DE RUIJTER AND WILLIAM OF ORANGE
When the danger from Spain had passed away, it was not long before
England and the Dutch Republic began to take up a position of rivalry.
The two States had fought side by side against Spain, but they had
had trade differences, which culminated in an abominable massacre by
the Dutch East India Company of English merchants at Amboyna, in the
Moluccas. This was in 1623, and the Governments of James I. and Charles
I. had failed to obtain any success by diplomatic means. The Dutch were
supreme in the world of sea commerce, and trade rivalry and political
differences brought on the first Dutch War in 1652-53. The result was
the victory of England, but it was by no means decisive or final, and
twelve years later the two countries were again at war.
In the second Dutch War, twelve years later, there is little of which
England can be proud. The Restoration Government’s corruption and
mismanagement had allowed the Navy to fall far below the high level
of efficiency to which it had been raised by Oliver Cromwell. The
ships were crowded with useless fine gentlemen from the Court. The
seamen were so ill-provided that they deserted in numbers to escape
the misery of life on shipboard. Scotland had no interest in England’s
wars, and many Scottish seamen preferred to serve under the Dutch flag
rather than that of Great Britain. The result was several very bloody
and indecisive battles, in which the Dutch, upon the whole, held their
own. Finding that little advantage had been gained, Charles II. was
ready to come again to terms, and in May, 1667, Peace Commissioners
met at Breda. In truth, there was hardly any other alternative. The
Great Plague and the Great Fire of London had been stunning blows to
the prosperity of England. Meanwhile, though Peace Commissioners were
sitting, there was no armistice. Yet no attempt was made by the English
Government to fit out for sea the Navy, which was lying dismantled in
harbour after the late campaign. Only two commerce-destroying squadrons
were sent out. At the same time measures were taken to fortify the
coasts. In other words, the peace conference was considered as a
sufficient protection, and the fleet was deliberately demobilized.
Ineptitude could go no further. The Duke of York (afterwards James
II.), as High Admiral, approved--a fact which gives the measure of
his essentially dull and stupid character. No one appears to have
anticipated danger. The work of fortification went forward slowly or
not at all. The Court was in the midst of its usual profligacies when,
on June 7, the Dutch fleet was sighted off the North Foreland.
While Charles was lounging among his courtiers at Whitehall, the Dutch,
under the direction of the famous Grand Pensionary de Witt, were
preparing to strike a blow. Late in May a squadron, under Admiral van
Ghent, was despatched, presumably to distract English attention, to
the Forth. Van Ghent failed to land anywhere, but he made havoc of the
Scots’ coasting trade, and then quietly withdrew to join the main fleet.
On June 1 seventy men-of-war left the ports of Holland, and, though
scattered by a storm, reassembled off the North Foreland on the 7th.
The Commander-in-Chief was Admiral Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruijter,
the hero of the war, and the greatest of all the great seamen whom his
country has borne. His whole naval career is a splendid story of calm,
dauntless courage, of unerring skill, of battle after battle gained, or
maintained with honour against desperate odds.
At Whitehall all was confusion and dismay. Pepys has given a vivid
description of the scene. He himself fully expected to be murdered in
a burst of popular fury. The one man who could be trusted to do his
duty--Monk, the Lord General--was sent to take command at Chatham.
Train-bands and militia were mobilized in frantic haste--all too late.
[Illustration:
_Emery Walker, Ltd._
JAMES, DUKE OF MONMOUTH (1649-1685).
Probably a natural son of Charles II. by Lucy Walters. He was a
weak, pleasure-loving man, but nevertheless a popular favourite
owing to his good looks and general amiability. After his
father’s death he rose against James II. and claimed the crown,
but was defeated and executed.]
On June 9 the advance squadron of the Dutch, under Admiral van Ghent,
was off Gravesend, chasing merchantmen and naval light craft in
panic-terror up the Thames, while the boom of his guns could, it is
said, be heard in London. There must have been few who on that day did
not look back with regret to the victorious years of the Commonwealth.
The Dutch fleet, however, carried no great landing force, and De
Ruijter, judging that London could not be safely attacked, decided to
recall Van Ghent and turn against Chatham, the headquarters of the
English Navy.
Monk reached Rochester on the 11th, but he could do little. His hard
fate was to end his military career as a helpless spectator of the
national disgrace. The available troops consisted of a weak Scottish
regiment and some seamen at Sheerness, under Admiral Sir Edward
Spragge. The fortifications were unfinished and unarmed. The ships
were not manned, and, to complete the disgrace, the seamen refused
point-blank to fight for the king who had starved and robbed them.
There is an even darker side to the gloomy picture. The oncoming Dutch
fleet was full of English and Scottish seamen, who preferred the good
treatment and regular pay of the States to that of their discredited
king. The dockyard hands--starving, unpaid, and mutinous--deserted _en
masse_.
[Illustration: THE DUTCH IN THE MEDWAY.
(_From a Dutch contemporary engraving._)]
On June 10 De Ruijter entered the Medway. Sheerness fort was bombarded
into ruins, though Spragge and his handful of English and Scots held
their ground until an overwhelming force was landed for the storm.
Fifteen guns and all the stores at Sheerness were taken, and the
Dutch fleet worked on up the winding reaches of the Medway. On the 12th
the leading squadron under Van Ghent, with the fireships commanded by
Captain Brackel, arrived at Gillingham Reach, the usual harbourage
of the naval ships. Two small and ill-armed batteries guarded the
entrance. Between them was stretched a heavy iron chain, and behind it
were anchored three Dutch prizes and some smaller craft. Higher up Monk
was striving desperately to save the ships. But the dockyard officials
had all fled, and carried with them the ships’ boats, so that the
heavy vessels could not be towed away. Everywhere there was cowardice,
selfishness, and confusion. Brackel drove straight for the chain on
the flood-tide, and crashed through it, silencing the impotent forts,
and burning all the ships at the barrier. A little farther up lay the
_Royal Charles_, the finest ship in the British Navy. She had been the
_Naseby_ of the Commonwealth, and had carried Monk himself to victory.
She was almost unarmed, and before Monk could fire her, the Dutch
were at hand. Her crew fled to shore, and the exultant foe towed her
triumphantly down the river to their fleet.
[Illustration: A DUTCH TWO-DECKED BATTLESHIP.
With an armament of about 50 guns, the Dutch fleet which inflicted the
great humiliation on England in 1667 was largely composed of ships of
this type.
(_From a contemporary Dutch print._)]
The tide was now turning, and Brackel retired some distance and
anchored. Despairing of saving the _Royal Oak_, _Great James_, and
_Loyal London_, which lay higher up, Monk scuttled them, and sank three
ships in the fairway of the only channel by which, according to local
information, the Dutch could approach. On the following day the
Dutch came back with the tide and ran through another channel pointed
out, no doubt, by their English comrades. Upnor Castle strove in vain
to stop them. They passed its batteries in safety, and came on to the
half-sunken ships which lay aground in the shallow stream. With hardly
any resistance they fired and destroyed all three. Captain Douglas, of
the _Royal Oak_, died on board his ship, and his gallant end was the
one slight redeeming feature of the melancholy scene. Had they known
the utter panic and lack of organized defence at Chatham, the Dutch
might well have destroyed the dockyard. But they did not know; they had
inflicted upon England the greatest humiliation that she has endured
since the day of the Norse rovers, and so, well content, the small
squadron that had done so much sailed triumphantly down the river,
insulting their humbled enemies with thundering cheers and songs and
victorious music.
For six weeks the victorious Dutch fleet dominated the English seas. So
secure was De Ruijter that he left only Van Ghent’s squadron to guard
the Thames, and sailed down the Channel as a conqueror, sweeping up
English trade, and terrorizing the coasts. What he might have done had
his fleet carried troops may be judged from the pages of Pepys. Panic,
confusion, and self-seeking reigned supreme at Court, and among the
seamen discontent was rife. Sir Edward Spragge did at last succeed in
forming a squadron sufficient to hold the Thames against Van Ghent,
but this was all. When the Peace of Breda was signed in July De Ruijter
still victoriously ranged the English seas.
So ten years after Oliver Cromwell had made Britain’s name dreaded
wherever her flag flew, Charles II., ‘the Lord’s anointed,’ degraded
her to the dust. He was to wage another war with the Dutch, and to see
the heroic De Ruijter successfully withstand the combined strength of
France and her jackal--England. He left his realm the vassal of France,
the national escutcheon bearing a stain that has never been forgotten,
and the once invincible navy reduced to a mass of rotting hulks that
could not venture out of port.
When James II. succeeded to the throne discontent was already rife
among the people, and when his natural brother James, Duke of Monmouth,
landed almost alone in Dorsetshire, the West country peasantry flocked
to his standard. The hideous barbarity with which the premature
and ill-conducted revolt was suppressed merely added fuel to the
smouldering furnace. Had Monmouth been a stronger man, had he been
better supplied with money, arms, and trained officers, matters might
have been different. The navy could with difficulty mobilize a small
squadron, which was at sea too late to prevent him from landing.
The fate of the Stuart dynasty was sealed when James alienated the
sympathies of the hitherto thoroughly servile Anglican Church and the
Court, or ‘Tory’ party, in Parliament. The result was a temporary, but
for the time all-powerful, coalition against him. A nucleus of trained
troops around which the discontented could rally was necessary; and the
malcontents naturally turned to William, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder
of the Dutch Republic, the husband of the King’s daughter Mary. Every
motive of statesmanship, interest, and personal inclination, combined
to induce William to respond to the appeal. The great object of his
life was to curtail the overshadowing power of Louis XIV. Without the
assistance of England, this was all but an impossibility. It can hardly
be doubted that William looked forward to his own ultimate election as
King of England. That the men who invited him had no clear conception
of this part of the political situation seems certain; but William,
with his sagacity and experience, must have been perfectly aware of the
only possible satisfactory solution.
By October, 1688, William had gathered a fleet of some 500 transports
and store-ships, with an escort of over 50 men-of-war, at Helvoetsluys.
The danger in his path was that of France, and had James II. been less
stupid and less proud at the wrong moment, there can be no doubt that
William’s plans would have been brought to an abrupt end by a French
invasion. The great European alliance against France was already
formed, and war was about to break out. The French armies were already
collecting at the frontier. But James rudely repelled the offers of
his ally and practical overlord, and Louis turned his arms against
Germany. William was therefore left free to sail.
His expedition cannot be described in any sense as a hostile invasion.
It is mentioned in this work in order to draw a comparison between the
foreign attacks successfully repelled by England, and this officially
hostile but actually friendly expedition which landed and did its work,
because it was deliberately allowed to pass unopposed.
The fleet which James possessed was fully equal to crippling that of
William, had it been directed with energy and fidelity. This was not
the case. The ships had been for the most part reconstructed by James,
and materially the navy was strong. The commander, Lord Dartmouth, was
faithful. But the majority of the officers were disloyal, and they
persuaded Dartmouth to take up a position from which it was impossible
to work out of the Thames in time to stop any passing fleet. The army,
though it was three times as strong as that of William, was rotten to
the very core with discontent and treachery. Those of the superior
officers who were faithful were often the least capable--notably the
Commander-in-Chief, the Frenchman Louis Duras, Lord Feversham. The
ablest of them all, General Churchill, was the worst traitor. It was
practically certain that William would meet little effective resistance
from the fleet and army which were nominally opposed to him.
It must be admitted that England at this time presented to the world
a very depressing spectacle. That the House of Stuart had proved
poor and faithless guardians of the national honour was undoubted,
and the Whigs, in endeavouring to oust them, could at least lay claim
to political consistency. But the Church and the Tories were simply
obeying the dictates of self-interest and injured pride. Open rebellion
need not be dishonourable, but very many members, both of James’s civil
and defensive services, were traitors.
So far as its events are concerned, the story of the expedition may be
told in a few sentences. William had at first intended to land in the
North, where his adherents--the Whig Earl of Devonshire, and the Tory
Lord Danby--were ready to receive him. He sailed on October 19, but was
driven back, and unable to start again until November 1. The wind was
favourable, and rapidly rose. The vast fleet went past the mouth of the
Thames, and Lord Dartmouth, owing to the faulty dispositions into which
he had been persuaded, could not come out in time to oppose it. William
passed down the Channel unmolested, and landed, ‘as every schoolboy
knows,’ at Brixham on November 5. Dartmouth was following down the
Channel, but the wind again changed, and he put into Portsmouth. Had
the fleets met, the result cannot be doubted. The Dutch fleet was
commanded by the refugee English Admiral Herbert, and his ships were
full of English seamen. The crews of James’s fleet were thoroughly
discontented, and half the ships would undoubtedly have been carried
over by their captains. To discuss the events of 1688 as if they
constituted a military campaign is a mistake. William’s design rested
upon the known fact that England as a whole was not merely passive, but
actively friendly.
William, having landed, occupied Exeter with his army of 14,000, of
whom over 3,000 were British infantry. For a week there was hesitation,
for he had not been expected, and the memory of the Bloody Assize hung
over the West. But soon the Western gentry, both Whigs and Tories,
began pouring into Exeter, while all over England revolt blazed up.
The royal officers deserted in a manner that can only be described
as utterly shameless. William entered London on December 16 without
any fighting on the route, except a skirmish at Wincanton, in which
one of his Scottish battalions roughly handled Colonel Patrick
Sarsfield’s Irish regiment. James fled to France, and England was
lost and won almost without a blow. Not only this, but Jacobitism was
never again, except in one or two remote localities, a real militant
force. From the military point of view, one may almost say that
everything was prearranged, and the main lesson to be learnt from the
English Revolution is that, when public opinion is not dormant and the
defensive services are amenable to its influence, it is impossible for
the mere official administration to maintain itself.