“M. de Colbert laughed at him, and said that it could not be for his pocket’s sake; and the end of it was, that he put down three thousand livres.”  Colbert could not get over the mortifying success of the company of the Dutch Indies.  “I cannot believe that they pay forty per cent.,” said he.  It was with the Dutch that he most frequently had commercial difficulties.  The United Provinces produced but little, and their merchant navy was exclusively engaged in the business of transport; the charge of fifty sous per ton on merchandise carried in foreign vessels caused so much ill humor amongst the Hollanders that it was partly the origin of their rupture with France and of the treaty of the Triple Alliance.  Colbert made great efforts to develop the French navy, both the fighting and the merchant.  “The sea-traffic of all the world,” he wrote in 1669 to M. de Pomponne, then ambassador to Holland, “is done with twenty thousand vessels or thereabouts.  In the natural order of things, each nation should have its own share thereof in proportion to its power, population, and seaboard.  The Hollanders have fifteen or sixteen thousand out of this number, and the French perhaps four or five hundred at most.  The king is employing all sorts of means which he thinks useful in order to approach a little more nearly to the number his subjects ought naturally to have.”  Colbert’s efforts were not useless; at his death, the maritime trade of France had developed itself, and French merchants were effectually protected at sea by ships of war.  “It is necessary,” said Colbert in his instructions to Seignelay, “that my son should be as keenly alive to all the disorders that may occur in trade, and all the losses that may be incurred by every trader, as if they were his own.”  In 1692 the royal navy numbered a hundred and eighty-six vessels; a hundred and sixty thousand sailors were down on the books; the works at the ports of Toulon, Brest, and Rochefort were in full activity; Louis XIV. was in a position to refuse the salute of the flag which the English had up to that time exacted in the Channel from all nations.  “The king my brother and those of whom he takes counsel do not quite know me yet,” wrote the king to his ambassador in London, “when they adopt towards me a tone of haughtiness and a certain sturdiness which has a savor of menace.  I know of no power under heaven that can make me move a step by that sort of way; evil may come to me, of course, but no sensation of fear.  The King of England and his chancellor may, of course, see pretty well what my strength is, but they do not see my heart; I, who feel and know full well both one and the other, desire that, for sole reply to so haughty a declaration, they learn from your mouth that I neither seek nor ask for any accommodation in the matter of the flag, because I shall know quite well how to maintain my right whatever may happen.  I intend before long to place my maritime forces on such a footing that the English shall consider it a favor if it be my good pleasure then to listen to modifications touching a right which is due to me more legitimately than to them.”  Duquesne and Tourville, Duguay-Trouin and John Bart, permitted the king to make good on the seas such proud words.  From 1685 to 1712 the French fleets could everywhere hold their own against the allied squadrons of England and Holland.