Louis XIVEverything you need to know about the Sun King (1638–1715).
Adam Frans van der Meulen's painting of Louis XIV crossing the Rhine at Lobith, 12 June 1672
Adam Frans van der Meulen, Louis XIV crossing the Rhine at Lobith, 12 June 1672 (public domain).

The Dutch War, 1672–1678

In June 1672 the greatest army in Europe crossed the Rhine and nearly erased the Dutch Republic in weeks. It took six more years — and a European coalition — to end what the invasion started.

Why Holland?

Louis’s motives, as historians reconstruct them: revenge for the Triple Alliance of 1668 (which had checked his gains in the War of Devolution), the Protestant republic’s commercial rivalry, and the conviction — shared by his ministers — that a short, glorious war would complete the humiliation of Spain’s former allies and secure France’s “natural” frontiers. Louvois promised a campaign; the Dutch were to be, in a minister’s phrase, chastised.

The invasion

On 12 June 1672 the French army crossed the Rhine at Lobith (the Tolhuis) — the celebrated passage painted by van der Meulen, the war’s official artist. City after city fell: Utrecht, much of Holland and Zeeland seemed lost. The Dutch opened the dikes — the waterlinie — flooding the polders and halting the advance on Amsterdam. William of Orange, 21, became stadtholder; the De Witt brothers were lynched by a mob in The Hague (August 1672). France had won the campaign and lost the war’s meaning: all of Europe now saw Louis as the aggressor.

The coalition

Spain, the Emperor, Brandenburg, and eventually England joined the Dutch. What began as a French invasion became a general European war, fought from Sicily to the North Sea. Turenne campaigned brilliantly in the Empire until his death at Sasbach (27 July 1675); Condé won the bloody battle of Seneffe (1674).

Nijmegen

The Treaties of Nijmegen (1678–79) ended it: France kept Franche-Comté and a chain of Flemish towns, and Louis — at forty — stood at the summit of his power. The peace was his apogee: the arbiter of Europe, the Sun King at noon. It was also the moment the bill began to come due — the finances broken, the coalitions formed, the reputation made that would unite Europe against him again in 1688.

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