d of the French name rendered capable of
conceiving great things and of executing them, one of those geniuses who
seem born to move at their will both peoples and sovereigns." French
diplomacy was not in a condition to struggle with the Prince of Orange.
M. de Pomponne had succeeded Lionne; he was disgraced in 1679. "I order
his recall," said the king, "because all that passes through his hands
loses the grandeur and force which ought to be shown in executing the
orders of a king who is no poor creature." Colbert de Croissy, the
minister's brother, was from that time employed to manage with foreign
countries all the business which Louvois did not reserve to himself.

Duquesne had bombarded Algiers in 1682; in 1684, he destroyed several
districts of Genoa, which was accused of having failed in neutrality
between France and Spain; and at the same time Marshals Humieres and
Crequi occupied Audenarde, Courtray, and Dixmude, and made themselves
masters of Luxemburg; the king reproached Spain with its delays in the
regulation of the frontiers, and claimed to occupy the Low Countries
pacifically; the diet of Ratisbonne intervened; the emperor, with the aid
of Sobieski, King of Poland, was occupied in repelling the invasions of
the Turks; a truce was concluded for twenty-four years; the empire and
Spain acquiesced in the king's new conquests. "It seemed to be
established," said the Marquis de la Fare, "that the empire of France was
an evil not to be avoided by other nations." Nobody was more convinced
of this than King Louis XIV.

He was himself about to deal his own kingdom a blow more fatal than all
those of foreign wars and of the European coalition. Intoxicated by so
much success and so many victories, he fancied that consciences were to
be bent like states, and he set about bringing all his subjects back to
the Catholic faith. Himself returning to a regular life, under the
influence of age and of Madame de Maintenon, he thought it a fine thing
to establish in his kingdom that unity of religion which Henry IV. and
Richelieu had not been able to bring about. He set at nought all the
rights consecrated by edicts, and the long patience of those Protestants
whom Mazarin called "the faithful flock;" in vain had persecution been
tried for several years past; tyranny interfered, and the edict of Nantes
was revoked on the 13th of October, 1685. Some years later, the
Reformers, by hundreds of thousands, carried into foreign