The ascendancy of France, 1598-1715

by Henry Offley Wakeman

The peace of Nimwegen, 1678.

By these treaties, generally known as the peace of Nimwegen the United Provinces were not called upon to surrender one acre of their territory, while they gained the removal of the hostile restrictions on their trade with France. The barrier of the Spanish Netherlands was not materially interfered with, and Spain even recovered Charleroi and some other towns which she had surrendered at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the frontier was fixed on a fairly straight line, from Dunkirk to the Sambre at Maubeuge. The Emperor recovered Philipsburg, but surrendered Freiburg with the passage of the river at Breisach. The only substantial gain to France was the actual annexation of Franche Comté, and the virtual annexation of Lorraine. True to his one faithful ally Louis insisted on the restoration to Sweden of the territories in Germany taken from her by the Great Elector.

Virtual defeat of Louis’s policy.

The treaty of Nimwegen is often looked upon as the summit of the success of Louis XIV., the pinnacle of his glory. It is rather the first step in his decline, for it marks the limits of his power. He had made deliberately a bid for supremacy over Europe, and he had failed. He had determined on an act of signal vengeance upon the petty nation which had dared to thwart his will, and he had been baffled. But this was not all. Not only was his failure one of fact, but it was one of policy. He had failed in a way which made it certain that he would fail again, if he made a similar attempt. However carefully laid his plans, however skilfully conceived his campaigns, however brilliantly led his armies, he could not fight single-handed against Europe; and Europe was as certain to combine sooner or later against him, if he continued his policy of universal dominion, as the tides were certain to ebb and to flow. The selfishness of a Charles II., the ambition of a bishop of Münster, the greediness of a Swedish oligarchy, the poverty of a Polish nobility, the cunning inertness of a Leopold might enable him to purchase alliance and secure neutrality until the storm-cloud actually burst, until the danger of a French tyranny became instant and menacing. But in the end the web of diplomacy, however deftly woven, was certain to be torn into fragments before the rude shock of the spirit of nationality and the love of independence. De Witt with his policy of the Triple Alliance had shown Europe how the monster might be bridled, and Europe did not forget the lesson. Interests rival to those of France were too numerous, too varied, too deep-seated in national character, to be for long obscured by the arts of diplomacy, or quieted by the alliance of governments. The principle of the balance of power was certain to assert itself sooner or later, and as long as Louis persisted in an attempt to make himself dictator of Europe, whether by the conquest of the maritime powers, or by the annexation of the dominions of Spain, or by the disintegration of Germany and Austria, so long would Europe combine against him and prevent that dictatorship from becoming an accomplished fact. Unfortunately, like Napoleon after him, Louis could not bring himself to acknowledge the permanent limits of his power. He could not understand that he had embarked on a policy impossible in the very nature of things. He looked upon Nimwegen as he had looked upon Aix-la-Chapelle, merely as a check in the game which he was playing. He knew he had made some mistakes in his play. A fresh combination of pieces directed by a riper experience could not fail to succeed. So, like the gambler, who, convinced of the infallibility of his system, attributes his losses to mere errors of calculation which experience and care must detect, Louis, in no wise disconcerted by the failure of Nimwegen, began with increased assiduity to weave his plots and repair his errors, so that he might again be ready to assert his claims, when the turn of the cards seemed once more favourable to his fortune.

Character of William III.

In reality while Louis was persuading himself that he was marching by steady and statesmanlike steps to a sure goal, his chances of ultimate success were dwindling daily. The opposition to him in Europe had acquired both a policy and a leader. Never had a hero of a great cause less of the heroic about him than had William of Orange. Taught in the school of adversity, he had become a man before ever he knew what it was to be a boy. Implicated from his birth in a web of intrigue, nurtured in an atmosphere of suspicion, surrounded by foes of his race and cause, his earliest lessons were those of deceit and fraud. Generous instincts withered away in a heart in which affection had ever to give place to policy. At the age of twenty he was heartless as a Talleyrand, unscrupulous as a Walpole, cold, pitiless, and self-concentrated as Macchiavelli himself. Strange indeed was the contrast between this puny, dyspeptic, selfish, taciturn stripling of twenty, untouched by sentiment, and inaccessible to love, and the open-hearted, magnificent Louis in the prime of life and of glory, the prince of gallants and the pattern of chivalry. Yet deep down in the cold breast of William there burned a fire more enduring and more intense than any of the fitful flashes which illumined from time to time the soul of the splendid king. Ennobling influence of his enmity to Louis. Love for his country, which, under the peculiar circumstances of the time, translated itself into an undying and unconquerable hatred of the aggression and tyranny of France, slowly through long years of suffering and of patience, fused the selfish heartlessness of William into metal of heroic stamp. To him was not given the power of witching the world with noble deeds. He could not plan campaigns like Turenne, or win battles like Condé or Luxemburg. He could not enmesh two hemispheres in the bonds of his policy like Chatham, he could not dazzle Europe with the glow of his fame like Charles XII., or entrance it with the richness of personal gifts like Henry IV. He could not command admiration like Gustavus Adolphus, or extort obedience like Richelieu. The depths of mind and of character which move nations and sway the world had no place within the narrow limits of his mean and pedantic nature. But in their stead were developed to an almost abnormal extent the unyielding and tenacious qualities of his stubborn ancestry. Endurance, fortitude, perseverance, inspiring and inspired by unconquerable hate and enlisted in the noble cause of patriotism and liberty, made him a hero in spite of himself. He would not recognise failure, he would not accept defeat. He knew not the meaning of despair. Never for an instant was he tempted to put personal ambition before public duty, for to him the public duty of resistance to France summed up his personal ambition.

He valued the crown of England only because it enlisted the power of England on his side against the great enemy. He was prepared to abdicate the moment he found that England was but half-hearted and insular in her views about the war. To die in the last ditch was in his mouth no empty or braggart boast. He would no more have dreamed of surrendering the religion and liberty of his country to Louis XIV. than would Leonidas of submitting to the Persians at Thermopylæ. He waged the military and diplomatic struggle of thirty years in the spirit of that declaration. He fought throughout not as a conqueror but as a defender, till he won for himself the position of the saviour of his country, and the champion of the liberty of Europe. Concentrating all his faculties on the personal duel in which he was engaged, he never fully realised the magnitude of the issues at stake, and the far-reaching effects of the policy which he had undertaken. To his successors fell the task of reaping the harvest prepared by his patient and painful husbandry, to resettle the map of Europe after the overthrow of the tyrant, and to lay down at Utrecht a new balance of power. Naturally he could not know that Steinkirk was but the prelude to Blenheim, and that la Hogue alone made possible the glories alike of Plassey and Quebec; yet if his spirit was permitted to follow the Maison du Roi in their flight from Ramillies, or a century later to brood over the shattered hulks amid the storms of Trafalgar, well might he proudly have claimed for himself his share in the wreaths of laurel which encircled the brows of Marlborough and of Nelson.

Quarrel of Louis with the Papacy.

For ten years Europe was at peace, but it was a peace which was in reality little more than a breathing space, devoted by both parties to preparations for the next round in the struggle. While William was plotting and scheming for his father-in-law’s crown, Louis was strengthening his frontier by diplomacy as well as by arms. Both realised that the duel was still undecided, both hesitated to be the first to loose again the dogs of war. Meanwhile other difficulties of a serious nature came up for settlement in France herself. The Church of France had always maintained a much greater independence of the authority of the Pope than had been the case in Spain or in Italy or in Germany since the Reformation. The long continued presence of Mohammedanism in Spain, and the pressure of heresy in Germany, had naturally tended to augment the personal authority of the Pope over those countries. In France the tendency had been the other way. National spirit and national pride called out by the liberation of the country from the English yoke, and employed in the task of conquest in Italy, emphasised national rights and distinctions. As in England the feeling of the people was strongly anti-papal, and it was the Crown not the Church which found it to its interest to make surrender to the claims of the Roman Curia, in order to gain a useful ally in its struggle with the nobles. The independence of the Gallican Church. As however the royal power in France gradually made itself supreme over all departments of the national life, the kings began in their turn to take up the cudgels against the Pope in a quarrel, which could not fail in the end to minister to their own greatness. Francis I. was within an ace of declaring France independent of the Holy See, the Valois kings refused for many years to take any part whatever in the council of Trent, and when the cardinal of Lorraine did appear with the French bishops, it was rather to present an ultimatum than to take part in a discussion. The doctrinal decisions of the council were never formally accepted by France at all. Heresy, in the form of Huguenotism, was suppressed in France much more by the Crown than by the efforts of the Pope, and the Jesuits were only admitted into France under strict limitations. Richelieu and Mazarin, though cardinals of the Roman Church, did not hesitate to pursue a policy in strong opposition to the wishes of the Pope, and Louis XIV. himself had not scrupled in the earlier years of his reign to put a public indignity upon the Pontiff. The very orthodoxy of the kings themselves and of their government made them the more jealous of all exercise of authority in their dominions by another sovereign, even though he was the Pope.

Claim of the regale over the whole of France.