ce of Sweden,
England and Holland, of the year 1661, was concluded. It did not last
long. With money and fair promises Louis bought up both King Charles and
the Swedish Estates. Holland was betrayed by her allies and was left
to her own fate. In the year 1672 the French invaded the low countries.
They marched to the heart of the country. For a second time the dikes
were opened and the Royal Sun of France set amidst the mud of the Dutch
marshes. The peace of Nimwegen which was concluded in 1678 settled
nothing but merely anticipated another war.

A second war of aggression from 1689 to 1697, ending with the Peace
of Ryswick, also failed to give Louis that position in the affairs
of Europe to which he aspired. His old enemy, Jan de Witt, had been
murdered by the Dutch rabble, but his successor, William III (whom you
met in the last chapter), had checkmated all efforts of Louis to make
France the ruler of Europe.

The great war for the Spanish succession, begun in the year 1701,
immediately after the death of Charles II, the last of the Spanish
Habsburgs, and ended in 1713 by the Peace of Utrecht, remained equally
undecided, but it had ruined the treasury of Louis. On land the French
king had been victorious, but the navies of England and Holland had
spoiled all hope for an ultimate French victory; besides the long
struggle had given birth to a new and fundamental principle of
international politics, which thereafter made it impossible for one
single nation to rule the whole of Europe or the whole of the world for
any length of time.

That was the so-called "balance of power." It was not a written law but
for three centuries it has been obeyed as closely as are the laws of
nature. The people who originated the idea maintained that Europe, in
its nationalistic stage of development, could only survive when there
should be an absolute balance of the many conflicting interests of the
entire continent. No single power or single dynasty must ever be allowed
to dominate the others. During the Thirty Years War, the Habsburgs had
been the victims of the application of this law. They, however, had been
unconscious victims. The issues during that struggle were so clouded in
a haze of religious strife that we do not get a very clear view of the
main tendencies of that great conflict. But from that time on, we begin
to see how cold, economic considerations and calculations prevail in all
matters of international importance. We disco