Action soon proved the reality of the prince’s profession.  He took the field; having first punished with death some of the cowardly commanders of the frontier towns.  He besieged and took Naarden, an important place; and, by a masterly movement, formed a junction with Montecuculi, whom the emperor Leopold had at length sent to his assistance with twenty thousand men.  Groningen repulsed the bishop of Munster, the ally of France, with a loss of twelve thousand men.  The king of Spain (such are the strange fluctuations of political friendship and enmity) sent the count of Monterey, governor of the Belgian provinces, with ten thousand men to support the Dutch army.  The elector of Brandenburg also lent them aid.  The whole face of affairs was changed; and Louis was obliged to abandon all his conquests with more rapidity than he had made them.  Two desperate battles at sea, on the 28th of May and the 4th of June, in which De Ruyter and Prince Rupert again distinguished themselves, only proved the valor of the combatants, leaving victory still doubtful.  England was with one common feeling ashamed of the odious war in which the king and his unworthy ministers had engaged the nation.  Charles was forced to make peace on the conditions proposed by the Dutch.  The honor of the flag was yielded to the English; a regulation of trade was agreed to; all possessions were restored to the same condition as before the war; and the states-general agreed to pay the king eight hundred thousand patacoons, or nearly three hundred thousand pounds.

With these encouraging results from the Prince of Orange’s influence and example, Holland persevered in the contest with France.  He, in the first place, made head, during a winter campaign in Holland, against Marshal Luxemburg, who had succeeded Turenne in the Low Countries, the latter being obliged to march against the imperialists in Westphalia.  He next advanced to oppose the great Conde, who occupied Brabant with an army of forty-five thousand men.  After much manoeuvring, in which the Prince of Orange displayed consummate talent, he on only one occasion exposed a part of his army to a disadvantageous contest.  Conde seized on the error; and of his own accord gave the battle to which his young opponent could not succeed in forcing him.  The battle of Senef is remarkable not merely for the fury with which it was fought, or for its leaving victory undecided, but as being the last combat of one commander and the first of the other.  “The Prince of Orange,” said the veteran Conde (who had that day exposed his person more than on any previous occasion), “has acted in everything like an old captain, except venturing his life too like a young soldier.”