Germany in the Age of Louis XIV by Wolfgang Menzel

Author:Wolfgang Menzel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

FRENCH DEPREDATIONS

..................

THE EDICT OF NANTES, PUBLISHED by Louis XIV., had driven eight hundred thousand Reformers out of France. Servile Switzerland repulsed them from her inhospitable frontiers, and they emigrated to Holland, England, and, more particularly, to Brandenburg, where they were permitted by the great elector to settle at Berlin, A. D. 1685. Their gradual intermixture with the natives produced tile peculiarly boastful and shrewd character for which the people of Berlin are proverbial. Louis, at the same time, continued his encroachments, seized Treves, harassed Lorraine and Alsace, and erected the fortress of Hüningen, opposite to Basle. The Swiss murmuted, but, ever mercenary, furnished him with all the contingents he required, and, during the subsequent war, their number amounted to twenty-eight thousand seven hundred men. Valckenier, the Dutch envoy to Switzerland, at the same time, succeeded in raising eight thousand five hundred men from the Reformed cantons.

The possession of tile Pfalz had long been the principal object of Louis’s ambition. Tile Pfalzgrave, Charles Louis, who had been deprived of his inheritance by French intrigue, laboured throughout the whole of his life to reconcile the various religious sects. At Friedrichsburg he built a church, named by him the Temple of Concord, in which he had the service successively performed according to tile three Christian forms of worship, the Catholic, the Lutheran, and the Calvinistic. He also abolished the severe laws against the Anabaptists. His toleration drew colonists from every part of Germany, who again cultivated his wasted lands and rapidly restored Mannhelm, in particular, to a state of prosperity. The capricious conduct of his consort, Charlotte of Hesse-Cassel, provoked a divorce, and he married Mademoiselle Louise yon Degenfeld, by whom he had thirteen children, who, on account of the inequality of their mother’s birth, were excluded from the succession. Of his two children by his former wife, the prince died early, and his daughter, Elisabeth Charlotte, he was, in 1671, persuaded by Louis XIV. to bestow upon Philip of Orleans, as security against all further attacks on the part of France. Louis’s insolence was, however, thereby increased, and, under pretext of Charles Louis’s having aided in again depriving him of Philippsburg, he demanded 150,000 florins by way of reparation and sent troops to Neustadt in order to enforce payment. Germersheim was declared dependent upon France, and the unfortunate elector, unsupported by the empire, died of chagrin, A. D. 1688.

Louis instantly claimed tile inheritance for Philip, Charlotte’s husband, without regard to the right of the house of Wittelsbach. The German princes, who had unscrupulously deserted the imperial free towns and tile nobility of the empire in Alsace, and the Dutch republic were, at length, roused by this insolent attack on their hereditary rights, and, entering into a close confederacy, formed [A. D. 1686] tile great alliance of Augsburg against France. Even Maximilian of Bavaria, who, under the guidance of Marshal Villars and of his mistresses, imitated all the vices of the French court, saw his family interests endangered by the destruction of the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.