The ambitions of France were not,
however, empty fancies. More than once she has seemed on the
point of mastering the nations of the West. Just before the year
1690 she had a great opportunity. In England, in 1660, the fall
of the system created by Oliver Cromwell brought back to the
English throne the House of Stuart, for centuries the ally and
usually the pupil of France. Stuart kings of Scotland, allied
with France, had fought the Tudor kings of England. Stuarts in
misfortune had been the pensioners of France. Charles II, a
Stuart, alien in religion to the convictions of his people,
looked to Catholic France to give him security on his throne.
Before the first half of the reign of Louis XIV had ended, it was
the boast of the French that the King of England was vassal to
their King, that the states of continental Europe had become mere
pawns in the game of their Grand Monarch, and that France could
be master of as much of the world as was really worth mastering.
In 1679 the Canadian Intendant, Duchesneau, writing from Quebec
to complain of the despotic conduct of the Governor, Frontenac,
paid a tribute to "the King our master, of whom the whole world
stands in awe, who has just given law to all Europe.
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