the peace which followed the Christian victory at the Battle of St. Gotthard in August 1664, he aided Charles II of England in his Second Anglo-Dutch War with the Dutch, until the intervention of Louis XIV and Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg compelled him to make a disadvantageous peace in 1666 in Cleve. When Galen again attacked the Dutch Republic six years later in the Franco-Dutch War, he was in alliance with Louis XIV, who helped him take Groenlo. His troops went more east and north and conquered not only Deventer and Coevorden. His army got stuck before the city of Groningen, failing to occupy the coast in the north, because of the deliberate flooding of the fields and marshes that became almost impassible. In October 1674 he withdrew his troops from the Dutch Republic and gave up his attempts to restore Catholicism to the Eastern provinces. In 1675 he deserted his former ally, and fought for the emperor Leopold I against France. In conjunction with Brandenburg and Denmark he attacked Charles XI of Sweden, and conquered the Duchy of Bremen in the Bremen-Verden Campaign during the Swedish-Brandenburg War. Von Galen died at Ahaus. He proved himself anxious to reform the church, although his chief energies were directed to increasing his power and prestige, in the course of which he succeeded in getting rid of foreign armies, occupying Westphalia since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. In popular culture In the Netherlands he carries the nickname "Bommen Berend" ("Bombing Bernard") because he unsuccessfully laid siege to the Dutch city of Groningen using artillery. A holiday with this name is still celebrated in the city of Groningen on 28 August to commemorate the breaking of the siege. In Dutch legend and lore, he is also said to lead the Wild Hunt. See also Strasbourg Agreement (1675), the first chemical weapons treaty in history, which was negotiated as a result of Bishop von Galen's siege of Groningen. Notes External links Online-Biography of Christoph Bernhard von Galen 1606 births 1678 deaths People from Warendorf (district) 17th-century German Roman Catholic bishops German people of the Thirty Years' War Bernard Converts to Roman Catholicism from Lutheranism Von Galen family