reconciliation with the new government of England till the
whole strength of his realm had been put forth in one more
effort. A mighty effort in truth it was, but too exhausting to
be repeated. He made an immense display of force at once on
the Pyrenees and on the Alps, on the Rhine and on the Meuse,
in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. That nothing might
be wanting which could excite the martial ardour of a nation
eminently high-spirited, he instituted, a few days before he
left his palace for the camp, a new military order of
knighthood, and placed it under the protection of his own
sainted ancestor and patron. The cross of Saint Lewis shone on
the breasts of the gentlemen who had been conspicuous in the
trenches before Mons and Namur, and on the fields of Fleurus
and Steinkirk. ... On the 18th of May Lewis left Versailles.
Early in June he was under the walls of Namur. The Princesses,
who had accompanied him, held their court within the fortress. He
took under his immediate command the army of Boufflers, which
was encamped at Gembloux. Little more than a mile off lay the
army of Luxemburg. The force collected in that neighbourhood
under the French lilies did not amount to less than 120,000
men. Lewis had flattered himself that he should be able to
repeat in 1693 the stratagem by which Mons had been taken in
1691 and Namur in 1692; and he had determined that either
Liege or Brussels should be his prey. But William had this
year been able to assemble in good time a force, inferior
indeed to that which was opposed to him, but still formidable.
With this force he took his post near Louvain, on the road
between the two threatened cities, and watched every movement
of the enemy. ... Just at this conjuncture Lewis announced his
intention to return instantly to Versailles, and to send the
Dauphin and Boufflers, with part of the army which was
assembled near Namur, to join Marshal Lorges who commanded in
the Palatinate. Luxemburg was thunderstruck. He expostulated
boldly and earnestly. Never, he said, was such an opportunity
thrown away. ... The Marshal reasoned: he implored: he went on
his knees: but all was vain; and he quitted the royal presence
in the deepest dejection. Lewis left the camp a week after he
had joined it, and never afterwards made war in person. ...
Though the French army in the Netherlands had been weakened by
the departure of the forces commanded by the Dauphin and
Boufflers, and though the allied army was daily strengthened
by the arrival of fresh troops, Luxemburg still had a
superiority of force; and that superiority he increased by an
adroit stratagem." He succeeded by a feint in inducing William
to detach 20,000 men from his army and to send them to Liege.
He then moved suddenly upon the camp of the allies, with
80,000 men, and found but 50,000 to oppose him. "It was still
in the [English] King's power, by a hasty retreat, to put
between his army and the enemy the narrow, but deep, waters of
the Gette, which had lately been swollen by rains. But the
site which he occupied was strong; and it could easily be made
still stronger. He set all his troops to work. Ditches were
dug, mounds thrown up, palisades fixed in the earth. In a few
hours the ground wore a new aspect; and the King trusted that
he should be able to repel the attack even of a force greatly
outnumbering his own. ... On the left flank, the village of
Romsdorff rose close to the little stream of Landen, from
which the English have named the disastrous day. On the right
was the village of Neerwinden. Both villages were, after the
fashion of the Low Countries, surrounded by moats and fences.
"Notwithstanding the strength of the position held by the
allies, and the valor with which they defended it, they were
driven out of Neerwinden [July 29]--but only after the
shattered village had been five times taken and retaken--and
across the Gette, in confusion and with heavy loss.
{1242}
"The French were victorious: but they had bought their victory
dear. More then 10,000 of the best troops of Lewis had fallen.
Neerwinden was a spectacle at which the oldest soldiers stood
aghast. The streets were piled breast high with corpses. Among
the slain were some great lords and some renowned warriors.
... The region, renowned as the battle field, through many
ages, of the greatest powers of Europe, has seen only two more
terrible days, the day of Malplaquet and the day of Waterloo.
... There was no pursuit, though the sun was still high in the
heaven when William crossed the Gette. The conquerors were so
much exhausted by marching and fighting that they could
scarcely move. ... A very short delay was enough for William.
... Three weeks after his defeat he held a review a few miles
from Brussels. The number of men under arms was greater than
on the morning of the bloody day of Landen: their appearance
was soldierlike; and their spirit seemed unbroken. William now
wrote to Heinsius that the worst was over. 'The crisis,' he
said, 'has been a terrible one. Thank God that it has ended
thus.' He did not, however, think it prudent to try at that
time the event of another pitched field. He therefore suffered
the French to besiege and take Charleroi; and this was the
only advantage which they derived from the most sanguinary
battle fought in Europe during the seventeenth century."
_Lord Macaulay,
History of England,
chapter 20 (volume 4)._
ALSO IN:
_G. Burnet,
History of My Own Time,
book 5 (1693), volume 4._
_Duc de Saint-Simon,
Memoirs (translated by St. John),
volume 1, chapter 4._
FRANCE: A. D. 1693 (October).
Defeat of the Duke of Savoy at Marsaglia.
"The great efforts made by Louis in the north prevented him
from strengthening the army of Catinat sufficiently to act
with energy against the Savoyard prince, and it was determined
to restrict the campaign of 1693 to the defensive on the part
of France. The forces of the duke had in the meantime been
reinforced from Germany, and he opened the campaign with a
brilliant and successful movement against Pignerol. ... He is
said to have entertained hopes of carrying the war in that one
campaign to the very gates of Lyons; but the successes which
inspired him with such expectations alarmed the court of
France, and Louis detached in haste a large body of cavalry to
reinforce Catinat. That general marched at once to fight the Duke
of Savoy, who, presuming on his strength, suffered the French
to pour out from the valley of Suza into the plain of
Piedmont, abandoned the heights, and was consequently defeated
at Marsaglia on the 4th of October. Catinat, however, could not
profit by his victory; he was too ill supplied in every
respect to undertake the siege of Coni, and the state of the
French armies at this time marks as plainly that Louvois was
dead, as the state of the finances speaks the loss of
Colbert."
_G. P. R. James,
Life and Times of Louis XIV.,
volume 2, chapter 11._
FRANCE: A. D. 1694.
Campaigns without battles.
Operations at sea.
In 1694, King William was "in a position to keep an army afoot
in the Netherlands stronger than any had hitherto been. It was
reckoned at 31,800 horse, including a corps of dragoons, and
58,000 foot; so great a force had never been seen within the
memory of man. All the best-known generals, who had hitherto
taken part in the wars of western Europe, were gathered round
him with their troops. The French army, with which the
Dauphin, but not the King, was present, was not much smaller;
it was once more led by Marshal Luxembourg. These two hosts
lay over against one another in their camps for a couple of
months; neither offered battle to the other. ... This campaign
is notable in the annals of the art of war for the skill with
which each force pursued or evaded the other; but the results
were limited to the recovery by the allies of that unimportant
place, Huy. William had thought himself fortunate in having
come out of the previous campaign without disaster: in this
campaign the French were proud to have held their lines in
presence of a superior force. On the coast also the French
were successful in repelling a most vehement and perilous
attack. They had been warned that the English were going to
fall on Brest, and Vauban was sent down there in haste to
organise the defence; and in this he was thoroughly
successful. When the English landed on the coast in Camaret
Bay (for the fort of that name had first to be taken) they
were saluted by two batteries, which they had never detected,
and which were so well placed that every shot told, and the
grape-shot wounded almost every man who had ventured ashore.
The gallant General, Talmash, was also hit, and ere long died
of his wounds. The English fleet, which had come to bombard
Brest, was itself bombarded from the walls. But though this
great effort failed, the English fleet still held the mastery
of the Channel: it also blockaded the northern coast of
France. After Brest it attacked Dieppe, laying it almost
entirely in ashes; thence it sailed to Havre, and St. Malo, to
Calais, and Dunkirk. This was of great use in the conduct of
the war. King William observes that had not the coasts been
kept in a state of alarm, all the forces detained there for
defensive purposes would have been thrown on the Netherlands.
... But the most important result of the maritime war lay on
another side. In May, 1694, Noailles pushed into Catalonia,
supported by Tourville, who lay at anchor with the fleet in
the Bay of Rosas. ... It was of incalculable importance to
Spain to be in alliance with the maritime powers. Strengthened
by a Dutch fleet and some Spanish ships, Admiral Russell now
appeared in the Mediterranean. He secured Barcelona from the
French, who would never have been kept out of the city by the
Spaniards alone. The approach of the English fleet had at this
time the greatest influence in keeping the Duke of Savoy
staunch to the confederation. In Germany the rise of the house
of Hanover to the Electoral dignity had now caused most
unpleasant complications. A shoal of German princes, headed by
the King of Denmark, as a Prince of the Empire, and offended
by the preference shown to Hanover, inclined, if not to
alliance with France, at least to neutrality. ... We can have
no conception, and in this place we cannot possibly
investigate, with what unbroken watchfulness King William,
supported by Heinsius, looked after the German and the
Northern courts, so as to keep their irritation from reacting
on the course of the great war. ... When the French, in June,
1694, crossed the Rhine, meaning, as they boasted with true
Gallic arrogance, soon to dip their swords in the Danube, they
found the Prince of Baden so well prepared, and posted so
strongly near Wisloch, that they did not venture to attack
him. ... The general result is this: neither side was as yet
really superior to the other: but the French power was
everywhere checked and held within bounds by the arms and
influence of William III."
_L. von Ranke,
History of England, 17th Century,
book 20, chapter 6 (volume 5)._
{1243}
FRANCE: A. D. 1695-1696.
The end of the War of the League of Augsburg.
Loss of Namur.
Terms with Savoy.
The Peace of Ryswick.
"Military and naval efforts were relaxed on all sides: on the
Rhine the Prince of Baden and the Marechal de Lorges, both ill
in health, did little but observe each other; and though the
Duke of Savoy made himself master of Casal on the 11th July,
1695, no other military event of any consequence took place on
the side of Italy, where Louis entered into negotiations with
the duke, and succeeded, in the following year, in detaching
him from the league of Augsburg. As the price of his defection
the whole of his territories were to be restored to him, with
the exception of Suza, Nice, and Montmeillan, which were
promised to be delivered also on the signature of a general
peace. Money was added to render the consent of a needy prince
more ready. ... The duke promised to obtain from the emperor a
pledge that Italy should be considered as neutral ground, and
if the allies refused such a pledge, then to join the forces
of Savoy to those of France, and give a free passage to the
French through his dominions. In consequence of this treaty
... he applied to the emperor for a recognition of the
neutrality of Italy, and was refused. He then hastened, with a
facility which distinguished him through life, to abandon his
friends and join his enemies, and within one month was
generalissimo for the emperor in Italy fighting against
France, and generalissimo for the King of France in Italy
fighting against the emperor. Previous to this change,
however, the King of England opened the campaign of 1695 in
the Netherlands by the siege of Namur. The death of Luxemburg
had placed the French army of Flanders under the command of
the incapable Marshal Villeroi: and William, feeling that his
enemy was no longer to be much respected, assumed at once the
offensive. He concealed his design upon Namur under a variety
of manœuvres which kept the French generals in suspense; and,
then leaving the Prince of Vaudemont to protect the principal
Spanish towns in Flanders, he collected his troops suddenly;
and while the Duke of Bavaria invested Namur, he covered the
operations of the siege with a considerable force. Villeroi
now determined to attack the Prince of Vaudemont, but twice
suffered him to escape: and then, after having apparently
hesitated for some time how to drive or draw the King of
England from the attack upon Namur, he resolved to bombard the
city of Brussels, never pretending to besiege it, but alleging
as his motive for a proceeding which was merely destructive,
the bombardment of the maritime towns of France by the
English. During three days he continued to fire upon the city,
ruining a great part thereof, and then withdrew to witness the
surrender of the citadel of Namur on the 2nd September, the
town itself having capitulated on the 4th of the preceding
month. As some compensation, though but a poor one, for the
loss of Namur, and the disgrace of the French arms in
suffering such a city to be captured in the presence of 80,000
men, Montal took Dixmude and Deynse in the course of June. ...
The only after-event of any importance which occurred in
Flanders during this war, was the capture of Ath by the
French, in the year 1697, while negotiations for peace were
going on with activity at Ryswick. ... Regular communications
regarding peace having been once established, Ryswick, near
the Hague, was appointed for the meeting of plenipotentiaries;
and Harlay, Torci, and Callières appeared at that place as
representatives of Louis. The articles which had been formerly
sketched out at Utrecht formed the base of the treaties now
agreed upon; and Louis yielded far more than could have been
expected from one so proud and so successful."
_G. P. R. James,
Life and Times of Louis XIV.,
volume 2, chapter 11._
ALSO IN:
_T. H. Dyer,
History of Modern Europe,
volume 3, chapter 5._
_Sir J. Dalrymple,
Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland,
part 3, book 4 (volume 3)._
FRANCE: A. D. 1697 (April).
The sacking of Carthagena.
See CARTHAGENA: A. D. 1697.
FRANCE: A. D. 1697.
The Peace of Ryswick.
"The Congress for the treaty or series of treaties that was to
terminate the great European war, which had now lasted for
upwards of nine years, was held at Ryswick, a château near the
Hague. The conferences were opened in May, 1697. Among the
countries represented were Sweden, Austria, France, Spain,
England, Holland, Denmark and the various States of the German
Empire. The treaties were signed, in severalty, between the
different States, except Austria, in September and October,
1697, and with the Emperor, in November. The principal
features of the treaty were, as between France and Spain,
that, the former country was to deliver to Spain Barcelona,
and other places in Catalonia; also various places which
France had taken in the Spanish Netherlands, during the war,
including Luxembourg and its Duchy, Charleroi, Mons and
Courtrai. Various others were excepted, to be retained by
France, as dependencies of French possessions. The principal
stipulations of the treaty, as between France and Great
Britain, were that France formally recognized William III. as
lawful king of Great Britain, and agreed not to trouble him in
the possession of his dominions, and not to assist his
enemies, directly or indirectly. This article had particular
relation to the partisans of the exiled Stuart king, then
living in France. By another article, all places taken by
either country in America, during the war, were to be
relinquished, and the Principality of Orange and its estates
situated in the south of France were to be restored to
William. In the treaty with Holland, certain possessions in
the East Indies were to be restored to the Dutch East India
Company: and important articles of commerce were appended,
among which the principle was laid down that free ships should
make free goods, not contraband of war. By the treaty with the
Emperor and the German States, the Treaties of Westphalia and
Nymeguen were recognized as the basis of the Treaty of
Ryswick, with such exceptions only as were to be provided in
the latter treaty. France also was to give up all territory
she had occupied or controlled before or during the war under
the name of 'reunions,' outside of Alsace, but the Roman
Catholic religion was to be preserved in Alsace as it then
existed.
{1244}
This concession by France included among other places
Freiburg, Brisach, and Treves; and certain restitutions were
to be made by France, in favor of Spire, the Electors of
Treves, and Brandenburg and the Palatinate; also, others in
favor of certain of the smaller German Princes. The city of
Strasburg, in return, was formally ceded to France, ... and
the important fort of Kehl was yielded to the Empire. The
navigation of the Rhine was to be free to all persons. The
Duke of Lorraine was to be restored to his possessions with
such exceptions as were provided in the treaty. By the terms
of this treaty, a more advantageous peace was given to Spain
than she had any expectation of. ... Not only were the places
taken in Spain, including the numerous fortified places in
Catalonia, yielded up, but also, with some exceptions, those
in the Spanish Netherlands, and also the important territory
of Luxembourg; some places were even yielded to Spain that
France had gained under former treaties."
_J. W. Gerard,
The Peace of Utrecht,
chapter 4._
"The restitutions and cessions [from France to Germany]
comprised Treves, Germersheim, Deux-Ponts, Veldentz,
Montbéliard, Kehl, Freiburg, Breisach, Philippsburg, the
Emperor and the Empire ceding in exchange Strasbourg to the
King of France in complete sovereignty. ... Louis XIV. had
consented somewhat to relax the rigor of the treaty of
Nimeguen towards the heir of the Duchy of Lorraine, nephew of
the Emperor by his mother; he restored to the young Duke
Leopold his inheritance in the condition in which Charles IV.
had possessed it before the French conquest of 1670; that is
to say, he restored Nancy, allowing only the ramparts of the
Old Town to remain, and razing all the rest of the
fortifications without the power of restoring them; he kept
Marsal, an interior place calculated to hold Lorraine in
check, and also Sarre-Louis, a frontier-place which separated
Lorraine from the Germanic provinces; he restored Bitche and
Homburg dismantled, without power to reestablish them, and
kept Longwy in exchange for a domain of similar value in one
of the Trois-Evêchés; finally, he no longer demanded, as at
Nimeguen, four great strategic routes through Lorraine, and
consented that the passage should always be open to his
troops. The House of Lorraine was thus reestablished in its
estates after twenty-seven years of exile."
_H. Martin,
History of France: Age of Louis XIV.,
volume 2, chapter 2._
ALSO IN:
_L. von Ranke,
History of England, 17th Century,
book 20, chapter 11 (volume 5)._
See, also, CANADA: A. D. 1692-1697;
and NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1694-1697.
FRANCE: A. D. 1698-1712.
The colonization of Louisiana.
Broad claims to the whole valley of the Mississippi.
See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1698-1712.
FRANCE: A. D. 1700.
Bequest of the Spanish crown to a French royal prince.
See SPAIN: A. D. 1698-1700.
FRANCE: A. D. 1701-1702.
Provocation of the Second Grand Alliance
and War of the Spanish Succession.
See SPAIN: A. D. 1701-1702,
and ENGLAND: A. D. 1701-1702.
FRANCE: A. D. 1702-1710.
The Camisard rising of the French Protestant's in the
Cévennes.
"The movement known as the War of the Camisards is an episode
of the history of Protestantism in France which, though rarely
studied in detail and perhaps but partially understood, was
not devoid of significance. When it occurred, in the summer of
1702, a period of little less than 17 years had elapsed since
Louis XIV., by his edict of Fontainebleau, October, 1685,
solemnly revoked the great and fundamental law enacted by his
grandfather, Henry IV., for the protection of the adherents of
the Reformed faith, known in history as the Edict of Nantes.
During the whole of that period the Protestants had submitted,
with scarcely an attempt at armed resistance, to the
proscription of their tenets: ... The majority, unable to
escape from the land of oppression, remained at home ...
nearly all of them cherishing the confident hope that the
king's delusion would be short-lived, and that the edict under
which they and their ancestors had lived for three generations
would, before long, be restored to them with the greater part,
if not the whole, of its beneficent provisions. Meanwhile, all
the Protestant ministers having been expelled from France by
the same law that prohibited the expatriation of any of the
laity, the people of the Reformed faith found themselves
destitute of the spiritual food they craved. True, the new
legislation affected to regard that faith as dead, and
designated all the former adherents of Protestantism, without
distinction, as the 'New Converts,' 'Nouveaux Convertis.' And,
in point of fact, the great majority had so far yielded to the
terrible pressure of the violent measures brought to bear upon
them ... that they had consented to sign a promise to be
're-united' to the Roman Catholic Church, or had gone at least
once to mass. But they were still Protestants at heart. ...
Under these circumstances, feeling more than ever the need of
religious comfort, now that remorse arose for a weak betrayal
of conscientious conviction, the proscribed Protestants,
especially in the south of France, began to meet clandestinely
for divine worship in such retired places as seemed most
likely to escape the notice of their vigilant enemies. ... It
was not strange that in so exceptional a situation, a phase of
religious life and feeling equally exceptional should manifest
itself. I refer to that appearance of prophetic inspiration
which attracted to the province of Vivarais and to the
Cévennes Mountains the attention of all Europe. ...
Historically ... the influence of the prophets of the Cévennes
was an important factor in the Protestant problem of the end
of the 17th and the commencement of the 18th centuries. ...
Various methods were adopted to put an end to the prophets
with their prophecies, which were for the most part
denunciatory of Rome as Antichrist and foreshadowed the
approaching fall of the papacy. But this form of enthusiasm
had struck a deep root and it was hard to eradicate it.
Imprisonment, in convent or jail, was the most common
punishment, especially in the case of women. Not infrequently
to imprisonment was, added corporal chastisement, and the
prophets, male and female, were flogged until they might be
regarded as fully cured of their delusion. ... But no
utterances of prophets, however fervid and impassioned, would
have sufficed to occasion an uprising of the inhabitants of
the Cévennes Mountains, had it not been for the virulent
persecution to which the latter found themselves exposed at
the hands of the provincial authorities directly instigated
thereto by the clergy of the established church.
{1245}
For it must be noticed that a large part of the population of
the Cévennes was still Protestant, and made no concealment of
the fact, even though the king's ministers affected to call
them 'New Catholics,' or 'New Converts.' The region over which
the Camisard war extended with more or less violence comprised
six episcopal dioceses, which, in 1698, had an aggregate
population of about two-thirds of a million of souls. Of these
souls, though Protestantism had been dead in the eye of the
law for 13 years, fully one-fourth were still Protestant. ...
The war may be said to have begun on the 24th of July, 1702,
when the Abbé du Chayla, a noted persecutor, was killed in his
house, at Pont de Montvert, by a band of 40 or 50 of the
'Nouveaux Convertis,' whom he had driven to desperation by his
cruelty to their fellow believers. If we regard its
termination to be the submission of Jean Cavalier, the most
picturesque, in the month of May, 1704, the war lasted a
little less than two years. But, although the French
government had succeeded, rather by craft than by force, in
getting rid of the most formidable of its opponents ... it was
not until five or six years later--that is, until 1709 or
1710--that ... comparative peace was finally restored. ...
During the first months of the insurrection the exploits of
the malcontents were confined to deeds of destruction
accomplished by companies of venturesome men, who almost
everywhere eluded the pursuit of the enemy by their superior
knowledge of the intricacies of the mountain woods and paths.
The track of these companies could easily be made out; for it
was marked by the destruction of vicarages and rectories, by
the smoke of burned churches, too often by the corpses of
slain priests. The perpetrators of these acts of violence soon
won for themselves some special designations, to distinguish
them from the more passive Protestants who remained in their
homes, taking no open part in the struggle. ... About the
close of 1702, however, or the first months of 1703, a new
word was coined for the fresh emergency, and the armed
Protestants received the appellation under which they have
passed into history--the Camisards. Passing by all the strange
and fanciful derivations of the word which seem to have no
claim upon our notice, unless it be their evident absurdity,
we have no difficulty in connecting it with those nocturnal
expeditions which were styled 'Camisades'; because the
warriors who took advantage of the darkness of the night to
ride out and explore or force the enemy's entrenchments,
sometimes threw over their armor a shirt that might enable
them to recognize each other. Others will have it that, though
the name was derived from the same article of apparel--the
'camisa' or shirt--it was applied to the Cévenol bands for
another reason, namely," that when they found opportunities,
they carried off clean linen from the villages and left their
soiled garments in exchange. The final overthrow of the
Camisards "was not accomplished without the employment of
100,000 troops, certainly far more than ten times the total
number ever brought into the field by the Camisards. ... Not
less than three officers of the highest grade in the service,
marshals of France, were successively appointed to put down a
revolt which it might have been expected a simple colonel
could suffice to quell--M. de Broglie being succeeded by the
Marshal de Montrevel, the Marshal de Montrevel by the Marshal
de Villars, and the Marshal de Villars by the Marshal de
Berwick."
_H. M. Baird,
The Camisard Uprising
(Papers of the American Society of Church History,
volume 2, pages 13-34)._
ALSO IN:
_Mrs. Bray,
The Revolt of the Protestants of the Cevennes._
_N. Peyrat,
The Pastors in the Wilderness._
_S. Smiles,
The Huguenots in France after the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, chapters 5-8._
FRANCE: A. D. 1702-1711.
The War of the Spanish Succession in America
(called Queen Anne's War).
See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1702-1710;
and CANADA: A. D. 1711-1713.
FRANCE: A. D. 1702-1713.
The War of the Spanish Succession in Europe.
See
ITALY: A. D. 1701-1713;
SPAIN: A.D. 1702, to 1707-1710;
GERMANY: A. D. 1702, to 1706-1711;
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1702-1704, to 1710-1712.
FRANCE: A. D. 1702-1715.
Renewed Jesuitical persecution of the Jansenists.
The odious Bull Unigenitus and its tyrannical enforcement.
See PORT ROYAL AND THE JANSENISTS: A. D. 1702-1715.
A. D. 1710.
The War of the Spanish Succession: Misery of the nation.
Overtures for Peace.
Conferences at Gertruydenberg.