The French Challenge: Responses East and West, 1648–1721

Abstract

Louis XIV was 16 years old when he was crowned in Rheims Cathedral in July 1654. Still learning the craft of kingship, however, he was to defer to his advisers — Mazarin especially — until the cardinal died in 1661. As far as foreign policy was concerned, the major problem of these still early years was to bring to a conclusion the war against Spain. During the troublesome years of the Fronde, the French had suffered some reverses, which persuaded Mazarin that final victory could not be won without allies. Having recognised Cromwell’s Commonwealth in 1652, he made a treaty of friendship with it in 1655, expanding commerce and expelling the Stuarts. In 1657 he agreed to co-operate in the conquest of Dunkirk and other cities in Flanders, then part of the Spanish Netherlands. A joint force was successful at the Battle of the Dunes and the allied aims were achieved in the summer of 1658. At this time, Mazarin also obliged Leopold I at his election as Holy Roman Emperor to forswear further assistance to Spain against France. An alliance with Brandenburg—Prussia which had been arranged at the beginning of 1656 was now supplemented by a League of the Rhine in which France combined with Sweden and a number of German associates in order to force Leopold I to keep his word. A beleaguered Spain had no alternative but to make peace, and in the Treaty of the Pyrenees of November 1659 agreed to make that mountain range the south-west frontier of France while also making concessions in the north-east and allowing Lorraine to move further into the French sphere of influence. France agreed to abandon support for the Catalans beyond the Pyrenees and the Portuguese by the Atlantic, and to give up most claims in Italy and some of them in the neighbourhood of Switzerland. In 1660, peace with Spain was consolidated by the marriage of Louis XIV to Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV, and France on its side of the Pyrenees was strengthened by the final pacification of Provence. Mazarin was able to avoid any clash with the restored Stuart King Charles II and to contribute to peace in the Baltic before his death in March 1661.