Europe demanded a general peace; England and Holland desired it passionately. “I am as anxious as you for an end to be put to the war,” said the Prince of Orange to the deputies from the Estates, “provided that I get out of it with honor.” He refused obstinately to separate from his allies. “It is not astonishing that the Prince of Orange does not at once give way even to things which he considers reasonable,” said Charles II., “he is the son of a father and mother whose obstinacy was carried to extremes; and he resembles them in that.” Meanwhile, William had just married (November 15, 1677), the Princess Mary, eldest daughter of the Duke of York and Anne Hyde. An alliance offensive and defensive between England and Holland was the price of this union, which struck Louis XIV. an unexpected blow. He had lately made a proposal to the Prince of Orange to marry one of his natural daughters. “The first notice I had of the marriage,” wrote the king, “was through the bonfires lighted in London.” “The loss of a decisive battle could not have scared the King of France more,” said the English ambassador, Lord Montagu. For more than a year past negotiations had been going on at Nimeguen; Louis XIV. resolved to deal one more great blow.
The campaign of 1676 had been insignificant, save at sea. John Bart, a corsair of Dunkerque, scoured the seas and made foreign commerce tremble; he took ships by boarding, and killed with his own hands the Dutch captain of the Neptune, who offered resistance. Messina, in revolt against the Spaniards, had given herself up to France; the Duke of Vivonne, brother of Madame de Montespan, who had been sent thither as governor, had extended his conquests; Duquesne, quite young still, had triumphantly maintained the glory of France against the great Ruyter, who had been mortally wounded off Catana; on the 21st of April. But already the possession of Sicily was becoming precarious, and these distant successes had paled before the brilliant campaign of 1677; the capture of Valenciennes, Cambrai, and St. Omer, the defence of Lorraine, the victory of Cassel, gained over the Prince of Orange, had confirmed the king in his intentions. “We have done all that we were able and bound to do,” wrote William of Orange to the Estates, on the 13th of April, 1677, “and we are very sorry to be obliged to tell your High Mightinesses that it has not pleased God to bless on this occasion the arms of the state under our guidance.”
“I was all impatience,” says Louis XIV. in his Memoires, “to commence the campaign of 1678, and greatly desirous of doing something therein as glorious as, and more useful than, what had already been done; but it was no easy matter to come by it, and to surpass the lustre conferred by the capture of three large places and the winning of a battle. I examined what was feasible, and Ghent being the most important of all I could attack, I fixed upon it to besiege.” The place was invested on the 1st of March, and capitulated on the 11th; Ypres, in its turn, succumbed on the 25th, after a vigorous resistance. On the 7th of April the king returned to St. Germain, “pretty content with what I had done,” he says, “and purposing to do better in the future, if the promise I had given not to undertake anything for two months were not followed by the conclusion of peace.” Louis XIV. sent his ultimatum to Nimeguen.
Holland had weight in congress as well as in war, and her influence was now enlisted on the side of peace. “Not only is it desired,” said the grand pensionary Fagel, “but it is absolutely indispensable, and I would not answer for it that the States General, if driven to extremity by the sluggishness of their allies, will not make a separate peace with France. I know nobody in Holland who is not of the same opinion.” The Prince of Orange flew out at such language. “Well, then, I know somebody,” said he, “and that is myself; I will oppose it to the best of my ability; but,” he added more slowly, upon reflection, “if I were not here, I know quite well that peace would be concluded within twenty-four hours.”
One man alone, though it were the Prince of Orange, cannot long withstand the wishes of a free people. The republican party, for a while cast down by the death of John van Witt, had taken courage again, and Louis XIV. secretly encouraged it. William of Orange had let out his desire of becoming Duke of Gueldres and Count of Zutphen: these foreshadowings of sovereignty had scared the province of Holland, which refused its consent; the influence of the stadtholder was weakened thereby; the Estates pronounced for peace, spite of the entreaties of the Prince of Orange. “I am always ready to obey the orders of the state,” said he, “but do not require me to give my assent to a peace which appears to me not only ruinous, but shameful as well.” Two deputies from the United Provinces set out for Brussels.
“It is better to throw one’s self out of the window than from the top of the roof,” said the Spanish plenipotentiary to the nuncio, when he had cognizance of the French proposals, and he accepted the treaty offered him. “The Duke of Villa Hermosa says that he will accept the conditions; for ourselves, we will do the same,” said the Prince of Orange, bitterly, “and so here is peace made, if France continues to desire it on this footing, which I very much doubt.”