passage of the Rhine was considered a very brilliant achievement,
and added much to the military reputation of Louis XIV., though it
appears to have been exclusively the feat of the Prince of Conde. The
cities of Holland fell in such rapid succession into the power of the
French, that scarcely an hour of the day passed in which the king did
not receive the news of some conquest. An officer named Mazel sent an
aid to Marshal Turenne to say,

"If you will be kind enough to send me fifty horsemen, I shall with
them be able to take two or three places."

It was on the 12th of June, 1672, that the passage of the Rhine was
effected. On the 20th the French king made his triumphal entrance into
the city of Utrecht. The king was a Catholic--a bigoted Catholic.
Corrupt as he was in life, regardless as he was in his private conduct
of the precepts of Jesus, he was extremely zealous to invest the
Catholic Church with power and splendor. It was with him a prominent
object to give the Catholic religion the supremacy.

Amsterdam was the capital of the republic. The capture of that city
would complete the conquest. Not only the republic would perish, but
Holland would, as it were, disappear from the earth, her territory
being absorbed in that of France. The consternation in the metropolis
was great. The most noble and wealthy families were preparing for a
rapid flight to the north. Amsterdam was then the most opulent and
influential commercial town in Europe. It contained a population of
two hundred thousand sagacious, energetic, thrifty people. As is
invariably the case in days of disaster, there were discordant
counsels and angry divisions among the bewildered defenders of the
imperiled realm. Some were for fiercely pressing the war, others for
humbly imploring peace.

At length four deputies were sent to the French camp to intercede for
the clemency of the conqueror. They were received with raillery and
insult. After contemptuously compelling the deputation several times
to come and go without any result, the king at last condescended to
present the following as his terms:

He demanded that the States of Holland should surrender to him the
whole of the territory on the left bank of the Rhine; that they
should place in his hands, to be garrisoned by French troops, the most
important forts and fortified towns of the republic; that they should
pay him twenty millions of francs, a sum equal to several times that
amount at the pre