Claude de Mesmes, comte d'Avaux (like Rafał Leszczyński). Count d'Avaux concluded treaties between France and Sweden in 1638 and 1641, and during the years 1643–1648, he took part in the lengthy negotiations which led to the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War. However, d'Avaux was removed from the Congress of Westphalia in 1648, largely due to ideological differences and competition with the other French diplomats and with his superiors in France. Although this affair damaged his reputation, he ended his life serving the French government as a member of the high Council of the Realm. Claude de Mesmes, comte d'Avaux Claude de
Piracy in the Caribbean problems at home to turn much attention to their New World colonies. The non-Spanish colonies were growing and expanding across the Caribbean, fueled by a great increase in immigration as people fled from the chaos and lack of economic opportunity in Europe. While most of these new immigrants settled into the West Indies' expanding plantation economy, others took to the life of the buccaneer. Meanwhile, the Dutch, at last independent of Spain when the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia ended their own Eighty Years War (1568–1648) with the Habsburgs, made a fortune carrying the European trade goods needed by these new