in point of fact, with all the delight imaginable, testifying their sorrow at not having had more time to make preparations for receiving her more befittingly.”  The queen’s quarters were at Courtrai.  Marshal Turenne had moved on Dendermonde, but the Flemings had opened their sluices; the country was inundated; it was necessary to fall back on Audenarde; the town was taken in two days; and the king, still attended by the court, laid siege to Lille.  Vauban, already celebrated as an engineer, traced out the lines of circumvallation; the army of M. de Crequi formed a junction with that of Turenne; there was expectation of an attempt on the part of the governor of the Low Countries to relieve the place; the Spanish force sent for that purpose arrived too late, and was beaten on its retreat; the burgesses of Lille had forced the garrison to capitulate; and Louis XIV. entered it on the 27th of August, after ten days’ open trenches.  On the 2d of September, the king took the road back to St. Germain; but Turenne still found time to carry the town of Alost before taking up his winter-quarters.

Louis XIV.’s first campaign had been nothing but playing at war, almost entirely without danger or bloodshed; it had, nevertheless, been sufficient to alarm Europe.  Scarcely had peace been concluded at Breda, when another negotiation was secretly entered upon between England, Holland, and Sweden.

It was in vain that King Charles II. leaned personally towards an alliance with France; his people had their eyes “opened to the dangers” —­incurred by Europe from the arms of Louis XIV.  “Certain persons of the greatest influence in Parliament come sometimes to see me, without any lights and muffled in a cloak in order not to be recognized,” says a letter of September 26, 1669, from the Marquis of Ruvigny to M. de Lionne; “they give me to understand that common sense and the public security forbid them to see, without raising a finger, the whole of the Low Countries taken, and that they are bound in good policy to oppose the purposes of this conquest if his Majesty intend to take all for himself.”  On the 23d of January, 1668, the celebrated treaty of the Triple Alliance was signed at the Hague.  The three powers demanded of the King of France that he should grant the Low Countries a truce up to the month of May, in order to give time for treating with Spain and obtaining from her, as France demanded, the definitive cession of the conquered places or Franche-Comte in exchange.  At bottom, the Triple Alliance was resolved to protect helpless Spain against France; a secret article bound the three allies to take up arms to restrain Louis XIV., and to bring him back, if possible, to the peace of the Pyrenees.  At the same moment, Portugal was making peace with Spain, who recognized her independence.