in Christendom.
The religious wars which began with the Reformation had broken the
strength of the nations around her. Spain was no longer able to fight
the battle of Catholicism. The Peace of Westphalia, by the independence
it gave to the German princes and the jealousy it kept alive between the
Protestant and Catholic powers of Germany, destroyed the strength of the
Empire. The German branch of the House of Austria, spent with the long
struggle of the Thirty Years War, had enough to do in battling hard
against the advance of the Turks from Hungary on Vienna. The victories
of Gustavus and of the generals whom he formed had been dearly purchased
by the exhaustion of Sweden. The United Provinces were as yet hardly
regarded as a great power, and were trammelled by their contest with
England for the empire of the seas.

[Sidenote: France.]

France alone profited by the general wreck. The wisdom of Henry the
Fourth in securing religious peace by a grant of toleration to the
Protestants had undone the ill effects of its religious wars. The
Huguenots were still numerous south of the Loire, but the loss of their
fortresses had turned their energies into the peaceful channels of
industry and trade. Feudal disorder was roughly put down by Richelieu;
and the policy which gathered all local power into the hands of the
Crown, though fatal in the end to the real welfare of France, gave it
for the moment an air of good government and a command over its internal
resources which no other country could boast. Its compact and fertile
territory, the natural activity and enterprise of its people, and the
rapid growth of its commerce and manufactures, were sources of natural
wealth which even its heavy taxation failed to check. In the latter half
of the seventeenth century France was looked upon as the wealthiest
power in Europe. The yearly income of the French crown was double that
of England, and even Lewis the Fourteenth trusted as much to the credit
of his treasury as to the triumphs of his arms. "After all," he said,
when the fortunes of war began to turn against him, "it is the last
louis d'or which must win!"

It was in fact this superiority in wealth which enabled France to set on
foot forces such as had never been seen in Europe since the downfall of
Rome. At the opening of the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth its army
mustered a hundred thousand men. With the war against Holland it rose
to nearly two hundred thousand. In the last