A peace was now formally made by the English Government with Holland, which was quickly followed by an alliance between the two countries so lately at war. Yet, while this alliance was thus sealed by the Government, Charles, King of England, on his own account, and in return for sums of money advanced {93} to him by Louis, made a secret treaty of alliance with the French. Four years later, England and France, as allies, declared war upon Holland. A separate peace was made between England and Holland two years later again; but between France and Holland the war continued for another four years. A temporary peace was then agreed to, but yet again Louis, by further claims, provoked the war anew; and it was while this war was in progress that William of Holland became King of England, in succession to James II., last of the Stuarts. This conjunction naturally brought England and Holland into a really active alliance, and so threw England into war with France. It was a war which at first went badly for the allies, both on sea and land, and England was menaced with invasion by the French--a menace dispelled by the great English naval victory of La Hogue in 1692. [Sidenote: The Peace of Ryswick] On land also the Dutch gained some successes, and in 1697 a general peace, to which Spain was one of the signatories, was made at Ryswick. By a former treaty, some ten years earlier, Spain had given up, as we have seen, part of her Netherlands possessions. That treaty had been broken, as usual, by the aggressive policy of the Grand Monarque, Louis XIV. But by the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, Spain recovered a portion of the Netherlands territory that had been taken from her during the latter course of the war. Nevertheless, only a year later--as we are able to state now, though probably nothing was known of it at the time--a secret pact was made between England, France, and Holland for dividing up the Spanish dominions. The whole story is one of false dealing between nations and of alliances so quickly shifting as to be bewildering, and so guileful as to be offensive to all faith in human nature. But the very idea that there {94} could be good faith between nations, or any other guide for their conduct than the selfish interest of each, never seems to have entered into the minds of the statesmen of that day. They may have been men of honour in their personal dealings, but in their international dealings such terms as honour and honesty were empty words, conveying no meaning. All through this portion of our story Christian Europe was constantly in peril from the Turk on the borders, and often far over the borders, of Austria and Hungary. Never was that menace greater than in 1683 when he was besieging Vienna with a great force. He was defeated by Poles and Germans. Yet at this supreme crisis Louis, the Catholic King of France, was secretly favouring the Moslems!