Franco-Dutch War - The War

The War

After unexpectedly bypassing the fortress of Maastricht, the French had little trouble marching into the heart of the Dutch Republic, even taking Utrecht. In 1672 the leading Dutch politician Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis were lynched by an angry mob, following rumors (never substantiated) that they were planning the assassination of William of Nassau (the later William III), and William was acclaimed stadtholder. As the French had promised the major cities of Holland to the English, they were in no hurry to capture them. The French tried to gain sixteen million guilders from the Dutch in exchange for a separate peace. This demand and other conditions posed by the French stiffened Dutch resistance. Negotiations gave the Republic time to flood the countryside by deliberate inundations along the Dutch Water Line, blocking further French advances. The army of the Bishop of Münster laid siege to Groningen but failed to take it. An attempt was made to invade the Dutch Republic by sea; this was thwarted by Admiral Michiel de Ruyter in four strategic victories against the combined Anglo-French fleet (these events are usually called the Third Anglo-Dutch War). England then abandoned the war in 1674.

Already, allies had joined the Dutch cause; the Elector of Brandenburg, the Emperor, and Charles II of Spain. Louis, despite the successful Siege of Maastricht in 1673, was forced to abandon his plans of conquering the Dutch and revert to a slow, cautious war of attrition around the French frontiers.

Jurriaen Aernoutsz, a navy captain from Curaçao, captured two small forts in the French colony of Acadia in 1674. Although the Dutch never fully gained control of the territory, they continued to claim sovereignty over Acadia on paper for the duration of the war, even appointing Cornelius Van Steenwyk as its nominal governor. In actual practice, however, the territory remained under French control. By the time of the Treaty of Nijmegen, however, the Dutch claim to Acadia was simply abandoned. During their war against England, the Dutch also occupied New York City, which had formerly been the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, but returned it to the English when the English left the war.

In 1676, the French navy finally destroyed a Dutch fleet near Palermo and temporarily achieved naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. De Ruyter had already been killed during the inconclusive battle of Augusta against a French fleet.

By 1678, Louis had managed to break apart his opponents' coalition, and France gained considerable territories under the terms of the Treaty of Nijmegen. Most notably, the French acquired the Franche-Comté and various territories in the Southern Netherlands from the Spanish. Nevertheless, the Dutch had thwarted the ambitions of two of the major royal dynasties of the time: the Stuarts and the Bourbons.

The war marked the beginning of a rivalry between two powerful men in Europe: William III (who would later invade England in support of the claim of his wife, Queen Mary II, to the English throne as part of the "Glorious Revolution") and Louis XIV. They, along with their respective allies, would be pitted against each other in a series of wars in the years that followed.