THE ERA OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 285 was isolated, and was ready enough to accept the terms offered by Mazarin, and ratified by the treaty of the Pyrenees. France gave back Lorraine to its duke ; she also resigned all pretensions in Italy. But she received from Spain some frontier territory in the Netherlands with a number of fortresses, and the con- firmation of her right to Alsace. At the same time the young King of France, Louis xiv., married the elder of the Spanish princesses, and was thus able forty years afterwards to claim the succession to the Spanish throne for his own grandson. Eighteen months later Mazarin was dead, and the young Louis took upon himself the task of governing France through ministers whose policy was dictated by himself; not masters of the government but servants of the king.
