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Holland's position as a maritime power was wrecked, and, like Spain she was reduced to the status of a minor sea power.
England, the Arch-foe of France.
After the British had humiliated Spain and Holland, they forced France, her whilom ally in the struggle with Holland, to the knees.
The position of France at this period was supreme on the European continent and she was almost the equal of England on the high seas. Her commerce was flourishing. As early as the 15th century and at the beginning of the 16th, French sailors visited the New Foundland Banks, known for their enormous wealth in fishes. The French furnished the Catholic countries of Europe with dried fish, which formed the principal diet during the many religious fasting days. In connection with these trips the French discovered vast stretches of the North-American continent. Verrazano explored, as the first, in 1524 the whole coast from North Carolina to Maine, whereby he also discovered New York Bay. Ten years later Cartier discovered the St. Lawrence River as well as the coasts of New Brunswick and Canada. Then followed the import important explorations by Ribault, Champlain, La Salle and many other so-called "voyageurs." In these great areas, comprising the system of the St. Lawrence as well as of the Mississippi, the French founded two great empires: New France and Louisiana. The first stretched from the mouth of the St. Lawrence westward to the Great Lakes, and across the Ohio and down to the mouth of the Mississippi. Louisiana included all the territory west of the "Father of Waters." In time it became more and more evident that France had gotten the best and most fertile part of North America. The British were not slow to perceice this fact and with this perception began their untiring efforts to dislodge their more fortunate rivals from their rich possessions. Encroaching constantly on French territory they started that system of border war-fare, which lasted with short intervals from 1689 to 1763. These wars reached an appalling character when the English as well as the French persuaded the Indians under their influence, to help in the mutual murder. In this savage butchery German emigrants from the Palatinate, which the English had settled at the most exposed points, had to bear the brunt of the hostile assaults. The chronicles of the Germans in Maine, in the valleys of the Mohawk and Schoharie of the Colony New York, in the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania, and of numerous other places con-
