The Prince of Orange thought as Madame de Seigne:  he regarded the peace of Nimeguen as a truce, and a truce fraught with danger to Europe.  For that reason did he soon seek to form alliances in order to secure the repose of the world against the insatiable ambition of King Louis XIV.  Intoxicated by his successes and the adulation of his court, the King of France no longer brooked any objections to his will or any limits to his desires.  The poison of absolute power had done its work.  Louis XIV. considered the “office of king” grand, noble, delightful, “for he felt himself worthy of acquitting himself well in all matters in which he engaged.”  “The ardor we feel for glory,” he used to say, “is not one of those feeble passions which grow dull by possession; its favors, which are never to be obtained without effort, never, on the other hand, cause disgust, and whoever can do without longing for fresh ones is unworthy of all he has received.”

Standing at the king’s side and exciting his pride and ambition, Louvois had little by little absorbed all the functions of prime minister without bearing the title.  Colbert alone resisted him, and he, weary of the struggle, was about to succumb before long (1683), driven to desperation by the burdens that the wars and the king’s luxury caused to weigh heavily upon France.  Peace had not yet led to disarmament; an army of a hundred and forty thousand men remained standing, ever ready to uphold the rights of France during the long discussions over the regulation of the frontiers.  In old papers ancient titles were found, and by degrees the villages, Burghs, and even principalities, claimed by King Louis XIV. were re-united quietly to France; King Charles XI. was thus alienated, in consequence of the seizure of the countship of Deux-Ponts, to which Sweden laid claim.  Strasburg was taken by a surprise.  This free city had several times violated neutrality during the war; Louvois had kept up communications inside the place; suddenly he had the approaches and the passage over the Rhine occupied by thirty-five thousand men on the night between the 16th and 17th of September, 1681; the burgesses sent up to ask aid from the emperor, but the messengers were arrested; on the 30th Strasburg capitulated, and Louis XIV. made his triumphant entry there on the 24th of October.  “Nobody,” says a letter of the day, “can recover from the consternation caused by the fact that the French have taken Strasburg without firing a single shot; everybody says it is one of the wheels of the chariot to be used for a drive into the empire, and that the door of Elsass is shut from this moment.”