In all these treaties he gave the law,and he was now at the highest point of his grandeur.He continued at this point for several years,and in this height of his power he prepared those alliances against it,under the weight of which he was at last well nigh oppressed;and might have been reduced as low as the general interest of Europe required,if some of the causes,which worked now,had not continued to work in his favor,and if his enemies had not proved,in their turn of fortune,as insatiable as prosperity had rendered him.
After he had made peace with all the powers with whom he had been in war,he continued to vex both Spain and the empire,and to extend his conquests in the Low Countries,and on the Rhine,both by the pen and the sword.He erected the chambers of Metz and of Brisach,where his own subjects were prosecutors,witnesses,and judges all at once.Upon the decisions of these tribunals,he seized into his own hands,under the notion of dependencies and the pretence of reunions,whatever towns or districts of country tempted his ambition,or suited his conveniency.and added,by these and by other means,in the midst of peace,more territories to those the late treaties had yielded to him,than he could have got by continuing the war.He acted afterwards,in the support of all this,without any bounds or limits.His glory was a reason for attacking Holland in one thousand six hundred and seventy-two,and his conveniency a reason for many of the attacks he made on others afterwards.He took Luxemburg by force;he stole Strasburg;he bought Casal:and,whilst he waited the opportunity of acquiring to his family the crown of Spain,he was not without thoughts,nor hopes perhaps,of bringing into it the imperial crown likewise.Some of the cruelties he exercised in the empire may be ascribed to his disappointment in this view:I say some of them,because in the war that ended by the treaty of Nimeguen,he had already exercised many.Though the French writers endeavor to slide over them,to palliate them,and to impute them particularly to the English that were in their service;for even this one of their writers has the front to advance:let these cruelties,unheard of among civilised nations,must be granted to have been ordered by the counsels,and executed by the arms of France,in the Palatinate,and in other parts.
If Louis the Fourteenth could have contented himself with the acquisitions that were confirmed to him by the treaties of one thousand six hundred and seventy-eight,and one thousand six hundred and seventy-nine,and with the authority and reputation which he then gained;it is plain that he would have prevented the alliances that were afterwards formed against him,and that he might have regained his credit amongst the princes of the empire,where he had one family alliance by the marriage of his brother to the daughter of the elector Palatine,and another by that of his soil to the sister of the elector of Bavaria;where Sweden was closely attached to him,and where the same principles of private interest would have soon attached others as closely.He might have remained not only the principal,but the directing power of Europe,and have held this rank with all the glory imaginable,till the death of the king of Spain,or some other object of great ambition,had determined him to act another part.But instead of this,he continued to vex and provoke all those who were,unhappily for them,his neighbors,and,that in many instances,for trifles.All example of this kind occurs to me.
On the death of the Duke of Deux Ponts,he seized that little inconsiderable duchy,without any regard to the indisputable right of the king of Sweden,to the services that crown had rendered him,or to the want he might have of that alliance hereafter.The consequence was,that Sweden entered with the emperor,the king of Spain,the elector of Bavaria,and the States General,into the alliance of guaranty,as it was called,about the year one thousand six hundred and eighty-three,and into the famous league of Augsburg,in one thousand six hundred and eighty-six.
