INTRODUCTION

SECTION I. -- Wars.

THE history of western Europe in the seventeenth century is a history of wars.

"Wars destroy the morals of mankind by habituating them to refer everything to force, and by necessitating them so often to dispense with the ordinary suggestions of sympathy and justice." This is true of wars in general; but the demoralizing effect is much greater if wars are civil wars; or religious wars--wars, that is, between fellow-citizens to serve the ends of some political party, or to enforce the observance of some political truth; or wars between fellow-Christians to force all to follow some religious creed. Moral virtues are in these cases uprooted; military virtues, which may exist in the most depraved man or state, flourish.

The era of the great Protestant Revolution ushered in the period of religious wars, France was devastated by religious and civil wars combined in the latter half of the sixteenth, and in the beginning of the seventeenth century. It took part in the Thirty Years' War of Germany (1618-1648); it was again the theatre of the civil war of the Fronde, in which aimless attempts were made to oppose the absolutism of the French crown (1648- 1653). Germany was almost ruined by its great civil and religious Thirty Years' War. England had also suffered in its great civil and partly religious war, which ended in 1648, with the execution of Charles I.

The great principle of religious toleration was unknown in the sixteenth century, and taught without success by a few great thinkers in the seventeenth century. Men believed great truths, by believing which they thought they secured their salvation, and they deemed it their bounden duty to make others believe, in order that they too might be saved. So not merely were wars undertaken for the sake of religious tenets, but within the several countries there were persecutions of Christians by Christians, of Englishmen by Englishmen, Frenchmen by Frenchmen, Germans by Germans.

Nevertheless it is only through the fire of religious and civil wars, and of religious persecutions, that the cause of religious and civil liberty comes out triumphant. The fall of the Stuarts, of which we shall treat, is an event in the successful struggle for civil and religious liberty.

The latter half of the seventeenth century was occupied by wars of a less demoralizing character than civil and religious wars; by wars undertaken by one man, Louis XIV., to obtain certain personal ends, These ends were the supremacy of Western Europe, the Imperial crown, and the succession to the throne of Spain. Of what befell Louis in his attempts to secure the supremacy of Western Europe, and how the "balance of power" was eventually righted, we shall also treat.

SECTION II.--Peace of Nimwegen, 1678.

The sovereigns of the principal states of Europe in 1678 were: -- Leopold of Hapsburg, Emperor; Louis XIV., King of France; Charles II., King of England; Charles II., King of Spain; William, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder or Governor of the United Provinces of Holland.

Holland and England were the great naval powers; France coming next to them, and then Spain. Louis XIV. having designs on the independence of the United Provinces of Holland, prevailed on Charles II. of England to join him in declaring war on Holland in 1672. In England the war was so unpopular that when a parliament was summoned in 1673 in order to vote supplies to carry on the war, the majority in it, opposed to the policy of Charles and his ministers, drove the ministry from power, declined to vote further supplies and forced the king in 1674 to make peace with Holland.

The Emperor Leopold and Charles II., King of Spain, alarmed for the safety of their dominions, which were threatened by the success of Louis against Holland, concluded an alliance with the United Provinces.

Although the private intrigues of Louis XIV. with the King of England kept that country neutral, the sympathies of the English nation were so strongly excited on behalf of the Dutch and their Stadtholder William of Orange, that it became evident to both Louis and Charles that this neutral position could not long be maintained. Louis, by the aid of his ambassador, Barillon, attempted to foment dissensions amongst the popular party in the parliament by bribery, the means which he had hitherto effectually employed with Charles and his ministers. But his success was not sufficient to warrant him in advising Charles to oppose the wishes of the nation. In 1677 William of Orange married Mary, elder of the two daughters of James, the Duke of York and heir presumptive of Charles II., and thus had claims of relationship on Charles, which in the seventeenth century, were considered by politicians more binding than they are now. Charles and Louis consequently, agreed that the former should become the mediator for a peace, by which France should profit, Holland should not suffer, and the pride of the English should be gratified by the prominent position which their country should occupy in the negotiations. After many difficulties, overcome chiefly by the diplomatic tact of Sir William Temple, the English ambassador at the Hague on the one hand, and by that of the plenipotentiary of Louis on the other, a treaty was signed August 10, 1678.

This treaty put an end to the war. It was called the Peace of Nimwegen, (Nimeguen), from the small town on the frontier between Holland and Germany were it was signed. The treaty was drawn up in French, although Latin had hitherto been the diplomatic language, and this is an important fact in diplomatic history, as marking the claim of supremacy in Europe put forth by France.

The results of the treaty were that the United Provinces of Holland retained their integrity, Maestricht being restored to them, so that the boundaries of the state governed by William of Orange were almost identical with those of the present kingdom of the Netherlands. France, however, kept its conquest of Senegal and Guiana, and these settlements were the sole loss of Holland at the conclusion of a terrible war which had threatened to annihilate her. The United Provinces agreed to be neutral in any war which might continue between France and any other powers, and guaranteed the neutrality of Spain. Treaties of commerce between France and Holland, conferring equal privileges on both nations for twenty-five years, were also signed. France gained from Spain, a declining power, and therefore the principal suffers, Franche Comté (part of the old duchy of Burgundy, now forming the French departments of Haute Saône, Doubs, and Jura); and the towns of St. Omer, Valenciennes, Gassel, and the adjacent districts, sometimes called French Flanders, and forming the department of the Nord. Spain retained that part of her dominions in the Netherlands which is almost conterminous with the present kingdom of Belgium. Lothringen (Lorraine) was restored to its duke, and again formed one of the states of the Empire, although practically deprived of its independence by being obliged to keep up for Louis four military roads, each two miles broad, and also to give up its two fortified towns, Nancy and Longwy. It was at the time of the peace of Nimwegen that the power of France, and the glory of Louis XIV., were at their height.

SECTION III. -- Louis XIV. and France.

Louis XIV. was, when the peace of Nimwegen was signed, forty years old; his figure was handsome, his manners were engaging, although at the same time dignified. He had an excellent constitution, and was able to endure fatigue, cold and hunger. He was not easily moved to anger, nor easily dispirited. These being his natural gifts, he himself, in his "Mémoires historiques," tells us the chief motives which influenced his actions.

He had the most exalted idea of the kingly office. "It is the will of God," wrote he, "who has given kings to men, that they should be revered as His vicegerents, He having reserved to Himself alone the right to scrutinize their conduct.""It is the will of God that every subject should yield to his sovereign an implicit obedience.""All property within the nation belongs to the king by virtue of his title.""Kings are absolute lords." "L'Etat--c'est moi." (The State--I am the State.) His ambition was unbounded. "Self-aggrandizement," he writes, "is at once the noblest and most agreeable occupation of kings." Magnificence in daily life, and in pleasures, involving the greatest extravagance, was thus upheld by him--"A large expenditure is the almsgiving of kings."

His habitual disregard of treaties was not the result of dishonesty or fickleness, but was the deliberate design of one who preferred pleasant manners to sincerity, who condemned a noble to exile with a sweet smile, and bowed with infinite grace to a courtier who before night fall was on the road to prison. "In dispensing," he says, "with the exact observance of treaties, we do not violate them; for the language of such instruments is not to be understood literally. We must employ in our, treaties a conventional phraseology, just as we use complimentary expressions in society. They are indispensable to our intercourse with one another, but they always mean much less than they say."

Louis' intellectual powers were good, but not extraordinary. He was a man of strong opinions, of strong will, of strong health, a practical man of business, but not an originator, a governor rather than a statesman.

His private life was regulated by his pleasures; he, as a king, was subject to none of those laws which...