ersecutions, but on his part
it was as truly defensive as were the wars of Napoleon after the
invasion of Russia. Whatever is truly heroic in the character of Louis
was seen after he was forty-eight. Whatever claims to greatness he may
have had are only to be sustained by the memorable resistance he made
to united Europe in arms against him, when his great ministers and his
best generals had died, Turenne died in 1675, Colbert in 1683, Conde in
1686, Le Tellier in 1687, and Louvois in 1691. Then it was that his
great reverses began, and his glory paled before the sun of the King of
England, These reverses may have been the result of incapacity, and
they may have been the result of the combined forces which outnumbered
or overmatched his own; certain it is that in the terrible contest to
which he was now doomed, he showed great force of character and great
fortitude, which command our respect.

I cannot enter on that long war which began with the League of Augsburg
in 1686, and continued to the peace of Ryswick in 1697,--nine years of
desperate fighting, when successes and defeats were nearly balanced, and
when the resources of all the contending parties were nearly exhausted.
France, at the close of the war, was despoiled of all her conquests and
all the additions to her territory made since the Peace of Nimeguen,
except Strasburg and Alsace. For the first time since the accession of
Richelieu to power, France lost ground.

The interval between this war and that of the Spanish succession--an
interval of three years--was only marked by the ascendency of Madame de
Maintenon, and a renewed persecution, directed not against Protestants,
but against those Catholics who cultivated the highest and freest
religious life, and in which Bossuet appears to a great disadvantage by
the side of his rival, the equally illustrious Fenelon. It was also
marked by the gradual disappearance of the great lights in literature.
La Fontaine died in 1695, Racine in 1699. Boileau was as good as dead;
Mesdames de la Sabliere and de la Fayette, Pellisson and Bussy-Rabutin,
La Bruyere and Madame Sevigne, all died about this time. The only great
men at the close of the century in France who made their genius felt
were Bossuet, who encouraged the narrow intolerance which aimed to
suppress the Jansenists and Quietists, and Fenelon, who protected them
although he did not join them,--the "Eagle of Meaux" and the "Swan of
Cambray," as they were called, o