In the following year a closer union, called the Triple League, was formed, chiefly by the agency of De Witt and Sir William Temple, between these two powers, in conjunction with Sweden. It was intended to restrain the ambition of Louis XIV., which had manifested itself in such encroachments upon the Spanish Netherlands as gave just cause of anxiety to the United Provinces. De Witt saw that a new danger threatened the independence of his country from abroad, and sacrificed to the emergency his own political prepossessions and his jealousy of everything which could restore the House of Orange to power. So great was his earnestness, that he violated a fundamental principle of the Union, by inducing the States General to ratify the treaty at once, instead of referring it, as was prescribed by the constitution, to the acceptance of the several provinces: an act by which, had it proved unpalatable to the nation, the lives of all who were concerned in it were endangered, and which is only to be excused on the plea of necessity, and by the certainty that the measure, which its framers regarded as essential to the welfare of the whole confederacy, would have been frustrated by the influence of France over some or other of its least important members. In 1670 De Witt concluded another treaty with the emperor of Germany and the King of Spain, with the same object of maintaining the power of Spain in the Netherlands, as a barrier against the encroachments of France. All these precautions were rendered vain by the weak and corrupt conduct of the English Court. The ministers were bribed, and the King cajoled by a French mistress, sent over in the train of his sister the Duchess of Orleans, to renounce the Triple League and to declare war against the United Provinces, in 1672, on the most frivolous pretences. At the same time the king of France in person led against them a numerous, well appointed, and well officered army. It is probable that De Witt had relied with confidence on the sincerity of England in promoting the objects of the Triple League, and that though well aware of the disposition of Louis, he had not thought the danger so near at hand. At all events he had made no sufficient preparation to meet it; and the consequences of this omission were most disastrous. The troops of the Provinces, composed in a great measure of new levies, could make no head; the frontier fortresses yielded almost without resistance; the Rhine was passed, an event remarkable only by the flatteries for which it gave a subject to the French poets; and Louis held his court at Utrecht, while his troops advanced within a few miles of Amsterdam. A loud clamour was now raised against De Witt, who was roundly accused of having disbanded the veteran troops of the Republic, dismantled the fortresses, and exhausted the treasury, that his country might fall an easier prey to the French connexion. This calumny, even at the time,