Hello and welcome to When Diplomacy Fails. As usual, my name is Zach and I will be guiding you through this latest installment of the Franco-Dutch War.

Before we begin, a small amount of housekeeping has to be done. As you may have noticed by the date, today is the 19th of December, which means that Christmas is almost upon us, which also means that I will be far too

busy filling my face and catching up with all these people I've ignored for this entire year

to do actual podcasting, which unfortunately means as well that we'll be on a bit of a hiatus

for the Christmas slash happy holidays slash winter break. So I hope you guys don't mind too much, but I'm sure

you'll have far too much to do anyway and far too much catching up and far too much face feeding

yourselves to be worried about when diplomacy fails. It should go without saying that I wish you guys

all a very safe and very happy holidays. Wherever you are in the world, I hope that

the end of this year, thank God, 2016 is nearly over, I hope that it brings you some peace

and happiness. So that's the nice stuff. This stuff, which follows, is probably less nice.

Although if you're me, it's great because, well, first of all, I get to thank you guys for your monetary support so far. Since my last somewhat shameless appeal, I've received a good

few donations, so that's really, really great. Thanks in particular to Michael McCormick,

Timothy Furman, and a little while ago, Derek Upham, who actually did give me a donation,

but I forgot to thank him for it.

So thank you guys all very much.

It's quite amazing, really, that through my simple appeal, I've been able to get you guys to give your hard-earned cash.

It's very encouraging.

But if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, hey, do you know what?

I probably could give like just a little tiny bit,

but I don't have a large purse lying around with which to give a donation.

Well, that's fine.

Number one, you can keep doing what you're doing with your emotional support

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