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The French–English preliminaries of peace are addressed to the view of satisfying, according to the rule of reason, the security requirements and frontiers, as well as the freedom of commerce, of all parties to the conflict, and to regulate the same so that these two issues will not again trouble the European peace. It is on this basis that the treaty of peace must be founded.
Three major multilateral peace conferences took place in the aftermath of Westphalia: Nijmegen, Ryswick, and Nystadt. The first two terminated Louis's wars against Holland; the latter brought to an end the Great Northern War(s). There were also bilateral settlements between France and Spain, Great Britain and Holland, Denmark and Sweden, Russia and Turkey, and several others. Nijmegen and Ryswick stand out because they introduced some diplomatic conventions and best exemplified practices such as compensation, exchange, and the role of mediation in conflict resolution. They also reconfirmed the importance of the Westphalia settlements as an outline of order for western Europe.
But they were not significant learning experiences; they dealt with particulars rather than with the generic sources of war. Following each conference, Louis XIV continued his annexations and provocations against neighbors. Individual issues were resolved, compromised, or left unsettled. It is hard to see any “authoritative allocation of values” in those conferences.
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