ALSACE UNDER GERMAN RULE 158

Her rich plains attracted the troops of every chieftain.
To say nothing of her innumerable internecine quarrels,
Alsace, from the Hundred Years' War onward, had
seen in her country the Armagnacs, the English, and
the Burgundians; after the Reformation she saw there
the Austrians, the Hungarians, the Spaniards, and the
Swedes, who successively ravaged and ruined the
country.
In the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years' War
proved more conclusively than anything the impo-
tence of the German Empire, and caused Alsace to seek
aid and protection from a more powerful State. Such
was the object of the conventions entered into by
several Alsatian towns with Richelieu, the culmina-
tion of which was the reunion of Alsace with France
by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Louis XIH,
and afterward Louis XIV, took Alsace under their
protection at her own request.
France succeeded in making herself beloved in the
province. Anxious to preserve the sympathies she
had inspired, she respected the inununities of the
communes, and the traditions and customs of the
inhabitants. Her policy was inspired by a generosity
and breadth of view which persuaded them that
their reunion with France had wrought no change
in their lives.
French rule manifested itself only in beneficent
effects. Never had Alsace been so tranquil, so securely
defended against foreign armies. Trade and industry
developed, thanks to an assured peace, and the skilful
and benignant measures of the governors of the prov-
ince, for France made it a point of honour to send her



154 ALSACE UNDER GERMAN RULE

best administrators to the frontier territory. She
also instituted the Sovereign Council of Alsace in the
province, a single legal court for the whole territory,
which dispensed justice both swiftly and impartially.
