The United Provinces produced but little, and their merchant navy was exclusively engaged in the business of transport; the charge of fifty sous per ton on merchandise carried in foreign vessels caused so much ill humor amongst the Hollanders that it was partly the origin of their rupture with France and of the treaty of the Triple Alliance.

Colbert made great efforts to develop the French navy, both the fighting and the merchant.

"The sea-traffic of all the world," he wrote in 1669 to M.de Pomponne, then ambassador to Holland, "is done with twenty thousand vessels or thereabouts.

In the natural order of things, each nation should have its own share thereof in proportion to its power, population, and seaboard.
The Hollanders have fifteen or sixteen thousand out of this number, and the French perhaps four or five hundred at most.

The king is employing all sorts of means which he thinks useful in order to approach a little more nearly to the number his subjects ought naturally to have." Colbert's efforts were not useless; at his death, the maritime trade of France had developed itself, and French merchants were effectually protected at sea by ships of war.