[Sidenote: The Dutch fleet burn ships at Chatham, threaten London, and proceed to Portsmouth.] Renewed efforts were then made to procure peace. Charles, however, procrastinated until he had obtained a fresh and liberal vote of money from Parliament; and when, at length, negotiations were opened at Breda, claimed satisfaction for losses sustained before the treaty of 1662. The Dutch, believing the King to be trifling, and finding that he had not taken precaution to maintain his fleet upon a war footing, despatched De Ruyter to the Thames to force the English to come to terms. The Londoners were greatly alarmed. A strong chain was thrown across the Medway, but the Dutch, with an easterly wind and a strong tide, broke through it, destroyed the fortifications of Sheerness, burnt three large merchant ships, the _Matthias_, the _Unity_, and the _Charles V._, which had been taken from them during the present war, and carried away with them the hull of the _Royal Charles_, besides burning and damaging several others. After this they pushed up the Medway as far as Upnor Castle, near Chatham, and burnt the _Royal Oak_, the _Royal London_, and the _Great James_ before the eyes of the Dukes of York and Albemarle, who had just arrived with some troops. Fearing that the Dutch fleet would sail up to London Bridge, the English sunk thirteen ships at Woolwich, and four at Blackwall, and raised various platforms furnished with artillery to defend the approaches to the city. After committing all the damage he could in the Thames, De Ruyter sailed for Portsmouth with a design to burn the ships in the harbour, but, finding them secured, passed on down Channel and captured several vessels in Torbay. Thence proceeding eastwards, he routed the English off Harwich, and chased a squadron of nineteen men-of-war under Sir Edward Spragge, who was forced to retire into the Thames, thus keeping the English coasts in continual alarm until the Treaty of Peace was signed in the following July.[186] [Sidenote: Peace concluded.] By the Treaty of Breda each nation retained the goods and moveables they had respectively captured; and, by the nineteenth article, all ships of war as well as merchant vessels belonging to the United Provinces, meeting on British waters any of her ships of war, were required “to strike the flag and lower the sail as had been formerly practised.” Thus terminated this bitter and bloody struggle. If England suffered much, Holland, with a larger capital but fewer permanent resources, suffered still more severely. [Sidenote: Its effects.]