more advantageous for my designs, and less common on the score of glory,"
he wrote to Colbert on the 31st of May, "to attack four places at once on
the Rhine, and to take the actual command in person at all four sieges...
.  I chose, for that purpose, Rheinberg, Wesel, Burick, and Orsoy, and I
hope that there will be no complaint of my having deceived public
expectation."  The four places did not hold out four days.  On the 12th
of June, the king and the Prince of Conde appeared unexpectedly on the
right bank of the intermediary branch of the Rhine, between the Wahal and
the Yssel.  The Hollanders were expecting the enemy at the ford of, the
Yssel, being more easy to pass; they were taken by surprise; the king's
cuirassier regiment dashed into the river, and crossed it partly by
fording and partly by swimming; the resistance was brief; meanwhile the
Duke of Longueville was killed, and the Prince of Conde was wounded for
the first time in his life.  "I was present at the passage, which was
bold, vigorous, full of brilliancy, and glorious for the nation," writes
Louis XIV.  Arnheim and Deventer had just surrendered to Turenne and
Luxembourg; Duisbourg resisted the king for a few days; Monsieur was
besieging Zutphen.  John van Witt was for evacuating the Hague and
removing to Amsterdam the centre of government and resistance; the Prince
of Orange had just abandoned the province of Utrecht, which was
immediately occupied by the French; the defensive efforts were
concentrated upon the province of Holland; already Naarden, three leagues
from Amsterdam, was in the king's hands.  "We learn the surrender of
towns before we have heard of their investment," wrote Van Witt.  A
deputation from the States was sent on the 22d of June to the king's
headquarters to demand peace.  Louis XIV. had just entered Utrecht,
which, finding itself abandoned, opened its gates to him.  On the same
day, John van Witt received in a street of the Hague four stabs with a
dagger from the hand of an assassin, whilst the city of Amsterdam, but
lately resolved to surrender and prepared to send its magistrates as
delegates to Louis XIV., suddenly decided upon resistance to the bitter
end.  " If we must perish, let us at any rate be the last to fall,"
exclaimed the town-councillor Walkernier, "and let us not submit to the
yoke it is desired to impose upon us until there remain no means of
securing ourselves against it."  All the sluices were opened and the
dikes cut.  Amsterdam floated amidst the waters.  "I thus found myself
under the necessity of limiting my conquests, as regarded the province of
Holland, to Naarden, Utrecht, and Werden," writes Louis XIV. in his
unpublished Memoire touching the campaign of 1672, and he adds, with rare
impartiality, "the resolution to place the whole country under water was
somewhat violent; but what would not one do to save one's self from
foreign domination?  I cannot help admiring and commending the zeal and
stout-heartedness of those who broke off the negotiation of Amsterdam,
though their decision, salutary as it was for their country, was very
prejudicial to my service; the proposals made to me by the deputies from
the States General were very advantageous, but I could never prevail upon
myself to accept them."

Louis XIV. was as yet ignorant what can be done amongst a proud people by
patriotism driven to despair; the States General offered him Maestricht,
the places on the Rhine, Brabant and Dutch Flanders, with a war-indemnity
of ten millions; it was an open door to the Spanish Low Countries, which
became a patch enclosed by French possessions; but the king wanted to
annihilate the Hollanders; he demanded Southern Gueldres, the Island of
Bonmel, twenty-four millions, the restoration of Catholic worship, and,
every year, an embassy commissioned to thank the king for having a second
time given peace to the United Provinces.  This was rather too much; and,
whilst the deputies were negotiating with heavy hearts, the people of
Holland had risen in wrath.

From the commencement of the war, the party of the house of Nassau had
never ceased to gain ground.  John van Witt was accused of all the
misfortunes of the state; the people demanded with loud outcries the
restoration of the stadtholderate, but lately abolished by a law voted by
the States under the presumptuous title of perpetual edict.  Dordrecht,
the native place of the Van Witts, gave the signal of insurrection.
Cornelius van Witt, who was confined to his house by illness, yielded to
the prayers of his wife and children, and signed the municipal act which
destroyed his brother's work; the contagion spread from town to town,
from province to province; on the 4th of July the States General
appointed William of Orange stadtholder, captain-general, and admiral of
the Union; the national instinct had divined the savior of the country,
and with tumultuous acclamations placed in his hands the reins of the
state.

[Illustration: William III., Prince of Orange----434]

William of Orange was barely two and twenty when the fate of revolutions
suddenly put him at the head of a country invaded, devastated, half
conquered; but his mind as well as his spirit were up to the level of his
task.  He loftily rejected at the assembly of the Estates the proposals
brought forward in the king's name by Peter van Groot.  "To subscribe
them would be suicide," he said: "even to discuss them is dangerous; but,
if the majority of this assembly decide otherwise, there remains but one
course for the friends of Protestantism and liberty, and that is, to
retire to the colonies in the West Indies, and there found a new country,
where their consciences and their persons will be beyond the reach of
tyranny and despotism."  The States General decided to "reject the hard
and intolerable conditions proposed by their lordships the Kings of
France and Great Britain, and to defend this state and its inhabitants
with all their might."  The province of Holland in its entirety followed
the example of Amsterdam; the dikes were everywhere broken down, at the
same time that the troops of the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony were
advancing to the aid of the United Provinces, and that the emperor was
signing with those two princes a defensive alliance for the maintenance
of the treaties of Westphalia, the Pyrenees, and Aix-la-Chapelle.

Louis XIV. could no longer fly from conquest to conquest; henceforth his
troops had to remain on observation; care for his pleasures recalled him
to France; he left the command-in-chief of his army to M. de Turenne, and
set out for St.  Germain, where he arrived on the 1st of August.  Before
leaving Holland, he had sent home almost without ransom twenty thousand
prisoners of war, who before long entered the service of the States
again.  "It was an excess of clemency of which I had reason afterwards
to repent," says the king himself.  His mistake was, that he did not
understand either Holland or the new chief she had chosen.

Dispirited and beaten, like his country, John van Witt had just given in
his resignation as councillor pensionary of Holland.  He wrote to Ruyter
on the 5th of August, as follows: "The capture of the towns on the Rhine
in so short a time, the irruption of the enemy as far as the banks of the
Yssel, and the total loss of the provinces of Gueldres, Utrecht, and
Over-Yssel, almost without resistance and through unheard-of poltroonery,
if not treason, on the part of certain people, have more and more
convinced me of the truth of what was in olden times applied to the Roman
republic: _Successes are claimed by everybody, reverses are put down to
one (Prospera omnes sibi vindicant, adversa uni imputantur)_.  That is my
own experience.  The people of Holland have not only laid at my door all
the disasters and calamities that have befallen our republic; they have
not been content to see me fall unarmed and defenceless into the hands of
four individuals whose design was to murder me; but when, by the agency
of Divine Providence, I escaped the assassins' blows and had recovered
from my wounds, they conceived a violent hatred against such of their
magistrates as they believed to have most to do with the direction of
public affairs; it is against me chiefly that this hatred has manifested
itself, although I was nothing but a servant of the state; it is this
that has obliged me to demand my discharge from the office of
councillor-pensionary."  He was at once succeeded by Gaspard van Fagel,
passionately devoted to the Prince of Orange.

Popular passion is as unjust as it is violent in its excesses.  Cornelius
van Witt, but lately sharing with his brother the public confidence, had
just been dragged, as a criminal, to the Hague, accused by a wretched
barber of having planned the assassination of the Prince of Orange.  In
vain did the magistrates of the town of Dordrecht claim their right of
jurisdiction over their fellow-citizen.  Cornelius van Witt was put to
the torture to make him confess his crime.  'You will not force me to
confess a thing I never even thought of," he said, whilst the pulleys
were dislocating his limbs.  His baffled judges heard him repeating
Horace's ode: _Just um et tenacem propositi virum_.  .  .  .  At the end
of three hours he was carried back to his cell, broken but indomitable.
The court condemned him to banishment; his accuser, Tichelaer, was not
satisfied.

Before long, at his instigation, the mob collected about the prison,
uttering imprecations against the judges and their clemency.  "They are
traitors!" cried Tichelaer, "but let us first take vengeance on those
whom we have."  John van Witt had been brought to the prison by a message
supposed to have come from the ruart.  In vain had his daughter conjured
him not to respond to it.  "What are you come here for?" exclaimed
Cornelius, on seeing his brother enter.  "Did you not send for me?"
"No, certainly not."  Then we are lost," said John van Witt, calmly.  The
shouts of the crowd redoubled; a body of cavalry still preserved order; a
rumor suddenly spread that the peasants from the environs were marching
on the Hague to plunder it; the States of Holland sent orders to the
Count of Tilly to move against them; the brave soldier demanded a written
order.  "I will obey," he said, "but the two brothers are lost."

[Illustration: The Brothers Witt----436]

The troops had scarcely withdrawn, and already the doors of the prison
were forced; the ruart, exhausted by the torture, was stretched upon his
bed, whilst his brother sat by his side reading the Bible aloud; the
madmen rushed into the chamber, crying, "Traitors, prepare yourselves;
you are going to die."  Cornelius van Witt started up, joining his hands
in prayer; the blows aimed at him did not reach him.  John was wounded.
They were both dragged forth; they embraced one another; Cornelius,
struck from behind, rolled to the bottom of the staircase; his brother
would have defended him; as he went out into the street, he received a
pike-thrust in the face; the ruart was dead already; the murderers vented
their fury on John van Witt; he had lost nothing of his courage or his
coolness, and, lifting his arms towards heaven, he was opening his mouth
in prayer to God, when a last pistol-shot stretched him upon his back.
"There's the perpetual edict floored!" shouted the assassins, lavishing
upon the two corpses insults and imprecations.  It was only at night, and
after having with difficulty recognized them, so disfigured had they
been, that poor Jacob van Witt was able to have his sons' bodies removed;
he was before long to rejoin them in everlasting rest.

William of Orange arrived next day at the Hague, too late for his fame,
and for the punishment of the obscure assassins, whom he allowed to
escape.  The compassers of the plot obtained before long appointments and
rewards.  "He one day assured me," says Gourville, "that it was quite
true he had not given any orders to have the Witts killed, but that,
having heard of their death without having contributed to it, he had
certainly felt a little relieved."  History and the human heart have
mysteries which it is not well to probe to the bottom.

For twenty years John van Witt had, been the most noble exponent of his
country's traditional policy.  Long faithful to the French alliance, he
had desired to arrest Louis XIV. in his dangerous career of triumph;
foreseeing the peril to come, he had forgotten the peril at hand; he had
believed too much and too long in the influence of negotiations and the
possibility of regaining the friendship of France.  He died unhappy, in
spite of his pious submission to the will of God; what he had desired for
his country was slipping from him abroad as well as at home; Holland was
crushed by France, and the aristocratic republic was vanquished by
monarchical democracy. With the weakness characteristic of human views,
he could not open his eyes to a vision of constitutional monarchy freely
chosen, preserving to his country the independence, prosperity, and order
which he had labored to secure for her.  A politician as, bold as and
more far-sighted than Admiral Coligny, twice struck down, like him, by
assassins, John van Witt remained in history the unique model of a great
republican chief, virtuous and able, proud and modest, up to the day at
which other United Provinces, fighting like Holland for their liberty,
presented a rival to the purity of his fame, when they chose for their
governor General Washington.

For all their brutal ingratitude, the instinct of the people of Holland
saw clearly into the situation.  John van Witt would have failed in the
struggle against France; William of Orange, prince, politician, and
soldier, saved his country and Europe from the yoke of Louis XIV.

On quitting his army, the king had inscribed in his notebook, "My
departure.--I do not mean to have anything more done."  The temperature
favored his designs; it did not freeze, the country remained inundated
and the towns unapproachable; the troops of the Elector of Brandenburg,
together with a corps sent by the emperor, had put themselves in motion
towards the Rhine; Turenne kept them in check in Germany.  Conde covered
Alsace; the Duke of Luxembourg, remaining in Holland, confined himself to
burning two large villages--Bodegrave and Saammerdam.  "There was a grill
of all the Hollanders who were in those burghs," wrote the marshal to the
Prince of Conde, "not one of whom was let out of the houses.  This
morning we were visited by two of the enemy's drummers, who came to claim
a colonel of great note amongst them (I have him in cinders at this
moment), as well as several officers that we have not, and that are
demanded of us, who, I suppose, were killed at the approaches to the
villages, where I saw some rather pretty little heaps."  The attempts of
the Prince of Orange on Charleroi had failed, as well as those of
Luxembourg on the Hague; the Swedes had offered their mediation, and
negotiations were beginning at Cologne; on the 10th of June, 1673, Louis
XIV. laid siege to Maestricht; Conde was commanding in Holland, with
Luxembourg under his orders; Turenne was observing Germany.  The king was
alone with Vauban.  Maestricht held out three weeks.  "M. de Vauban, in
this siege as in many others, saved a number of lives by his ingenuity,"
wrote a young subaltern, the Count of Alligny.  "In times past it was
sheer butchery in the trenches, now he makes them in such a manner that
one is as safe as if one were at home."  "I don't know whether it ought
to be called swagger, vanity, or carelessness, the way we have of showing
ourselves unadvisedly and without cover," Vauban used to say; " but it is
an original sin of which the French will never purge themselves, if God,
who is all-powerful, do not reform the whole race."  Maestricht taken,
the king repaired to Elsass, where skilful negotiations delivered into
his hands the towns that had remained independent: it was time to
consolidate past conquests; the coalition of Europe was forming against
France; the Hollanders held the sea against the hostile fleets; after
three desperate fights, Ruyter had prevented all landing in Holland; the
States no longer entertained the proposals they had but lately submitted
to the king at Utrecht; the Prince of Orange had recovered Naarden, and
just carried Bonn, with the aid of the Imperialists, commanded by
Montecuculli; Luxembourg had already received orders to evacuate the
province of Utrecht; at the end of the campaign of 1673, Gueldres and
Over-Yssel were likewise delivered from the enemies who had oppressed and
plundered them; Spain had come forth from her lethargy; and the emperor,
resuming the political direction of Germany, had drawn nearly all the
princes after him into the league against France.  The Protestant qualms
of the English Parliament had not yielded to the influence of the Marquis
of Ruvigny, a man of note amongst the French Reformers, and at this time
ambassador of France in London; the nation desired peace with the
Hollanders; and Charles II. yielded, in appearance at least, to the
wishes of his people.

On the 21st of February, 1674, he repaired to Parliament to announce to
the two Houses that he had concluded with the United Provinces "a prompt
peace, as they had prayed, honorable, and, as he hoped, durable."  He at
the same time wrote to Louis XIV., to beg to be condoled with, rather
than upbraided, for a consent which had been wrung from him.  The
regiments of English and Irish auxiliaries remained quietly in the
service of France; and the king did not withdraw his subsidies from his
royal pensioner.

Thus was being undone, link by link, the chain of alliances which Louis
XIV. had but lately twisted round Holland.  France, in her turn, was
finding herself alone, with all Europe against her; scared, and,
consequently, active and resolute; the congress of Cologne had broken up;
not one of the belligerents desired peace; the Hollanders had just
settled the heredity of the stadtholderate in the house of Orange.  Louis
XIV. saw the danger.  "So many enemies," says he in his Memoires,
"obliged me to take care of myself, and think what I must do to maintain
the reputation of my arms, the advantage of my dominions, and my personal
glory."  It was in Franche-Comte that Louis XIV. went to seek these
advantages.  The whole province was reduced to submission in the month of
June, 1674.  Turenne had kept the Rhine against the Imperialists; the
marshal alone escaped the tyranny of the king and Louvois, and presumed
to conduct the campaign in his own way; when Louis XIV. sent him
instructions, he was by this time careful to add, "You will not bind
yourself down to what I send you hereby as to my intentions, save when
you think that the good of my service will permit you, and you will give
me of your news the oftenest you find it possible."  (30th of March,
1674.)  Turenne did not always write, and it sometimes happened that he
did not obey.

This redounded to his honor in the campaign of 1674.  Conde had gained,
on the 11th of August, the bloody victory of Seneffe over the Prince of
Orange and the allied generals; the four squadrons of the king's
household, posted within range of the fire, had remained for eight hours
in order of battle, without any movement but that of closing up as the
men fell.  Madame de Sdvigne, to whom her son, standard-bearer in the
dauphin's gendarmes, had told the story, wrote to M. de BussyRabutin,
"But for the Te Deum, and some flags brought to Notre-Dame, we should
have thought we had lost the battle."  The Prince 6f Orange, ever
indomitable in his cold courage, had attacked Audenarde on the 15th of
September; but he was not in force, and the, approach of Conde had
obliged him to raise the siege; to make up, he had taken Grave, spite of
the heroic resistance made by the Marquis of Chemilly, who had held out
ninety-three days.  Advantages remained balanced in Flanders; the result
of the campaign depended on Turenne, who commanded on the Rhine.  "If the
king had taken the most important place in Flanders," he wrote to
Louvois, "and the emperor were master of Alsace, even without Philipsburg
or Brisach, I think the king's affairs would be in the worst plight in
the world; we should see what armies we should have in Lorraine, in the
Bishoprics, and in Champagne.  I do assure you that, if I had the honor
of commanding in Flanders, I would speak as I do."  On the 16th of June
he engaged in battle, at Sinzheim, with the Duke of Lorraine, who was
coming up with the advance-guard.  "I never saw a more obstinate fight,"
said Turenne: "those old regiments of the emperor's did mighty well."
He subsequently entered the Palatinate, quartering his troops upon it,
whilst the superintendents sent by Louvois were burning and plundering
the country, crushed as it was under war-contributions.  The king and
Louvois were disquieted by the movement of the enemy's troops, and wanted
to get Turenne back into Lothringen.  "An army like that of the enemy,"
wrote the marshal to Louvois, on the 13th of Septem ber, "and at the
season it is now, cannot have any idea but that of driving the king's
army from Alsace, having neither provisions nor means of getting into
Lorraine, unless I be driven from the country."  On the 20th of
September, the burgesses of the free city of Strasburg delivered up
the bridge over the Rhine to the Imperialists who were in the heart
of Elsass.  The victory of Ensheim, the fights of Mulhausen and
Turckheim, sufficed to drive them back; but it was only on the 22d
of January, 1675, that Turenne was at last enabled to leave Elsass
reconquered.  "There is no longer in France an enemy that is not a
prisoner," he wrote to the king, whose thanks embarrassed him.
"Everybody has remarked that M. de Turenne is a little more bashful than
he was wont to be," said Pellisson.

The coalition was proceeding slowly; the Prince of Orange was ill; the
king made himself master of the citadel of Liege and some small places.
Limburg surrendered to the Prince of Conde, without the allies having
been able to relieve it; Turenne was posted with the Rhine in his rear,
keeping Montecuculli in his front; he was preparing to hem him in, and
hurl him back upon Black Mountain.  His army was thirty thousand strong.
"I never saw so many fine fellows," Turenne would say, "nor better
intentioned."  Spite of his modest reserve, he felt sure of victory.
"This time I have them," he kept saying; "they cannot escape me."

On the 27th of June, 1675, in the morning, Turenne ordered an attack on
the village of Salzbach.  The young Count of St. Hilaire found him at the
head of his infantry, seated at the foot of a tree, into which he had
ordered an old soldier to climb, in order to have a better view of the
enemy's manoeuvres.  The Count of Roye sent to conjure him to reconnoitre
in person the German column that was advancing.  "I shall remain where I
am," said Turenne, "unless something important occur;" and he sent off
re-enforcements to M. de Roye; the latter repeated his entreaties; the
marshal asked for his horse, and, at a hard gallop, reached the right of
the army, along a hollow, in order to be under cover from two small
pieces of cannon, which kept up an incessant fire.  "I don't at all want
to be killed to-day," he kept saying.  He perceived M. do St. Hilaire,
the father, coming to meet him, and asked him what column it was on
account of which he had been sent for.  "My father was pointing it out to
him, writes young St.  Hilaire, "when, unhappily, the two little pieces
fired: a ball, passing over the quarters of my father's horse, carried
away his left arm and the horse's neck, and struck M. de Turenne in the
left side; he still went forward about twenty paces on his horse's neck,
and fell dead.  I ran to my father, who was down, and raised him up.
'No need to weep for me,' he said; 'it is the death of that great man;
you may, perhaps, lose your father, but neither your country nor you will
ever have a general like that again.  O, poor army, what is to become of
you?'  Tears fell from his eyes; then, suddenly recovering himself, 'Go,
my son, and leave me,' he said; 'with me it will be as God pleases; time
presses; go and do your duty.'" [_Memoires du Marquis de St. Hilaire,_
t. i.  p. 205.]  They threw a cloak over the corpse of the great general,
and bore it away.  "The soldiers raised a cry that was heard two leagues
off," writes Madame de Sevigne; "no consideration could restrain them;
they roared to be led to battle, they wanted to avenge the death of their
father, with him they had feared nothing, but they would show how to
avenge him, let it be left to them; they were frantic, let them be led to
battle."  Montecuculli had for a moment halted.  "Today a man has fallen
who did honor to man," said he, as he uncovered respectfully.  He threw
himself, however, on the rearguard of the French army, which was falling
back upon Elsass, and recrossed the Rhine at Altenheim.  The death of
Turenne was equivalent to a defeat.

[Illustration: Death of Turenne----443]

The Emperor Napoleon said of Turenne, "He is the only general whom
experience ever made more daring."  He had been fighting for forty years,
and his fame was still increasing, without effort or ostentation on his
part.  "M. de Turenne, from his youth up, possessed all good qualities,"
wrote Cardinal de Retz, who knew him well, "and the great he acquired
full early.  He lacked none but those that he did not think about.  He
possessed nearly all virtues as it were by nature; he never possessed the
glitter of any.  He was believed to be more fitted for the head of an
army than of a party, and so I think, because he was not naturally
enterprising; but, however, who knows?  He always had in everything, just
as in his speech, certain obscurities, which were never cleared up save
by circumstances, but never save to his glory."  He had said, when he set
out, to this same Cardinal de Retz, then in retirement at Commercy, "Sir,
I am no _talker (diseur),_ but I beg you to believe that, if it were not
for this business in which perhaps I may be required, I would go into
retirement as you have gone, and I give you my word that, if I come back,
I, like you, will put some space between life and death."  God did not
leave him time.  He summoned suddenly to Him this noble, grand, and
simple soul.  "I see that cannon loaded with all eternity," says Madame
de Sevigne: "I see all that leads M. de Turenne thither, and I see
therein nothing gloomy for him.  What does he lack?  He dies in the
meridian of his fame.  Sometimes, by living on, the star pales.  It is
safer to cut to the quick, especially in the case of heroes whose actions
are all so watched.  M. de Turenne did not feel death: count you that for
nothing?"  Turenne was sixty-four; he had become a convert to Catholicism
in 1668, seriously and sincerely, as he did everything.  For him Bossuet
had written his Exposition of faith.  Heroic souls are rare, and those
that are heroic and modest are rarer still: that was the distinctive
feature of M. de Turenne.  "When a man boasts that he has never made
mistakes in war, he convinces me that he has not been long at it," he
would say.  At his death, France considered herself lost.  "The premier-
president of the court of aids has an estate in Champagne, and the farmer
of it came the other day to demand to have the contract dissolved; he was
asked why: he answered that in M. de Turenne's time one could gather in
with safety, and count upon the lands in that district, but that, since
his death, everybody was going away, believing that the enemy was about
to enter Champagne." [_Lettres de Madame de Sevigne_.]  "I should very
much like to have only two hours' talk with the shade of M. de Turenne,"
said the Prince of Conde, on setting out to take command of the army of
the Rhine, after a check received by Marshal Crequi.  "I would take the
consequences of his plans if I could only get at his views, and make
myself master of the knowledge he had of the country, and of
Montecuculli's tricks of feint."  "God preserves you for the sake of
France, my lord," people said to him; but the prince made no reply beyond
a shrug of the shoulders.

[Illustration: TURENNE.----444]

It was his last campaign.  The king had made eight marshals, "change for
a Turenne."  Crequi began by getting beaten before Treves, which
surrendered to the enemy.  "Why did--the marshal give battle?" asked a
courtier.  The king turned round quickly.  "I have heard," said he, "that
the Duke of Weimar, after the death of the great Gustavus, commanded the
Swedish allies of France; one Parabere, an old blue ribbon, said to him,
speaking of the last battle, which he had lost, 'Sir, why did you give
it?'  'Sir,' answered Weimar, 'because I thought I should win it.'  Then,
leaning over towards somebody else, he asked, 'Who is that fool with the
blue ribbon?'"  The Germans retired.  Conde returned to Chantilly once
more, never to go out of it again.  Montecuculli, old and ill, refused to
serve any longer.  "A man who has had the honor of fighting against
Mahomet Coprogli, against the prince, and against M. de Turenne, ought
not to compromise his glory against people who are only just beginning to
command armies," said the, veteran general to the emperor on taking his
retirement.  The chiefs were disappearing from the scene, the heroic
period of the war was over.

Europe demanded a general peace; England and Holland desired it
passionately.  "I am as anxious as you for an end to be put to the war,"
said the Prince of Orange to the deputies from the Estates, "provided
that I get out of it with honor."  He refused obstinately to separate
from his allies.  "It is not astonishing that the Prince of Orange does
not at once give way even to things which he considers reasonable," said
Charles II., "he is the son of a father and mother whose obstinacy was
carried to extremes; and he resembles them in that."  Meanwhile, William
had just married (November 15, 1677), the Princess Mary, eldest daughter
of the Duke of York and Anne Hyde.  An alliance offensive and defensive
between England and Holland was the price of this union, which struck
Louis XIV. an unexpected blow.  He had lately made a proposal to the
Prince of Orange to marry one of his natural daughters.  "The first
notice I had of the marriage," wrote the king, "was through the bonfires
lighted in London."  "The loss of a decisive battle could not have scared
the King of France more," said the English ambassador, Lord Montagu.  For
more than a year past negotiations had been going on at Nimeguen; Louis
XIV. resolved to deal one more great blow.

[Illustration: An Exploit of John Bart's----446]

The campaign of 1676 had been insignificant, save at sea.  John Bart, a
corsair of Dunkerque, scoured the seas and made foreign commerce tremble;
he took ships by boarding, and killed with his own hands the Dutch
captain of the Neptune, who offered resistance.  Messina, in revolt
against the Spaniards, had given herself up to France; the Duke of
Vivonne, brother of Madame de Montespan, who had been sent thither as
governor, had extended his conquests; Duquesne, quite young still, had
triumphantly maintained the glory of France against the great Ruyter, who
had been mortally wounded off Catana; on the 21st of April.  But already
the possession of Sicily was becoming precarious, and these distant
successes had paled before the brilliant campaign of 1677; the capture of
Valenciennes, Cambrai, and St.  Omer, the defence of Lorraine, the
victory of Cassel, gained over the Prince of Orange, had confirmed the
king in his intentions.  "We have done all that we were able and bound to
do," wrote William of Orange to the Estates, on the 13th of April, 1677,
"and we are very sorry to be obliged to tell your High Mightinesses that
it has not pleased God to bless on this occasion the arms of the state
under our guidance."

[Illustration: Duquesne victorious over Ruyter---446a]

"I was all impatience," says Louis XIV. in his Memoires, "to commence
the campaign of 1678, and greatly desirous of doing something therein as
glorious as, and more useful than, what had already been done; but it was
no easy matter to come by it, and to surpass the lustre conferred by the
capture of three large places and the winning of a battle.  I examined
what was feasible, and Ghent being the most important of all I could
attack, I fixed upon it to besiege."  The place was invested on the 1st
of March, and capitulated on the 11th; Ypres, in its turn, succumbed on
the 25th, after a vigorous resistance.  On the 7th of April the king
returned to St. Germain, "pretty content with what I had done," he says,
"and purposing to do better in the future, if the promise I had given not
to undertake anything for two months were not followed by the conclusion
of peace."  Louis XIV. sent his ultimatum to Nimeguen.

Holland had weight in congress as well as in war, and her influence was
now enlisted on the side of peace.  "Not only is it desired," said the
grand pensionary Fagel, "but it is absolutely indispensable, and I would
not answer for it that the States General, if driven to extremity by the
sluggishness of their allies, will not make a separate peace with France.
I know nobody in Holland who is not of the same opinion."  The Prince of
Orange flew out at such language.  "Well, then, I know somebody," said
he, "and that is myself; I will oppose it to the best of my ability;
but," he added more slowly, upon reflection, "if I were not here, I know
quite well that peace would be concluded within twenty-four hours."

One man alone, though it were the Prince of Orange, cannot long withstand
the wishes of a free people.  The republican party, for a while cast down
by the death of John van Witt, had taken courage again, and Louis XIV.
secretly encouraged it.  William of Orange had let out his desire of
becoming Duke of Gueldres and Count of Zutphen: these foreshadowings of
sovereignty had scared the province of Holland, which refused its
consent; the influence of the stadtholder was weakened thereby; the
Estates pronounced for peace, spite of the entreaties of the Prince of
Orange.  "I am always ready to obey the orders of the state," said he,
"but do not require me to give my assent to a peace which appears to me
not only ruinous, but shameful as well."  Two deputies from the United
Provinces set out for Brussels.

"It is better to throw one's self out of the window than from the top of
the roof," said the Spanish plenipotentiary to the nuncio, when he had
cognizance of the French proposals, and he accepted the treaty offered
him.  "The Duke of Villa Hermosa says that he will accept the conditions;
for ourselves, we will do the same," said the Prince of Orange, bitterly,
"and so here is peace made, if France continues to desire it on this
footing, which I very much doubt."

At one moment, in fact, Louis XIV. raised fresh pretensions.  He wished
to keep the places on the Meuse, until the Swedes, almost invariably
unfortunate in their hostilities with Denmark and Brandenburg, should
have been enabled to win back what they had lost.  This was to postpone
peace indefinitely.  The English Parliament and Holland were disgusted,
and concluded a new alliance.  The Spaniards were preparing to take up
arms again.  The king, who had returned to the army, all at once cut the
knot.  "The day I arrived at the camp," writes Louis XIV., I received
news from London apprising mee that the King of England would bind
himself to join me in forcing my enemies to make peace, if I consented to
add something to the conditions he had already proposed.  I had a battle
over this proposal, but the public good, joined to the glory of gaining a
victory over myself, prevailed over the advantage I might have hoped for
from war.  I replied to the King of England that I was quite willing to
make the treaty he proposed to me, and, at the same time, I wrote to the
States General a letter, stronger than the first, being convinced that,
since they were wavering, they ought not to have time given them to take
counsel upon the subject of peace with their allies, who did not want
it."  Beverninck went to visit the king at Ghent; and he showed so much
ability that the special peace concluded by his pains received, in
Holland, the name of Beverninck's peace.  "I settled more business in an
hour with M. de Beverninck than the plenipotentiaries would have been
able to conclude in several days," said Louis XIV.; "the care I had taken
to detach the allies one from another, overwhelmed them to such an
extent, that they were constrained to submit to the conditions of which I
had declared myself in favor at the commencement of my negotiations.  I
had resolved to make peace, but I wished to conclude one that would be
glorious for me and advantageous for my kingdom.  I wished to recompense
myself, by means of the places that were essential, for the probable
conquests I was losing, and to console myself for the conclusion of a war
which I was carrying on with pleasure and success.  Amidst such turmoil,
then, I was quite tranquil, and saw nothing but advantage for myself,
whether the war went on or peace were made."

All difficulties were smoothed away Sweden had given up all stipulations
for her advantage; the firm will of France had triumphed over the
vacillations of Charles II.  and the allies.  "The behavior of the French
in all this was admirable," says Sir W. Temple, an experienced
diplomatist, long versed in all the affairs of Europe, "whilst our own
counsels and behavior resembled those floating islands which winds and
tide drive from one side to the other."

On the 10th of August, in the evening, the special peace between Holland
and France was signed after twenty-four hours' conference.  The Prince of
Orange had concentrated all his forces near Mons, confronting Marshal
Luxembourg, who occupied the plateau of Casteau; he had no official news
as yet from Nimeguen, and on the 14th he began the engagement outside the
abbey of St. Denis.  The affair was a very murderous one, and remained
indecisive: it did more honor to the military skill of the Prince of
Orange than to his loyalty.  Holland had not lost an inch of her
territory during this war; so long, so desperate, and notoriously
undertaken in order to destroy her; she had spent much money, she had
lost many men, she had shaken the confidence of her allies by treating
alone and being the first to treat, but she had furnished a chief to the
European coalition, and she had shown an example of indomitable
resistance; the States General and the Prince of Orange alone, besides
Louis XIV., came the greater out of the struggle.  The King of England
had lost all consideration both at home and abroad, and Spain paid all
the expenses of the war.

Peace was concluded on the 17th of September, thanks to the energetic
intervention of the Hollanders.  The king restored Courtray, Audenarde,
Ath, and Charleroi, which had been given him by the treaty of Aix-la-
Chapelle, Ghent, Linmburg, and St.  Ghislain; but he kept by definitive
right St. Omer, Cassel, Aire, Ypres, Cambray, Bouchain, Valenciennes, and
all Franche-Comte; henceforth he possessed in the north of France a line
of places extending from Dunkerque to the Meuse; the Spanish monarchy was
disarmed.

It still required a successful campaign under Marshal Crequi to bring the
emperor and the German princes over to peace; exchanges of territory and
indemnities re-established the treaty of Westphalia on all essential
points.  The Duke of Lorraine refused the conditions on which the king
proposed to restore to him his duchy; so Louis XIV. kept Lorraine.

The King of France was at the pinnacle of his greatness and power.
"Singly against all," as Louvois said, he had maintained the struggle
against Europe, and he came out of it victorious; everywhere, with good
reason, was displayed his proud device, _Nec pluribus impar_.  "My will
alone," says Louis XIV. in his Memoires, "concluded this peace, so much
desired by those on whom it did not depend; for, as to my enemies, they
feared it as much as the public good made me desire it, and that
prevailed on this occasion over the gain and personal glory I was likely
to find in the continuation of the war.  .  .  .  I was in full enjoyment
of my good fortune and the fruits of my good conduct, which had caused me
to profit by all the occasions I had met with for extending the borders
of my kingdom at the expense of my enemies."

"Here is peace made," wrote Madame de Sevigne to the Count of Bussy.
"The king thought it handsomer to grant it this year to Spain and Holland
than to take the rest of Flanders; he is keeping that for another time."

The Prince of Orange thought as Madame de Seigne: he regarded the peace
of Nimeguen as a truce, and a truce fraught with danger to Europe.  For
that reason did he soon seek to form alliances in order to secure the
repose of the world against the insatiable ambition of King Louis XIV.
Intoxicated by his successes and the adulation of his court, the King of
France no longer brooked any objections to his will or any limits to his
desires.  The poison of absolute power had done its work.  Louis XIV.
considered the "office of king" grand, noble, delightful, "for he felt
himself worthy of acquitting himself well in all matters in which he
engaged."  "The ardor we feel for glory," he used to say, "is not one of
those feeble passions which grow dull by possession; its favors, which
are never to be obtained without effort, never, on the other hand, cause
disgust, and whoever can do without longing for fresh ones is unworthy of
all he has received."

Standing at the king's side and exciting his pride and ambition, Louvois
had little by little absorbed all the functions of prime minister without
bearing the title.  Colbert alone resisted him, and he, weary of the
struggle, was about to succumb before long (1683), driven to desperation
by the burdens that the wars and the king's luxury caused to weigh
heavily upon France.  Peace had not yet led to disarmament; an army of a
hundred and forty thousand men remained standing, ever ready to uphold
the rights of France during the long discussions over the regulation of
the frontiers.  In old papers ancient titles were found, and by degrees
the villages, Burghs, and even principalities, claimed by King Louis XIV.
were re-united quietly to France; King Charles XI. was thus alienated, in
consequence of the seizure of the countship of Deux-Ponts, to which
Sweden laid claim.  Strasburg was taken by a surprise.  This free city
had several times violated neutrality during the war; Louvois had kept up
communications inside the place; suddenly he had the approaches and the
passage over the Rhine occupied by thirty-five thousand men on the night
between the 16th and 17th of September, 1681; the burgesses sent up to
ask aid from the emperor, but the messengers were arrested; on the 30th
Strasburg capitulated, and Louis XIV. made his triumphant entry there on
the 24th of October.  "Nobody," says a letter of the day, "can recover
from the consternation caused by the fact that the French have taken
Strasburg without firing a single shot; everybody says it is one of the
wheels of the chariot to be used for a drive into the empire, and that
the door of Elsass is shut from this moment."

The very day of the surrender of Strasburg (September 30, 1681), Catinat,
with a corps of French troops, entered Casale, sold to Louis XIV. by the
Duke of Mantua.  The king thought to make sure of Piedmont by marrying
his niece, Monsieur's daughter, to the Duke of Savoy, Victor-Amadeo,
quite a boy, delicate and taciturn, at loggerheads with his mother and
with her favorites.  Marie Louise d'Orleans, elder sister of the young
Duchess of Savoy, had married the King of Spain, Charles II., a sickly
creature of weak intellect.  Louis XIV. felt the necessity of forming new
alliances; the old supports of France had all gone over to the enemy.
Sweden and Holland were already allied to the empire; the German princes
joined the coalition.  The Prince of Orange, with an ever-vigilant eye on
the frequent infractions of the treaties which France permitted herself
to commit, was quietly negotiating with his allies, and ready to take up
arms to meet the common danger.  "He was," says Massillon, "a prince
profound in his views, skilful in forming leagues and banding spirits
together, more successful in exciting wars than on the battle-field, more
to be feared in the privacy of the closet than at the head of armies, a
prince and an enemy whom hatred of the French name rendered capable of
conceiving great things and of executing them, one of those geniuses who
seem born to move at their will both peoples and sovereigns."  French
diplomacy was not in a condition to struggle with the Prince of Orange.
M. de Pomponne had succeeded Lionne; he was disgraced in 1679.  "I order
his recall," said the king, "because all that passes through his hands
loses the grandeur and force which ought to be shown in executing the
orders of a king who is no poor creature."  Colbert de Croissy, the
minister's brother, was from that time employed to manage with foreign
countries all the business which Louvois did not reserve to himself.

Duquesne had bombarded Algiers in 1682; in 1684, he destroyed several
districts of Genoa, which was accused of having failed in neutrality
between France and Spain; and at the same time Marshals Humieres and
Crequi occupied Audenarde, Courtray, and Dixmude, and made themselves
masters of Luxemburg; the king reproached Spain with its delays in the
regulation of the frontiers, and claimed to occupy the Low Countries
pacifically; the diet of Ratisbonne intervened; the emperor, with the aid
of Sobieski, King of Poland, was occupied in repelling the invasions of
the Turks; a truce was concluded for twenty-four years; the empire and
Spain acquiesced in the king's new conquests.  "It seemed to be
established," said the Marquis de la Fare, "that the empire of France was
an evil not to be avoided by other nations."  Nobody was more convinced
of this than King Louis XIV.

He was himself about to deal his own kingdom a blow more fatal than all
those of foreign wars and of the European coalition.  Intoxicated by so
much success and so many victories, he fancied that consciences were to
be bent like states, and he set about bringing all his subjects back to
the Catholic faith.  Himself returning to a regular life, under the
influence of age and of Madame de Maintenon, he thought it a fine thing
to establish in his kingdom that unity of religion which Henry IV. and
Richelieu had not been able to bring about.  He set at nought all the
rights consecrated by edicts, and the long patience of those Protestants
whom Mazarin called "the faithful flock;" in vain had persecution been
tried for several years past; tyranny interfered, and the edict of Nantes
was revoked on the 13th of October, 1685.  Some years later, the
Reformers, by hundreds of thousands, carried into foreign lands their
industries, their wealth, and their bitter resentments.  Protestant
Europe, indignant, opened her doors to these martyrs to conscience,
living witnesses of the injustice and arbitrary power of Louis XIV.
All the princes felt themselves at the same time insulted and threatened
in respect of their faith as well as of their puissance.  In the early
months of 1686, the league of Augsburg united all the German princes,
Holland, and Sweden; Spain and the Duke of Savoy were not slow to join
it.  In 1687, the diet of Ratisbonne refused to convert the twenty years'
truce into a definitive peace.  By his haughty pretensions the king gave
to the coalition the support of Pope Innocent XI.; Louis XIV. was once
more single-handed against all, when he invaded the electorate of Cologne
in the month of August, 1686.  Philipsburg, lost by France in 1676, was
recovered on the 29th of October; at the end of the campaign, the king's
armies were masters of the Palatinate.  In the month of January, 1689,
war was officially declared against Holland, the emperor, and the empire.
The commander-in-chief of the French forces was intrusted to the dauphin,
then twenty-six years of age.  "I give you an opportunity of making your
merit known," said Louis XIV. to his son: "exhibit it to all Europe, so
that when I come to die it shall not be perceived that the king is dead."

The dauphin was already tasting the pleasures of conquest, and the
coalition had not stirred.  They were awaiting their chief; William of
Orange was fighting for them in the very act of taking possession of the
kingdom of England.  Weary of the narrow-minded and cruel tyranny of
their king, James II., disquieted at his blind zeal for the Catholic
religion, the English nation had summoned to their aid the champion of
Protestantism; it was in the name of the political liberties and the
religious creed of England that the Prince of Orange set sail on the 11th
of November, 1688; on the flags of his vessels was inscribed the proud
device of his house, I will maintain; below were the words, _Pro
libertate et Protestante religione._  William landed without obstacle at