The Shifting Balance

Abstract

To the observer of the European scene in 1648 there was little doubt that France had become the strongest power on the continent. In addition to her large population (three times that of her two main rivals, Spain and England), she now enjoyed the additional prestige of spectacular successes at arms. The victory of French troops over the fabled Spanish tercios at Rocroi in 1643 demonstrated in dramatic form that Spain’s power, which had dominated the continent for a century, was now yielding to that of France. At the Westphalia peacemaking it was she that had gained most conspicuously. She had finally won title to the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun that she had occupied since 1552; acquired the important city of Breisach on the right bank of the Rhine; and in Alsace, which French troops had occupied during the war, secured outright title to ten cities, together with ambiguous rights in the province as a whole — rights which would provide a fruitful basis for further claims in the future. She had been explicitly recognised as a guarantor of the settlement in Germany and so secured an acknowledged right to intervene in German affairs. And, soon after, she had underlined this position by helping to create (and to finance) the League of the Rhine, a grouping of German states nominally established to maintain the Westphalia settlement but in practice concerned to resist Hapsburg power in Germany.