688 Outlines of European History He aims to restore the " natural boundaries ' of France the Journal des Savants, was founded for the promotion of science at this time. Colbert had an astronomical observatory built at Paris; and the Royal Library, which only possessed about sixteen thousand volumes, began to grow into that great collection of two and a half million volumes — by far the largest in existence — which to-day attracts scholars to Paris from all parts of the world. In short, Louis XIV and his ministers be- lieved one of the chief objects of any government to be the pro- motion of art, literature, and science, and the example they set has been followed by almost every modem state. V Louis XIV's warlike enterprises Section 123. Louis XIV attacks his Neighbors Unfortunately for France, the king's ambitions were by no means exclusively peaceful. Indeed, he regarded his wars as his chief glory. He employed a carefully reorganized army and the skill of his generals in a series of inexcusable attacks on his neigh- bors, in which he finally squandered all that Colbert's economies had accumulated and led France to the edge of financial ruin. Louis XIV's predecessors had had, on the whole, little time to think of conquest. They had first to consolidate their realms and gain the mastery of their feudal dependents, who shared the power with them ; then the claims of the English Edwards and Henrys had to be met, and the French provinces freed from their clutches ; lasdy, the great religious dispute was only settled after many years of disintegrating civil war. But Louis XIV was now at liberty to look about him and consider how he might best realize the dream of his ancestors and perhaps rees- tablish the ancient boundaries which Caesar reported that the Gauls had occupied. The " natural limits " of France appeared to be the Rhine on the north and east, the Jura Mountains and the Alps on the southeast, and to the south the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees. Richelieu had believed that it was the chief end of his ministry to restore to France the boundaries deter- mined for it by nature. Mazarin had labored hard to win Savoy
