Still, war was not yet declared; the King, while making preparations, under the powers granted him, for shipping over 10,000 men from England and Ireland to Holland, declared, at the same time that it was unfair to charge him with a desire for war. No doubt he did not wish exactly for war, but for the acceptance of his conditions.

As affairs actually stood between France and the maritime powers a peaceful settlement might perhaps have still been come to: the French offered to still the anxieties of Holland by allowing the Spanish Netherlands to be given to Lorraine, and then indemnifying Spain with Roussillon; they were now willing to let England take part in the negotiations, with the sole condition that they should be carried on in Paris. William acceded to neither proposal; he remarked that there was no security to be gained by establishing in the Netherlands a weak Prince, dependent on France: he also thought the transfer of the negotiations not an honourable proposal; he insisted that they should still go on at the Hague; and at the same time he likewise demanded the entrance of the Imperial ambassador into the deliberations.

He himself had still no kind of understanding with the Emperor. The court of Vienna was much rather set against him, in consequence of his declining to renew the old alliance, and of his continuing to negotiate with France; for this they thought would lead in the end (just as before Nimuegen and Ryswick) to an agreement between the two powers to which the Emperor would then be forced to accede.