The Battles of Schooneveld were two naval battles of the Franco-Dutch War, fought off the coast of the Netherlands on 7 June and 14 June 1673 (New Style; 28 May and 4 June in the Julian calendar then in use in England) between an allied Anglo-French fleet commanded by Prince Rupert of the Rhine on his flagship the Royal Charles, and the fleet of the United Provinces, commanded by Michiel de Ruyter. The Dutch victories in the two battles, and at the Battle of the Texel that followed in August, saved their country from an Anglo-French invasion. Background The Franco-Dutch War of 1672–1678 resulted from the attempts of Louis XIV of France to annex the Spanish Netherlands. In 1672, troops from France, Münster and Cologne invaded the Netherlands by land, while England's navy attacked Dutch shipping and threatened a seaborne invasion. The conflict between England and the Republic is commonly called the Third Anglo-Dutch War. The years 1672-1673 were particularly desperate for the Dutch, with the French stopped only by Holland Water Line, a deliberate flooding of large parts of the countryside, and the withdrawing of guns and men from the fleet to augment the army of William III of Orange, now Admiral-General of the fleet. A surprise attack by De Ruyter in June 1672, resulting in the Battle of Solebay, had however prevented the allies from establishing naval superiority on the North Sea, keeping open the sea lanes so vital to Dutch trade. When the French invaded, the Orangist party took power, falsely accusing the former leading politician Johan de Witt and his personal friend Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter of plotting to betray the Republic to the French. The Orangists themselves were in fact subsidised by the English. Both England and France hoped to create a Dutch puppet state, using the enormous Dutch mercantile assets to gain world trade dominance, each expecting that any moment the Dutch might surrender to one of them, but fearing not being the one chosen. Therefore, during the battles, mutual suspicion between the French and the English was considerable. This reflected political divisions within the Dutch fleet. De Ruyter was seen as pro-French, while Lieutenant-Admiral Cornelis Tromp, readmitted to the Dutch fleet early in 1673, was a, traditionally pro-English, Orangist. William had asked De Ruyter to purify the fleet from supporters of the old States regime, but the admiral refused. De Ruyter accused Tromp