This memorable defeat, and the death of this great naval hero, added to the injury done to their trade, induced the states-general to seek terms from their too powerful enemy.  The want of peace was felt throughout the whole country.  Cromwell was not averse to grant it; but he insisted on conditions every way disadvantageous and humiliating.  He had revived his chimerical scheme of a total conjunction of government, privileges, and interests between the two republics.  This was firmly rejected by John de Witt, now grand pensionary of Holland, and by the States under his influence.  But the Dutch consented to a defensive league; to punish the survivors of those concerned in the massacre of Amboyna; to pay nine thousand pounds of indemnity for vessels seized in the Sound, five thousand pounds for the affair of Amboyna, and eighty-five thousand pounds to the English East India Company, to cede to them the island of Polerone in the East; to yield the honor of the national flag to the English; and, finally, that neither the young Prince of Orange nor any of his family should ever be invested with the dignity of stadtholder.  These two latter conditions were certainly degrading to Holland; and the conditions of the treaty prove that an absurd point of honor was the only real cause for the short but bloody and ruinous war which plunged the Provinces into overwhelming difficulties.

For several years after the conclusion of this inglorious peace, universal discontent and dissension spread throughout the republic.  The supporters of the House of Orange, and every impartial friend of the national honor, were indignant at the act of exclusion.  Murmurs and revolts broke out in several towns; and all was once more tumult, agitation, and doubt.  No event of considerable importance marks particularly this epoch of domestic trouble.  A new war was at last pronounced inevitable, and was the means of appeasing the distractions of the people, and reconciling by degrees contending parties.  Denmark, the ancient ally of the republic, was threatened with destruction by Charles Gustavus, king of Sweden, who held Copenhagen in blockade.  The interests of Holland were in imminent peril should the Swedes gain the passage of the Sound.  This double motive influenced De Witt; and he persuaded the states-general to send Admiral Opdam with a considerable fleet to the Baltic.  This intrepid successor of the immortal Tromp soon came to blows with a rival worthy to meet him.  Wrangel, the Swedish admiral, with a superior force, defended the passage of the Sound; and the two castles of Cronenberg and Elsenberg supported his fleet with their tremendous fire.  But Opdam resolutely advanced; though suffering extreme anguish from an attack of gout, he had himself carried on deck, where he gave his orders with the most admirable coolness and precision, in the midst of danger and carnage.  The rival monarchs witnessed the battle; the king of Sweden from the castle of Cronenberg, and the king of Denmark