Louis had long been willing to make peace with Holland alone; but the States had been withheld, at first by fidelity to those who had joined them in their hour of trouble, and latterly by the firm purpose of William of Orange.

Difficulties were gradually smoothed away, and the Peace of Nimeguen between the United Provinces and France was signed August 11, 1678.

The other powers shortly afterward acceded to it.

The principal sufferer, as was natural, was the overgrown but feeble monarchy whose centre was Spain, which gave up to France Franche Comte and a number of fortified towns in the Spanish Netherlands, thus extending the boundaries of France to the east and northeast.

Holland, for whose destruction Louis began the war, lost not a foot of ground in Europe; and beyond the seas only her colonies on the west coast of Africa and in Guiana.