After a few years, however, seeing the alliance broken off and his enemies otherwise engaged, the King of France assumed a more and more aggressive attitude and encroached so much on the rights of Spain that Charles II was finally compelled to resist his pretensions. Luxemburg was the only town which offered any serious resistance; everywhere else French armies pursued their methods of terrorism, bombarded the towns and ravaged the country. The Truce of Ratisbon, concluded in 1684 for twenty years, added Chimay, Beaumont and Luxemburg to the French spoils.
William III, alarmed by this progress, succeeded in enlisting the support of the Emperor Leopold I, the King of Spain, the King of Sweden and the Duke of Savoy. A new League against France was founded in Augsburg (1686). When, two years later, William succeeded in supplanting James II on the throne of England, this country entered the League and a new conflict became inevitable. Belgium was not directly interested in it, and, as on former occasions, served as the battleground of foreign armies. In spite of the series of victories won by the French general, the Marshal of Luxemburg, at Fleurus (1690), Steenkerque (1692) and Neerwinden (1693), William III always succeeded in reconstituting his army. Two years later, he retook Namur, in spite of Marshal de Villeroi's attack on Brussels, during which the capital was bombarded for two days (August 13th to 15th) with red-hot bullets, over four thousand houses, including those of the Grand' Place, being destroyed by fire. The peace of Ryswyck, September 20, 1697, gave back to Spain the advanced fortresses annexed by the two previous treaties, William being definitely recognized as King of England.
The personal union between the two countries reacted somewhat on British policy in the Netherlands, this country taking a far more important share in the last period of the struggle against Louis XIV. Up till then, England had been content with checking France's encroachments in Flanders and maintaining the balance of power in Europe. The closer relationships with the United Provinces, during the reigns of William and Mary and of Queen Anne, involved England in further responsibilities and even induced her to impose, for a short time, an Anglo-Dutch protectorate on the Belgian provinces. This attitude was made more apparent by Marlborough's personal ambitions concerning the governorship of the Southern provinces, but the failure of these projects and the prompt return to traditional policy, after the treaty of Utrecht, only makes more apparent the general territorial disinterestedness of this country concerning the Netherlands.