Retribution was not long in coming. Directly the thunder cloud burst, and the French armies were in full march on Amsterdam, the nation awoke to the fact that it had been betrayed. William was at once declared captain general. A reaction set in, wild and unreasoning as such popular movements usually are. A scapegoat was required. The popular vengeance demanded a victim. The faithful and glorious service of twenty years was forgotten, and a blunder magnified into treachery. For the moment the selfish burgher governors of Holland trembled under the terror of a popular outbreak. They were relieved to find the fury of the populace directed against de Witt alone. On June 21st 1673, John de Witt was attacked by ruffians in the streets of the Hague, who fled for refuge to William’s camp leaving their victim half dead. In August his brother Cornelius was arrested and put to the torture. Murder of de Witt, 1673. On the 20th John de Witt was induced to visit his brother in the prison. They were caught like rats in a trap. An infuriated mob surrounded the prison, broke open the gates, dragged the victims forth, and beat their brains out, while the Calvinistic clergy hounded them on to their butcher’s work. William himself, cruel, callous, and calculating in 1673, as he afterwards showed himself to be in 1692, took care to know nothing and to do nothing which could stop the impending outrage. As in the massacre of Glencoe, he looked the other way at the time and tried to screen the perpetrators from justice afterwards. An accessory before the fact, and an accessory after the fact, all that his apologists can say for him is that his ambition necessitated the sacrifice of his humanity.
CHAPTER XI
LOUIS XIV. AND WILLIAM III.
1672–1698
The war between France and the Dutch—The campaign of 1672—Refusal of reasonable terms—Coalition against France—The campaigns of 1674–1675—Exhaustion of France—The peace of Nimwegen—Virtual defeat of Louis’s policy—The character and influence of William III.—The quarrel of Louis with the Papacy—The four resolutions of 1682—Analogy to the English Reformation—Settlement of the dispute—Policy of religious uniformity—Influence of Madame de Maintenon—Persecution of the Huguenots—Revocation of the Edict of Nantes—Aggressions of Louis—Formation of the league of Augsburg—Quarrel between Louis and James II.—The war of the league of Augsburg—Importance of the naval operations—Exhaustion of France—Peace of Ryswick.
Grandeur of Louis XIV., 1672.
The year 1672 saw Louis XIV. at the height of his glory, and France at the summit of the prosperity to which she attained under his guidance. He was in the prime of life, his court was the most magnificent and distinguished in Europe, his palace the most splendid, his throne the most assured. As yet no breath of domestic or national misfortune had visited the complexion of his fortunes too roughly. Alone among the monarchs of Europe, thanks to the thrifty administration of Colbert, he enjoyed the supreme satisfaction of a well-filled treasury; and if since the war of devolution occasional grumblings made themselves heard about the reimposition of taxes once remitted, yet few of the tax-payers would not be constrained on examination to admit that if the taxes had risen, their power of paying them had doubled. Through the willing service of able negotiators his diplomacy was triumphant in all quarters of Europe. There was not a state which did not dread his displeasure, which was not prepared to sacrifice something for his friendship. The watchful diligence of Louvois had given to him as the champion of his honour, and the instrument of his ambition, a professional army, superior in discipline, in organisation, in leadership to all the other armies of Europe put together. His navy, already more powerful than that of Spain, threatened soon to rival the English and the Dutch on their own element. England was already his vassal, Sweden Poland and half the petty sovereigns of Germany his subsidised allies, Spain his defeated enemy. Only the upstart merchants of Amsterdam ventured to assert their independence of him and to dispute his authority. He had but to stretch forth his hand and seize the fruit of supremacy over Europe thus temptingly lying open to his grasp. He had but to ‘travel’ in the United Provinces to reduce them to due submission.
The Dutch war, 1672.
Nevertheless he was wise enough to neglect no precaution to ensure the safety of his travelling tour. It was in no empty, braggart spirit that he made war upon so tough an enemy in so difficult a country. Charles II., in pursuance of the treaty of Dover, declared war upon the Dutch in March, and Louis trusted to him with the assistance of one hundred and twenty French vessels to keep the formidable Ruyter quiet in port, while the great effort was being made by land. Charleroi was chosen as the basis of operations, and large stores of every warlike necessity were collected there by Louvois with the utmost diligence. Further magazines were established at the advanced post of Neuss near Dusseldorf in the electorate of Köln. No longer, as in the days of Wallenstein, was war to support war, but for the first time in modern warfare the army was to be regularly provisioned from its base by means of magazines established along the line of route. In the early spring 176,000 men were massed at Charleroi under the orders of Condé and Turenne. On the 5th of May Louis joined the army and the storm burst upon the devoted Dutch.[4] Campaign of 1672. Marching down the Meuse valley past Liége and Maestricht, masking the latter fortress as he went, an operation hitherto unconceived of, he turned sharply to the right at Ruremonde and reached his magazines at Neuss on the Rhine safely on the 31st. Having thus gained the Rhine valley he pushed Condé over the river at Kaiserwerth to sweep the right bank and capture Wesel, while Turenne marched down the left bank and made himself master of the smaller fortresses of Orsoy Rhynberg and Bürick. On the 6th of June Turenne rejoined Condé at Wesel, and the whole army poured down the right bank unchecked across the frontier of Guelderland, until it was brought to a stop on the 11th by the little stream of the Yssel, behind which William was posted at the head of all the available Dutch troops. The hesitation was but momentary. Instead of forcing the line of the Yssel in the face of the enemy, always a most hazardous operation, Turenne determined to turn it. On his left flank as he faced William on the Yssel ran the broad but fordable stream of the old Rhine, which, leaving the main branch of the river, called the Waal, in a northerly direction, receives the water of the Yssel a few miles farther down at Arnheim, where, turning again to the west, it flows on to the sea. Half-way between Arnheim and the junction of the Waal and the Rhine is the ford of the Tolhuys. There, on the 12th of June, Condé crossed the old Rhine with his cavalry almost without opposition. On the next day a bridge was thrown across the stream, and the king and the whole army followed. After securing Nimwegen in his rear, Louis marched down the left bank of the old Rhine and crossed it again a little below Arnheim without difficulty. He had thus completely turned William’s position on the Yssel and conquered the far more formidable difficulties of the country. When he left Charleroi, only six weeks before, he had, between him and the heart of his enemies’ country, the deep difficult and treacherous streams of the Meuse, the Waal, and the Rhine, defended at the most critical points of their course by the formidable fortresses of Maestricht, Wesel, Nimwegen and Arnheim. Well might de Witt and the Dutch have calculated that, according to the usual movements of war in those days, there was material there for two campaigns at least. By the brilliant strategy of Turenne—for to him the plan was due—all these difficulties had been surmounted, and Louis was within striking distance of Amsterdam itself, without having fought a battle, almost without the loss of a man. The crossing of the Rhine at Tolhuys was indeed in itself a military operation of the fourth order, as Napoleon called it. So was the blockade of Ulm in 1805, but both marked the successful conclusion of an offensive campaign which evinced the highest qualities of strategical skill.
The cutting of the dykes.
Just in the very crisis of success Louis drew back. Condé urged him to make the most of his opportunity, push on to Amsterdam and end the war at a blow. There was no one to resist him. He might have ‘travelled as safely’ to Amsterdam as he had hitherto ‘travelled safely’ to Arnheim. But with inconceivable folly he refused, sent Turenne towards Rotterdam, and sat down himself before the petty forts on the Yssel. Rochefort, acting on his own initiative, rushed forward with some cavalry to seize Muyden, and so prevent the cutting of the dykes outside Amsterdam, but he was too late. A Dutch garrison was thrown in just in time. De Witt had ordered all to be in readiness to let in the water directly the peasantry had moved from the doomed fields. For a few days the anxiety was intense lest the French should appear before all was prepared, but on the 18th the signal was given. The sea resumed her ancient mastery and Amsterdam was safe on her island throne.
A breathing space was all that was required. If the Dutch could save their independence until the winter was passed, it was pretty certain that a coalition against France could be formed. Refusal of reasonable terms of peace by Louis. On the 7th of June the victory of Ruyter over the combined fleets of France and England removed all danger from the sea. Holland was safe, and stood firm against all suggestion of submission, but the other provinces either in the hands of Louis or exposed to his irresistible power desired peace. For the time they prevailed, and an embassy reached Louis at the end of June offering him 6,000,000 of livres and the fortress and district of Maestricht. This would have made him absolute master of the Spanish Netherlands whenever he chose to occupy them, yet at the advice of Louvois he deliberately threw away the solid results of his success merely to gratify his pride. He demanded that the Dutch should acknowledge their dependence on him, maintain Catholicism with public money, suppress all commercial edicts unfavourable to France, and pay 24,000,000 of livres. This was in fact to demand the surrender of their independence, and was only another way of saying that the war was to be a duel to death. Coalition against France.They accepted the position, elected William III. stadtholder and captain and admiral general, and began to organise a coalition against the tyrant of Europe. In October 1672 the Emperor Leopold and the Great Elector made common cause with the Dutch and the war became European.