burg and the capture of Manheim and Coblentz.
"The king has seen with pleasure," he wrote to Marshal Boufflers, "that,
after well burning Coblentz, and doing all the harm possible to the
elector's palace, you were to march back to Mayence." The haughtiness of
the king and the violence of the minister went on increasing with the
success of their arms; they treated the pope's rights almost as lightly
as those of the Protestants. The pamphleteers of the day had reason to
write, "It is clearly seen that the religion of the court of France is a
pure matter of interest; the king does nothing but what is for that which
he calls his glory and grandeur; Catholics and heretics, Holy Pontiff,
church, and anything you please, are sacrificed to his great pride;
everything must be reduced to powder beneath his feet; we in France are
on the high road to putting the sacred rights of the Holy See on the same
footing as the privileges granted to Calvinists; all ecclesiastical
authority is annihilated. Nobody knows anything of canons, popes,
councils; everything is swallowed up in the authority of one man." "The
king willeth it:" France had no other law any longer; and William III.
saved Europe from the same enslavement.

The Palatinate was in flames; Louvois was urging on the generals and
armies everywhere, sending despatch after despatch, orders upon orders.
"I am a thousand times more impatient to finish this business than you
can be," was the spirited reply he received from M. de la Hoguette, who
commanded in Italy, in the environs of Cuneo; "besides the reasons of
duty which I have always before my eyes, I beg you to believe that the
last letters I received from you were quite strong enough to prevent
negligence of anything that must be done to prevent similar ones, and to
deserve a little more confidence; but the most willing man can do nothing
against roads encumbered with ice and snow." Louvois did not admit this
excuse; he wanted soldiers to be able to cross the defiles of mountains
in the depths of winter just as he would have orange trees travel in the
month of February. "I received orders to send off to Versailles from La
Meilleraye the orange trees which the Duke of Mazarin gave the king,"
writes Superintendent Foucauld in his journal. "M. Louvois, in spite of
the representations I made him, would have them sent by carriage through
the snow and ice. They arrived leafless at Versailles, and several are
dead. I had sent