In the treaties signed at Ryswick the clauses which formally terminated the war show differences of phraseology. Between the French and the Dutch there was to be a good, firm, fruitful and inviolable peace; between Louis XIV and William III as king by the grace of God of Great Britain, a universal and perpetual peace was to be inviolably, religiously and sincerely observed. The peace made by France with Spain was to be good, firm and durable; that with the emperor Christian, universal and perpetual. Whatever significance these variations may have had, none of them implied any reservation. None of the leading contemporaries seems to have suggested, at least in writing or in reported conversation, that the official phrases were hypocritical or over-optimistic, or that this peace of exhaustion was a mere armistice. Yet less than four years later the French were fighting the Austrians in Lombardy, and in the spring of 1702 the emperor, Queen Anne and the States-General declared war against France. This was the result of two processes. The first and more difficult to trace was the economic and administrative recovery which enabled the powers to take the field again. Such recovery was a normal concomitant of peace; it was usually quicker than seemed possible at the moment when peace was made, and statesmen were liable to miscalculate when they estimated how far it had proceeded in their own or in other countries. The other process was the building-up of antagonisms, some inveterate and others new.