d alone; but the States
had been withheld, at first by fidelity to those who had joined them
in their hour of trouble, and latterly by the firm purpose of William
of Orange. Difficulties were gradually smoothed away, and the Peace of
Nimeguen between the United Provinces and France was signed August 11,
1678. The other powers shortly afterward acceded to it. The principal
sufferer, as was natural, was the overgrown but feeble monarchy whose
centre was Spain, which gave up to France Franche Comte and a number
of fortified towns in the Spanish Netherlands, thus extending the
boundaries of France to the east and northeast. Holland, for whose
destruction Louis began the war, lost not a foot of ground in Europe;
and beyond the seas only her colonies on the west coast of Africa and
in Guiana. She owed her safety at first, and the final successful
issue, to her sea power. That delivered her in the hour of extreme
danger, and enabled her afterward to keep alive the general war. It
may be said to have been one of the chief factors, and inferior to no
other one singly, in determining the event of the great war which was
formally closed at Nimeguen.

The effort none the less sapped her strength, and being followed by
many years of similar strain broke her down. But what was the effect
upon the vastly greater state, the extreme ambition of whose king was
the principal cause of the exhausting wars of this time? Among the
many activities which illustrated the brilliant opening of the reign
of the then youthful king of France, none was so important, none so
intelligently directed, as those of Colbert, who aimed first at
restoring the finances from the confusion into which they had fallen,
and then at establishing them upon a firm foundation of national
wealth. This wealth, at that time utterly beneath the possibilities of
France, was to be developed on the lines of production encouraged,
trade stimulated to healthful activity, a large merchant shipping, a
great navy, and colonial extension. Some of these are sources, others
the actual constituents, of sea power; which indeed may be said in a
seaboard nation to be the invariable accompaniment, if it be not the
chief source, of its strength. For nearly twelve years all went well;
the development of the greatness of France in all these directions
went forward rapidly, if not in all with equal strides, and the king's
revenues increased by bounds. Then came the hour in which he had to
dec