Seignelay and the Colbertian Legacy

Abstract

In the summer of 1688 Louis XIV was suddenly overtaken by three converging political crises that soon led him into war1. In Hungary, the Emperor’s armies defeated the Turks so decisively that the Sultan prepared to sue for peace; this would free the Emperor to turn his forces westwards, to settle his long-standing differences with France. It therefore became imperative for Louis XIV to secure his Rhine frontier by a swift pre-emptive action. At the same time the security of his eastern frontier was jeopardised by the vacancy that occured in June at the strategically-located archbishopric of Cologne. When Louis tried to install a pro-French candidate there, he ran into the opposition of the Pope, with whom he had long been on bad terms. Negotiations failed, and a candidate hostile to French interests was elected, to whom the Pope granted his approval; Cologne seemed about to slip out of the French orbit. The third and most serious element in the crisis was William of Orange’s design on the English throne; all through the summer he gathered ships in the ports of the United Provinces, ready to invade England.