He accepted, at first, the ministers whom the dying cardinal had recommended. The most prominent of these were Le Tellier, De Lionne, and Fouquet. The last was intrusted with the public chest, who found the means to supply the dissipated young monarch with all the money he desired for the indulgence of his expensive tastes and ruinous pleasures.
The thoughts and time of the king, from the death of Mazarin, for six or seven years, were chiefly occupied with his Habits and Pleasures of Louis. pleasures. It was then that the court of France was so debauched, splendid, and far-famed. It was during this time that the king was ruled by La Vallière, one of the most noted of all his favorites, a woman of considerable beauty and taste, and not so unprincipled as royal favorites generally have been. She was created a duchess, and her children were legitimatized, and also became dukes and princes. Of these the king was very fond, and his love for them survived the love for their unfortunate mother, who, though beautiful and affectionate, was not sufficiently intellectual to retain the affections with which she inspired the most selfish monarch of his age. She was supplanted in the king's affections by Madame de Montespan, an imperious beauty, whose extravagances and follies shocked and astonished even the most licentious court in Europe; and La Vallière, broken-hearted, disconsolate, and mortified, sought the shelter of a Carmelite convent, in which she dragged out thirty-six melancholy and dreary years, amid the most rigorous severities of self-inflicted penance, in the anxious hope of that heavenly mansion where her sins would be no longer remembered, and where the weary would be at rest.
It was during these years of extravagance and pleasure that Versailles attracted the admiring gaze of Christendom, the most gorgeous palace which the world has seen since the fall of Babylon. Amid its gardens and groves, its parks and marble halls, did the modern Nebuchadnezzar revel in a pomp and grandeur unparalleled in the history of Europe, surrounded by eminent prelates, poets, philosophers, and statesmen, and all that rank and beauty had ennobled throughout his vast dominions. Intoxicated by their united flatteries, by all the incense which sycophancy, carried to a science, could burn before him, he almost fancied himself a deity, and gave no bounds to his self-indulgence, his vanity, and his pride. Every thing was subordinate to his pleasure and his egotism—an egotism alike regardless of the tears of discarded favorites, and the groans of his overburdened subjects.
But Louis, at last, palled with pleasure, was aroused from the festivities of Versailles by dreams of His Military Ambition. military ambition. He knew nothing of war, of its dangers, its reverses, or of its ruinous expenses; but he fancied it would be a beautiful sport for a wealthy and absolute monarch to engage in the costly game. He cast his eyes on Holland, a state extremely weak in land forces, and resolved to add it to the great kingdom over which he ruled.
The only power capable of rendering effectual assistance to Holland, when menaced by Louis XIV., was England; but England was ruled by Charles II., and all he cared for were his pleasures and independence from parliamentary control. The French king easily induced him to break his alliance with the Dutch by a timely bribe, while, at the same time, he insured the neutrality of Spain, by inflaming the hereditary prejudices of the Spanish court against the Low Countries.
War, therefore, without even a decent pretence, and without provocation, was declared against Holland, with a view of annexing the Low Countries to France.
Before the Dutch were able to prepare for resistance, Louis XIV. appeared on the banks of the Rhine with an army of one hundred and twenty thousand, marshalled by such able generals as Luxembourg, Condé, and Turenne. The king commanded in person, and with all the pomp of an ancient Persian monarch, surrounded with women and nobles. Without any adequate force to resist him, his march could not but be triumphant. He crossed the Rhine,—an exploit much celebrated, by his flatterers, though nothing at all extraordinary,—and, in the course of a few weeks, nearly all the United Provinces had surrendered to the royal victor. The reduction of Holland and Zealand alone was necessary to crown his enterprise with complete success. But he wasted time in vain parade at Utrecht, where he held his court, and where his splendid army revelled in pleasure and pomp. Amsterdam alone, amid the general despondency and consternation which the French inundation produced, was true to herself, and to the liberties of Holland; and this was chiefly by means of the gallant efforts of the William, Prince of Orange. Prince of Orange.
At this time, (1672,) he was twenty-two years of age, and had received an excellent education, and shown considerable military abilities. In consequence of his precocity of talent, his unquestioned patriotism, and the great services which his family had rendered to the state, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces of the republic, and was encouraged to aspire to the office of stadtholder, the highest in the commonwealth. And his power was much increased after the massacre of the De Witts—the innocent victims of popular jealousy, who, though patriotic and illustrious, inclined to a different policy than what the Orange party advocated. William advised the States to reject with scorn the humiliating terms of peace which Louis XIV. offered, and to make any sacrifice in defence of their very last ditch. The heroic spirit which animated his bosom he communicated to his countrymen, on the borders of despair, and in the prospect of national ruin; and so great was the popular enthusiasm, that preparations were made for fifty thousand families to fly to the Dutch possessions in the East Indies, and establish there a new empire, in case they were overwhelmed by their triumphant enemy.
Never, in the history of war, were such energies put forth as by the Hollanders in the hour of their extremity. They opened their dikes, and overflowed their villages and their farms. They rallied around the standard of their heroic leader, who, with twenty-two thousand men, kept the vast armies of Condé and Turenne at bay. Providence, too, assisted men who were willing to help themselves. The fleets of their enemies were dispersed by storms, and their armies were driven back by the timely inundation.
The heroism of William called forth universal admiration. Louis attempted to bribe him, and offered him the sovereignty of Holland, which offer he unhesitatingly rejected. He had seen the lowest point in the depression of his country, and was confident of ultimate success.