peace by arguing that the emperor, not France, was really to be feared. These attempts to detach William from the house of Habsburg continued on the part of both the English and French governments through 1675 and 1676, and had the effect of making the war languish in the campaigns of those years.
In the earlier part of 1675 William was attacked by the small-pox (see his letter to Waldeck, announcing his recovery, ap. Müller, ii. 247; and the medal with the inscription ‘God saves the Prince of Orange,’ in Histoire Numismatique, ii. 192). This was the occasion on which William Bentinck (afterwards first Earl of Portland) [q. v.] endeared himself to the prince for life by his devotion (see Macaulay, ch. vii.; the story is told rather differently in M'Cormick's Life of Carstares, p. 64). William was able to take part in the unimportant campaign of 1675. Before taking the field in 1676 he sounded Temple on the question of his marriage with the Princess Mary, the elder daughter of James, Duke of York [see James II, King of England]. Marriage had been pressed upon him by the states of the provinces when they had made the stadholderate hereditary; and to an English marriage personal, as well as political, reasons inclined him. Temple having satisfied him both as to the personality of the princess and as to the stability of her uncle's throne, he determined on proceeding with his suit (Temple, Memoirs, p. 415). The campaign of 1676, in which he received a musket-shot in the arm at the siege of Maestricht, was not successful; he was unable to relieve either Valenciennes or Cambray, and in vain offered battle to Louis, who was again figuring at the head of his army (Burnet, ii. 114). In April 1677 he marched to the relief of St. Omer, but was defeated (11 April) by the Duke of Orleans at Montcassel, notwithstanding a display of great personal bravery; and his attempt on Charleroi (July) was likewise unsuccessful.
In the middle of October 1677, encouraged by Danby's assurances conveyed through Temple, he embarked for England on his marriage suit. Notwithstanding the efforts of Charles II, who in the course of the summer had sent Laurence Hyde [q. v.] to the Hague to urge his views, the prince arrived in England politically unpledged [as to the transactions which ensued see MARY II]. The marriage was solemnised on 4 Nov.; in the negotiations concerning the peace which were carried on during William's visit, he held his own against the designs of Charles. The conditions agreed upon between them for a general peace (Temple, pp. 455–6) were, however, rejected at Versailles, and the treaty of January 1678 based on them remained a dead letter owing partly to the false play of Charles II, but chiefly to the successes of the French arms in Flanders in the spring of 1678, to the revival of the French republican party in Holland, its suspicions of dynastic designs, and to the intrigues of Louis with the whig opposition in England. Thus, when William had reached the Hague with his wife (December), serious disappointments awaited him. A treaty for the transfer of the English troops in the French to the Dutch service (July) proved of no avail, and three days before his sanguinary battle with Luxemburg (13 Aug.) the peace of Nimeguen was concluded. Having withdrawn to his hunting-seat Dieren, he treated the situation as one in which he could no longer interfere (Temple, u.s. p. 472). As a matter of fact this peace secured his primary object, the integrity of the territories of the united provinces; while the losses of Spain and the empire justified his policy, and marked him out as the leader of a future alliance against the aggressive policy of France.
After the peace of Nimeguen William continued to watch very closely the progress of English politics, chiefly through the medium of Henry Sidney [q. v.], ambassador at the Hague from 1679, and to oppose the intrigues of the French ambassador d'Avaux with the republican party. He gave a cordial reception at the Hague to the Duke of York, and treated Monmouth with discreet kindness (Sidney, Diary and Correspondence, i. 55); but his utterances as to the proposed exclusion of the former from the throne were not altogether consistent with one another (ib. i. 143, ii. 120). At the time of the crisis (1680) he offered to come to England, doubtless with a view to the suggested compromise of creating him ‘protector’ or ‘regent’ on the nominal succession of his father-in-law as king (ib. ii. 177; cf. Burnet, ii. 276, and Macaulay). Some of his well-wishers thought that he should have come sooner; when he actually arrived in England, in July 1681, the situation had completely changed [see James II]. Sidney, who had been recently superseded at the Hague by Skelton, to the dissatisfaction of William and the states and others, had urged the visit against the prince's better judgment. He was generally supposed to be anxious to engage Charles against the French in the defence of the Spanish Netherlands (Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 112); and he certainly about this time made no secret of his apprehensions of
