The taste of the Grand Monarch was
thereby whetted, but his appetite hardly appeased.
[Sidenote: Franco-Dutch Rivalry]
Louis blamed the Dutch for his rebuff. He was thoroughly alive to the
fact that Holland would never take kindly to having powerful France as
a near neighbor, and that French acquisition of the Belgian
Netherlands, therefore, would always be opposed by the Dutch. Nor were
wounded vanity and political considerations the only motives for the
Grand Monarch's second war, that against the Dutch. France, as well as
England, was now becoming a commercial and colonial rival of Holland,
and it seemed both to Louis XIV and to Colbert that the French middle
class would be greatly benefited by breaking the trade monopolies of
the Dutch. Louis's second war was quite as much a trade war as a
political conflict.
[Sidenote: Civil Strife in Holland]
First, Louis bent his energies to breaking up the Triple Alliance and
isolating Holland. He took advantage of the political situation in
England to arrange (1670) the secret treaty of Dover with Charles II,
the king of that country: in return for a large pension, which should
free him from reliance upon Parliament, the English king undertook to
declare himself a Roman Catholic and to withdraw from the Triple
Alliance.
Pages:
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540