[1] In the 1667–1668 War of Devolution, France captured parts of the Spanish Netherlands and the entire Franche-Comté but was forced to relinquish the bulk of these gains in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668) with the Triple Alliance of the Dutch Republic, England and Sweden.

Before making another attempt to gain territory in the north, Louis XIV strengthened his diplomatic position by paying Sweden to remain neutral, while England agreed an alliance against the Dutch in the 1670 Secret Treaty of Dover.

[1] When the French invaded the Dutch Republic in May 1672, they initially seemed to have achieved an overwhelming victory, capturing the major fortresses of Nijmegen and Fort Crèvecœur near 's-Hertogenbosch and occupying Utrecht without a fight.

However, by late July, the Dutch position stabilised behind the Holland Water Line and concern at French gains brought them support from Brandenburg-Prussia, Emperor Leopold and Charles II of Spain.

[2] Maastricht is located on the extreme eastern edge of the Flanders region, a compact area 160 kilometres wide, the highest point only 100 metres above sea level, and dominated by canals and rivers.

Louis wanted to capture the fortress first,[7] but on advice of Turenne bypassed the main defences and only with ten thousand men occupied the satellites of Tongeren, Maaseik, and Valkenburg.

[11] While Louis assembled his forces around Kortrijk, another French army was concentrated in the west for a feint attack against Bruges, to prevent Spanish troops from further reinforcing Maastricht.

The King first moved east against Brussels, the seat of their governor Juan Domingo de Zuñiga y Fonseca, but continued his advance, reaching Maastricht over Sint-Truiden.

The King regularly visited the trenches, exposing himself to enemy fire and was closely followed by painters and poets who had to immortalise his exploits for posterity,[14] as well as the court historian Paul Pellisson.

The transverse parallels allowed a much larger number of troops to participate simultaneously in an assault to overwhelm the defenders, while avoiding choking points that often had led to costly failures.

[18] Vauban was unusually sympathetic to the impact of war on the poor, on one occasion requesting compensation be paid a man with eight children whose land was taken to build one of his forts.

[22] While Charles was anxious to ensure Louis felt he was getting value for money, there were considerable doubts as to the brigade's reliability if asked to fight the Protestant Dutch on behalf of the Catholic French.

[16] The following day, after the completion of the bridges during the night, he was joined by his brother Philippe I, Duke of Orléans and camped at Wolder,[16] a village to the southwest of the city, in an enormous tent able to accommodate four hundred courtiers.

The north of the fortress was protected by a deep and wide moat, directly connected to the river Maas, while the south was covered by the Jeker rivulet, which would flood trenches.

[25] On 16 June, gun batteries were positioned, two in front of the Tongeren Gate and one on the north slope of the St Pietersberg which offers an ideal vantage point over the fortress.

The French gun batteries smashed the palisades, silenced the Dutch cannon on the Tongerse Kat, and created small breaches in the main wall.

[16] In the city a rumour circulated that Louis was in haste to end the siege in order to celebrate mass in its St Janskerk on the nativity of Saint John the Baptist, 24 June.

The Duke of Monmouth commanded that on the left, which included some fifty English volunteers and a company of Mousquetaires du roi under Captain-Lieutenant D'Artagnan, directed against the hornwork.

[28] Louis had tried to dissuade Monmouth from participating, fearing that his death might deteriorate relations with England, but ultimately the king felt obliged to give his permission though providing him with a bulletproof armour, which indeed might have saved his life.

[29] Vauban had ordered that the secondary attacks had to be only feints, but to his disgust Monmouth attempted to scale the hornwork and was beaten off with heavy losses, over a hundred casualties.

At the first contre-escarpe, an artificial escarpment offering the defenders a forward covered transverse communication line, and the Groene Halve Maen, the French too suffered many losses, especially among their officers.

He wrote to François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois, the French minister of war, that if the Dutch managed to recapture the lunette for a third time, it was a distinct possibility that the siege would have to be lifted.

The batteries on the north slope of the Sint Pietersberg concentrated their fire on the southwest corner of the city wall which collapsed into the moat behind the Groene Halve Maan.

They reminded him that during the Siege of Maastricht of 1579, on the 29th of June the Spanish troops of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma began to sack the city, in three days murdering a thousand of its inhabitants.

Immediately after the surrender two French regiments occupied the Duitse Poort in the east Wijck suburb and, in the west, the Brussels Gate through which Louis would make his triumphal entry.

[34] William III had feared that 's-Hertogenbosch or Breda would be the next French target and had assembled an allied States-Spanish army of thirty thousand at Geertruidenberg to relieve any of these cities.

The emperor moved his army into the Rhineland and Louis in response withdrew most of his troops from the Holland Water Line, dangerously weakening his hold on Utrecht and Gelderland.

[35] Shortly after the fall of Maastricht, the Dutch agreed the August 1673 Treaty of The Hague with Emperor Leopold and Spain,[36] joined in October by Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine,[37] creating the Quadruple Alliance.

[43] After much controversy among historians, the present consensus is that this model was discarded relatively early and is not identical to the extant Maastricht maquette in the Paris Musée de l'Armée which shows the situation in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Louis had the Porte Saint-Denis redesigned to commemorate this siege also, a plaque dedicating it LUDOVICO MAGNO, QUOD TRAJECTUM AD MOSAM - XIII.