7.  War in the Low Countries.—­Maria Theresa, the queen of Louis XIV., was the child of the first marriage of Philip IV. of Spain; and on her father’s death in 1661, Louis, on pretext of an old law in Brabant, which gave the daughters of a first marriage the preference over the sons of a second, claimed the Low Countries from the young Charles II. of Spain.  He thus began a war which was really a continuance of the old struggle between France and Burgundy, and of the endeavour of France to stretch her frontier to the Rhine.  At first England, Holland, and Sweden united against him, and obliged him to make the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668; but he then succeeded in bribing Charles II. of England to forsake the cause of the Dutch, and the war was renewed in 1672.  William, Prince of Orange, Louis’s most determined enemy through life, kept up the spirits of the Dutch, and they obtained aid from Germany and Spain, through a six years’ terrible war, in which the great Turenne was killed at Saltzbach, in Germany.  At last, from exhaustion, all parties were compelled to conclude the peace of Nimeguen in 1678.  Taking advantage of undefined terms in this treaty, Louis seized various cities belonging to German princes, and likewise the free imperial city of Strassburg, when all Germany was too much worn out by the long war to offer resistance.  France was full of self-glorification, the king was viewed almost as a demi-god, and the splendour of his court and of his buildings, especially the palace at Versailles, with its gardens and fountains, kept up the delusion of his greatness.

8.  Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.—­In 1685 Louis supposed that the Huguenots had been so reduced in numbers that the Edict of Nantes could be repealed.  All freedom of worship was denied them; their ministers were banished, but their flocks were not allowed to follow them.  If taken while trying to escape, men were sent to the galleys, women to captivity, and children to convents for education.  Dragoons were quartered on families to torment them into going to mass.  A few made head in the wild moors of the Cevennes under a brave youth named Cavalier, and others endured severe persecution in the south of France.  Dragoons were quartered on them, who made it their business to torment and insult them; their marriages were declared invalid, their children taken from them to be educated in the Roman Catholic faith.  A great number, amounting to at least 100,000, succeeded in escaping, chiefly to Prussia, Holland, and England, whither they carried many of the manufactures that Colbert had taken so much pains to establish.  Many of those who settled in England were silk weavers, and a large colony was thus established at Spitalfields, which long kept up its French character.