WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.

The dominion of the emperor being less supportable than that of the Turks, this unhappy people opened a door to the latter to infest the empire, instead of making their country what it had been before, a barrier against the Ottoman power. France became a sure though secret ally of the Turks as well as the Hungarians, and has found her account in it by keeping the emperor in perpetual alarms on that side, while she has ravaged the empire and the Low Countries on the other.

"If, after having seen the imbecility of Germany and Spain against the France of Louis XIV., we turn to the two only remaining European powers of any importance at that time, to England and to Holland, we find the position of our own country as to European politics, from 1660 to 1688, most painful to contemplate; nor is our external history during the last twelve years of the eighteenth century by any means satisfactory to national pride, though it is infinitely less shameful than that of the preceding twenty-eight years. From 1660 to 1668, "England, by the return of the Stuarts, was reduced to a nullity." The words are Michelet's and, though severe, they are just. They are, in fact, not severe enough; for when England, under her restored dynasty of the Stuarts, did not take any part in European politics, her conduct, or rather her king's conduct, was almost invariably wicked and dishonorable.

Bolingbroke rightly says that, previous to the revolution of 1688, during the whole progress that Louis XIV, made toward acquiring such exorbitant power as gave him well-grounded hopes of acquiring at last to his family the Spanish monarchy. England had been either an idle spectator of what passed on the Continent, or a faint and uncertain ally against France, or a warm and sure ally on her side, or a partial mediator between her and the powers confederated together in their common defense. But though the court of England submitted to abet the usurpations of France, and the King of England stooped to be her pensioner, the crime was not national. On the contrary, the nation cried out loudly against it even while it was committing.

Holland alone, of all the European powers, opposed from the very beginning a steady and uniform resistance to the ambition and power of the French king. It was against Holland that the fiercest attacks of France were made, and, though often apparently on the eve of complete success, they were always ultimately baffled by the stubborn bravery of the Dutch, and the heroism of their great leader, William of Orange.

When he became King of England, the power of this country was thrown decidedly into the scale against France; but though the contest was thus rendered less unequal, though William acted throughout "with invincible firmness, like a patriot and a hero." France had the general superiority in every war and in every treaty; and the commencement of the eighteenth century found the last league against her dissolved, all the forces of the confederates against her dispersed, and many disbanded; while France continued armed, with her veteran forces by sea and land increased, and held in readiness to act on all sides, whenever the opportunity should arise for seizing on the great prizes which, from the very beginning of his reign, had never been lost sight of by her king.

This is not the place for any narrative of the first essay which Louis XIV. made of his power in the war of 1667 ; of his rapid conquest of Flanders and Franche-Comte ; of the treaty of Aixla Chapelle, which "was nothing more than a composition between the bully and the bullied, " of his attack on Holland in 1672 ; of the districts and the barrier tow-is of the Spanish Netherlands, which were secured to him by the treaty of Nimeguen in 1678 ; of how, after this treaty, he "continued to vex both Spain and the empire, and to extend his conquests in the Low Countries and on the Rhine, both by the pen and the sword. 

How he took Luxembourg by force, stole Strasburg, and bought Casal;" of how the league of Augsburg was formed against him in 1686, and the election of William of Orange to the English throne in 1688 gave a new spirit to the opposition which France encountered, of the long and checkered war that followed, in which the French armies were generally victorious on the Continent, though his fleet were beaten at La Hogue, and his dependent, James, was defeated at the Boyne ; or of the treaty of Ryswick, which left France in possession of Roussillon, Artois, and Strasburg, which gave Europe no security against her claims on the Spanish succession, and which Louis regarded as a mere truce, to gain breathing-time before a more decisive struggle.

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