could count for little against a foreign enemy.

France had for centuries suffered from the same cause. The families
of Lorraine, Bouillon, Enghien, Burgundy, the Guises, Longueville,
the Counts of Armagnac, and other powerful vassals of France, paid
but a nominal allegiance to the crown, and were really independent
princes. Louis XI had done much to break their power. Richelieu
continued the work, and under him France for the first time became
consolidated into a whole. Had he lived, the work would doubtless
have been completed, but his death and that of the king postponed
the work for years. The long regency, controlled by a minister
possessing none of the courage and firmness of Richelieu, and
personally obnoxious alike to the nobles and to the population of
Paris, again threw the power into the hands of the great nobles,
plunged France into civil strife, and the wars of the Fronde,
like those of the Roses in England, so weakened the nobles that
the crown under Louis XIV became absolutely dominant.

Had Austria succeeded in crushing the Protestant princes, that
empire, with all Germany under her control, would have become
a power greatly superior in strength and population to France. It
was principally to prevent this result that Richelieu after the
battle of Nordlingen threw himself into the struggle, but his aim
was also to carry the frontier of France up to the Rhine. Here the
territories of the Dukes of Lorraine, and Bouillon Prince of Sedan,
not only cut France off from the Rhine and the Moselle, but opened
a door by which she could at any time be invaded from Germany.
The Dukes of Lorraine had always borne themselves as independent
princes, giving, indeed, a nominal allegiance to France, but
as often allying themselves with German princes as with her. The