To be honest, Hieronius van Beverninghe has been in a good mood recently, for no reason. The French army invaded the Union Province has basically retreated into the Southern Netherlands and parts of Germany. Although the enclave Maastricht is still under the control of the French, most of the seven provinces, one common, and one region have been restored, and the reputation of Prince William III of Orange is now at its peak.

The French had tried to attack Amsterdam for the last time before evacuating. They had soldiers nailed small iron hooks on thick soles, and then attacked Leiden and The Hague from the ice, aiming directly at Amsterdam, and finally gave up because the weather was not cold enough, the ice and snow blew, and the ground was muddy.

Of course, even in the cold winter, the French's offensive would not be possible, because William's army is no longer as pitiful as it was at the beginning. He has mobilized more than 80,000 Dutch Army. Even if he deducted 15,000 people from the defense of Amsterdam, he still had more than 65,000 people to fight the French on the front, including many mercenaries with strong combat capabilities.

In addition, the French were attacked everywhere, and the southern border of Lucirong was attacked by the Spanish army. The eastern border needed to fight against the Germans, and the north had to face the Dutch army and a large number of mercenaries from various countries. In addition, some important local coastal cities also had to divide their troops to defend. Although the French army has always been proud and looked down on the Dutch's combat effectiveness, they could not be at all unprepared for the possible landing operations of the other party, and it was necessary to divide the troops to defend.

After such a variety of distribution, the French were not able to directly use the troops to fight against the Dutch, probably 45,000 people led by Prince Conde, at most, plus a partial division of 20,000 to 30,000 people led by Duke Butwell, Duke of Luxembourg, but he had to be stationed in Germany to guard against the attacks of the Holy Roman Empire army. There was no way, the Dutch had a lot of money and won too many German princes. Even the French's original allies, Münster and Cologne, had shrunk and signed a peace agreement with the Dutch. At present, the French army was under great pressure.

Therefore, after repeated discussions with his ministers, King Louis XIV of France finally had to order the main force of the army to give up the war now everywhere. Because Louis XIV ordered the promotion of Catholicism and imposed heavy taxes, the Dutch rose up to resist, which greatly restrained the French's military strength and had no interests at all, and instead focused on the unlucky Spaniards, such as Louis XIV led his army to personally conquer Francheconte, Lorraine and other places, Viscount Tirena was in Alsace, and Butwell fought with the Shenluo coalition forces in Germany.

The Spanish, who were rashly involved in the war, became the most miserable one again, so the pressure on the Dutch is greatly reduced now. They only need to face the 40,000 to 50,000 men of Prince Conde, and the Austrian Marshal and Italian Montecukoli brought nearly 30,000 troops. This combined is close to 100,000 troops. Perhaps it will be defeated by the more than 40,000 people of the Great Conde, but if the fortress is focused on defending based on the terrain, the problem should not be great. After all, the Dutch army, which has been strictly rectified, is no longer as collapsed as it was two or three years ago, not to mention that there are many mercenaries with rich war experience in assisting in the war.

Of course, the French army was not a good deal. When they evacuated the southern provinces of the United Provinces, they also plundered the local area in a very fierce manner. Almost all cities were forced to hand over an astonishing amount of city redemption expenses. In the Utrecht alone, the combined offerings of each town exceeded 1.668,000 rupiahs, which was very amazing.

In addition, each captured United Province soldier was also priced at one silver ration by the French, which was also an astonishing fee. In short, the French took advantage of the panic of the Dutch residents in the southern provinces and blackmailed about seven or eight million rupiahs in cash, equivalent to more than 2.5 million yuan of silver dollars on the east coast, which is also amazing.

Since the French army gradually withdrew from Utrecht, Gelderland, Limburg-Brabant and other places, the Dutch army under the command of Prince William of Orange naturally went south and advanced eastward, and recovered these territories one by one. This not only brought William the supreme honor, but also shocked the morale of the Dutch military and civilians. Although we did not fight the French, we used them to be a victory, which was also a victory, right?

In this way, since mid-last year, the Dutch army, with a number of more than 65,000 people, confronted the French army in the Mez River. At the same time, the French army led by Prince Conde, with a number of about 45,000 people, suppressed the resistance of the residents of the South Netherlands and the attacks of the remaining Spanish troops. While confronting the army in Orange, they also had to guard against the 20,000 Austrian soldiers in Montecukoli who were advancing from the flank, and the pressure was still quite large.

Therefore, Prince Orange, who was already a little inflated, even had the idea of ​​counterattacking France and began to frequently order the generals on the front line to mobilize troops, stockpile food and grass, and actively contact Montecucoli, so that he could lead his army to quickly approach France.

Who was Prince Conde? Naturally, he soon discovered the intentions of the Dutch, so he planned to take the initiative to attack the Dutch and Austrian troops and dispel their intention of counterattacking the French mainland. Therefore, he launched the Battle of Senafu near Mons, and 4.5 people actively attacked the Dutch and Austrian coalition forces with a total of 90,000.

Both sides showed great courage in this battle. Prince Conde led the way and led the French army to charge in a disadvantaged situation, and replaced three war horses. Prince Orange and Montecucoli also persisted until the end, withstood the fierce offensive of the French at the cost of 30,000 casualties, and successfully caused nearly 10,000 French officers and soldiers to be killed and injured. In the end, both sides were unable to continue fighting and retreated.

After this battle, the two sides fought several small-scale battles one after another, but unfortunately there were no major gains, and the front line stabilized. The Dutch recovered the ruined and messy country, but the attempt to counterattack France was shattered, and the attempt to help allies recover the South Dutch was also blocked by Prince Conde, and he was basically in a stalemate now.

This state was a bit bad for the Spanish, but it was not unacceptable to the Dutch, because to be honest, they had successfully escaped from the center of the war storm. Hironimus Van Bevrenhe, who had always been very concerned about the war situation in the Old Continent on the East Coast, was very happy after learning about this situation through diplomatic letters. Although he was a republican, everything Prince Orange did is for the benefit of the United Provinces. Van Bevrenhe was also patriotic, and he admired William III in this matter, so he was also very concerned when he issued a document asking him to negotiate with the East Coast people about the status of the Cape Town colony.

Prince Orange's instructions to Van Beverninghe was to try to leave the Cape Town colony, even if the East Coast people asked for huge ransoms, this is a priority; and if the East Coast people insisted on not agreeing to return, then they would settle for the second best, and asked the East Coast people to hand over the city of Cape Town Port to the Dutch as a supply and maintenance base for the East Indian Company ships. In addition, the weapons, military funds and even some daily necessities that were detained by the East Coast people during the war should also urge the East Coast people to ship the goods as soon as possible, because the above Dutch people had already paid part of the deposit, and the East Coast people had to talk about commercial reputation. Of course, at this time, Prince Orange might have chosen to forget that when he decided to tear down the woolen trade with the East Coast people, he seemed to have no concern about the commercial reputation of the United Provinces.

The above clause is basically the bottom line of negotiations issued by Amsterdam to Van Bevrenhe. Van Bevrenhe has lived on the East Coast for many years and knows that it is not easy to achieve this goal, because he has truly studied the national policy of the East Coast Republic of China in depth, and is very clear about their goal of controlling South Africa and dominating the two oceans (guide to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans). At that time, they tried every means to drive away the British and French people, and now they have occupied Dutch South Africa. No matter how stupid people are, they can see what they are constantly struggling in South Africa!

In this case, Amsterdam also issued a letter asking Van Bevernenhe to try his best to talk about Cape Town. To be honest, he was not sure, and from the bottom of his heart, he actually only had one direction of effort, that is, to have a good talk with the East Coast people to see if they can redeem Cape Town, and at least let Union Province have a foothold in South Africa. This is very important for the Dutch East India Company, which is increasingly important for the Dutch East India Company, which is increasingly important for Union Province. It is estimated that they will not refuse any amount of money they pay.

"After all, our influence is too weak, and the geographical location of the East Coast people is too good." Sitting in the conference room where Spanish Ambassador Baron Sebastian once sat, Van Beverninghe couldn't help but sigh softly: "In fact, the East Coast people are not without a handle. At least, the United Province's invincible navy is also very advantageous in the Mediterranean. If the East Coast people want to do business safely in the local area, they cannot ignore us. Especially now that the British withdraw from the war and the power to restrain us has greatly reduced, we can free up more ships to invest in the Mediterranean and the North Sea. No matter who the East Coast people go to do business, they can be intercepted by our warships. Of course, these are just the worst cases and should not be able to reach this point, otherwise everyone's losses will be extremely tragic."

In Van Beverninghe's understanding, once the trade of the East Coast people is cut off by the Dutch Navy, there will be big problems in the country immediately, which will lead them to take extremely fierce measures to protect their interests, such as war, more accurately, maritime war.

Once a maritime war broke out between the two countries, the famous Dutch navy naturally had an overwhelming advantage. But they also had a great headache for the East Coast Navy, which had equipped with steam power systems. Once these East Coast people did not engage in large-scale head-on decisive battles with them, it would be like the previous British-Dutch wars, with tens of thousands of sailors and hundreds of warships on both sides sending elite fleets to attack the merchant ships of the United Provinces. A small fleet would be a big problem. Conservatively estimated that more than a thousand merchant ships and fishing boats might be lost, which was almost close to the loss of the first British-Dutch war, which was unacceptable to them.

Thinking of this section, Van Beverninghe sighed even more. The English had made great breakthroughs in the production and application of steam engines, but the United Provinces could only build the earliest bulky and bloated steam engines in the UK, and they were only suitable for use in swamp drainage. They were not stable and had problems every once in a while, which made people feel very troubled. It can be said that if it were not for the British's example, the Dutch really didn't plan to develop a "thankful" machine like a steam engine. Wouldn't it be good to use traditional industrial windmills?

Of course, the above is purely complaints. Whether it is Van Beverninghe who witnessed the power of steam engines on the East Coast, or those with insight in the Netherlands, they all understand the extreme importance of steam engines. Not to mention anything else, the Dutch captains supported by private sea coachmen are envious of the propeller propellers of the East Coast people and have wanted to import them for many years, but the East Coast people never sell them, but secretly make some scraps, and find that they can't copy them at all, which is really a headache.

Van Beverninghe even felt that while the relations between England and United Provinces were greatly relaxed, it would be better to spend money to introduce technology from the UK. At least, the steam engines created by the British were much better than those created by the Dutch under the same effect, both cost, size and reliability!

The steam engines produced by the British can be used stably in farmland, docks, coal mines, docks and iron ore (used to promote sledgehammers to crush ore). They are more and more widely used, have increasingly large functions, and have more advanced technology. Although they are currently unable to make the size and weight of the steam engine the same size as those of the East Coast people so that they can be loaded on ships, and in addition, they know nothing about the design and sealing of propeller propulsion systems, they are really much stronger than those of the United Provinces, France, Portugal, Sweden, Germany and other countries and regions that have introduced steam engine technology, and are very worthy of learning from the Dutch.
Chapter completed!