 Although (its) economic and military power suffered an abrupt decline in the half century after (1659), (it) was a major participant in the European coalitions against Louis XIV, and the peace congresses at Nijmegen in 1678, and Ryswick in 1697".David Parrott, Professor of Early Modern History at New College, Oxford suggests that both the Peaces of Westphalia and the Pyrenees reflected mutual exhaustion and stalemate, not a military diktat imposed by victorious powers.Elsewhere, he labels the war as "25 years of indecisive, over-ambitious and, on occasions, truly disastrous conflict".