in 1683, Conde in 1686, Le Tellier in 1687, and Louvois in 1691.  Then it was that his great reverses began, and his glory paled before the sun of the King of England, These reverses may have been the result of incapacity, and they may have been the result of the combined forces which outnumbered or overmatched his own; certain it is that in the terrible contest to which he was now doomed, he showed great force of character and great fortitude, which command our respect.

I cannot enter on that long war which began with the League of Augsburg in 1686, and continued to the peace of Ryswick in 1697,—­nine years of desperate fighting, when successes and defeats were nearly balanced, and when the resources of all the contending parties were nearly exhausted.  France, at the close of the war, was despoiled of all her conquests and all the additions to her territory made since the Peace of Nimeguen, except Strasburg and Alsace.  For the first time since the accession of Richelieu to power, France lost ground.

The interval between this war and that of the Spanish succession—­an interval of three years—­was only marked by the ascendency of Madame de Maintenon, and a renewed persecution, directed not against Protestants, but against those Catholics who cultivated the highest and freest religious life, and in which Bossuet appears to a great disadvantage by the side of his rival, the equally illustrious Fenelon.  It was also marked by the gradual disappearance of the great lights in literature.  La Fontaine died in 1695, Racine in 1699.  Boileau was as good as dead; Mesdames de la Sabliere and de la Fayette, Pellisson and Bussy-Rabutin, La Bruyere and Madame Sevigne, all died about this time.  The only great men at the close of the century in France who made their genius felt were Bossuet, who encouraged the narrow intolerance which aimed to suppress the Jansenists and Quietists, and Fenelon, who protected them although he did not join them,—­the “Eagle of Meaux” and the “Swan of Cambray,” as they were called, offering in the realm of art “the eternal duality of strength and grace,” like Michael Angelo and Raphael; the one inspiring the fear and the other the love of God, yet both seeing in the Christian religion the highest hopes of the world.  The internal history of this period centres around those pious mystics of whom Madame Guyon was the representative, and those inquiring intellectual Jansenists who had defied the Jesuits, but were finally crushed by an intolerant government.  The lamentable dispute between Bossuet and Fenelon also then occurred, which led to the disgrace of the latter,—­as banishment to his diocese was regarded.  But in his exile his moral influence was increased rather than diminished; while the publication of his “Telemaque,” made without his consent from a copy that had been abstracted from him, won him France and Europe, though it rendered Louis XIV. forever irreconcilable.  Bossuet did not long survive the banishment of his