While we have been watching our little domestic puppet show and have
seen how the figures were being moved by the dextrous fingers of some
hidden French performer, what has been happening upon the large stage of
the world? Great and wonderful things have happened. A little half-pay
lieutenant, of humble parentage, bad manners, ungrammatical language,
but inordinate ambition, has hewn his way upward until as
commander-in-chief of the French armies he has made all the land
surrounding the country of his adoption into little tributary republics,
has obliged the Sphinx to listen to his oratory, and has caused his
frightened enemies to forget their mutual dislike to such an extent that
they combine into the second coalition of England, Prussia, Russia, and
Turkey. The Batavian Republic, bound to France by her defensive and
offensive treaty, found herself suddenly in war with the greater part of
the European continent. Now if there was anything which the new assembly
of moderates did not wish, it was another outbreak of hostilities.
Once more a strong British fleet was blockading the Dutch coast. The
Dutch fleet, bottled up in the harbour of Texel, was again doomed to
inactivity. As for the army, it was supposed to consist of 20,000 men,
but the majority of the soldiers were raw and untrained recruits and
useless for immediate action upon any field of battle.
Often during the previous years the French had contemplated an invasion
of the British Isles. This game of invasion is one which two people can
play. And on the 27th of August, 1799, the directors, who were patiently
working their way through the mountains of official red tape demanded by
the over-centralized Batavian Government, were informed by courier from
Helder that a large hostile fleet had been sighted near the Dutch coast.
Frantic orders were given to Daendels to take his army and prepare for
defense. But the general, in no mild temper, reported that he had
neither "clothes for his men, nor horses for his cavalry, nor straw for
his horses." And before he had obtained the money with which to buy part
of these necessaries the British fleet had captured the Dutch one and
had thrown 15,000 men, English and Russian, upon the Dutch coast. A week
later these were followed by more men, until half a hundred thousand
foreign soldiers were upon the territory of the Batavian Republic and
within two days' march from Amsterdam.
[Illustration: DE LANDING DER ENGELSCHEN. INVASION OF THE BRITISH]
Daendels, with such men as he could muster, bravely marched to the
front, and from behind dikes and in the narrow streets of ancient
villages opened a guerilla warfare upon the invaders. French troops were
reported to be on their way to help the Batavians, but could not
arrive before a couple of days. The country was in a dangerous position,
and yet the British-Russian invasion petered out completely, and, full
of promise, was changed into a complete failure. This was due partly to
the dilatoriness of the English commander and to the bad understanding
between Englishman and Russian. But worst of all, the allies, for the
second time, committed the blunder which had cost them so dearly just
before the battle of Verdun. The young Prince of Orange had joined this
expedition, and some enthusiast (if not he himself) had thought to
improve the occasion by the issuing of a high-sounding proclamation.
This document treated the entire revolution as so much personal
wickedness, as the machinations of vicious and ambitious people who
desired to change the country's government merely for the benefit of
their own pockets. It called upon all fatherlanders to drive the French
usurpers out and to return to their old allegiance to what the
proclamation was pleased to call their "sovereign ruler." This sovereign
ruler was none less than old William V. But if there was anything which
the people as a whole did not desire, it was a return to the days of
that now forgotten Stadholder. Federalists and unionists were bad
enough, but the comparative liberty of the present moment was too
agreeable to make the citizens desire a repetition of those old times
when all the voters and assemblymen of the present hour were merely
silent actors in a drama which was not of their making and not of their
approval. And with quite rare unanimity the Batavians rejected this
proclamation of their loving Stadholder and made ready to defend the
country against the invader who came under the guise of a deliverer.
The hereditary Prince settled down in the little town of Alkmaar of
famous memory and waited. He waited a week, but nothing happened except
that the troops of the allies, badly provisioned by their commissary
departments, began to steal and plunder among the Dutch farmers. And
when another week had passed it had become manifestly clear that the
Prince and his army could not count upon the smallest support from the
Batavians. By that time, too, the French army had been greatly
strengthened. Commanded by the French Jacobin Brune, who loved a fight
as well as he did brandy, the defences of the republic were speedily put
into excellent shape. Krayenhoff, our friend of the revolution of
Amsterdam, now a very capable brigadier general of engineers, inundated
the country around Amsterdam, while the English, under their slow and
ponderous commander Yorke, were still debating as to the best ways and
means of attack. When finally the allies went over to that attack they
found themselves with the sea behind them, with sand dunes and
impassable swamps on both sides, and with a strong French and a smaller
Batavian army in front of them. And when they tried to drive this army
out of its position they were badly defeated in a number of small
fights; and a month after they had marched from Helder to Alkmaar
they marched back from Alkmaar to Helder, shipped their enormous number
of sick and wounded on board the fleet, and departed, cursing a country
where even the drinking water had to be transported across the North
Sea, where it always rained, and where, even if it did not rain, the
water sprang from the soil and turned camps and hospitals and trenches
into uninhabitable puddles.
[Illustration: DUTCH TROOPS RUSHING TO THE DEFENCE OF THE COAST]
The Batavian army was proud of itself and was praised by others. The men
had stood the test of the war much better than people had dared to hope.
But what good, apart from a little glory, had all their bravery done
them? On land they had beaten the English, but in far-away Asia the
British fleet had taken one Dutch colony after the other, until of the
large colonial empire there remained but the little island of Decima, in
Japan. Upon a strip of territory of a few hundred square feet the old
red, white, and blue flag of Holland continued to fly. Everywhere else
it had been hauled down.