avert it, but the hatred of Charles and Louis prevented any
concession being accepted as final. An English royal yacht was ordered
to pass through the Dutch ships-of-war in the Channel, and to fire on
them if they did not strike their flags. In January, 1672, England
sent an ultimatum, summoning Holland to acknowledge the right of the
English crown to the sovereignty of the British seas, and to order its
fleets to lower their flags to the smallest English man-of-war; and
demands such as these received the support of a French king. The Dutch
continued to yield, but seeing at length that all concessions were
useless, they in February ordered into commission seventy-five
ships-of-the-line, besides smaller vessels. On the 23d of March the
English, without declaration of war, attacked a fleet of Dutch
merchantmen; and on the 29th the king declared war. This was followed,
April 6th, by the declaration of Louis XIV.; and on the 28th of the
same month he set out to take command in person of his army.

The war which now began, including the third and last of the great
contests between the English and Dutch upon the ocean, was not, like
those before it, purely a sea war; and it will be necessary to mention
its leading outlines on the land also, not only in order to clearness
of impression, but also to bring out the desperate straits to which
the republic was reduced, and the final deliverance through its sea
power in the hands of the great seaman De Ruyter.

The naval war differs from those that preceded it in more than one
respect; but its most distinctive feature is that the Dutch, except on
one occasion at the very beginning, did not send out their fleet to
meet the enemy, but made what may properly be called a strategic use
of their dangerous coast and shoals, upon which were based their sea
operations. To this course they were forced by the desperate odds
under which they were fighting; but they did not use their shoals as a
mere shelter,--the warfare they waged was the defensive-offensive.
When the wind was fair for the allies to attack, Ruyter kept under
cover of his islands, or at least on ground where the enemy dared not
follow; but when the wind served so that he might attack in his own
way, he turned and fell upon them. There are also apparent indications
of tactical combinations, on his part, of a higher order than have
yet been met; though it is possible that the particular acts referred
to, consisting in partial at