The choice of Louvois as Minister of War was no less happy than that of Colbert in Finance.  And with Vauban to build his defences, Turenne and Luxembourg and the great Conde to lead his armies, it is not strange that there were victories.

The four great wars of Louis’ reign were not for theatrical effect, like that of the fanciful Charles VIII. in Italy.  They were all in pursuance of a serious and definite purpose.  Just or unjust, wise or unwise, they were planned in order to reach some boundary, or to secure some strategic position essential to France.  These wars were: 

First—­The war upon the Spanish Netherlands, ending with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1668.

Second—­The invasion of the Dutch Republic, ending with the peace of Nymwegen, 1678.

Third—­War with the coalition of European States, closing with the Treaty of Ryswick, 1697.

Fourth—­War of the Spanish Succession, closed by the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713.

The first of these wars, undertaken because Louis believed and intended that Flanders should belong to France, to which it was geographically allied, was ostensibly undertaken in order to recover the unpaid dowry which had been promised by Spain in exchange for Louis’ renunciation of any claim upon the throne of Spain which might result from his marriage with the Infanta Maria Theresa.  His conquest of the Spanish possessions in Flanders might have been supposed to set at rest forever the question of a claim upon the Spanish throne.  But we shall hear of that again.  The success of this war made Louis, at twenty-nine years of age, the most heroic figure in Europe.  Every one bowed before him, and everything seemed to be gravitating toward him as toward a central sun.  Not alone nobility, but even genius put on his livery and became sycophantish, Bossuet and even Moliere, hungering for his smile, and in despair if he frowned.

This was the time of the supremacy of the beautiful Louise la Valliere.  Her reign was brief, and, the king’s infatuation being passed, she was to spend the rest of her dreary life in a Carmelite convent, hearing only the far-off echoes from the brilliant world in which she was once the central and envied figure.

The Dutch Republic had come under Louis’ displeasure and was marked for his next foreign campaign.  This (to his mind) insignificant nation of fishermen and small traders had presumed to stand in his path.  So the most magnificent army since the Crusades in 1672 invaded the peaceful little state of Holland.  As one after another of the cities helplessly fell, someone asked why Louis came himself—­why he did not send his valet?  Louis insolently demanded as the price of peace the surrender of all their fortified cities, the payment of twenty million francs, and the renunciation of the Protestant faith.