But the clearest reason why Europe would not be convulsed by a general conflict seemed to lie in the worsening condition of France. For some years after the victory of 1783, its diplomatic position had appeared as strong as ever; the domestic economy, as well as foreign trade with the West Indies and the Levant, was growing rapidly. Nonetheless, the sheer costs of the 1778–1783 war—totaling more than France’s three previous wars together—and the failure to reform national finances interacted with the growing political discontents, economic distress, and social malaise to discredit the ancien régime. From 1787 onward, as the internal crisis worsened, France seemed ever less capable of playing a decisive role in foreign affairs. The diplomatic defeat in the Netherlands was caused primarily by the French government’s recognition that it simply could not afford to finance a war against Britain and Prussia, while the withdrawal of support for Spain in the Nookta Sound controversy was due to the French assembly’s challenge to Louis XVI’s right to declare war. All this hardly suggested that France would soon be seeking to overturn the entire “old order” of Europe.