The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12

Volume Xii

An Outline Narrative of the Great Events CHARLES F. HORNE

Louis XIV Establishes Absolute Monarchy (A.D. 1661) JAMES COTTER MORISON

New York Taken by the English (A.D. 1664) JOHN R. BRODHEAD

Great Plague in London (A.D. 1665) DANIEL DEFOE

Great Fire in London (A.D. 1666) JOHN EVELYN

Discovery of Gravitation (A.D. 1666) SIR DAVID BREWSTER

Morgan, the Buccaneer, Sacks Panama (A.D. 1671) JOHANN W. VON ARCHENHOLZ

Struggle of the Dutch against France and England (A.D. 1672) C.M. DAVIES.

Discovery of the Mississippi La Salle Names Louisiana (A.D. 1673-1682) FRANÇOIS XAVIER GARNEAU

King Philip's War (A.D. 1675) RICHARD HILDRETH

Growth of Prussia under the Great Elector His Victory at Fehrbellin (A.D. 1675) THOMAS CARLYLE

William Penn Receives the Grant of Pennsylvania Founding of Philadelphia (A.D. 1681) GEORGE E. ELLIS

Last Turkish Invasion of Europe Sobieski Saves Vienna (A.D. 1683) SUTHERLAND MENZIES

Monmouth's Rebellion (A.D. 1685) GILBERT BURNET

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (A.D. 1685) BON LOUIS HENRI MARTIN

The English Revolution Flight of James II (A.D. 1688) GILBERT BURNET H.D. TRAILL

Peter the Great Modernizes Russia Suppression of the Streltsi (A.D. 1689) ALFRED RAMBAUD

Tyranny of Andros in New England The Bloodless Revolution (A.D. 1689) CHARLES WYLLYS ELLIOTT

Massacre of Lachine (A.D. 1689) FRANÇOIS XAVIER GARNEAU

Siege of Londonderry and Battle of the Boyne (A.D. 1689-1690) TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT

Salem Witchcraft Trials (A.D. 1692) RICHARD HILDRETH

Establishment of the Bank of England (A.D. 1694) JOHN FRANCIS

Colonization of Louisiana (A.D. 1699) CHARLES E.T. GAYARRÉ

Prussia Proclaimed a Kingdom (A.D. 1701) LEOPOLD VON RANKE

Founding of St. Petersburg (A.D. 1703) K. WALISZEWSKI

Battle of Blenheim (A.D. 1704) Curbing of Louis XIV, SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY

Union of England and Scotland (A.D. 1707) JOHN HILL BURTON

Downfall of Charles XII at Poltava (A.D. 1709) Triumph of Russia K. WALISZEWSKI

Capture of Port Royal (A.D. 1710) France Surrenders Nova Scotia to England DUNCAN CAMPBELL

Universal Chronology (A.D. 1661-1715) JOHN RUDD

ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume Xii

Surrender of Marshal Tallard at the Battle of Blenheim, Painting by R. Caton Woodville.

The Duke of Monmouth humiliates himself before King James II, Painting by J. Pettie, A.R.A.

Charles XII carried on a litter during the Battle of Poltava, Painting by W. Hauschild.

%AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE%

Tracing Briefly The Causes, Connections, And Consequencies Of

%THE GREAT EVENTS%

(Age Of Louis XIV)

CHARLES F. HORNE

It is related that in 1661, on the day following the death of the great Cardinal Mazarin, the various officials of the State approached their young King, Louis XIV. "To whom shall we go now for orders, Your Majesty?" "To me," answered Louis, and from that date until his death in 1715 they had no other master. Whether we accept the tale as literal fact or only as the vivid French way of visualizing a truth, we find here the central point of over fifty years of European history. The two celebrated cardinals, Richelieu and Mazarin, had, by their strength and wisdom, made France by far the most powerful state in Europe. Moreover, they had so reduced the authority of the French nobility, the clergy, and the courts of law as to have become practically absolute and untrammelled in their control of the entire government. Now, all this enormous power, both at home and abroad, over France and over Europe, was assumed by a young man of twenty-three. "I am the state," said Louis at a later period of his career. He might almost have said, "I am Europe," looking as he did only to the Europe that dominated, and took pleasure in itself, and made life one continued glittering revel of splendor. Independent Europe, that claimed the right of thinking for itself, the suffering Europe of the peasants, who starved and shed their blood in helpless agony--these were against Louis almost from the beginning, and ever increasingly against him.

At first the young monarch found life very bright around him. His courtiers called him "the rising sun," and his ambition was to justify the title, to be what with his enormous wealth and authority was scarcely difficult, the Grand Monarch. He rushed into causeless war and snatched provinces from his feeble neighbors, exhausted Germany and decaying Spain. He built huge fortresses along his frontiers, and military roads from end to end of his domains. His court was one continuous round of splendid entertainments. He encouraged literature, or at least pensioned authors and had them clustered around him in what Frenchmen call the Augustan Age of their development.

The little German princes of the Rhine, each of them practically independent ruler of a tiny state, could not of course compete with Louis or defy him. Nor for a time did they attempt it. His splendor dazzled them. They were content to imitate, and each little prince became a patron of literature, or giver of entertainments, or builder of huge fortresses absurdly disproportioned to his territory and his revenues. Germany, it has been aptly said, became a mere tail to the French kite, its leaders feebly draggling after where Louis soared. Never had the common people of Europe or even the nobility had less voice in their own affairs. It was an age of absolute kingly power, an age of despotism.

England, which under Cromwell had bid fair to take a foremost place in Europe, sank under Charles II into unimportance. Its people wearied with tumult, desired peace more than aught else; its King, experienced in adversity, and long a homeless wanderer in France and Holland, seemed to have but one firm principle in life. Whatever happened he did not intend, as he himself phrased it, to go on his "travels" again. He dreaded and hated the English Parliament as all the Stuarts had; and, like his father, he avoided calling it together. To obtain money without its aid, he accepted a pension from the French King. Thus England also became a servitor of Louis. Its policy, so far as Charles could mould it, was France's policy. If we look for events in the English history of the time we must find them in internal incidents, the terrible plague that devastated London in 1665, the fire of the following year, that checked the plague but almost swept the city out of existence. We must note the founding of the Royal Society in 1660 for the advancement of science, or look to Newton, its most celebrated member, beginning to puzzle out his theory of gravitation in his Woolsthorpe garden.

CONTINENTAL WARS

Louis's first real opponent he found in sturdy Holland. Her fleets and those of England had learned to fight each other in Cromwell's time, and they continued to struggle for the mastery of the seas. There were many desperate naval battles. In 1664 an English fleet crossed the ocean to seize the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, and it became New York. In 1667 a Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames and burned the shipping, almost reaching London itself.

Yet full as her hands might seem with strife like this, Holland did not hesitate to stand forth against the aggression of Louis's "rising sun." When in his first burst of kingship, he seized the Spanish provinces of the Netherlands and so extended his authority to the border of Holland, its people, frightened at his advance, made peace with England and joined an alliance against him. Louis drew back; and the Dutch authorized a medal which depicted Holland checking the rising sun. Louis never forgave them, and in 1672, having secured German neutrality and an English alliance, he suddenly attacked Holland with all his forces.

For a moment the little republic seemed helpless. Her navy indeed withstood ably the combined assaults of the French and English ships, but the French armies overran almost her entire territory. It was then that her people talked of entering their ships and sailing away together, transporting their nation bodily to some colony beyond Louis's reach. It was then that Amsterdam set the example which other districts heroically followed, of opening her dykes and letting the ocean flood the land to drive out the French. The leaders of the republic were murdered in a factional strife, and the young Prince William III of Orange, descended from that William the Silent who had led the Dutch against Philip II, was made practically dictator of the land. This young Prince William, afterward King William III of England, was the antagonist who sprang up against Louis, and in the end united all Europe against him and annihilated his power.

Seeing the wonderful resistance that little Holland made against her apparently overwhelming antagonists, the rest of Germany took heart; allies came to the Dutch. Brandenburg and Austria and Spain forced Louis to fall back upon his own frontier, though with much resolute battling by his great general, Turenne.

Next to young William, Louis found his most persistent opponent in Frederick William, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg and Prussia, undoubtedly the ablest German sovereign of the age, and the founder of Prussia's modern importance. He had succeeded to his hereditary domains in 1640, when they lay utterly waste and exhausted in the Thirty Years' War; and he reigned until 1688, nearly half a century, during which he was ever and vigorously the champion of Germany against all outside enemies. He alone, in the feeble Germany of the day, resisted French influence, French manners, and French aggression.

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