Lille had forced the garrison to capitulate; and Louis
XIV. entered it on the 27th of August, after ten days' open trenches. On
the 2d of September, the king took the road back to St. Germain; but
Turenne still found time to carry the town of Alost before taking up his
winter-quarters.

Louis XIV.'s first campaign had been nothing but playing at war, almost
entirely without danger or bloodshed; it had, nevertheless, been
sufficient to alarm Europe. Scarcely had peace been concluded at Breda,
when another negotiation was secretly entered upon between England,
Holland, and Sweden.

It was in vain that King Charles II. leaned personally towards an
alliance with France; his people had their eyes "opened to the dangers"
--incurred by Europe from the arms of Louis XIV. "Certain persons of the
greatest influence in Parliament come sometimes to see me, without any
lights and muffled in a cloak in order not to be recognized," says a
letter of September 26, 1669, from the Marquis of Ruvigny to M. de
Lionne; "they give me to understand that common sense and the public
security forbid them to see, without raising a finger, the whole of the
Low Countries taken, and that they are bound in good policy to oppose the
purposes of this conquest if his Majesty intend to take all for himself."
On the 23d of January, 1668, the celebrated treaty of the Triple Alliance
was signed at the Hague. The three powers demanded of the King of France
that he should grant the Low Countries a truce up to the month of May, in
order to give time for treating with Spain and obtaining from her, as
France demanded, the definitive cession of the conquered places or
Franche-Comte in exchange. At bottom, the Triple Alliance was resolved
to protect helpless Spain against France; a secret article bound the
three allies to take up arms to restrain Louis XIV., and to bring him
back, if possible, to the peace of the Pyrenees. At the same moment,
Portugal was making peace with Spain, who recognized her independence.

The king refused the long armistice demanded of him. "I will grant it up
to the 31st of March," he had said, "being unwilling to miss the first
opportunity of taking the field." The Marquis of Castel-Rodriguo made
merry over this proposal. "I am content," said he, "with the suspension
of arms that winter imposes upon the King of France." The governor of
the Low Countries made a mistake: Louis XIV. was about to prove that his
soldiers, like tho