Franco-Dutch War of the Dutch Republic by surprise, is often referred to as "het Rampjaar" ("the Disaster Year") in Dutch. In order to weaken its Hapsburg rivals in Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, largely Catholic France supported the Dutch Republic during the 1568-1648 Eighty Years War and in 1635, it entered the Thirty Years' War as part of the anti-Imperial Protestant alliance. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia ended the wider war but the subsidiary Franco-Spanish War continued until the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees; the net effect was that Spain was no longer the dominant power in Europe, while France emerged
Treaty of Xanten in Westphalia to be governed by the House of Hohenzollern, and were the oldest constituents of the future Prussian Rhineland and the future Province of Westphalia. Treaty of Xanten The Treaty of Xanten () was signed in the Lower Rhine town of Xanten on November 12, 1614 between Wolfgang Wilhelm, Count Palatine of Neuburg and John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, with representatives from England and France serving as mediators. The treaty ended the War of the Jülich Succession and all hostilities between Wolfgang William and John Sigismund. Based on the terms of the treaty, the territories of Jülich-Berg and Ravenstein