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.