Third Anglo-Dutch War - The Invasion

The Invasion

As agreed in the Treaty of Dover, England joined France, having declared war on 6 April 1672 (New Style), by declaring war on 7 April, using as a pretext the Merlin incident. Many sources incorrectly state the English were the first to declare war on 27 March, a mistake caused by the fact that the English were still using the Julian calendar, then ten days behind the Gregorian calendar in use at the Continent. Due to a new system of forward supply bases devised by the Marquess de Louvois, the French were able to advance surprisingly fast. A French army of 130,000 (118,000 foot and 12,500 horse), exceptionally accompanied by Louis himself, from 7 May in a single month marched through Liège, bypassed the strong Dutch fortress of Maastricht, advanced along the Rhine, took the six Rhine fortresses of Cleves manned with Dutch garrisons and then on 12 June crossed the Lower Rhine into the Betuwe, thus invading the Republic itself and outflanking the IJssel Line. As a result the province of Overijssel withdrew its troops from the already small Dutch field army to protect its own cities; soon after this province capitulated to Bernhard von Galen, the bishop of Münster, who then marched north to occupy Drenthe and lay siege to Groningen. William was forced to fall back on Utrecht with a mere nine thousand men, but the burghers refused to prepare the city for defence. Instead they opened their gates to the French army, to avoid a siege. William withdrew behind the Dutch Water Line, a deliberate flooding to protect the core province of Holland, but the inundations were not ready yet, only having been ordered by the States of Holland on 8 June and hampered by villages unwilling to let the water damage their property.

Meanwhile the first sea battle had taken place. After the English declaration of war, the States-General had increased the naval budget with 2.2 million guilders. De Witt, seeking a decisive naval victory, had decided on an aggressive strategy and sent out De Ruyter with the mission to destroy the Allied fleet. On 7 June, he surprised it when resupplying on the English coast; it was only saved from a severe defeat in the Battle of Solebay by a sudden turning of the wind, causing De Ruyter to lose the weather gage. Nevertheless the damage incurred — including the death of Admiral Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich — was so extensive that the Allies would be prevented from executing major naval actions for the rest of the season, apart from a failed attempt to intercept the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Return Fleet from the Dutch East Indies. A blockade of the Dutch coast failed. Johan de Witt's brother Cornelis de Witt had accompanied the fleet to make the States regime share in the glory, but the events on land nullified this.

The sudden appearance of a hostile army in the heart of the Republic caused a general panic. On 14 June, the States of Holland decided to ask for peace conditions from France and England. This convinced Louis that the war was already won and on the advice of de Louvois he began negotiations to reach a treaty as favourable as possible for France. The city populations rioted, blaming the States regime for the disaster and calling for the Prince of Orange to take over government. Most city councils turned Orangist or were even replaced by threat of force with Orangist partisans. Charles had always supported the Orangist faction; now they repaid him with accusing the States faction of wanting to betray the land to the French and depicting Charles as the only man able and willing to save the Dutch from French subjugation. In Dutch history, the year 1672, the national annus horribilis, subsequently became known as the "Year of Disaster" (Rampjaar). A Dutch saying was coined to describe the situation of the state: Redeloos, radeloos, reddeloos, meaning: "reasonless" (the people), "clueless" (the authorities), "rescueless" (the country).

In fact the situation was not as immediately desperate as the population believed. De Witt had assumed the conflicting interests of England and France would prevent their successful cooperation. The two kings, motivated by a shared lust for revenge, had managed to put their differences aside as long as their immediate common goal of humiliating the Republic had not been reached yet. Now that it was, each began to worry the other would benefit too much from the war; neither would allow a complete domination of the Republic, and its huge mercantile assets, by his formal ally. When a Dutch mission arrived suing for peace, Louis only demanded Delfzijl, by far the least important port Charles desired, for the English. Yet, when he was offered the southern fortresses of the Republic — the French possession of which would make the Spanish Netherlands indefensible — and ten million guilders, he refused. Knowing that the mission was not allowed to make any concessions on the point of religion and the territorial integrity of the provinces themselves (the southern fortress cities of Breda, 's-Hertogenbosch and Maastricht were in the Generality Lands) Louis demanded — besides twenty million guilders and an annual embassy from the States-General to Louis asking pardon for their perfidy — either religious freedom for the Catholics or lordship over Utrecht and Guelders, merely to humiliate the Dutch a bit further. Still he didn't continue his advance fearing to drive the Dutch into the hands of Charles. He waited while the mission returned to ask for new instructions, which would take some time given the decentralised nature of the Dutch administration; all the city councils would have to be consulted on the issue. Meanwhile the water gradually filled the polders of the defence line. On 7 July, the inundations were fully set and the province of Holland was safe from a further French advance. Louis wasn't overly worried by this; he was very much focused on Amsterdam and, an early attempt to take the city by a sudden cavalry assault having failed, had decided in any case to avoid an expensive and inevitably very muddy siege by waiting till winter when he expected — reasonably so in the Little Ice Age — his troops to be able to advance over the ice. He personally returned to France on 26 July, taking 18,000 men with him and freeing 20,000 Dutch prisoners of war, to avoid having to pay for their maintenance.

On 4 July, William was appointed stadtholder of Holland; on 16 July, of Zealand. In early July, Charles had decided to secure his share of the booty and sent Lord Arlington, one of the few English politicians privy to the Treaty of Dover, together with the Duke of Buckingham to the Republic to convey his peace conditions. Arlington landed in Brill accompanied by a group of Dutch Orangist exiles and then travelled to William at the Dutch headquarters in Nieuwerbrug, all the way being cheered by Dutch crowds, believing he had come to promise English support against the French. Arriving on 5 July, he brought William the good news that Charles insisted on his nephew being made Sovereign Prince of Holland. Everything would be all right if only William would then consent to an equitable peace, including paying the English ten million guilders for their efforts, paying a yearly sum of ₤10,000 for the North Sea herring rights and reinstating the clauses of the 1585 Treaty of Nonsuch about Brill, Sluys and Flushing being English securities. Far from finding William grateful to his uncle for having brought about his rise to power, Arlington soon discovered that the stadtholder was outraged by these demands, the prince even uncharacteristically losing his temper in public. He yelled that he would rather "die a thousand times than accept them". Arlington in turn threatened the Dutch state with total annihilation if William did not comply; in the end the meeting turned into a quarrel and Arlington left without having accomplished anything. He then travelled to Heeswijk, the headquarters of the French army in vain besieging 's-Hertogenbosch, where he on 16 July concluded the Accord of Heeswijk with the French, each party agreeing on a minimal shared list of demands and promising never to conclude a separate peace. These demands were again refused by William on 20 July.

On 18 July, William received a letter from Charles, very moderate in tone, in which the king claimed that the entire campaign was merely directed against the States regime and that the only obstacle to peace was the continued influence of the faction of De Witt. William responded by offering the herring rights, ₤400,000, Sluys and Surinam; in return Charles should make him Sovereign Prince and conclude a separate peace. Annoyed Charles answered by accusing William of being unreasonably obstinate and scheming behind his back with politicians of the Country Party, the later "Whigs".

De Witt had had to resign from his function of Grand Pensionary after he had been wounded by an attempt on his life in June. His brother Cornelis had been arrested on (probably false) charges of having plotted to murder William. On 15 August, the stadtholder published Charles's letter to further incite the population against De Witt. There were many new riots; on 20 August, Johan de Witt visited his brother in prison; both were then murdered by an Orangist civil militia that had been instructed by Tromp, the Orangist admiral. William's power was now secure from internal threats.

The Allies now found themselves in a rather awkward position. If the Battle of Solebay had not prevented it, they would have been able to force the Dutch population to surrender by starvation, as it was dependent for its survival on supplies of Baltic grain. Now they had no clear exit strategy; they could only wait hoping the Dutch would at last understand the hopelessness of their situation and capitulate. Meanwhile their own situation deteriorated. The war was very expensive and especially Charles had trouble paying for it. Münster was in an even worse condition; in August it had to abandon the siege of Groningen; before 1672 had ended Coevorden was retaken and the province of Drenthe liberated, leaving the Allies in possession of only three of the in fact ten (despite the number traditionally given of seven) Dutch provincial areas. The supply lines of the French army were dangerously extended and William in the autumn of 1672 tried to cut them off, marching all the way through the Spanish Netherlands via Maastricht to attack Charleroi, then a French border city close to the supply route through Liège. Also the German states, though having promised Louis to remain neutral, had become very worried by the French success and especially by the refusal to withdraw from the Duchy of Cleves. On 25 July, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Leopold I, concluded a defensive treaty with the Republic in The Hague and together with Brandenburg, of which Cleves was a dependency and which had declared itself a Dutch ally on 6 May, sent an army of forty thousand to the Rhine. Though this force did not attack the French army, its presence was enough to draw it to the east in response. On 27 December, after a severe frost the Duc de Luxembourg began to cross the ice of the Water Line with eight thousand men, hoping to sack The Hague, but a sudden thaw cut his force in half and he narrowly escaped to his own lines with the remainder.