e same
authority; the violence of party-struggles had blinded patriotic
sentiment and was hampering the preparations for defence. Out of
sixty-four thousand troops inscribed on the registers of the Dutch army,
a great number neglected the summons; in the towns, the burgesses rose
up against the magistrates, refusing to allow the faubourgs to be pulled
down, and the peasants threatened to defend the dikes and close the
sluices." When word was sent yesterday to the peasants to come and work
on the Rhine at the redoubts and at piercing the dikes, not a man
presented himself," says a letter of June 28, from John van Witt to his
brother Cornelius; "all is disorder and confusion here." "I hope that,
for the moment, we shall not lack gunpowder," said Beverninck; "but as
for guncarriages there is no help for it; a fortnight hence we shall not
have more than seven." Louvois had conceived the audacious idea of
purchasing in Holland itself the supplies of powder and ball necessary
for the French army and the commercial instincts of the Hollanders had
prevailed over patriotic sentiment. Ruyter was short of munitions in
the contest already commenced against the French and English fleet.
"Out of thirty-two battles I have been in I never saw any like it," said
the Dutch admiral after the battle of Soultbay (Solebay) on the 7th of
June. "Ruyter is admiral, captain, pilot, sailor, and soldier all in
one," exclaimed the English. Cornelius van Witt in the capacity of
commissioner of the Estates had remained seated on the deck of the
admiral's vessel during the fight, indifferent to the bullets that
rained around him. The issue of the battle was indecisive; Count
d'Estrees, at the head of the French flotilla, had taken little part
in the action.

It was not at sea and by the agency of his lieutenants that Louis XIV.
aspired to gain the victory; he had already arrived at the banks of the
Rhine, marching straight into the very heart of Holland. "I thought it
more advantageous for my designs, and less common on the score of glory,"
he wrote to Colbert on the 31st of May, "to attack four places at once on
the Rhine, and to take the actual command in person at all four sieges...
. I chose, for that purpose, Rheinberg, Wesel, Burick, and Orsoy, and I
hope that there will be no complaint of my having deceived public
expectation." The four places did not hold out four days. On the 12th
of June, the king and the Prince of Conde appeared