ror with which, a century and a half ago, the monarch of that race, with reason, inspired all Europe, or the narrow escape which the continental states, at least, then made from being reduced to the condition of provinces of France. The forces of that monarchy, at all times formidable to its neighbors, from the warlike spirit of its inhabitants, and their rapacious disposition, conspicuous alike in the earliest and the latest times;* its central situation, forming, as it were, the salient angle of a bastion projecting into the center of Germany, and its numerous population, were then, in a peculiar manner, to be dreaded, from the concentration of the elements of power thus afforded in the hands of an able and ambitious monarch, who had succeeded for the first time, for two hundred years, in healing the divisions and stilling the feuds of its nobles, and turning their buoyant energy into the channel of foreign conquest. Immense was the force which, in consequence of this able policy, was found to exist in France, and terrible the danger to which it at once exposed the neighboring states.

France was rendered the more formidable in the time of Louis XIV. from the remarkable talents which he

17.

Vast ability

government

of France was

by which the himself possessed, and the unbounded ambition by which he was actuated, the extraordinary concendirected. tration of talent which his discernment or good fortune had collected round his throne, and the consummate abilities, civil and military, with which affairs were directed. Turenne, Boufflers, and Condé were his generals; Vauban was his engineer; Louvois and Torcy were his statesmen. The luster of the exploits of these illustrious men, in itself great, was much enhanced by the still greater blaze of fame which encircled his throne, from the genius of the literary men who have given such immortal celebrity to his reign. Corneille and Racine were his tragedians; Molière wrote his comedies; Bossuet, Fénélon, and Bourdaloue were his theo

* "Galli turpe esse ducunt frumentum manu quærere; itaque armati alienos agros demetunt."-CÆSAR.

logians; Massillon his preacher; Boileau his critic; Le Notre laid out his gardens; Le Brun painted his halls. Greatness had come upon France, as, in truth, it does to most other states, in all departments at the same time; and the adjoining nations, alike intimidated by a power which they could not resist, and dazzled by a glory which they could not emulate, had come almost to despair of maintaining their independence, and were sinking into that state of apathy which is at once the consequence and the cause of extraordinary re

verses.

18.

Extraordi

nary success which had hitherto at

tended Louis

in all his en

The influence of these causes had distinctly appeared in the extraordinary good fortune which had attended the enterprises of Louis, and the numerous conquests he had made since he had lanched into the career of foreign aggrandizement. Nothing had been able to resist his victorious arms. At the terprises. head of an army of a hundred thousand men, directed by Turenne, he had speedily overrun Flanders. Its fortified cities yielded to the science of Vauban, or the terrors of his name. The boasted barrier of the Netherlands was passed in a few weeks; hardly any of its far-famed fortresses made any resistance. The passage of the Rhine was achieved under the eyes of the monarch with little loss, and with melo-dramatic effect. One half of Holland was soon subdued, and the presence of the French army at the gates of Amsterdam seemed to presage immediate destruction to the United Provinces ; and, but for the firmness of their leaders, and a fortunate combination of circumstances, unquestionably would have done so. The alliance with England in the early part of his reign, and the junction of the fleets of Britain and France to ruin their fleets and blockade their harbors, seemed to deprive these states of their last resource, derived from their energetic industry. Nor were substantial fruits wanting from these conquests. Alsace and Franche Comté were overrun, and, with Lorraine, permanently annexed to the French monarchy; and although, by the treaties of Aix-la

Chapelle and Nimeguen, part of the acquisitions of Louis in Flanders were abandoned, enough was retained by the devouring monarchy to deprive the Dutch of the barrier they had so ardently desired, and render their situation to the last degree precarious in the neighborhood of so formidable a

power.

Hopes and

Catholic party throughout Europe at this time. Their ultimate failure.

It was the ambition and detestable cruelty of the Church 19. of Rome which first produced, and probably alone schemes of the could have produced, a reaction against these dangers. Intoxicated with the success which had in many quarters attended its efforts, and in an especial manner in France, for the extirpation of heresy, its leaders thought nothing could resist their power, The long triumphs and well-known orthodoxy of Louis XIV. gave them the greatest hopes that he would employ his vast power and great capacity in effecting that unity in the Church which he had so long labored to produce in the temporal administration of his monarchy; while the secret inclination of James II., revealed to his spiritual guides, made the leaders of the Romish Church aware that he was resolutely bent on re-establishing the Catholic faith in his dominions, or, at least, in restoring it to such a degree of power and consideration, as with so aspiring a body would have amounted, in effect, to the same thing. His character-bold, sincere, and enterprising, but withal rash, bigoted, and inconsiderate-appeared to promise the fairest chance of success to such a design. The moment seemed beyond all hope favorable for a general aggression on the Protestant faith; for in France was an able and powerful monarch, who considered, and perhaps with reason, unity in religion as indispensable to his great object of centralization in temporal power; and in England a devout and daring Catholic was on the throne, whose efforts, supported by a considerable party in Great Britain and a very large one in Ireland, promised ere long to render the British empire, hitherto the strong hold of the Reformed, the chief outwork of the ancient faith. The two rival powers, whose

jealousy and rival pretensions had so long desolated Europe, and whose opposite creeds had recently still more widely severed them from each other, were now united in close alliance, under governments alike anxious for the restoration of unity in matters of religion. And yet so short-sighted are often the conclusions of human sagacity, even when founded on the most apparently reasonable grounds, or so entirely are they overruled by a Superior Power, that to the consequence of this very aggression may be traced, by a clear chain of causes and effects, the curbing of the power of Louis XIV., and the establishment of the Reformed faith on a solid foundation in the north of Europe.

Simultaneous

Protestants in

England irre

rate the two

The onset of the Church of Rome against that of Luther commenced in both countries at the same time. 20. In 1685 the Edict of Nantes was revoked by Louis attacks on the XIV., and those sanguinary military executions France and began which have reflected such disgrace on his vocably sepa reign. In 1687 the persecution of the Protestants, countries. and measures evidently designed for the re-establishment of the Romish faith, commenced in Great Britain. The result was different in the two countries. In France, four hundred thousand weeping citizens were sent into exile, who carried into foreign states their industry, their arts, their hatred of Roman Catholic oppression. In England, the reigning dynasty was expelled from the throne, and carried to foreign. courts the inextinguishable desire to regain its inheritance. Europe was permanently divided by these great events. The wrongs committed, the injuries suffered on both sides, were too great to be forgiven. On the one side was a throne overturned, a race of sovereigns in exile; on the other were half a million of persecuted human beings wandering in foreign lands. Temporal wrongs of the deepest dye had come to be superadded to religious divisions. Alliances on both sides followed, and revealed the vehement passions which were felt. The League of Augsburg, first signed on the 9th of July, 1686, united Austria, Spain, Holland, Saxony, Swabia-to

which, after the revolution of 1688, was added Englandagainst France; while Louis XIV. contracted an alliance of the closest kind with the exiled James, now established at St. Germains, entered into correspondence with the Royalists and Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland, and commenced those dark intrigues at the court of Madrid which ere long led to the War of the Succession.

21.

Efforts of

to avert the

danger.

The heroic William struggled not in vain for the independence of his country. The distant powers of William III. Europe, at length awakened to a sense of their danger, made strenuous efforts to coerce the ambition of France. The revolution of 1688 had restored England to its natural place in the van of the contest for continental freedom; and the peace of Ryswick in 1697 saw the trophies of conquest in some degree more equally balanced between the contending parties. But still it was with difficulty that the alliance kept its ground against Louis; any untoward event, the defection of any considerable power, would at once, it was felt, cast the balance in his favor; and all history had demonstrated how many are the chances against any considerable confederacy keeping for any length of time together, when the immediate danger which had stilled their jealousies, and bound together their separate interests, is in appearance removed. Such was the dubious and anxious state of Europe when the death of Charles II. at Madrid, on the 1st of November, 1700, and the bequest of his vast territories to Philip, duke of Anjou, second son of the dauphin, and grandson of Louis XIV., threatened at once to place the immense resources of the Castilian monarchy at the disposal of the ambitious monarch of France, whose passion for glory had not diminished with his advancing years, and whose want of moderation was soon evinced by his accepting, after an affected hesitation, the splendid bequest.

The manner in which this bequest in favor of the Bourbons had been brought about was very curious, and more creditable to the astuteness and ability of the diplomatists of