claim upon the throne of Spain which might result from his marriage
with the Infanta Maria Theresa. His conquest of the Spanish
possessions in Flanders might have been supposed to set at rest forever
the question of a claim upon the Spanish throne. But we shall hear of
that again. The success of this war made Louis, at twenty-nine years
of age, the most heroic figure in Europe. Every one bowed before him,
and everything seemed to be gravitating toward him as toward a central
sun. Not alone nobility, but even genius put on his livery and became
sycophantish, Bossuet and even Moliere, hungering for his smile, and in
despair if he frowned.

This was the time of the supremacy of the beautiful Louise la Valliere.
Her reign was brief, and, the king's infatuation being passed, she was
to spend the rest of her dreary life in a Carmelite convent, hearing
only the far-off echoes from the brilliant world in which she was once
the central and envied figure.

The Dutch Republic had come under Louis' displeasure and was marked for
his next foreign campaign. This (to his mind) insignificant nation of
fishermen and small traders had presumed to stand in his path. So the
most magnificent army since the Crusades in 1672 invaded the peaceful
little state of Holland. As one after another of the cities helplessly
fell, someone asked why Louis came himself--why he did not send his
valet? Louis insolently demanded as the price of peace the surrender
of all their fortified cities, the payment of twenty million francs,
and the renunciation of the Protestant faith.

The answer of William of Nassau was an unexpected one. The history of
modern times has nothing more heroic than this little mercantile state
defying the greatest potentate in Europe. William of Nassau knew
perfectly well that every battle meant defeat. The thing to do was to
make battles impossible by inundating their fertile fields. When he
saw the destruction of life and property in one scale and political
slavery in the other, he did not hesitate. The dikes were quietly
opened. Turenne and Luxembourg and Vauban were baffled as completely
as Napoleon in Russia. And when the magnificent army had evacuated the
flooded country, the dikes were quietly closed again and time and
windmills restored their fields to fertility.

In the meantime William had been drawing to himself powerful allies.
Half of Europe was in league with him in the battles he now fought upon
the