War
After the Treaty of the Pyrenees the French armed forces had been sharply reduced in order to save costs. In 1665 they numbered only 50,000 men. Louis XIV however authorised preparations through which the number of soldiers grew to 82,000 by the start of the war. In spring 1667 51,000 French soldiers, who had been raised in 4 days, deployed between Mézières and the sea. The main army consisted of 35,000 men personally commanded by Louis XIV. However, the actual commander was Maréchal Turenne. To the left of the main army, a further French corps drew up in Artois at the coast, under Maréchal Antoine d’Aumont de Rochebaron, whilst another corps under Lieutenant General François de Créquy, marquis de Marines, took over the protection of the main army on the right flank. All three armies were to enter the Spanish territories at the same time, in order to take advantage of the French numerical superiority and not allow the Spanish to concentrate their defence against a single French force.
Read more about this topic: War Of Devolution
Famous quotes containing the word war:
“Testimony of all ages forces us to admit that war is among the most dangerous enemies to liberty, and that the executive is the branch most favored by it of all the branches of Power.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Now, were I once at home, and in good satire,
I’d try conclusions with those Janizaries,
And show them what an intellectual war is.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The inconveniences and horrors of the pox are perfectly well known to every one; but still the disease flourishes and spreads. Several million people were killed in a recent war and half the world ruined; but we all busily go on in courses that make another event of the same sort inevitable. Experientia docet? Experientia doesn’t.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)