In that, however, they were grossly unjust. They were visiting upon him their dislike of the increased war taxation of which he was the mouthpiece not the author. The choice of policy before Louis, 1671. In the year 1671 France stood at the parting of the ways. On each side stretched far into the future a long vista of glory and prosperity, but she had to choose between them. Through the victories of Richelieu and of Mazarin, through the administration of Colbert, through the government of Louis, France stood at the head of the countries of Europe in absolute security, without a rival who wished to attack her, without an enemy whose attack she might justly fear. Commercial supremacy open to France. Entrenched within the borders of a frontier easily defensible by the genius of a Vauban, she might sit free from all possible danger until the floodgates of European warfare should reopen. Planting her colonies in America, in Africa, in Madagascar, and among the islands of the West, pushing out the operations of her trading companies to India and the Spice Islands of the East, enjoying a pre-eminence through treaty over all other European powers at the court of the Sultan and in the trade of the Levant, on the point of gaining an influence, hitherto unparallelled and undreamed of, over the vast expanse of the empire of China through her Jesuit missionaries, she had but to stretch forth her hand to seize the crown of colonial empire and of commercial supremacy, which was already threatening to fall from the head of the Dutch. In the middle of the seventeenth century she had no rivals to fear. The day of Spain and Portugal was over. Holland, though vigorous, capable and persevering, could not stand out for long against the pressure of her greater neighbours. She had gained her unique and glorious position through their weakness, she could not maintain herself against them in their strength. Already she was stricken to the knees by the English Navigation Act and the war of 1651, and had had to recognise in England an equal in naval power and a rival in commerce. But the day of England had not yet come. In the lucid intervals of a mad and despicable policy, Charles II. did something to encourage the American plantations, and to promote the operations of the East India Company, but it was quite certain that the power of the state would never be thrown into commercial or colonial competition with France, as long as Louis retained in his own hands the means of rendering the king independent of parliamentary control. It is moreover a significant fact that the most important and permanent part of the English colonial empire, which was built up in the eighteenth century, was not the result of colonial enterprise but of war. Canada, the West Indies, the Cape of Good Hope, India itself were the direct fruits of the long wars with France, which in their origin and essence sprang from the military and political ambition of Louis XIV. The rivalry with France, which beginning in 1690 did not end till 1815, which produced during that century and a quarter no less than seven distinct and prolonged contests between the two nations, which gained for England mainly at the expense of France a vast colonial empire, which lost for her her only considerable plantations, was primarily and in its essence a military and European rivalry. The wars were primarily and essentially wars to check the military and political ascendency of France over Europe, and to preserve the balance of power in Europe. They sprang from the policy adopted by Louis XIV. in 1672, when, no longer satisfied with pre-eminence in Europe, he deliberately struck for supremacy over Europe. They followed from the determination of William III. and the Whig party in England to prevent such a consummation at all costs. Had Louis turned his ambition into other directions, followed where the policy of Colbert pointed the way, thrown the energies of his government and the genius of his people into the path of colonial development and commercial supremacy, pushed his fleets and his armies along the savage tracks where the cupidity of his traders and the self-sacrifice of his missionaries had first marked the road, he would have had nothing to fear from the impotent stubbornness of the Dutch, or the venal indolence of England. And if a century or half a century later England had awoke from her trance and put forth her claims to dominion, a very different task would have awaited her. She would have found an established organised power to conquer, not a rival to outdo.
Preference of military supremacy by Louis.
But it was not to be. The traditions of France lay in the direction of military conquest not of commercial supremacy. With an army carefully trained and organised by Louvois, with generals at his command like Turenne, Condé and Vauban, with all the traditions of the French monarchy behind him, with all the longing for glory within him, which was the very atmosphere he breathed, with his intimate knowledge of European courts to assist him, what wonder is it that Louis determined on the course which seemed to combine the certainty of success with the maximum of glory? There was no nation in Europe that could resist him. A combination of nations was alone to be feared, and what combination could long resist the disintegrating effects of his diplomacy and their own selfishness? What league had ever been a military success? The resources of France seemed inexhaustible, her armies invincible, her genius irresistible. In the distance but not so very far removed from practical politics must come some day the great question of the succession to the crown of Spain. When that question was ripe for solution France must be in a position to solve it. Impelled alike by the foresight of a statesman, the ambition of a king, and the flattery of a court, Louis took the fatal step and plunged his country into a century and a half of incessant war. With singular ease he had made himself master of France, he now determined to be master of Europe too.
CHAPTER X
LOUIS XIV. AND THE UNITED PROVINCES
Humiliation of Spain and the Pope—Purchase of Dunkirk—The war of devolution—Alarm of Europe—Opposition of the Dutch—The Triple Alliance—The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle—Overthrow of the Triple Alliance—Origin of the United Provinces—Their constitution—Supremacy of the burghers—Unique position of Holland—The House of Orange—Prosperity of the Dutch—Rivalry between the republicans and the House of Orange—John Olden Barneveldt—Attempted revolution of William II.—Supremacy of the republican party—Character and policy of John de Witt—War with England—The Act of Navigation—The Act of Exclusion—Second war with England—The treaty of Breda—Danger from France—The perpetual edict—Popular movement in favour of William III.—Murder of de Witt.
Humiliation of Spain by Louis, 1661.
No sooner had Louis XIV. taken the management of affairs into his own hands, than he began to let foreign countries understand that France was now ruled by a sovereign who intended his will to be law, and was not likely to abate one jot of the dignity which he thought due to his crown. In the autumn of 1661, on the occasion of the solemn entry of a Swedish envoy into London, the ambassadors of France and Spain in their eagerness to gain precedence of each other came to blows in the narrow streets. The carriage of d’Estrades, the French ambassador, was overturned, his horse killed, and his suite forced to take refuge in the adjacent houses wounded and beaten; while the victorious Spaniard proudly took his place in the procession clothed with all the insolent dignity of success. Louis took the matter up fiercely, dismissed d’Estrades for having been beaten, recalled his own ambassador from Madrid, and demanded and actually obtained from Philip IV., under threat of war, the acknowledgment of the right of the crown of France to precede that of Spain.
Humiliation of the Pope by Louis, 1662.
A few months later a tumult of a less honourable character brought Louis into sharp antagonism to the Pope. The French ambassador at Rome, the duc de Créqui, had made himself very unpopular by his intolerable pride, and some of the Corsican guards of the Vatican, urged on it is said by the brother of the Pope, and smarting under the wrong of a personal insult rendered to their body by some of the French suite, made themselves the organs of the general hatred and of private revenge, by a gross attack upon the ambassador’s wife as she was returning to her palace. A page was killed, many of the servants wounded, and the duc de Créqui, leaving Rome in real or assumed fear for his own life, demanded from Alexander VII. a reparation which the Pope seemed very unwilling to give. Louis immediately seized Avignon, assembled an army, appointed the maréchal du Plessis-Praslin to the command, and ordered him to form the siege of Rome and force the Pope to do justice to the outraged majesty of France. Alexander was astonished at this unexpected display of energy, and sent his nephew the cardinal Chigi in all haste to Paris to offer an humble apology and obtain the best terms he could. He was the first legate say the French historians ever sent by a Pope to ask for pardon. If so, the success of the experiment hardly warranted its repetition. Louis remained for some time obstinately irate, and was only pacified by imposing upon the Pope the public humiliation of banishing his brother, disbanding his Corsican guard, and erecting a pyramid in Rome as a perpetual memorial of his disgrace.
Purchase of Dunkirk, 1662.