 While the States General preferred peace, memories of the 1672 French invasion and murder of the de Witt brothers meant they accepted that war might be inevitable.Dutch public opinion also began to move in that direction, largely due to the October 1685 expulsion of French Protestants or Huguenots, which sent an estimated 200,000 into exile.Followed by the killing of around 2,000 Vaudois Protestants in 1686, this stoked fears that Protestant Europe was threatened by a Catholic counter-reformation.