The siege of
Spanish-occupied Dunkirk, 1658, by Turenne's Franco-English forces, covered by
ships of the Royal Navy.
The Netherlands of the seventeenth century was a disjointed
group of provinces. The northern area was known as the United Provinces and was
controlled by the Dutch, whereas the southern provinces (modern Belgium) were
under the control of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy, which had ruled all of the
Netherlands prior to the successful Dutch rebellion in the sixteenth century.
The southern provinces first attracted French interest when King Louis XIV
decided to establish a more secure northern border at the expense of the
Spanish, who had long been French rivals.
Louis believed that the Scheldt River should serve as a
natural northern boundary for France, and in 1667 he set about to make it so.
Louis had an extremely tenuous legal claim to that territory
through his marriage to Spanish Princess Maria Theresa, who was the daughter of
Philip IV by his first marriage. Though Charles II 100 came to the throne, he
was the son of Philip’s second marriage. Louis claimed that Maria Theresa’s
inheritance should outrank that of the progeny of Philip’s second marriage and,
therefore, the Netherlands were Maria Theresa’s by right. It was an incredibly
weak claim, but almost no one was in a position to challenge it. Louis had
created one of the largest European armies ever, numbering some 120,000 men,
and he entered the Spanish Netherlands on 24 May 1667. He enjoyed early success
against the unprepared Spanish. By October, Louis’ general Turenne captured a
vast number of towns and forts and controlled the entire area. Having
accomplished such easy victories in the north, Louis turned eastward in 1668 to
occupy the Habsburg province of Franche-Comte on the Swiss frontier.
No one was prepared for Louis to launch a winter offensive,
but he ordered Conde, the governor of Burgundy, to do just that. Conde’s force
of 15,000 invaded the province on 3 February 1668 and conquered it in two
weeks. Louis rode to Franche-Comte to accept the surrenders of the local
leaders; within three weeks the province was in French hands before any other
country could react.
Louis had spent the last months of 1667 negotiating with
possible rivals, and had threatened or bribed many into submission, or at least
cooperation. Most German princes accepted his bribes and stayed clear of his
military power. In January he concluded a secret treaty with Leopold, Holy
Roman Emperor, in which Louis would cede to him the Spanish throne upon the
imminent death of Charles II; he would also give up French claims in the West
Indies, Milan, and Tuscany. In return, Louis would receive the Spanish
Netherlands, Franche-Comte, Naples, Sicily, and Spanish possessions in Africa
and the Philippines. Though the treaty would reward him handsomely and confirm
his possession of France’s northern frontier, it depended on Charles II’s
death, and that could not be predicted. Therefore, Louis continued plans for
invading deeper into the Netherlands.
Afraid of his aggression, three nations allied themselves to
oppose Louis. Holland convinced Sweden and England to join forces, and the
alliance proposed a negotiation period through May 1668, beyond which the three
nations would make war against France on land and sea. Louis’ advisers were
divided on the wisdom of continuing the fighting. Spain had been unable to
provide troops for the defense of the Netherlands because of problems at home,
but the Spanish had made peace with Portugal and might now turn their attention
to Louis. The possibility of being surrounded convinced Louis that the secret
treaty with Leopold was worth waiting for, so he entered into negotiations with
his opponents and signed the Treaty of Aix-la- Chapelle on 29 May 1668. Under
this treaty Louis kept only two small pieces of land along the northern French
province of Artois.
The invasion Louis launched in the summer of 1667, sometimes
called the War of Devolution, was nothing more than a precursor of fighting to
come. It proved his ability to handle international diplomacy, and it was the
first serious military campaign in which he himself participated; this gave him
increased confidence in the ability of his nation and his subordinates, and
provided France with a small province that acted as a buffer for possible
Austrian or Swiss invasion into northern France. The peace signed in May 1668
proved to be nothing more than a ceasefire, and Louis invaded the Netherlands
again in 1672.
Louis realized that to gain control of the Spanish
Netherlands as soon as he hoped, he would have to break the Dutch, who feared
France as an immediate neighbor. Between the two wars, Louis broke the Triple
Alliance of Holland, England, and Sweden. Sweden had long had profitable trade
relations with France, and was easily convinced to change sides. Remarkably,
England proved almost as easy. Though the two nations had long been at odds,
England’s King Charles II was a Catholic ruling a predominantly Protestant
country, and he had continual troubles with Parliament. Louis offered moral
support not only as a fellow Catholic but as a fellow monarch, one who
exercised more power in his country than did Charles in England. The thought of
gaining personal power at the expense of Parliament (as well as strengthening
English naval dominance at Dutch expense) appealed to Charles, and he fell in
with Louis’ plans in 1670. The Holy Roman Empire maintained the neutrality it
had pledged in the secret 1668 treaty, and most German princes were quiet or
cooperative with French bribes. Holland was isolated, and Louis could depend on
the British navy to counter the Dutch fleet.
Britain struck first, declaring war on Holland in March
1672. Louis was quick to follow up with an army much strengthened since the end
of the last war. Aided by the talented general Turenne, who had trained Louis’
army, and the brilliant fortification engineer Vauban, Louis had what seemed to
be an unbeatable force. French armies rolled into Holland, and towns fell with
remarkable ease. The country seemed helpless before the onslaught, and was
saved only by Louis himself, who ignored Turenne’s advice for a quick drive on
to Amsterdam in favor of laying siege to a number of forts that he could easily
have bypassed. The hesitation in attacking Amsterdam saved the Dutch. They
sacrificed years of work for their own defense: They broke the dikes and
flooded the approaches to the capital city.
No one expected such a radical maneuver, and it brought
French operations to a halt. A change of government in Holland brought William
of Orange to power, and he proposed to cede Maastrict and the Rhine towns and
pay a large indemnity. Louis refused that, and a later, more generous offer.
Louis’ pride cost him dearly, because he gave up the chance to gain virtually
all he wanted for little cost. Instead, he demanded that the Dutch demilitarize
their southern border and pay a higher indemnity, which they refused. War was
declared, but the flooding ended campaigning in the Netherlands for a while.
The following summer, a new coalition formed to oppose Louis; it was made up of
the Dutch, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Spanish. They successfully captured
cities in German states Louis had previously bribed. Louis’ money proved too
little an inducement to resist the new coalition; most German states began to
join it because they were Protestant and feared Louis’ increasingly Catholic
viewpoint. Britain also pulled out of the conflict when Parliament forced
Charles II to make peace with Holland.
Louis was now isolated but undaunted. He ordered Turenne to
invade the Franche-Comte, which he had so easily conquered in 1668. The
campaign took six months and provoked a response from the coalition. In August
1674, they drove Turenne back along the Rhine frontier and threatened to
invade, held back only by the arrival of winter. Turenne surprised them with
another winter offensive just after Christmas and secured the French frontier
by a successful campaign in Alsace. After that, the war settled into one of
defense. Turenne died in July 1675, and Louis lost his most able general. Conde
replaced Turenne, but failing health forced his retirement by the end of the
year.
Louis spent his time between the battlefield and Versailles,
and in the spring of 1676 was back with his troops. He was in a position to
score a significant victory over William’s forces near Valenciennes, but
hesitated when he received conflicting opinions from his advisers. He returned
to his favorite pastime of siegecraft, and the Dutch army remained intact. The
French navy was successful in the Mediterranean in 1676, but the lack of progress
on land, coupled with a rising discontent among segments of the French
population, gave Louis pause. The destruction in the frontier provinces was
costly, and he had had to increase taxes and revert to the sale of offices to
pay for this war. There was little active campaigning in 1677 other than some
successful sieges, but William of Orange married Mary, daughter of England’s
James II, a union which could presage a closer Anglo-Dutch bond, and this
worried Louis. In 1678 he agreed to peace terms at Nijmegen in Holland, then
concluded separate treaties with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Though
required to surrender many Dutch towns, he acquired many more in the Spanish
Netherlands and had a belt of fortresses covering his northern frontier
reaching from Dunkirk to the Meuse River. The two conflicts against the
Netherlands had taken France to the height of its prestige, power not to be
seen again until the time of Napoleon. The financial cost had provoked some
domestic discontent, but Louis’ success solidified his strength as absolute
monarch. It also whetted his appetite for more glory and more secure borders,
both of which he pursued in later campaigns: the War of the League of Augsburg
and the War of the Spanish Succession.
References: Hassall, Arthur, Louis XIV and the Zenith of
French Monarchy (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1972 [1895]); Israel,
Jonathan, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995); Sonino, Paul, Louis XIV and the Origins of the
Dutch War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
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