These people had chosen to become his subjects; and how he treated them was a matter with which no neighbouring state had anything to do.

The magistrates of Amsterdam naturally resented the scornful ingratitude of the potentate whom they had strenuously and unscrupulously served against the general sense of their own countrymen.

Soon followed another provocation which they felt even more keenly.

Lewis began to make war on their trade.

He first put forth an edict prohibiting the importation of herrings into his dominions, Avaux hastened to inform his court that this step had excited great alarm and indignation, that sixty thousand persons in the United Provinces subsisted by the herring fishery, and that some strong measure of retaliation would probably be adopted by the States.