The French armies poured like a torrent into the territories of the republic.  Rivers were passed, towns taken, and provinces overrun with a rapidity much less honorable to France than disgraceful to Holland.  No victory was gained—­no resistance offered; and it is disgusting to look back on the fulsome panegyrics with which courtiers and poets lauded Louis for those facile and inglorious triumphs.  The Prince of Orange had received the command of a nominal army of seventy thousand men; but with this undisciplined and discouraged mass he could attempt nothing.  He prudently retired into the province of Holland, vainly hoping that the numerous fortresses on the frontiers would have offered some resistance to the enemy.  Guelders, Overyssel and Utrecht were already in Louis’s hands.  Groningen and Friesland were threatened.  Holland and Zealand opposed obstruction to such rapid conquest from their natural position; and Amsterdam set a noble example to the remaining towns—­forming a regular and energetic plan of defence, and endeavoring to infuse its spirit into the rest.  The sluices, those desperate sources at once of safety and desolation, were opened; the whole country submerged; and the other provinces following this example, extensive districts of fertility and wealth were given to the sea, for the exclusion of which so many centuries had scarcely sufficed.

The states-general now assembled, and it was decided to supplicate for peace at the hands of the combined monarchs.  The haughty insolence of Louvois, coinciding with the temper of Louis himself, made the latter propose the following conditions as the price of peace:  To take off all duties on commodities exported into Holland; to grant the free exercise of the Romish religion in the United Provinces; to share the churches with the Catholics, and to pay their priests; to yield up all the frontier towns, with several in the heart of the republic; to pay him twenty million livres; to send him every year a solemn embassy, accompanied by a present of a golden medal, as an acknowledgment that they owed him their liberty; and, finally, that they should give entire satisfaction to the king of England.

Charles, on his part, after the most insulting treatment of the ambassadors sent to London, required, among other terms, that the Dutch should give up the honor of the flag without reserve, whole fleets being expected, even on the coasts of Holland, to lower their topsails to the smallest ship under British colors; that the Dutch should pay one million pounds sterling toward the charges of the war, and ten thousand pounds a year for permission to fish in the British seas; that they should share the Indian trade with the English; and that Walcheren and several other islands should be put into the king’s hands as security for the performance of the articles.