HIS WARS AND HIS REVERSES. (1697-1713.)

France was breathing again after nine years of a desperate war, but she
was breathing uneasily, and as it were in expectation of fresh efforts.
Everywhere the memorials of the superintendents repeated the same
complaints. "War, the mortality of 1693, the, constant quarterings and
movements of soldiery, military service, the heavy dues, and the
withdrawal of the Huguenots have ruined the country." "The people," said
the superintendent of Rouen, "are reduced to a state of want which moves
compassion. Out of seven hundred and fifty thousand souls of which the
public is composed, if this number remain, it may be taken for certain
that there are not fifty thousand who have bread to eat when they want
it, and anything to lie upon but straw." Agriculture suffered for lack
of money and hands; commerce was ruined; the manufactures established by
Colbert no longer existed; the population had diminished more than a
quarter since the palmy days of the king's reign; Pontchartrain,
secretary of finance, was reduced to all sorts of expedients for raising
money; he was anxious to rid himself of this heavy burden, and became
chancellor in 1699; the king took for his substitute Chamillard, already
comptroller of finance, honest and hard-working, incapable and docile;
Louis XIV. counted upon the inexhaustible resources of France, and closed
his ears to the grievances of the financiers. "What is not spoken of is
supposed to be put an end to," said Madame de Maintenon. The camp at
Compiegne, in 1698, surpassed in splendor all that had till then been
seen; the enemies of Louis XIV. in Europe called him "the king of
reviews."

Meanwhile the King of Spain, Charles II., dying as he was, was regularly
besieged at Madrid by the queen, his second wife, Mary Anne of Neuburg,
sister of the empress, as well as by his minister, Cardinal
Porto-Carrero. The competitors for the succession were numerous; the
King of France and the emperor claimed their rights in the name of their
mothers and wives, daughters of Philip III. and Philip IV.; the Elector
of Bavaria put up the claims of his son by right of his mother, Mary
Antoinette of Austria, daughter of the emperor; for a short time Charles
II. had adopted this young prince; the child died suddenly at Madrid in
1699. For a long time past King Louis XIV. had been secretly
negotiating for the partition of the King of Spain's dominions, not--with
the emperor