Rampjaar
At the same time, it faced the threat of an English naval blockade in support of the French endeavor, though that attempt was abandoned following the Battle of Solebay.
By late July however, the Dutch position had stabilised, with support from Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, Brandenburg-Prussia, and Spain; this was formalised in the August 1673 Treaty of the Hague, which Denmark joined in January 1674.
[3] From 1674 to 1678, the French armies managed to advance steadily in the southern Spanish Netherlands and along the Rhine, defeating the badly coordinated forces of the Grand Alliance with regularity.
Eventually the heavy financial burdens of the war, along with the imminent prospect of England's reentry into the conflict on the side of the Dutch and their allies, convinced Louis XIV of France to make peace despite his advantageous military position.
These tensions had escalated in 1650 when William II, Prince of Orange had tried to conquer Amsterdam, the main bastion of the Regents of the De Graeff and Bicker clans.
The Act of Seclusion declared that they would not appoint his son, William III of Orange, or anybody else to the office of Stadholder, stating that a supreme head of government would be harmful to 'True Liberty'.
The takeover by the regents did not go without protest from the Orangists, but with the economy booming and peace on the Union's borders they had little opportunity to remove the government from office.
Oliver Cromwell, who was Lord Protector of England at that time, insisted on this condition because William II had assisted Charles I (his father-in-law) during the English Civil War.
While supporters of the Dutch Regent favoured diminishing the influence of the House of Orange, by agreeing to the English conditions they intermingled internal and foreign affairs and infuriated the pro-Orange faction.
Because of this, Johan de Witt allied with the defeated English and Sweden, who had an army nearby in Germany, forming the Triple Alliance.
He hoped that a defeat of the Republic would lead to the fall of the republican government so that his nephew, William III of Orange, could take power.
In 1670, after the mediation of Charles' sister Henrietta Anne Stuart, wife of Louis's brother the Duc d'Orléans, France and England signed the secret Treaty of Dover.
Johan de Witt counted on the unpopularity among the English public of a war with a fellow Protestant nation and tried to improve relations with the French.
According to the French ambassador, the Dutch acted from the motto: Gallicus amicus, non vicinus, or "The Frenchman is a good friend, but a bad neighbour".
In February 1672, Johan de Witt finally agreed to appoint William as Captain-General for the duration of a single war campaign.
Lower and middle-class people revolted against the government and demanded the appointment of the Prince along with the punishment of those responsible for the war and the state of the army.
When Johan de Witt visited his brother, the small cavalry security detail present was sent away on the pretext of stopping a group of marauding peasants.
The prison was stormed — according to some contemporary accounts, after Orangist Cornelis Tromp, an enemy of Johan de Witt, had given the sign — by civil militia.
These demands, especially the financial portions, led to a renewed public outrage and the Dutch mood abruptly changed from defeatism to a dogged determination to resist the French.
In 1688, when faced with an English king who again seemed to side with the French, the Dutch mobilised their full resources in order to invade Britain and overthrow the Catholic Stuart Dynasty (the Glorious Revolution)—an event of immense historical importance.
Although a gamble, it was considered worthwhile, since after the Rampjaar, the possibility of a Catholic and French-dominated Britain was regarded as a mortal threat to the Netherlands.
