Preparations
Although England, the Dutch Republic and Sweden had signed a Triple Alliance against France in 1668 to prevent that country from occupying the Spanish Netherlands, Charles II of England signed the secret Treaty of Dover with France in 1670, entailing that England would join Louis XIV of France in a punitive campaign against the United Provinces. Indeed Charles, feeling personally humiliated by the events of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, especially the Raid on the Medway, had only engaged himself in the Triple Alliance in order to create a rift between the Dutch and the French, two former allies. While publicly trying to appease tensions between France and the Republic, making ambassador William Temple avow friendship to Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt, he secretly schemed to seduce Louis to a campaign against the Dutch. He was promised that after a French victory he would be rewarded by taking as Crown possessions strategic coastal key positions. Walcheren, Cadzand and Sluys were mentioned explicitly but Charles also desired Brill, Texel, Terschelling and Delfzijl, to control the seaways towards the main Dutch ports, including Rotterdam and Amsterdam, the latter of which was the richest city in Europe.
Charles had hoped that an attack on the Republic could have begun in 1671, but it had to be delayed for a year because the French needed first to establish secure diplomatic relations with two key German principilaties: the Bishopric of Münster and the Archbishopric of Cologne. Normally the Spanish Netherlands would act as a buffer between the Republic and France; to conquer the strongly fortified towns of Flanders and the south of the Republic would both be too slow and too costly for a swift and decisive campaign. Furthermore, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I had promised not to interfere with the French plans, on condition that the Spanish Netherlands would not be attacked. Therefore it had been decided to let the French army advance through the Bishopric of Liège, a dependency of Cologne that intersected the Spanish Netherlands, and then attack the Republic unexpectedly from the east in its unprotected "soft side". Ultimately Münster and Cologne even decided to join the invasion with their armies.
Charles tried to use the delay to sow dissension between the Orangist faction in the Republic that wanted to restore the House of Orange (represented at the time by Charles's nephew William III of Orange) to the office of stadtholder and the republican States faction headed by De Witt. When from November 1670 William visited Charles to urge the House of Stuart to pay back a part of the large debt it owed to the House of Orange, Charles intended to make his nephew part of the conspiracy and promise him to be made Sovereign Prince of Holland, a puppet state, in return for collaboration with the invading forces. However he started this attempt to recruit the young prince for his undertaking by advising William to become Roman Catholic, as he believed Catholicism was best fitted to absolutist rulers. William's horrified reaction to this proposal convinced Charles that it was best not to reveal the Dover Treaty to him.
A further problem for Charles was the fact that he needed Parliament to vote for sufficient funds to bring out a strong fleet. England would not be involved with its rather weak army; apart from an English brigade in the French army under the Duke of Monmouth its only effort would be made by the Royal Navy: to defeat its Dutch counterpart and ideally blockade the Dutch coast. Charles was receiving considerable subsidies from Louis, about ₤225,000 a year, but he preferred to spend these on the luxuries of his own court. Besides, the treaty being after all secret, these subsidies couldn't be directed to the fleet anyway. However, whereas in 1664 the country had been, in the words of Samuel Pepys, "mad for war", in 1671 most English had begun to despair of ever being able to "beat the Dutch". To provide for short-term money Charles therefore on 2 January 1672 repudiated the Crown debts in the Great Stop of the Exchequer which gained him ₤1,300,000.
Read more about this topic: Third Anglo-Dutch War
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