ousand
pounds he had expended upon that fete he gave in honor of his royal
master; and to recall the splendors of the supper and the size of the
banqueting-hall, which Mansart, Le Brun, and the best that Italy could
furnish at that time had made beautiful.

It is said that the unfortunate visit of the king to his minister's
abode resulted in the creation of Versailles as a suburban residence.
From the Palais de St. Germain, on the heights in the suburbs of Paris,
Louis could see the Cathedral of St. Denis, where were the royal vaults
and the ancestors he must some day join. So depressing was this view
to him, and so charmed was he with the plan of Fouquet's palace and
gardens, that artists were immediately set to work to make one more
royal at Versailles, where his father, Louis XIII., used to have his
hunting-box; the place where that much-governed king used to go to hide
away from his scheming mother and his argus-eyed minister. The genius
of Colbert was severely taxed to supply the means for Louis'
magnificent tastes and for his foreign wars, at the same time. Even
Colbert could not create money out of nothing. The burden must rest
somewhere, and just as surely must ultimately be borne by the people.

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