succession to private inheritances; and Lewis thence
inferred, that his queen had acquired a right to the dominion of that
important duchy.

A claim of this nature was more properly supported by military force
than by argument and reasoning. Lewis appeared on the frontiers of the
Netherlands with an army of forty thousand men, commanded by the best
generals of the age, and provided with every thing necessary for action.
The Spaniards, though they might have foreseen this measure, were
totally unprepared. Their towns, without magazines, fortifications
or garrisons, fell into the hands of the French king, as soon as he
presented himself before them. Athe, Lisle, Tournay, Oudenarde,
Courtray, Charleroi, Binche, were immediately taken: and it was visible,
that no force in the Low Countries was able to stop or retard the
progress of the French arms.

This measure, executed with such celerity and success, gave great alarm
to almost every court in Europe. It had been observed with what dignity,
or even haughtiness, Lewis, from the time he began to govern, had
ever supported all his rights and pretensions. D'Estrades, the French
ambassador, and Watteville, the Spanish, having quarrelled in London,
on Account of their claims for precedency, the French monarch was not
satisfied, till Spain sent to Paris a solemn embassy, and promised never
more to revive such contests. Crequi, his ambassador at Rome, had met
with an affront from the pope's guards: the pope, Alexander VII., had
been constrained to break his guards, to send his nephew to ask pardon,
and to allow a pillar to be erected in Rome itself, as a monument of his
own humiliation. The king of England too had experienced the high spirit
and unsubmitting temper of Lewis. A pretension to superiority in the
English flag having been advanced, the French monarch remonstrated
with such vigor, and prepared himself to resist with such courage, that
Charles found it more prudent to desist from his vain and antiquated
claims. "The king of England," said Lewis to his ambassador D'Estrades,
"may know my force, but he knows not the sentiments of my heart: every
thing appears to me contemptible in comparison of glory."[*] These
measures of conduct had given strong indications of his character: but
the invasion of Flanders discovered an ambition, which, being supported
by such overgrown power, menaced the general liberties of Europe.

* January 25, 1662

As no state lay nearer the