Reinterpreting the Dutch Forty Years War, 1672–1713 by David Onnekink

Author:David Onnekink
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

Foreign Policy Discourses in Formal Published Documents

The autumn of 1688 saw an official trialogue between England, France and the Dutch Republic, reflecting on the complex international relations, mediated through government publications of diplomatic letters and resolutions. The focus was primarily on England and Cologne, rather than the Palatinate. On 9 September 1688, the French ambassador D’Avaux handed over a memorial to the States General, warning them to refrain from interference in English domestic affairs. He suggested that Louis would take it very ill should the Dutch take any hostile actions towards England; ‘the bonds of friendship and the alliance he has with the King of Great Britain, would…oblige him to come to his rescue’. Moreover, an invasion of England would be regarded as an ‘open rupture’ with France and a ‘manifest breach of peace’.10 This memorial was of monumental importance because D’Avaux constructed Louis and James as close allies, raising the spectre of repetition of 1672. D’Avaux also presented a second memorial that same day, in which he threatened the Dutch against intervening in Cologne. Louis vouched that he would ‘maintain’ Fürstenberg ‘against all who would trouble him’.11

The official publications are set in the context of frantic diplomatic negotiations that autumn, in which both England and France presented the Dutch Republic as warmongering. The French minister Croissy told the Dutch ambassador in Paris, Willem van Wassenaar-Sterrenburg ‘that the armament of the State, both at sea as on land, alarmed all their neighbours’ and that the Dutch must have ‘a design on England or on France. That they wanted to start the most cruel and unjust war against the King of England that was ever heard of’. Wassenaar dismissed Croissy’s arguments. It was not the States General that alarmed their neighbours but the King of France ‘who came down the Rhine with his army, and had so many troops along the frontiers of the state, which occupied the bishopric of Cologne’. Was it any wonder, Wassenaar asked, that the Dutch prepared to defend themselves, ‘in order not to find themselves in the same predicament as in the year 1672, which was still fresh in their memory?’12

The English ambassador in The Hague, Ignatius D’Albeville, as well feared a Dutch intervention. However, he believed the threat of the French 9 September memorial was counterproductive. There was no actual alliance between England and France, and the mere suggestion could cause an uproar in Parliament. D’Albeville vehemently countered the notion of an Anglo-French understanding and condemned the threats Louis had made towards the Dutch.13 On 14 September the States General declared to D’Albeville that they had no intention of waging war on ‘the king and his people’.14 On 16 October, the States General acknowledged that they were now convinced there was, after all, no alliance between France and England.15

However, in the official documents that followed that autumn, it was precisely this construction of the conjunction of the Kings of England and France bent on destroying the Dutch liberties and religion that dominated public discourse. The

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