on by the measures of the State. Prosperity grew apace. At the
end of twelve years everything was flourishing, everything rich in the
State, which was in utter confusion when he took charge of the
finances and marine.

"Under him," says a French historian, "France grew by peace as
she had grown by war.... The warfare of tariffs and premiums
skilfully conducted by him tended to reduce within just limits
the exorbitant growth of commercial and maritime power which
Holland had arrogated at the expense of other nations; and to
restrain England, which was burning to wrest this supremacy from
Holland in order to use it in a manner much more dangerous to
Europe. The interest of France seemed to be peace in Europe and
America; a mysterious voice, at once the voice of the past and
of the future, called for her warlike activity on other
shores."[19]

This voice found expression through the mouth of Leibnitz, one of the
world's great men, who pointed out to Louis that to turn the arms of
France against Egypt would give her, in the dominion of the
Mediterranean and the control of Eastern trade, a victory over Holland
greater than the most successful campaign on land; and while insuring
a much needed peace within his kingdom, would build up a power on the
sea that would insure preponderance in Europe. This memorial called
Louis from the pursuit of glory on the land to seek the durable
grandeur of France in the possession of a great sea power, the
elements of which, thanks to the genius of Colbert, he had in his
hands. A century later a greater man than Louis sought to exalt
himself and France by the path pointed out by Leibnitz; but Napoleon
did not have, as Louis had, a navy equal to the task proposed. This
project of Leibnitz will be more fully referred to when the narrative
reaches the momentous date at which it was broached; when Louis, with
his kingdom and navy in the highest pitch of efficiency, stood at the
point where the roads parted, and then took the one which settled that
France should not be the power of the sea. This decision, which killed
Colbert and ruined the prosperity of France, was felt in its
consequences from generation to generation afterward, as the great
navy of England, in war after war, swept the seas, insured the growing
wealth of the island kingdom through exhausting strifes, while drying
up the external resources of French trade and inflicting consequent
mi