commerce, manufactures, and the colonies had alike been smitten by the war; and the conditions of peace, so advantageous to the territorial and military power of France, were much less so to manufactures, the protective tariffs having been lowered in favor of England and Holland,"[63] the two sea powers. The merchant shipping was stricken, and the splendid growth of the royal navy, that excited the jealousy of England, was like a tree without roots; it soon withered away under the blast of war. Before finally quitting this war with Holland, a short notice of the Comte d'Estrées, to whom Louis committed the charge of the French contingent of the allied fleet, and who commanded it at Solebay and the Texel, will throw some light upon the qualifications of the French naval officers of the day before experience had made seamen of many of them. D'Estrées went to sea for the first time in 1667, being then a man of mature years; but in 1672 we find him in the chief command of an important squadron, having under him Duquesne, who was a seaman, and had been so for nearly forty years. In 1677, D'Estrées obtained from the king a body of eight ships which he undertook to maintain at his own expense, upon the condition of receiving half the prizes made. With this squadron he made an attack upon the then Dutch island of Tobago, with a recklessness which showed that no lack of courage prompted his equivocal conduct at the Texel. The next year he went out again and contrived to run the whole squadron ashore on the Aves Islands. The account given by the flag-captain of this transaction is amusing as well as instructive. In his report he says:-- "The day that the squadron was lost, the sun having been taken by the pilots, the vice-admiral as usual had them put down the position in his cabin. As I was entering to learn what was going on, I met the third pilot, Bourdaloue, who was going out crying. I asked him what the matter was, and he answered: 'Because I find more drift than the other pilots, the admiral is threatening me and abusing me, as usual; yet I am only a poor lad who does the best he can.' When I had entered the cabin, the admiral, who was very angry, said to me, 'That scoundrel of a Bourdaloue is always coming to me with some nonsense or other; I will drive him out of the ship. He makes us to be running a course, the devil knows where, I don't.' As I did not know which was right," says the captain of the ship, rather naïvely, "I did not dare to say anything for fear of bringing down a like storm on my own head."[64]