The success of this war made Louis, at twenty-nine years of age, the most heroic figure in Europe.

Every one bowed before him, and everything seemed to be gravitating toward him as toward a central sun.

Not alone nobility, but even genius put on his livery and became sycophantish, Bossuet and even Moliere, hungering for his smile, and in despair if he frowned.
This was the time of the supremacy of the beautiful Louise la Valliere.
Her reign was brief, and, the king's infatuation being passed, she was to spend the rest of her dreary life in a Carmelite convent, hearing only the far-off echoes from the brilliant world in which she was once the central and envied figure.
The Dutch Republic had come under Louis' displeasure and was marked for his next foreign campaign.

This (to his mind) insignificant nation of fishermen and small traders had presumed to stand in his path.

So the most magnificent army since the Crusades in 1672 invaded the peaceful little state of Holland.