Before giving up Franche-Comte, the king issued orders for demolishing the fortifications of Dole and Gray; he at the same time commissioned Vauban to fortify Ath, Lille, and Tournay.

The Triple Alliance was triumphant, the Hollanders at the head.
"I cannot tell your Excellency all that these beer-brewers write to our traders," said a letter to M.de Lionne from one of his correspondents; "as there is just now nothing further to hope for, in respect of they Low Countries, I vent all my feelings upon the Hollanders, whom I hold at this day to be our most formidable enemies, and I exhort your Excellency, as well for your own reputation as for the public satisfaction, to omit from your policy nothing that may tend to the discovery of means to abase this great power, which exalts itself too much." Louis XIV.

held the same views as M.de Lionne's correspondent, not merely from resentment against the Hollanders, who had stopped him in his career of success, but because he quite saw that the key to the barrier between the Catholic Low Countries and himself remained in the hands of the United Provinces.

He had relied upon his traditional influence in the Estates as well as on the influence of John van Witt; but the latter's position had been shaken.

"I learn from a good quarter that there are great cabals forming against the authority of M.de Witt, and for the purpose of ousting him from it," writel M.de Lionne on the 30th of March, 1668; Louis XIV.