volume 2, chapter 10, section 4.

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1620, to 1648; FRANCE: A. D. 1624-1626; and ITALY: A. D. 1627-1631.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1621. Formal establishment of the right of primogeniture in the Archducal Family.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1636-1637.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1624-1626. Hostile combinations of Richelieu. The Valtelline war in Northern Italy.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1624-1626.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1627-1631. War with France over the succession to the Duchy of Mantua.

See ITALY: A. D. 1627-1631.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1660-1664. Renewed war with the Turks. Help from France. Battle and victory of St. Gothard. Twenty years truce.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1660-1664.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1668-1683. Increased oppression and religious persecution in Hungary. Revolt of Tekeli. The Turks again called in. Mustapha's great invasion and siege of Vienna. Deliverance of the city by John Sobieski.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1668-1683.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1672-1714. The wars with Louis XIV. of France: War of the Grand Alliance. Peace of Ryswick.

"The leading principle of the reign [in France] of Louis XIV. ... is the principle of war with the dynasty of Charles V.--the elder branch of which reigned in Spain, while the descendants of the younger branch occupied the imperial throne of Germany. ... At the death of Mazarin, or to speak more correctly, immediately after the death of Philip IV., ... the early ambition of Louis XIV. sought to prevent the junior branch of the Austrian dynasty from succeeding to the inheritance of the elder branch. He had no desire to see reconstituted under the imperial sceptre of Germany the monarchy which Charles V. had at one time wished to transmit entire to his son, but which, worn out and weakened, he subsequently allowed without regret to be divided between his son and his brother. Before making war upon Austria, Louis XIV. cast his eyes upon a portion of the territory belonging to Spain, and the expedition against Holland, begun in 1672 [see NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1672-1674, and 1674-1678], for the purpose of absorbing the Spanish provinces by overwhelming them, opened the series of his vast enterprises. His first great war was, historically speaking, his first great fault. He failed in his object: for at the end of six campaigns, during which the French armies obtained great and deserved success, Holland remained unconquered. {210} Thus was Europe warned that the lust of conquest of a young monarch, who did not himself possess military genius, but who found in his generals the resources and ability in which he was himself deficient, would soon threaten her independence. Condé and Turenne, after having been rebellious subjects under the Regency, were about to become the first and the most illustrious lieutenants of Louis XIV. Europe, however, though warned, was not immediately ready to defend herself. It was from Austria, more directly exposed to the dangers of the great war now commencing, that the first systematic resistance ought to have come. But Austria was not prepared to play such a part; and the Emperor Leopold possessed neither the genius nor the wish for it. He was, in fact, nothing more than the nominal head of Germany. ... Such was the state of affairs in Europe when William of Orange first made his appearance on the stage. ... The old question of supremacy, which Louis XIV. wished to fight out as a duel with the House of Austria, was now about to change its aspect, and, owing to the presence of an unexpected genius, to bring into the quarrel other powers besides the two original competitors. The foe of Louis XIV. ought by rights to have been born on the banks of the Danube, and not on the shores of the North Sea. In fact, it was Austria that at that moment most needed a man of genius, either on the throne or at the head of affairs. The events of the century would, in this case, doubtless have followed a different course: the war would have been less general, and the maritime nations would not have been involved in it to the same degree. ... The treaties of peace would have been signed in some small place in France or Germany, and not in two towns and a village in Holland, such as Nimeguen, Ryswick, and Utrecht. . . . William of Orange found himself in a position soon to form the Triple Alliance which the very policy of Louis XIV. suggested. For France to attack Holland, when her object was eventually to reach Austria, and keep her out of the Spanish succession, was to make enemies at one and the same time of Spain, of Austria, and of Holland. But if it afterwards required considerable efforts on the part of William of Orange to maintain this alliance, it demanded still more energy to extend it. It formed part of the Stadtholder's ulterior plans to combine the union between himself and the two branches of the Austrian family, with the old Anglo-Swedish Triple Alliance, which had just been dissolved under the strong pressure brought to bear on it by Louis XIV. ... Louis XIV., whose finances were exhausted, was very soon anxious to make peace, even on the morrow of his most brilliant victories; whilst William of Orange, beaten and retreating, ardently desired the continuance of the war. ... The Peace of Nimeguen was at last signed, and by it were secured to Louis XIV. Franche-Comté, and some important places in the Spanish Low Countries on his northern frontier [see NIMEGUEN, PEACE OF]. This was the culminating point of the reign of Louis XIV. Although the coalition had prevented him from attaining the full object of his designs against the House of Austria, which had been to absorb by conquest so much of the territory belonging to Spain as would secure him against the effect of a will preserving the whole inheritance intact in the family, yet his armies had been constantly successful, and many of his opponents were evidently tired of the struggle. ... Some years passed thus, with the appearance of calm. Europe was conquered; and when peace was broken, because, as was said, the Treaty of Nimeguen was not duly executed, the events of the war were for some time neither brilliant or important, for several campaigns began and ended without any considerable result. ... At length Louis XIV. entered on the second half of his reign, which differed widely from the first. ... During this second period of more than thirty years, which begins after the Treaty of Nimeguen and lasts till the Peace of Utrecht, events succeed each other in complete logical sequence, so that the reign presents itself as one continuous whole, with a regular movement of ascension and decline. ... The leading principle of the reign remained the same; it was always the desire to weaken the House of Austria, or to secure an advantageous partition of the Spanish succession. But the Emperor of Germany was protected by the coalition, and the King of Spain, whose death was considered imminent, would not make up his mind to die. ... During the first League, when the Prince of Orange was contending against Louis XIV. with the co-operation of the Emperor of Germany, of the King of Spain, and of the Electors on the Rhine, the religious element played only a secondary part in the war. But we shall see this element make its presence more manifest. ... Thus the influence of Protestant England made itself more and more felt in the affairs of Europe, in proportion as the government of the Stuarts, from its violence, its unpopularity, and from the opposition offered to it, was approaching its end. ... The second coalition was neither more united nor more firm than the first had been: but, after the expulsion of the Stuarts, the germs of dissolution no longer threatened the same dangers. ... The British nation now made itself felt in the balance of Europe, and William of Orange was for the first time in his life successful in war at the head of his English troops. ... This was the most brilliant epoch of the life of William III. ... He was now at the height of his glory, after a period of twenty years from his start in life, and his destiny was accomplished; so that until the Treaty of Ryswick, which in 1698 put an end to his hostilities with France, and brought about his recognition as King of England by Louis XIV., not much more was left for him to gain; and he had the skill to lose nothing. ... The negotiations for the Treaty of Ryswick were conducted with less ability and boldness, and concluded on less advantageous terms, than the Truce of Ratisbon or the Peace of Nimeguen. Nevertheless, this treaty, which secured to Louis the possession of Strasbourg, might, particularly as age was now creeping on him, have closed his military career without disgrace, if the eternal question, for the solution of which he had made so many sacrifices, and which had always held the foremost place in his thoughts, had not remained as unsettled and as full of difficulty as on the day when he had mounted the throne. {211} Charles II. of Spain was not dead, and the question of the Spanish succession, which had so actively employed the armies of Louis XIV., and taxed his diplomacy, was as undecided as at the beginning of his reign. Louis XIV. saw two alternatives before him: a partition of the succession between the Emperor and himself (a solution proposed thirty years before as a means to avoid war), or else a will in favour of France, followed of course by a recommencement of general hostilities. ... Louis XIV. proposed in succession two schemes, not, as thirty years before, to the Emperor, but to the King of England, whose power and whose genius rendered him the arbiter of all the great affairs of Europe. ... In the first of the treaties of partition, Spain and the Low Countries were to be given to the Prince of Bavaria; in the second, to the Archduke Charles. In both, France obtained Naples and Sicily for the Dauphin. ... Both these arrangements ... suited both France and England as a pacific solution of the question. ... But events, as we know, deranged all these calculations, and Charles II., who, by continuing to live, had disappointed so much impatient expectation, by his last will provoked a general war, to be carried on against France by the union of England with the Empire and with Holland--a union which was much strengthened under the new dynasty, and which afterwards embraced the northern states of Germany. ... William III. died at the age of fifty-two, on the 9th of March, 1702, at the beginning of the War of Succession. After him, the part he was to have played was divided. Prince Eugene, Marlborough, and Heinsius (the Grand Pensionary) had the conduct of political and especially of military affairs, and acted in concert. The disastrous consequences to France of that war, in which William had no part, are notorious. The battles of Blenheim, of Ramilies, and of Oudenarde brought the allied armies on the soil of France, and placed Louis XIV. on the verge of ruin."

_J. Van Praet, Essays on the Political History of the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries, pages 390-414 and 441-455._

ALSO IN: _H. Martin, History of France: Age of Louis XIV:,