peace without sacrificing the republican ascendency. By those acts it was declared that the same person could not be at once stadtholder and captain and admiral general, and it was provided that the young prince should be intrusted with the command of the army at the age of twenty-two. By this division of the civil and military powers de Witt thought he had secured the republic against a renewal of the _coup d’état_, and guaranteed the political ascendency of Holland. Yet, so jealous was he of the prince and his party, that even then he did not dare to strengthen the army. While Louis was forming vast magazines, and massing thousands of men on the frontier, the Dutch fortresses were being allowed to perish and the Dutch army was being deliberately starved in men and munitions lest the republican supremacy should be endangered. The state was being sacrificed to the government. [Sidenote: =Popular movement in favour of William III.=] Retribution was not long in coming. Directly the thunder cloud burst, and the French armies were in full march on Amsterdam, the nation awoke to the fact that it had been betrayed. William was at once declared captain general. A reaction set in, wild and unreasoning as such popular movements usually are. A scapegoat was required. The popular vengeance demanded a victim. The faithful and glorious service of twenty years was forgotten, and a blunder magnified into treachery. For the moment the selfish burgher governors of Holland trembled under the terror of a popular outbreak. They were relieved to find the fury of the populace directed against de Witt alone. On June 21st 1673, John de Witt was attacked by ruffians in the streets of the Hague, who fled for refuge to William’s camp leaving their victim half dead. In August his brother Cornelius was arrested and put to the torture. [Sidenote: =Murder of de Witt, 1673.=] On the 20th John de Witt was induced to visit his brother in the prison. They were caught like rats in a trap. An infuriated mob surrounded the prison, broke open the gates, dragged the victims forth, and beat their brains out, while the Calvinistic clergy hounded them on to their butcher’s work. William himself, cruel, callous, and calculating in 1673, as he afterwards showed himself to be in 1692, took care to know nothing and to do nothing which could stop the impending outrage. As in the massacre of Glencoe, he looked the other way at the time and tried to screen the perpetrators from justice afterwards. An accessory before the fact, and an accessory after the fact, all that his apologists can say for him is that his ambition necessitated the sacrifice of his humanity. CHAPTER XI LOUIS XIV. AND WILLIAM III. 1672–1698