and Richelieu. With certain well-defined projects of
extension eastward upon the land were combined a steady resistance to
the House of Austria, which then ruled in both Austria and Spain, and
an equal purpose of resistance to England upon the sea. To further
this latter end, as well as for other reasons, Holland was to be
courted as an ally. Commerce and fisheries as the basis of sea power
were to be encouraged, and a military navy was to be built up.
Richelieu left what he called his political will, in which he pointed
out the opportunities of France for achieving sea power, based upon
her position and resources; and French writers consider him the
virtual founder of the navy, not merely because he equipped ships, but
from the breadth of his views and his measures to insure sound
institutions and steady growth. After his death, Mazarin inherited his
views and general policy, but not his lofty and martial spirit, and
during his rule the newly formed navy disappeared. When Louis XIV.
took the government into his own hands, in 1661, there were but thirty
ships of war, of which only three had as many as sixty guns. Then
began a most astonishing manifestation of the work which can be done
by absolute government ably and systematically wielded. That part of
the administration which dealt with trade, manufactures, shipping, and
colonies, was given to a man of great practical genius, Colbert, who
had served with Richelieu and had drunk in fully his ideas and policy.
He pursued his aims in a spirit thoroughly French. Everything was to
be organized, the spring of everything was in the minister's cabinet.
"To organize producers and merchants as a powerful army, subjected to
an active and intelligent guidance, so as to secure an industrial
victory for France by order and unity of efforts, and to obtain the
best products by imposing on all workmen the processes recognized as
best by competent men.... To organize seamen and distant commerce in
large bodies like the manufactures and internal commerce, and to give
as a support to the commercial power of France a navy established on a
firm basis and of dimensions hitherto unknown,"--such, we are told,
were the aims of Colbert as regards two of the three links in the
chain of sea power. For the third, the colonies at the far end of the
line, the same governmental direction and organization were evidently
purposed; for the government began by buying back Canada,
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia