annual embassy charged to present his majesty with a gold medal, which
should set forth how the Dutch owed to him the conservation of their
liberties. Such vindictive cruelty makes the mind run forward and dwell
with a glow of satisfied justice on the bitter days of retaliation and
revenge which in a future, still thirty years off, will humble the proud
and pitiless oppressor in the dust; when he shall be a suppliant, and
a suppliant in vain, at the feet of the haughty victors of Blenheim,
Ramillies, and Oudenarde.

But Louis' mad career of triumph was gradually being brought to a close.
He had before him not only the waste of waters, but the iron will and
unconquerable tenacity of the young Prince of Orange, "who needed neither
hope to made him dare nor success to make him persevere." Gradually, the
threatened neighbors of France gathered together and against her King.
Charles II was forced to recede from the French alliance by his Parliament
in 1674. The military massacre went on, indeed, for some years longer in
Germany and the Netherlands; but the Dutch Republic was saved, and peace
ratified by the treaty of Nimwegen.

After the conclusion of the Dutch War the reign of Louis XIV enters on a
period of manifest decline. The cost of the war had been tremendous. In
1677 the expenditure had been one hundred ten millions, and Colbert had to
meet this with a net revenue of eighty-one millions. The trade and commerce
of the country had also suffered much during the war. With bitter grief the
great minister saw himself compelled to reverse the beneficent policy of
his earlier days, to add to the tax on salt, to increase the ever-crushing
burden of the _taille_, to create new offices--hereditary employments in
the government--to the extent of three hundred millions, augmenting the
already monstrous army of superfluous officials, and, finally, simply to
borrow money at high interest. The new exactions had produced widespread