In 1667, France and the Netherlands were allies against England. France was also at war with Spain at the same time, though the Dutch remained neutral in that conflict.

1. In 1667, France and the Netherlands were allies against England. France was also at war
with Spain at the same time, though the Dutch remained neutral in that conflict.
The Dutch had spent most of the previous century at war with Spain. That war had
finally ended in 1648 when the Spanish were reluctantly forced to recognise Dutch
independence. Both France and England had supported the Dutch during that war.
However, the end of the Spanish-Dutch war allowed latent commercial and naval
rivalries between England and the Netherlands, which had been suppressed as long as
they had a common enemy, to come to the surface. In 1652 and again in 1665, England
launched naval wars against Dutch commercial shipping. The first war ended in English
victory, but the second in a humiliating defeat.
France had been at war with Spain, on and off, for two centuries. They had supported the
Dutch Republic as a way of weakening their Spanish rivals. At first France had been the
underdog in this conflict, as the Spanish Habsburgs and their Austrian allies controlled a
vast part of Europe as well as the fabulously rich gold and silver mines of the Americas.
However, by the mid-17th century France had gained the upper hand.
Accordingly, in the 1660s France under its new king Louis XIV was planning another war
with Spain, in order to conquer the Spanish Netherlands. (Modern-day Belgium, which
had been inherited by the Habsburg dynasty a couple of centuries earlier).

2. The French thought that Dutch help would be very valuable in this war, and did their
best to persuade them to help. The Dutch, however, having recently won independence
after 80 years of war, were reluctant to antagonise the Spanish again.
In order to help convince them he would make a valuable ally, Louis XIV joined the
ongoing Anglo-Dutch War by declaring war on England in 1666. French fleets
cooperated with the Dutch in attacking English colonies in the Americas, although the
main burden of the war in Europe was taken by the Dutch navy alone.
The war ended in July 1667, a month after the Dutch raid on the Medway. Charles was
forced to offer some commercial concessions to the Netherlands in the Treaty of Breda,
but otherwise the war ended in a status quo.
Meanwhile, France had launched its attack on the Spanish possessions in Belgium in
May. They didn't have active support from the Dutch, but nor were they opposed by
them at first.
However, the rapid advance of the French armies greatly alarmed the Dutch
government. They began to suspect that their aggressive, expansionist French 'allies'
were going to be far more of a danger to them in future than their impoverished,
weakened Spanish 'enemies'.
In January 1668 the Dutch reversed their diplomatic position by allying with England
against France. (Technically they claimed that the alliance wasn't anti-French at all; but
Louis XIV was not fooled). England's motive was to break up the Franco-Dutch alliance,
in which they were successful. Sweden also joined the alliance in return for a Dutch
subsidy.
The three allies, England, Sweden and the Netherlands, threatened to join the war on
Spain's side unless France halted its conquests. Louis XIV was furious, but unwilling to
fight all those countries at once. In May 1668 he signed a peace treaty with Spain in
which France withdrew again from all but a handful of the lands it had successfully
occupied.
Louis did not forgive the Dutch for what he saw as a gross betrayal after all the help
France had given them in the past. He spent the next few years trying his best to break
up their alliance. As a result of his diplomacy Sweden distanced itself from the
Netherlands. King Charles II of England went further; in return for a £3 million bribe he
agreed to change sides and launch a surprise attack on the Netherlands.
The resulting war began in 1672, as France, England and several minor German states
launched a combined attack on the Netherlands. At first the war went well for the
invaders; but this alarmed the other Powers of Europe.

3. In August 1673 Spain and Austria signed an anti-French alliance with the Dutch
Republic. This completed the diplomatic reversal: the Netherlands was now fighting
alongside its old enemy Spain against its former allies France and England.
The situation did not last, however. Fighting against their old Protestant comrades-in-
arms in the Netherlands was unpopular with public opinion in England. Worse, rumours
flew that part of Charles's secret treaty with France had included a promise to convert to
Catholicism. Parliament therefore forced King Charles to offer peace to the Dutch in
February 1674.
The Dutch were happy to remove one enemy from the list of their opponents, and paid
England a war indemnity and New Amsterdam in return for peace. Three years later the
Dutch head of government, William of Orange, married Mary, niece of King Charles and
the second in line to the English throne. This marriage would have fateful consequences.
Louis XIV fought on alone against the Dutch and an alliance of half of Europe. He won,
confirming France as the new military superpower of Europe. However, the Dutch
escaped lightly from the war: French gains were instead at the expense of Spain.
Nine years later the Stadtholder of the United Provinces became the King of England,
Scotland and Ireland as well; and this cemented an Anglo-Dutch alliance against France
that would last for a century.

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