which, he says, he knows to have been very affectionately looked upon by Henry the Great and he desires that, if their High Mightinesses looked upon his ancestor as a father, they should love him from this moment as a son, taking him for their best friend and principal ally.”  A secret negotiation was at the same time going on between John van Witt and Count d’Estrades, French ambassador in Holland, for the formation and protection of a Catholic republic in the Low Countries, according to Richelieu’s old plan, or for partition between France and the United Provinces.  John van Witt was anxious to act; but Louis XIV. seemed to be keeping himself hedged, in view of the King of Spain’s death, feeling it impossible, he said, with propriety and honor, to go contrary to the faith of the treaties which united him to his father-in-law.  “That which can be kept secret for some time cannot be forever, nor be concealed from posterity,” he said to Count d’Estrades, in a private letter:  “any how, there are certain things which are good to do and bad to commit to writing.”  An understanding was come to without any writing.  Louis XIV. well understood the noble heart and great mind with which he had to deal, when he wrote to Count d’Estrades, April 20, 1663, “It is clear that God caused M. de Witt to be born [in 1632] for great things, seeing that, at his age, he has already for many years deservedly been the most considerable person in his state; and I believe, too, that my having obtained so good a friend in him was not a simple result of chance, but of Divine Providence, who is thus early arranging the instruments of which He is pleased to make use for the glory of this crown, and for the advantage of the United Provinces.  The only complaint I make of him is, that, having so much esteem and affection as I have for his person, he will not be kind enough to let me have the means of giving him some substantial tokens of it, which I would do with very great joy.”  Louis XIV. was not accustomed to meet, at foreign courts, with the high-spirited disinterestedness of the burgess-patrician, who, since the age of five and twenty, had been governing the United Provinces.

Thus, then, it was a case of strict partnership between France and Holland, and Louis XIV. had remained faithful to the policy of Henry IV. and Richelieu when Philip IV. died, on the 17th of September, 1665.  Almost at the same time the dissension between England and Holland, after a period of tacit hostility, broke out into action.  The United Provinces claimed the aid of France.

Close ties at that time united France and England.  Monsieur, the king’s only brother, had married Henrietta of England, sister of Charles II.  The King of England, poor and debauched, had scarcely been restored to the throne when he sold Dunkerque to France for five millions of livres, to the great scandal of Cromwell’s old friends, who had but lately helped Turenne to wrest it from the Spaniards.