the latter party was in power, but as the young prince of Orange, William III, grew to maturity, signs were not lacking of a reaction in favor of his party.

[Sidenote: The Dutch War]

Under these circumstances, Louis XIV declared war against Holland in 1672. French troops at once occupied Lorraine on the pretext that its duke was plotting with the Dutch, and thence, proceeding down the Rhine, past Cologne, invaded Holland and threatened the prosperous city of Amsterdam. The Dutch people, in a frenzy of despair, murdered John DeWitt, whom they unjustly blamed for their reverses; and, at the order of the young William III, who now assumed supreme command, they cut the dykes and flooded a large part of northern Holland. The same expedient which had enabled them to expel the Spaniards in the War of Independence now stayed the victorious advance of the French.

The refusal of Louis XIV to accept the advantageous terms of peace offered by the Dutch aroused general apprehension throughout Europe. The Emperor Leopold and the Great Elector of Brandenburg made an offensive alliance with Holland, which subsequently was joined by Spain and several German states. The general struggle, thus precipitated, continued indeed with success for France. Turenne, by a brilliant victory, compelled the Great Elector to make peace. The emperor was defeated. The war was carried into the Spanish Netherlands and Franche Comté.

[Sidenote: Treaty of Nijmwegen, 1678]

But when at length the English Parliament compelled Charles II to adhere to the general anti-French alliance, Louis XIV thought it was time to make peace. As events proved, it was not Holland but Spain that had to pay the penalties of Louis's second war. By the treaty of Nijmwegen, the former lost nothing, while the latter ceded to France the long-coveted province of Franche Comté and several strong fortresses in the Belgian Netherlands. France, moreover, continued to occupy the duchy of Lorraine.

[Sidenote: Effects of the Dutch War on France]

Thus, if Louis XIV had failed to punish the insolence of the Dutch, he had at least succeeded in extending the French frontiers one stage nearer the Rhine. He had become the greatest and most-feared monarch in Europe. Yet for these gains France paid heavily. The border provinces had been wasted by war. The treasury was empty, and the necessity of negotiating loans and increasing taxes put Colbert in despair. Turenne, the best general, had been killed late in the contest, and Condé, on account of ill health, was obliged to withdraw from active service.

Yet at the darker side of the picture, the Grand Monarch refused to look. He was puffed up with pride by his successes in war and diplomacy. Like many another vain, ambitious ruler, he felt that what economic grievances or social discontent might exist within his country could readily be forgotten or obscured in a blaze of foreign glory—in the splendor of ambassadors, the glint and din of arms, the grim shedding of human blood. Having picked the sanguinary path, and at first found pleasure therein, the Grand Monarch pursued it to an end bitter for his family and tragic for his people.

[Sidenote: The "Chambers of Reunion" and Further French Annexations]

No sooner was the Dutch War concluded than Louis XIV set out by a policy of trickery and diplomacy further to augment the French territories. The cessions, which the treaties of Westphalia and Nijmwegen guaranteed to France, had been made "with their dependencies." It now occurred to Louis that doubtless in the old feudal days of the middle ages or early modern times some, if not all, of his new acquisitions had possessed feudal suzerainty over other towns or territories not yet incorporated into France. Although in most cases such ancient feudal ties had practically lapsed by the close of the seventeenth century, nevertheless the French king decided to reinvoke them in order, if possible, to add to his holdings. He accordingly constituted special courts, called "Chambers of Reunion," composed of his own obedient judges, who were to decide what districts by right of ancient feudal usage should be annexed. So painstaking and minute were the investigations of these Chambers of Reunion that they adjudged to their own country, France, no less than twenty important towns of the Holy Roman Empire, including Luxemburg and Strassburg. Nothing seemed to prevent the prompt execution of these judgments by the French king. He had kept his army on a war footing. The king of England was again in his pay and his alliance. The emperor was hard pressed by an invasion of the Ottoman Turks. Armed imperial resistance at Strassburg was quickly overcome (1681), and Vauban, the great engineer, proceeded to make that city the chief French fortress upon the Rhine. A weak effort of the Spanish monarch to protect Luxemburg from French aggression was doomed to dismal failure (1684).

[Sidenote: War of the League of Augsburg or of the Palatinate]

Alarmed by the steady advance of French power, the Emperor Leopold in 1686 succeeded in forming the League of Augsburg with Spain, Sweden, and several German princes, in order to preserve the territorial integrity of the Holy Roman Empire. Nor was it long before the League of Augsburg was called upon to resist further encroachments of the French king. In 1688 Louis dispatched a large army into the Rhenish Palatinate to enforce a preposterous claim which he had advanced to that valuable district. The war which resulted was Louis's third struggle, and has been variously styled the War of the League of Augsburg or the War of the Palatinate. In America, where it was to be paralleled by an opening conflict between French and English colonists, it has been known as King William's War.

[Sidenote: William III, Stadholder of Holland and King of England]

In his first two wars, Louis XIV could count upon the neutrality, if not the friendly aid, of the English. Their king was dependent upon him for financial support in maintaining an absolutist government. Their influential commercial and trading classes, who still suffered more from Dutch than from French rivalry, displayed no anxiety to mix unduly in the dynastic conflicts on the Continent. Louis had an idea that he could count upon the continuation of the same English policy; he was certainly on good terms with the English king, James II (1685-1688). But the deciding factor in England and in the war was destined to be not the subservient James II but the implacable William III. This William III, [Footnote: William III (1650-1702), Dutch stadholder in 1672 and British king in 1689.] as stadholder of Holland, had long been a stubborn opponent of Louis XIV on the Continent; he had repeatedly displayed his ability as a warrior and as a cool, crafty schemer. Through his marriage with the princess Mary, elder daughter of James II, he now managed adroitly to ingratiate himself with the Protestant, parliamentary, and commercial parties in England that were opposing the Catholic, absolutist, and tyrannical policies of James.

We shall presently see that the English Revolution of 1688, which drove James II into exile, was a decisive step in the establishment of constitutional government in England. It was likewise of supreme importance in its effects upon the foreign policy of Louis XIV, for it called to the English throne the son-in-law of James, William III, the stadholder of Holland and arch enemy of the French king.

[Sidenote: Beginning of a new Hundred Years' War between France and
England]

England, under the guidance of her new sovereign, promptly joined the League of Augsburg, and declared war against France. Trade rivalries between Holland and England were in large part composed, and the colonial empires of the two states, now united under a joint ruler, naturally came into conflict with the colonial empire of France. Thus, in addition to the difficulties which the Bourbons encountered in promoting their dynastic interests on the continent of Europe, they were henceforth confronted by a vast colonial and commercial struggle with England. It was the beginning of a Hundred Years' War that was to be fought for the mastery of India and America.

Louis XIV never seemed to appreciate the importance of the colonial side of the contest. He was too much engrossed in his ambition of stretching French boundaries to the Rhine. So in discussing the War of the League of Augsburg as well as the subsequent War of the Spanish Succession, we shall devote our attention in this chapter primarily to the European and dynastic elements, reserving the account of the parallel colonial struggle to a later chapter on the "World Conflict of France and Great Britain."

The War of the League of Augsburg, Louis' third war, lasted from 1689 to 1697. Notwithstanding the loss of Turenne and Condé, the splendidly organized French armies were able to hold the allies at bay and to save their country from invasion. They even won several victories on the frontier. But on the sea, the struggle was less successful for Louis, and a French expedition to Ireland in favor of James II proved disastrous. After many years of strife, ruinous to all the combatants, the Grand Monarch sued for peace.

[Sidenote: The Treaty of Ryswick, 1697]

By the treaty of Ryswick, which concluded the War of the League of Augsburg, Louis XIV (1) surrendered nearly all the places adjudged to him by the Chambers of Reunion, except Strassburg; (2) allowed the Dutch to garrison the chief fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands as a "barrier" against French aggression; (3) granted the Dutch a favorable commercial treaty; (4) restored Lorraine to its duke; (5) abandoned his claim to the Palatinate; (6) acknowledged William III as king of England and promised to support no attempt against his throne. Thus, the French king lost no territory,—in fact, he obtained full recognition of his ownership of the whole province of Alsace,—but his reputation and vanity had been uncomfortably wounded.