XXXII.

CHAP arrogance and pretension leading him to disgust and alienate even his most staunch adherents. His claim upon the Palatinate succession, notwithstanding the truce of Ratisbon, had roused the German Powers once more to sign a new defensive league, that of Augsburg (in July, 1686). This time all Germany joined in it; the great Elector of Brandenburg tacitly, notwithstanding his treaties with France. Even the Elector of Bavaria, whose sister had espoused the Dauphin, and to whom Villars, on behalf of Louis, made the most tempting offers, turned against France, and consented to take the command of the army destined to combat it.*

About the same time, the king inflicted an outrage on the Pope. Innocent the Eleventh, Odescalchi, had been mortified by the French king's rudeness and greed, in the affair of the Regale, and still more by the vengeance taken of his resistance, by the Declaration, in 1682, of the right and independence of the Gallican Church. Since that epoch he had refused to consecrate any French bishops, leaving the kingdom under a kind of interdict. The Pope's anxieties and interest were awakened almost exclusively in behalf of the Emperor, to whom he sent large sums to aid him in repelling the Turks from Christendom. This was indirect censure of Louis, the ally of the infidel. And when, in 1686, the Pope desired to cleanse Rome of brigands, and for this purpose resolved to annul the right of sanctuary, which existed in the streets round the ambassadorial palaces, the French alone of all the powers resisted. Nay, Louis sent the Marquis de Lavandière to Rome with an armed suite to uphold the old claim, and defy

* The Emperor and the King of Spain did everything to gain the Elector of Bavaria, whose electress was a Spanish princess. The King of Spain, in 1685, offered to them the sovereignty of Flanders, which so angered Louis, that he threatened

forthwith an invasion of Navarre. But what won the Elector of Bavaria was the command which the Emperor gave him of that army which took Belgrade. Memoirs of Sourches and of Villars.

his Holiness. He also seized Avignon. When there- CHAP.
fore, in the following year, Louis had need of the Pope's XXXII.
favour, he naturally found it bestowed upon his enemies.
His claim upon certain portions of the Palatinate* was
accompanied and completed by a design to raise his
pensioner, Furstenburg,† Bishop of Strasburg, to be
Archbishop of Cologne. The prelacy had formed a
large principality in the hands of a member of the
House of Bavaria, being held in conjunction with those
of Liege, Munster, and Hildesheim. To transfer this
to one of his dependents, whilst Louis at the same time
held Luxemburg by its capital, and Treves by the new
fortress of Mont Louis, the French also fortifying Lan-
den, would, as the Prince of Orange feared, make France
complete mistress of the Rhine. Hence the eagerness
of Louis to secure the prize to Furstenburg. The pre-
late in possession was in debt some half million of
crowns to Louis, who promised to forgive the debt if he
would procure the election of Furstenburg as his co-
adjutor. This was accordingly effected in 1687, and
had the Pope's investiture followed, and crowned the
election, Furstenburg would have succeeded at once
to the prelacy on the death of its occupant in June,
1688.§ The investiture withheld necessitated a new
election. This was accompanied by many formalities.
A candidate already invested with other church' dig-
nities, required two-thirds of the chapter to vote for
him, in order to be elected. The Pope might dispense
with this, which his Holiness did with respect to Prince
Clement, of Bavaria, who had been set up by the Ger-
man Powers in opposition to the French nominee. It

*The counties of Sponnen, Lautern, Simmer, and Germesheimthe best part of what belonged to the empire beyond the Rhine, says Leibnitz.

† Dangeau, March 1687, says, the King gave the Cardinal of Furs

tenburg ten years of his pension of
10,000 crowns in order that he
might pay his creditors.

Louis's letter of Nov. 1687 to
the Archbishop, in his Œuvres.
§ Tanarra's Relation in Ranke.

XXXII.

CHAP. was refused to Furstenburg. The latter thus required 16 votes, and obtained but 13. Clement the Bavarian required 13, and only obtained 9. In case of an election which proved null, as in the present instance, the choice reverted to the Pope. Louis instantly despatched an envoy to Rome, but the pontiff flatly refused even to receive him.

The indignation of Louis was intense. He, who had just cleared France of heresy, and not shrunk from the impoverishment of his kingdom, and the perpetration of wholesale murder and monstrous cruelty, to prove himself the eldest son of the Church, found the Pope not only his enemy, but in league with the Protestant Powers to check his influence on the Rhine, and actually deprive him of an alliance with England. His resentment, rather than his prudence, prompted Louis to secure Cologne and be avenged of the Pope, instead of turning his arms to prevent William's Dutch expedition invading England. Other reasons, which Louvois urged, also prompted him to undertake an expedition eastward rather than northward. James the Second, in reply to proffered succours, refused them, and declared himself able to repel the enemy. On the other hand the Emperor Leopold had driven the Turks from Buda and Belgrade, and threatened to be a more formidable enemy than William. To secure the Rhine seemed more urgent, than to prevent William's sailing, probably to defeat.

The historians, or rather the memoir writers of the epoch, not content with such serious causes for the war, abound in suggesting trivial ones. St. Simon says that Louis having found fault with a newly built window at Trianon, which he considered to be out of the perpendieular, Louvois, who superintended war as well as architecture, vowed that he would give his master something more grave to think of than masonry. A more serious cause, of the same kind, is hinted at by Madame La Fayette. The King had fixed his palace and water

XXXII.

works at Versailles, the most inconvenient place in the CHAP.
kingdom for water. Its fountains, therefore, could play
but by spurts.
To give them continual flow, Louis
undertook to bring the river Eure from a distance to
Versailles. He employed his soldiers in this work,
which, being conducted across marshes, caused an epi-
demic, and carried them off by thousands.
The en-
gineering difficulties in the way of the enterprise became
at the same time insurmountable. An honourable

pretext was found for abandoning the whole design,
by draughting off the soldiers to war, and undertaking
an immediate campaign upon the Rhine for the re-
covery of what had been ceded in the truce.

It would be idle to dwell on such secondary causes,
whilst the King's own temper and principles impelled
to perpetual aggression in his negotiations, a tendency
which received a still stronger impulse from his restless
minister, the Marquis of Louvois. This statesman could
not abide peace, not only from his habits and talents,
which were all for the direction and provisions of war,
but also because peace reduced him to a nullity, and
demanded of him political knowledge and experience
which he did not possess. Colbert was the minister of
peace, shone in it, and would have achieved great things
by its means. Louvois entertained a political and per-
sonal hatred towards him; and the Treaty of Nimeguen
was scarcely signed ere Louvois meditated and em-
ployed the means of rendering it null. He was grand
conceiver and director of the Chambres de Réunion, the
claims upon Germany, and the occupation of Stras-
burg.*

In the midst of his aggression, Louvois too looked about for alliance. He first turned to the Dutch, whose separate signature to the peace of Nimeguen showed them severed from their allies. Louvois, however, met

Rousset, Hist. de Louvois, 2nd part.

CHAP. with nothing but cold and dubious answers from the Dutch, and he turned his views in another direction.*

XXXII.

On the failure of the reigning dynasty of Spain, an event looked to by every politician, the conquests and position most important for France was in Italy. Could they get possession of the Milanese they might interrupt all communications between Spain and Austria, and prevent arms and succours proceeding from one country to the other. Louvois, therefore, turned his efforts to Savoy, where a French princess was regnant as duchess mother and regent. To get her into his power, make her dependent on France, even for the preservation of her authority in Piedmont, and by this means tear from her the order or promise for French troops to occupy the fortresses of Piedmont-such was the aim for years of Louvois' policy at Turin. A part of this scheme was the possession of Casal, which the French minister obtained. One of the agents of the Duke of Mantua, whom the French bribed to bring about the surrender of Casal, and who betrayed them, was Mattioli, evidently the man with the Iron Mask who died in the Bastile.† Louvois, however, overreached himself. His exigences, instead of winning the duchess as an ally, ruined her as regent, and transferred the government into the hands of the boy prince, her son, astute and spirited, who, though at first obeisant to France, and even espousing one of its princesses (Mademoiselle de Valois, daughter of the Duke of Orleans), soon showed that independence was dearer to him than even the alliance of the Grand Monarque. Meanwhile the King declared war, and avowed in a solemn manifestof his purpose to compel the emperor to abandon his defence of Cologne against the French

* Rousset, Hist. de Louvois. 2nd part.

For his treachery and captur see C. Rousset. Hist. de Louvois.

Dumont, Corps. Diplom. v. 7. The manifesto was answered by Leibnitz.