་ XXXII. nominee, and to acknowledge, not the temporary, but CHAP. the permanent sovereignty of France to the left bank of the Rhine (September 1688). Were these granted, Louis professed himself ready to give up.all towns beyond the river after razing their fortifications. He proer bably reckoned that the emperor, embarrassed in the Turkish war, would at once grant these terms. They would not only have secured the French in the possession of the left bank of the Rhine, and definitively severed Germany from Holland,† but would have immediately caused the recall of the ten or twelve thousand North Germans, who formed the chief force of the army with which William was about to invade England. ד The first object was to seize and secure a bridge over the Rhine, which would be obtained by the capture of Philipsburg. Possessed of it and the passage, the French army might with safety occupy the Palatinate, e live upon the Germans, and levy contributions upon them. For the French king, whilst precipitating himself into war, had neither money nor provisions, nor even troops sufficient to face his enemies. The finance minister, on the first aspect of hostilities, offered his resignation, seeing no mode of raising money save the sale of new and useless offices. The old arrière ban and militia were called forth, and a new conscription ordained, to supply the want of men.‡ The French army, such as it was, passed across the Rhine, it being impossible to promise it pay, or subsist its cavalry elsewhere.§ *It was said that Louis gave orders for the expedition on hearing of the capture of Belgrade. But this event took place on the 6th of September, and Louvois wrote to Catinat on the 8th, that he was to be employed in the siege of Philipsburg. Lettres Militaires. † See Sir Wm. Temple's Memoirs till his Retirement, for the designs of the French on Flanders. VOL. IV. D Isambert, Lois Françaises. XXXII. CHAP. Philipsburg surrendered to the Dauphin, or rather to Vauban and Catinat, on the sixth of November. Mayence was seized, and all the towns of the Palatinate, Coblentz and Ehrenbreitstein excepted, fell one after another into the hands of the French. But enemies started up on every side-England, of which the Prince of Orange had become monarch, partly in consequence of Louis having turned his arms towards Germany,* -Holland, now enchained to his car of triumphas well as all Germany, knit in the bond of the League of Augsburg. The humility and despair of Louis was almost as great in December as his arrogance had been three months previous. After having tried to tempt the Elector of Bavaria with promises of aggrandisement† in vain, Louis told Villars to offer either the appointment of Prince Clement as coadjutor, or even his acknowledgment as archbishop, provided Furstemburg was allowed to administer the electorate for fifteen or sixteen years. Villars in return told his master that neither Bavaria nor the Emperor would listen to any terms, the latter hoping to be soon master of Constantinople.§ Angered by the firmness of the enemies he had provoked, Louis resolved to take vengeance, not indeed so much on them as on the unfortunate subjects of the Powers who thus defied him. His generals were ordered to disperse their troops over Germany, to levy contributions and spread devastation, not only over Baden and the Rhine country, but over Franconia. This was organised as a regular system of rapine by safe from German attacks from *D'Avaux describes William's † Louis bids Villars offer Bavaria an "occasion de s'agrandir, qui est le plus digne et le plus agréable occupation des souverains." King to Villars, Dec. 1688. Lettres, Euvres de Louis XIV. § The Emperor believed, on the faith of a soothsayer, that a son of his would reign at Constantinople. Louvois, who called it the Extraordinaire des Guerres. The German armies could not muster to eject the in- *Dangeau, August, 1691. The Germans were at last driven to such fierce retaliation, that they burned alive in their market places, the French whom they caught setting fire to the farms and granaries. Louvois' Letters, 1690. Vauban describes five fortresses CHAP. XXXII. СНАР. XXXII. Rhine were the oldest and most venerable cities of the empire,-Spires, the seat of the Diet; Worms, where Luther had appeared; Heidelberg, famous for its beautiful castle. None, nothing was spared. The soldiers were bidden not to fire the cathedrals. But that was found impossible, and the illustrious domes, in which reposed the ashes of the early German Cæsars, were committed to the flames. Even their ruins were blown up. The spite of the French king, whilst he was rearing his own barrack of a palace at Versailles, was especially vented upon the residences of other princes. Those of Mannheim and Heidelberg* were ruthlessly destroyed. Nothing that was beautiful or venerable was safe from the vandalism of Louis the Fourteenth. One is pleased to find that the court which issued such edicts was visited by retributive vengeance. Its military efforts in 1689 were inglorious. "The campaign was limited in Germany," says Villars, "to our seizing Mayence." He might have added, and to our losing it, its recapture in September being one of the events which most discredited Louvois with his master. The Marshals D'Humières and De Lorges, who commanded, were devoid of talent, whilst Marshal de Luxemburg, the only French general possessed of ability, was left unemployed, owing to the dislike and jealousy of the king and his minister. The retribution dealt to the court was, however, not so much in military reverses as in pecuniary straits. An issue of a million and a half of annuities having produced little, the king at the close of 1689 half besought, half commanded, not only his courtiers but his clergy, to send their plate to the melting pot, to make coin more abundant, he * See in Rousset Tessé's letter, giving an account of his destruction of the castle and 432 houses of Heidelberg. He merely saved a portion of a Descent from the Cross, which he hoped to send as an acceptable present to Louvois! See also the letters of Duras in Lettres Militaires, t. vi. the маг שר er WI said; to supply the emptiness of the treasury, he meant. Louis set the example himself by sending all his rich ear vases, mirrors, and articles of furniture, even to the toilet table of the dauphiness, to be melted of their ornaments. His own silver throne shared the same fate. The chief value of these objects lay in the cost of the modelling, which was fifty times more than the worth of the mere melted metal. Lovers of virtu still deplore the vandalism as not inferior to that of the destruction of the Palatinate. It was, however, retributive justice, and was especially applied to the churches, those triumphant over the exiled, the tortured, and bleeding Protestants, which were obliged to give up their silver tabernacles, their gilded shrines and censers, preserving merely the chalices and plate necessary for diurnal service.* ar The few thousand livres proceeding from this momentary plunder of palace, church, and boudoir, went but a small way to pay for four or five armies, besides a great fleet, which Seignelay, the marine minister, son of Colbert, had assembled at Brest. The design was that, whilst James attacked William in Ireland, and detained him there, the French fleet should make itself master of the Channel, and foment insurrections which must be facile, since England was denuded of troops. The French Admiral, Tourville, was indeed master of the Channel, having eighty ships opposed to fifty-eight of -English and Dutch united.† A severe engagement, occasioning a great loss on both sides, resulted in the latter returning to the Thames, and the French being driven westward by wind and tide. The loss of the battle of the Boyne soon after by James tended to quiet any plans of insurrection which might have been formed in England. Louvois was averse to all these schemes of descent on Ireland and on England for the restoration of the † Mémoires de Forbin. * Clements Pontchartrain. CHAP. XXXII. |