The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World from Marathon to Waterloo - Edward Creasy (best novels to read in english txt) 📗

one, but the country which he governed was strong: strong in its geographical situation, in the compactness of its territory, in the number and martial spirit of its inhabitants, and in their complete and undivided nationality. Louis had neither a Hungary nor an Ireland in his dominions. and it was not till late in his reign, when old age had made his bigotry more gloomy, and had given fanaticism the mastery over prudence, that his persecuting intolerance caused the civil war in the Cevennes.

Like Napoleon in after-times, Louis XIV. saw clearly that the great wants of France were “ships, colonies, and commerce.” But Louis did more than see these wants: by the aid of his great minister, Colbert, he supplied them. One of the surest proofs of the genius of Louis was his skill in finding out genius in others, and his promptness in calling it into action. Under him, Louvois organized, Turenne, Conde, Villars and Berwick, led the armies of France; and Vauban fortified her frontiers. Throughout his reign, French diplomacy was marked by skilfulness and activity, and also by comprehensive far-sightedness, such as the representatives of no other nation possessed. Guizot’s testimony to the vigour that was displayed through every branch of Louis XIV.‘s government, and to the extent to which France at present is indebted to him, is remarkable. He says, that, “taking the public services of every kind, the finances, the departments of roads and public works, the military administration, and all the establishments which belong to every branch of administration, there is not one that will not be found to have had its origin, its development, or its greatest perfection, under the reign of Louis XIV.” [History of European Civilization, Lecture 13.] And he points out to us, that “the government of Louis XIV. was the first that presented itself to the eyes of Europe as a power acting upon sure grounds, which had not to dispute its existence with inward enemies, but was at ease as to its territory and its people, and solely occupied with the task of administering government, properly so called. All the European governments had been previously thrown into incessant wars, which deprived them of all security as well as of all leisure, or so harassed by internal parties or antagonists, that their time was passed in fighting for existence. The government of Louis XIV. was the first to appear as a busy thriving administration of affairs, as a power at once definitive and progressive, which was not afraid to innovate, because it could reckon securely on the future.

There have been in fact very few governments equally innovating.

Compare it with a government of the same nature, the unmixed monarchy of Philip II. in Spain; it was more absolute than that of Louis XIV., and yet it was far less regular and tranquil. How did Philip II. succeed in establishing absolute power in Spain?

By stifling all activity in the country, opposing himself to every species of amelioration, and rendering the state of Spain completely stagnant. The government of Louis XIV., on the contrary, exhibited alacrity for all sorts of innovations, and showed itself favourable to the progress of letters, arts, wealth in short, of civilization. This was the veritable cause of its preponderance in Europe, which arose to such a pitch, that it became the type of a government not only to sovereigns, but also to nations, during the seventeenth century.”

While France was thus strong and united in herself, and ruled by a martial, an ambitious, and (with all his faults) an enlightened and high-spirited sovereign, what European power was there fit to cope with her, or keep her in check?

“As to Germany, the ambitious projects of the German branch of Austria had been entirely defeated, the peace of the empire had been restored, and almost a new constitution formed, or an old revived, by the treaties of Westphalia; NAY, THE IMPERIAL EAGLE

WAS NOT ONLY FALLEN, BUT HER WINGS WERE CLIPPED.” [Bolingbroke, vol. ii. p. 378. Lord Bolingbroke’s “Letters on the Use of History,” and his ” Sketch of the History and State of Europe,”

abound with remarks on Louis XIV. and his contemporaries, of which the substance is as sound as the style is beautiful.

Unfortunately, like all his other works, they contain also a large proportion of sophistry and misrepresentation. The best test to use before we adopt any opinion or assertion of Bolingbroke’s, is to consider whether in writing it he was thinking either of Sir Robert Walpole or of Revealed Religion.

When either of these objects of his hatred was before his mind, he scrupled at no artifice or exaggeration that; might serve the purpose of his malignity. On most other occasions he may be followed with advantage, as he always may be read with pleasure.]

As to Spain, the Spanish branch of the Austrian house had sunk equally low. Philip II. left his successors a ruined monarchy.

He left them something worse; he left them his example and his principles of government, founded in ambition, in pride, in ignorance, in bigotry, and all the pedantry of state.”

[Bolingbroke, vol. ii. p. 378.]

It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that France, in the first war of Louis XIV., despised the opposition of both branches of the once predominant house of Austria. Indeed, in Germany the French king acquired allies among the princes of the Empire against the emperor himself. He had a still stronger support in Austria’s misgovernment of her own subjects. The words of Bolingbroke on this are remarkable, and some of them sound as if written within the last three years. Bolingbroke says, “It was not merely the want of cordial co-operation among the princes of the Empire that disabled the emperor from acting with vigour in the cause of his family then, nor that has rendered the house of Austria a dead weight upon all her allies ever since. Bigotry, and its inseparable companion, cruelty, as well as the tyranny and avarice of the court of Vienna, created in those days, and has maintained in ours, almost a perpetual diversion of the imperial arms from all effectual opposition to France. I MEAN TO

SPEAK OF THE TROUBLES IN HUNGARY. WHATEVER THEY BECAME IN THEIR

PROGRESS, THEY WERE CAUSED ORIGINALLY BY THE USERPATIONS AND

PERSECUTIONS OF THE EMPEROR; AND WHEN THE HUNGARIANS WERE CALLED

REBELS FIRST, THEY WERE CALLED SO FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN THIS, THAT THEY WOULD NOT BE SLAVES. The dominion of the emperor being less supportable than that of the Turks, this unhappy people opened a door to the latter to infest the empire, instead of making their country, what it had been before, a barrier against the Ottoman power. France became a sure though secret ally of the Turks, as well as the Hungarians, and has found her account in it, by keeping the emperor in perpetual alarms on that side, while she has ravaged the Empire and the Low Countries on the other.” [Bolingbroke, vol. ii. p. 397.]

If, after having seen the imbecility of Germany and Spain against the France of Louis XIV., we turn to the two only remaining European powers of any importance at that time, to England and to Holland, we find the position of our own country as to European politics, from 1660 to 1688, most painful to contemplate. From 1660 to 1688, “England, by the return of the Stuarts, was reduced to a nullity.” The words are Michelet’s, [Histoire Moderne, vol.

ii. p.106.] and though severe they are just. They are, in fact, not severe enough: for when England, under her restored dynasty of the Stuarts, did take any part in European politics, her conduct, or rather her king’s conduct, was almost invariably wicked and dishonourable.

Bolingbroke rightly says that, previous to the Revolution of 1688, during the whole progress that Louis XIV. made in obtaining such exorbitant power, as gave him well-grounded hopes of acquiring at last to his family the Spanish monarchy, England had been either an idle spectator of what passed on the continent, or a faint and uncertain ally against France, or a warm and sure ally on her side, or a partial mediator between her and the powers confederated together in their common defence. But though the court of England submitted to abet the usurpations of France, and the King of England stooped to be her pensioner, the crime was not national. On the contrary, the nation cried out loudly against it even whilst it was being committed.” [Bolingbroke, vol. ii p. 418.]

Holland alone, of all the European powers, opposed from the very beginning a steady and uniform resistance to the ambition and power of the French king. It was against Holland that the fiercest attacks of France were made, and though often apparently on the eve of complete success, they were always ultimately baffled by the stubborn bravery of the Dutch, and the heroism of their leader, William of Orange. When he became king of England, the power of this country was thrown decidedly into the scale against France; but though the contest was thus rendered less unequal, though William acted throughout “with invincible firmness, like a patriot and a hero,” [Bolingbroke, vol, ii, p.404.] France had the general superiority in every war and in every treaty: and the commencement of the eighteenth century found the last league against her dissolved, all the forces of the confederates against her dispersed, and many disbanded; while France continued armed, with her veteran forces by sea and land increased, and held in readiness to act on all sides, whenever the opportunity should arise for seizing on the great prizes which, from the very beginning of his reign, had never been lost sight of by her king.

This is not the place for any narrative of the first essay which Louis XIV. made of his power in the war of 1667; of his rapid conquest of Flanders and Franche-Comte; of the treaty of Aix-la-

Chapelle, which “was nothing more than a composition between the bully and the bullied;” [Ibid p. 399.] of his attack on Holland in 1672; of the districts and barrier-towns of the Spanish Netherlands which were secured to him by the treaty of Nimeguen in 1678; of how, after this treaty, he “continued to vex both Spain and the Empire, and to extend his conquests in the Low Countries and on the Rhine, both by the pen and the sword; how he took Luxembourg by force, stole Strasburg, and bought Casal;” of how the league of Augsburg was formed against him in 1686, and the election of William of Orange to the English throne in 1688, gave a new spirit to the opposition which France encountered; of the long and chequered war that followed, in which the French armies were generally victorious on the continent, though his fleet was beaten at La Hogue, and his dependent, James II,, was defeated at the Boyne, or of the treaty of Ryswick, which left France in possession of Roussillon, Artois, and Strasburg, which gave Europe no security against her claims on the Spanish succession, and which Louis regarded as a mere truce, to gain breathing-time before a more decisive struggle. It must be borne in mind that the ambition of Louis in these wars was twofold. It had its immediate and its ulterior objects. Its immediate object was to conquer and annex to France the neighbouring provinces and towns that were most convenient for the increase of her strength; but the ulterior object of Louis, from the time of his marriage to the Spanish Infanta in 1659, was to acquire for