Charles-Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, had just died, leaving as his successor a child, under the guardianship of a mother,[476] vain, ardent, and impassioned, and whom littleness of mind, as much as hastiness of character, led to exaggerated resistance, soon to be followed by humiliating concessions. Instead of showing himself the disinterested protector and sincere counsellor of Victor-Amadeus, Louis XIV. sought from that time forward to become powerful in Italy by profiting by the weakness of this government, the vanity of the Regent, the inexperience of her son, and by the passions aroused in this court around a frivolous and capricious woman. By an altogether opposite line of conduct he might have eternally attached to himself the young Duke, who, instead, was later to become his adversary, not the most formidable, but certainly the most inconvenient, and who was to contribute, above all others, to the diversion created in the South, to paralyze the power of France, and place her within an inch of her ruin. Victor-Amadeus has been represented, and with reason, as a perfidious enemy and unreliable ally. But, in the first place, it was the conduct of his mother, and afterwards that of Louis XIV., which early disposed this prince to dissimulation. Left in retirement by a hard and ambitious Regent, with his friends watched and suspected, and himself isolated, yet not a stranger to the interests of his States, taciturn, but thoughtful and observant, more patient than resigned, he was submitting with apparent indifference to a double and oppressive guardianship, from which he only awaited the opportunity to escape or to be revenged. From this moment Louis XIV. himself prepared those disasters which were to mark the end of his reign. Whilst those audaciously arbitrary decisions of the _Chambres de Réunion_ for the aggrandisement of France by conquests made in full peace, profoundly irritated the North of Europe, he was about to agitate the South by pretensions equally extravagant, for a long time concealed, then boldly disclosed, and which tended to nothing less than to place a part of Italy under his exclusive dominion.