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
Portuguese Restoration War at the negotiations for the European settlement-of-settlements, the new "realpolitik" of the peace of Westphalia (1648). With this treaty and the end of hostilities in Catalonia in 1652, Spain was again ready to direct its efforts against Portugal, but it faced a lack of men, resources, and, especially, good military commanders. By 1662, Spain had committed itself to a major effort to end the war. John of Austria the Younger, Philip IV's illegitimate son, led 14,000 men into Alentejo, and, the following year, they succeeded in taking Évora, the major city of the region. The Portuguese, under António Luís de