1688 - The Glorious Revolution
Louis, underrating the danger elsewhere, and thinking that a threat would keep the timid Dutch quiet, dispatched the dauphin to the east with the main army in September 1688. He took Philipsburg; the Palatinate and the three Rhine electorates fell easily into his hands. Immediately William, freed from his worst anxieties, set sail for England, and the Revolution took place at once and English without bloodshed. In November 1688, a hundred years after Philip II had tried to invade England with the Invincible Armada, in order to conquer it for Roman Catholicism, William III Prince of Orange, with a Dutch army, invaded England and reconquered it for Protestantism. James II fled, and William III, being the grandson of Charles I, received the English crown. In October 1677, William visited England, and on 04 November 1677 married Mary, eldest daughter of James, duke of York, heir presumptive to the British crown. This alliance was very popular both in Holland and in the British dominions, but it was some years before it was productive of much happiness to tho parties to it. Tho prince of Orange was regarded as the natural head of the Protestant party, and it was supposed that his wife would succeed regularly to the English throne. His chief object was to lessen the power of France, which under Louis XIV had become dangerous to Europe, and which was directed against Protestantism, even at the time when the king was quarrelling with the pope.
The success of the Prince of Orange in his expedition to England defeated the plans of James II and Louis XIV. By the lucky accident that the Prince of Orange, as a descendant of the Stuart family, was eligible for the English crown, the Netherlands were saved from a war which might have caused their destruction. William III remained Stadtholder of the Netherlands, and as England and the Netherlands were ruled by the same Prince, the Dutch were sure of England's support. The position of the Netherlands seemed absolutely secure.
Louis seized the principality of Orange, which is in France, and William resented the seizure as a personal insult. When Monmouth invaded England, after the accession of James II to the throne, the prince sent 6 British regiments in the Dutch service to James's aid, and offered to take command of his whole army. But a change soon came over their feelings, and William was looked upon as tho champion of the English constitution in church and state.
The Declaration of Rights was issued by parliament in February 1689, and William and Mary were seated on the throne of England. James II took refuge at the French court, and was established at the palace of St Germains; his presence in France, and that of his family, becomes an element in the politics of more than half a century. And now Louis recognized the error he had committed.
The French had kept up communications with Ireland without difficulty; the English fleet was not thought to be loyal to the new government, for King James had been a sailor, and many of the higher officers were held likely to side with him. The battle of the Boyne (1st July 1690), however, cleared away this peril. James lost heart, and fled to France; in a very short time the ascendancy of William III. was secured in Ireland. It was not too soon. A very few days after the battle of the Boyne, Tourville, commanding the French fleet, had defeated the Anglo-Dutch navy off Beachy Head; and in the same month, Marshal Luxembourg won the battle of Fleurus from Waldeck with his German and Dutch troops.
William espoused Mary of England, daughter of the duke of York. He sought, in this measure, like his predecessors, to establish his power on an alliance with the British crown. But considerations of profound policy had no doubt their influence in determining the stadtholder to a union which he knew could not but be offensive to the Dutch. It is probable that he saw in it the source of his future grandeur, and of that fortune which was destined to affect all the political relations of Europe.
His hopes were realized in 1688. He was called by the national voice to the throne of England. Two states, often enemies, and- always the rivals of each other, were thus united under the same scepter. This increase of power could not fail to augment the preponderance of William in the affairs of the republic; and hence it was said that he was a king in Holland, and a stadtholder in England, where his reign was far from being tranquil. The war of the succession broke out, and the stadtholder found a fresh opportunity for increasing his authority by a privilege still more formidable than the regulation of 1674.
The accession of William to the throne of England gave rise to a confederacy of several powers against the ambition of Louis XIV; and, at the congress of Utrecht, in the year 1690, that prince, at the same time uniting in his person the executive power in England and Holland, was named as the chief of the confederation. The war which followed was generally indecisive, as far as relates to Belgium ; Mons and Namur were captured by the French, and the fortress of Huy was taken by William. Marshal Villeroy with his army advanced to Brussels, and during three days kept up a furious bombardment, by which the townhouse, fourteen churches, and 4000 dwellings, were reduced to ashes, but with no farther effect. The other events of this war, extensively as they were spread, have only a remote connection with Belgium.
In 1690 Waldeck, commanding the Dutch, was defeated by Luxembourg at Fleurus; and the Anglo-Dutch fleet was also severely handled off Beachy Head by the French, who inflicted terrible losses on Dutch commerce. In 1691 the French took Mons; in 1692 the allied ships ruined Tourville's fleet off La Hogue, and recovered the command of the sea. On land the allies fared ill: Louis took Namur, and after a hard-fought battle William was defeated at Steenkirk; in 1693 the Dutch shared in the defeat of Neerwinden, and were not fortunate even on the sea.
The aggressive period of the war was coming to an end. In 1694 it became almost entirely defensive ; and the death of Marshal Luxembourg in the first days of 1695 took from Louis his most fortunate general. Villeroy, who succeeded him, was a poor officer; the ancient credit of the French army was upheld by Vauban and Catinat. The war in that year was exceedingly languid. The generals were afraid of the court; the king rewarded and promoted the less able over the heads of the more capable. The recovery of Namur by William III. in this year showed how France had lost strength since 1692.
In 1695 the tide of affairs had turned, and William III retook Namur, his greatest triumph after the battle of the Boyne. In 1696 Louis succeeded in detaching Victor Amadeus from the allies by abandoning Casale and Pinerolo to him, and securing to him his Savoyard territory; and the duke's daughter was betrothed to the duke of Burgundy, the eldest son of the dauphin, the father of Louis XV. This defection of Savoy, the appearance of Catinat in the Netherlands in 1697, the renewed vigor of the French arms, the difficulty of governing England now that Queen Mary was dead, at last led William III. to accept the mediation of Sweden.
Negotiations for peace, first attempted in 1694, led to the peace of Ryswiek in 1697, in which William was recognised by France as king of England, the Dutch obtaining a favorable commercial treaty, and the right to garrison the Netherland barrier-towns. Holland was still an important factor in the balancing system rendered necessary by the ambition of France. The peace of Ryswick was framed very little differing from that conclu ed at Nimwegen nineteen years before. By the treaty Spain gained the restoration of Luxembourg, Charleroy, Mons, Courtray, and all the towns and fortresses taken by the French in the province of Luxembourg, Namur, Brabant, Flanders, and Hainault, except eighty-two towns and villages claimed by them.
Louis XIV, however, held himself little bound by the peace. In 1701 he elbowed the Dutch troops out of the barriertowns, he defied England by recognizing James III on the death of his father; and it was clear to all that another war was imminent.
William III died childless in 1702, through falling with his horse, which had stepped into a mole-hole. . He had been made hereditary stadtholder in five of the Provinces in 1672; but as he left no children as heirs, the old opposition of Holland to his house again sprang up, and, led by the grand pensionary Heinsius, Amsterdam successfully asserted her independence, and ruled throughout the coming struggle against France with energy and credit. William's sudden death left the stadtholderate vacant. The oligarchy did not wish to have a stadtholder. But by abolishing the supreme national authority in 1702, the Netherlands signed their death-warrant.
