The very day of the surrender of Strasburg (September 30, 1681), Catinat, with a corps of French troops, entered Casale, sold to Louis XIV. by the Duke of Mantua.  The king thought to make sure of Piedmont by marrying his niece, Monsieur’s daughter, to the Duke of Savoy, Victor-Amadeo, quite a boy, delicate and taciturn, at loggerheads with his mother and with her favorites.  Marie Louise d’Orleans, elder sister of the young Duchess of Savoy, had married the King of Spain, Charles II., a sickly creature of weak intellect.  Louis XIV. felt the necessity of forming new alliances; the old supports of France had all gone over to the enemy.  Sweden and Holland were already allied to the empire; the German princes joined the coalition.  The Prince of Orange, with an ever-vigilant eye on the frequent infractions of the treaties which France permitted herself to commit, was quietly negotiating with his allies, and ready to take up arms to meet the common danger.  “He was,” says Massillon, “a prince profound in his views, skilful in forming leagues and banding spirits together, more successful in exciting wars than on the battle-field, more to be feared in the privacy of the closet than at the head of armies, a prince and an enemy whom hatred of the French name rendered capable of conceiving great things and of executing them, one of those geniuses who seem born to move at their will both peoples and sovereigns.”  French diplomacy was not in a condition to struggle with the Prince of Orange.  M. de Pomponne had succeeded Lionne; he was disgraced in 1679.  “I order his recall,” said the king, “because all that passes through his hands loses the grandeur and force which ought to be shown in executing the orders of a king who is no poor creature.”  Colbert de Croissy, the minister’s brother, was from that time employed to manage with foreign countries all the business which Louvois did not reserve to himself.

Duquesne had bombarded Algiers in 1682; in 1684, he destroyed several districts of Genoa, which was accused of having failed in neutrality between France and Spain; and at the same time Marshals Humieres and Crequi occupied Audenarde, Courtray, and Dixmude, and made themselves masters of Luxemburg; the king reproached Spain with its delays in the regulation of the frontiers, and claimed to occupy the Low Countries pacifically; the diet of Ratisbonne intervened; the emperor, with the aid of Sobieski, King of Poland, was occupied in repelling the invasions of the Turks; a truce was concluded for twenty-four years; the empire and Spain acquiesced in the king’s new conquests.  “It seemed to be established,” said the Marquis de la Fare, “that the empire of France was an evil not to be avoided by other nations.”  Nobody was more convinced of this than King Louis XIV.