ame
time; and the adjoining nations, alike intimidated by a power which they
could not resist, and dazzled by a glory which they could not emulate,
had come almost to despair of maintaining their independence; and were
sinking into that state of apathy, which is at once the consequence and
the cause of extraordinary reverses.

The influence of these causes had distinctly appeared in the
extraordinary good fortune which had attended the enterprises of Louis,
and the numerous conquests he had made since he had launched into the
career of foreign aggrandizement. Nothing could resist his victorious
arms. At the head of an army of an hundred thousand men, directed by
Turenne, he speedily overran Flanders. Its fortified cities yielded to
the science of Vauban, or the terrors of his name. The boasted barrier
of the Netherlands was passed in a few weeks; hardly any of its
far-famed fortresses made any resistance. The passage of the Rhine was
achieved under the eyes of the monarch with little loss, and
melodramatic effect. One half of Holland was soon overrun, and the
presence of the French army at the gates of Amsterdam seemed to presage
immediate destruction to the United Provinces; and but for the firmness
of their leaders, and a fortunate combination of circumstances,
unquestionably would have done so. The alliance with England, in the
early part of his reign, and the junction of the fleets of Britain and
France to ruin their fleets and blockade their harbours, seemed to
deprive them of their last resource, derived from their energetic
industry. Nor were substantial fruits awanting from these conquests.
Alsace and Franche Comte were overrun, and, with Lorraine, permanently
annexed to the French monarchy; and although, by the peace of Nimeguen,
part of his acquisitions in Flanders was abandoned, enough was retained
by the devouring monarchy to deprive the Dutch of the barrier they had
so ardently desired, and render their situation to the last degree
precarious, in the neighbourhood of so formidable a power. The heroic
William, indeed, had not struggled in vain for the independence of his
country. The distant powers of Europe, at length wakened to a sense of
their danger, had made strenuous efforts to coerce the ambition of
France; the revolution of 1688 had restored England to its natural
place in the van of the contest for continental freedom; and the peace
of Ryswick in 1697 had in some degree seen the trophies of conquest