However, the English fleet was not destroyed and, on 4 and 5 August, the Dutch suffered heavy losses and narrowly escaped disaster in the St. James's Day Battle. After the battle, De Ruyter accused Cornelis Tromp of ignoring the main English attack on the Dutch fleet, preferring to chase the English rear squadron as far as the coast, which eventually led to Tromp's dismissal. De Ruyter then became seriously ill, recovering just in time to take nominal command of the fleet executing the Raid on the Medway in 1667, the third year of the war. The Medway raid was part of a broader plan by Johan de Witt to land Dutch troops in Kent or Essex, and De Ruyter neither agreed with De Witt's fixation with the Thames estuary as the critical theatre of the naval war nor with this raid. Although the Medway raid was a costly and embarrassing defeat for the English, resulting in the loss of the English flagship it did not bring the success De Witt sought, as its effect politically was to help Charles II and his ministers to justify a third Dutch war.