influence was felt by the whole of Europe, and the pressure
of whose material power Holland had been made to feel in
that marvellous campaign on the Rhine, which, in the space
of three months, had laid the power of the United Provinces
prostrate.

Louis XIV. had long been the enemy of the Dutch, who
insulted or ridiculed him to their hearts' content, although
it must be said that they generally used French refugees for
the mouthpiece of their spite. Their national pride held him
up as the Mithridates of the Republic. The brothers De Witt,
therefore, had to strive against a double difficulty, --
against the force of national antipathy, and, besides,
against the feeling of weariness which is natural to all
vanquished people, when they hope that a new chief will be
able to save them from ruin and shame.

This new chief, quite ready to appear on the political
stage, and to measure himself against Louis XIV., however
gigantic the fortunes of the Grand Monarch loomed in the
future, was William, Prince of Orange, son of William II.,
and grandson, by his mother Henrietta Stuart, of Charles I.
of England. We have mentioned him before as the person by
whom the people expected to see the office of Stadtholder
restored.

This young man was, in 1672, twenty-two years of age. John
de Witt, who was his tutor, had brought him up with the view
of making him a good citizen. Loving his country better than
he did his disciple, the master had, by the Perpetual Edict,