1672 - The Dutch War
The French king's dislike for the Dutch is one of those things which illustrate the evils of personal rule. They were distasteful to him as Protestants, as burghers, as tradesmen, as a sea power, as a constitutional republic; they had given shelter to refugees who could not bear the brilliant despotism of France. Of old times French policy had favored the growth of the United Provinces, as a counterpoise to Spain; henceforward Spain and Holland were friends, and Louis was eager to revise the old lines of his country's foreign relations.
From 1668 to 1672 Louis XIV made ready to destroy the Dutch; and so well had his diplomacy served him that they were left without a friend in Europe. Louis XIV made use of his connection with the small Rhine-princes, those unpatriotic Germans who were ever on sale, and who sided with France against Germany. With them he arranged for a great Hunk attack on the republic; he secured England by buying over her king; the wishes and feelings of the people could easily be disregarded in these early days after the fall of the Commonwealth. In 1670 the treaty of Dover, that standing scandal of the Stewart period, was signed; it contained a secret clause, of which the second duke of Buckingham, who negotiated it with the fair duchess of Orleans, sister of Charles II, was ignorant.
The two kings played their comedy behind the backs of the two clever negotiators, and laughed in their sleeves at them and at the English nation. Sweden had been easily detached from Holland, and the Triple Alliance entirely swept away within two years of its formation. The efforts made by Leibnitz and others to divert Louis to a Mediterranean war proved utterly unavailing; Colbert's reluctance to furnish the costs of war was overborne; Lionne died in 1671, and was not there to guide the foreign policy of France.
In 1672 the storm broke: the English, without a declaration of war, tried unsuccessfully to intercept the Dutch Mediterranean fleet; and France at once set forth to conquer the hated tradesmen of the north. France had at last a considerable fleet to send to sea. Thirty ships of war Dutch joined the English navy, which was pledged to neutralize the sea-power of Holland, and to find employment for Admiral Ruyter's hands. Ruyter was the stay and strength of the aristocratic or burgher party at Amsterdam—the party which had now ruled for years, and had with no small glory rivalled England on the high seas. The States were ill-prepared on land, though their fleet was strong and ready. Party spirit was exceedingly bitter, and the ruling party, well aware that the prince of Orange was very popular with the land forces, had utterly neglected their army. On 28 May 1672, Ruyter fought a great naval battle in Southwold Bay (Solebay) against the duke of York and Marshal D'Estrees: the French held aloof, pleased to see the Dutch and English destroy each other; the English suffered most, but, as the Dutch withdrew to their own ports, the others claimed the victory.
Meanwhile Louis XIV crossed the Rhine and threatened Amsterdam. William III (b. 1650 - d. 1702), the young prince of Orange alone seemed to rise to the occasion; while others were panic-stricken, sending embassies of submission to the haughty monarch, making preparations for a great flight by sea, William with his miserable army did his best, and aroused so strongly the feelings of the people that Amsterdam, passing from dejection to despair and thence to reckless enthusiasm, rose against the De Witts and foully murdered both in the streets.
They had just before proclaimed William stadtholder of Holland, with powers unlimited. And thus Louis XIV destroyed the proud republic, though in so doing he had raised up the most formidable enemy he was destined to encounter. His invasion did not prosper; other nations began to take up the Dutch cause: Germans and Spaniards threatened the embarrassed French army in the Provinces; so that in 1674 France was on the defensive on every side.
Little did Louis XIV deem that by this war of 1672, and by this very alliance with England, he was laying the foundations of that power which would in the end frustrate his splendid plans, and hold up against him the liberties of Europe. The sea-party in the Provinces had resisted and overcome all the efforts of Spain. Louis was now about to overthrow in that party, to make room for the land-party, which, led by William of Orange and England, was to withstand him to the end. The sea-party, the aristocratic and commercial republic, headed by the two distinguished brothers, John and Cornelins de Witt, was inevitably hostile to England, and as naturally friendly to France. The land-party, democratic and agricultural, and headed by the great house of Orange-Nassau, was naturally a friend to Germany, with which it had close connections, and to England also; for it was no rival on the sea, and lastly, William, the head of the house, was first cousin to the king of England.
Louis had raised the army to 125,000 men; the French navy could count about a hundred sail. With almost all this great force Louis began the Dutch war of 1672. Guided by Turenne he set forth for the Rhine, leaving an army to mask Maestricht. The friendly princes gave him passage; the trembling Dutch with a raw ill-disciplined army of scarcely 25,000 men, under command of the prince of Orange, sheltered themselves behind the half furnished forts of the river Yssel. By crossing the Rhine into the ancient "Betuwe," Turenne hoped to get between the Dutch and Amsterdam, and with one hand to crush the army, while with the other he coerced the seat of government into submission. The plan was simple and good; the earlier stages of it were successfully carried out; the famous passage of the Rhine dazzled the eyes of all France, and, unopposed in fact, and perfectly easy, made Paris believe her monarch to be a complete hero of romance. Turenne at once pushed on and seized Arnheim, which gave him passage out of the Betuwe into the country behind the Yssel; and had his voice been heard, nothing could have saved the prince of Orange.
But, with overwhelming force, the king missed completely the point of the campaign. He set himself to reduce the unimportant Yssel forts, led by his own taste for siege-warfare and Louvois's advice; he wasted time and weakened his army by garrisoning the captured places. Presently he moved on and occupied Utrecht; Naarden, half way from thence to Amsterdam, was taken. The Dutch despaired of help, and offered terms to Louis; but he contemptuously refused them. Then the mob of Amsterdam in fury of despair rose on the De Witts and murdered them both, and called on William of Orange to rescue the state. He at once accepted the perilous task, and with equal skill and courage saved the republic, first by flooding the country, so as to defend Amsterdam from a land-attack, - and then by arousing the jealousies of Germany and Spain. Louis had gone back to Paris; his armies achieved nothing more in 1672.
In 1673 the interest of the war lay in the siege of Maestricht; for Germany was no longer a safe French roadway, and the line of the Meuse was necessary, if Holland was to be reached at all. Maestricht fell; but then no more was done. Louis returned again in triumph to Paris, and the war lagged. At this time (August 1673) a great league of the Hague was formed against France; its members were the emperor, the Spaniards, and the Dutch; the young stattholder became the leader of the opposition to Louis XIV. The campaign on the Rhine, in which William of Orange and Montecuculi were pitted against Turenne and Condé> while the duke of Orleans attacked the Spanish Netherlands, went on the whole against France. The allies took Bonn, and thus compelled the Rhine-princes to abandon France . The Great Elector, Frederick William of Brandenburg, who had hitherto leant towards the French, in 1674 joined the allies; public feeling in England forced Charles II. to make peace with the United Provinces. Sweden, jealous of Brandenburg, remained as almost the sole ally of France.
William III of Orange in 1674 was defeated at Seoef, and had to abandon his plan of penetrating into France, and in 1675 the death of Marshal Turenne, and the retirement of the great Conde, turned the tide of war in favor of the Dutch, except on the sea, where the French fleet defeated and destroyed in the Mediterranean (in 1676) the united navies of Holland and Spain. In 1677 negotiations for peace went on, and were hastened by the marriage, at the close of the year, of William of Orange with the Princess Mary, daughter of the duke of York. At last in 1678, came the great peace of Nimeguen, which sealed the independence of the Dutch.
In 1676 the war was feeble; nothing was done in the north; in the east the Germans took Philipsburg, a place of the utmost value to France before she had got Strasburg. On sea, however, the year was far more brilliant: in the Mediterranean Du Quesne in two great battles destroyed the combined fleets of Holland and Spain; and in the second battle off Palermo, Ruyter himself perished. Both France and Holland now began to wish for peace; the Dutch, seeing their navy ruined, and conscious that they could not recover Majestic, were very weary of war; and the French were also fretting under the burdens of the struggle, which had ruined all Colbert's plans for the development of their commerce and wealth. Troubles broke out in more than one district. Negotiations went on, and war also. In 1677 the French arms were more successful; the duke of Orleans, whom his brother never forgave for it, defeated William of Orange at Cassel, and was never again put in command; the French overran all Flanders; the duke of Lorraine was completely defeated by Marshal Crequy.
Towards the end of 1677 William of Orange was espoused to his young kinswoman, Mary, daughter of the duke of York, and early in 1678 King Charles was obliged to declare war on his royal patron. These things swelled the tide in favor of peace, The burgher party of Amsterdam, afraid of William's growing power, leant strongly on that side; Charles II. had never been sincere in his declaration of war, and gladly forwarded the wishes of Louis. Finally, the peace of Nimwegen closed the war. The first treaty was one between Holland and France, which restored Maestricht, the only place William had not retaken, to the Dutch; a friendly treaty of commerce was attached to it. The second treaty was between Spain and France; while the king restored some strong places to the Spaniards, they ceded a chain of strong frontier-cities to him; France became mistress of Valenciennes, Conde, Bouchain, Maubeuge, Cambrai, Saint-Omer, Aire, Ypres, and other towns. They also ceded Franche Comte which had ever since been French. Thirdly, there was a treaty with the German princes, which reaffirmed the treaty of Munster of 1648.
The aggressive policy of Louis XIV in the years which followed the peace of Nimeguen, enabled William III to lay the basis of the famous confederacy which changed the whole front of European politics. Brandenburg, Denmark, league and England sided with the French king; while the League of Augsburg (1686), following directly after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, placed William at the head of the resistance to French domination. The league was joined by the emperor, Spain, the United Provinces, Sweden, Bavaria, and other German princes.
The accession of James II to the throne of England made it easy for the stadtholder to keep up close relations with the malcontents in church and state, who regarded him and the Princess Mary as the natural successors to the English throne. On the birth of the prince of Wales the anti-Catholic feeling in England at last grew so strong that William was able to interfere with success; while the diversion of the attention of Louis XIV from Holland to the Rhine relieved the timid rulers of Amsterdam from all anxiety.
The Revolution of 1688 ensued, and England became, under William III's strong rule, the chief member of the great coalition against France. In the grand alliance of 1689-90 he clearly sacrificed Dutch to English interests, and carried through his policy in spite of great irritation in Holland and Zealand. His power seemed almost autocratic, and the States impotent Henceforward their part in history became quite secondary compared with that of England and France.
