pelled to withdraw
his troops from Holland, to meet the foes who were crowding upon him
from all directions.

Louis XIV. now found nearly all Europe against him. He sent twenty
thousand men, under Marshal Turenne, to encounter the forces of the
Emperor of Germany. The Prince de Conde was sent with forty thousand
troops to assail the redoubtable Prince of Orange. Another strong
detachment was dispatched to the frontiers of Spain, to arrest the
advance of the Spanish troops. A fleet was also sent, conveying a
large land force, to make a diversion by attacking the Spanish
sea-ports.

Turenne, in defending the frontiers of the Rhine, acquired reputation
which has made his name one of the most renowned in military annals.
The emperor sent seventy thousand men against him. Turenne had but
twenty thousand to meet them. By wonderful combinations, he defeated
and dispersed the whole imperial army. It added not a little to the
celebrity of Turenne that he had achieved his victory by following his
own judgment, in direct opposition to reiterated orders from the
minister of war, given in the name of the king.

Turenne, a merciless warrior, allowed no considerations of humanity to
interfere with his military operations. The Palatinate, a country on
both sides the Rhine, embracing a territory of about sixteen hundred
square miles, and a population of over three hundred thousand, was
laid in ashes by his command. It was a beautiful region, very fertile,
and covered with villages and opulent cities. The Elector Palatine saw
from the towers of his castle at Manheim two cities and twenty-five
villages at the same time in flames. This awful destruction was
perpetrated upon the defenseless inhabitants, that the armies of the
emperor, encountering entire desolation, might be deprived of
subsistence. It was nothing to Turenne that thousands of women and
children should be cast houseless into the fields to starve.

Alsace, with nearly a million of inhabitants, encountered the same
doom. Another province, Lorraine, which covered an area of about ten
thousand square miles, and contained a population of one and a half
millions, was swept of all its provisions by the cavalry of the French
commander. In reference to these military operations, Voltaire writes,

"All the injuries he inflicted seemed to be necessary. Besides, the
army of seventy thousand Germans, whom he thus prevented from
entering France, would have inflicted much more injury