Second Anglo-Dutch War

“ The first Dutch war ended with Blake's victory off the Kentish Knock. The second war, in the days of Charles II, is best remembered in England in connection with a national disgrace, the Dutch raid on Chatham and the blockade of the Thames. This disaster was the result of a piece of almost incomprehensible folly on the part of the King and his advisers. ”

“ The Dutch Netherlands had perhaps somewhat fewer people than England, but surpassed her in wealth. These two allies were pitted against the greatest military power that had existed in Europe since the days of Constantine the Great. To many the struggle seemed hopeless. For England the true policy was limited by circumstances. She could send troops across the Channel to help the Dutch in their stubborn resistance, but to try to land a force in the Spanish peninsula for aggressive warfare would be sheer madness. The shores of America and the open sea were the proper field of war for England. ”

“ When the Jacobin propaganda of murder and massacre was ended, several of the powers of the coalition determined to make peace with France. Prussia and Spain had drawn no profit from the war, and had lost men and money in it. Accordingly they withdrew their armies and acknowledged the Republic. Holland had been overrun by the French in 1794, after the Duke of York's defeat, and forced to become the ally of her conqueror. Hence the strong and well-equipped Dutch fleet is found for the rest of the war on the side of France. ”

“ They required the payment of the arrears of toll due for the fishing on the British coasts, the surrender of the Spice Islands, the punishment of the survivors of those concerned in the Amboina massacre, satisfaction for the murder of Doreslaar, and the payment of the indemnities due for losses sustained by Englishmen at the hands of the Dutch in various parts of the world. It is clear that these demands were practically an ultimatum. The [156] Netherlanders were required to choose between coalition or humiliation, and in case neither were accepted, war. ”

“ They dread the accession of the Dutch to the armed neutrality, more than all the other branches of that confederation, because of the rivalry in commerce, and because the Dutch will assist the Royal Marines of France and Spain, more than all the others. The present conduct of the English indicates a design to go to war with the Dutch, on pretence of an insult to their Crown, committed two years ago, by a treaty with America, in hopes, that they will not be supported in this quarrel by the confederated neutral powers. But they will be mistaken. ”

“ In the Netherlands they have not arrived at this idea by any means; but the Dutch have ever been noted for playing a mere selfish policy which blinds them to outside things. What does it matter to them, they say, what happens to other countries, so long as they are left in peace, they quite forgetting that any war between two Great Powers in Europe must affect them, and seriously. Who can say what is coming? For instance, many Dutch people have said to me that, in the supposition of a war between Germany and Great Britain, the British would defend them. ”

“ Holland, roused to a sense of danger by the appearance of French arms on the Rhine, protested and appealed to England for aid; and though her appeals remained at first unanswered, even England was roused from her lethargy by the French seizure of the coast towns of Flanders. The earlier efforts of English diplomacy indeed were of a selfish and unscrupulous kind. Holland, Spain, and France were tempted in turn by secret offers of alliance. A treaty offensive and defensive against all powers for the defence of the Spanish Netherlands was proposed to the Dutch. ”

“ In the hands of the English enemy, whose name was an object of absolute detestation throughout England, the enrolment of such an army would be sure to excite the most stubborn resistance even from those who had hitherto been disaffected or mutinous. For the English people, and, for the matter of that, the Dutch, however much they may have quarrelled or grumbled when danger was remote, have always forgotten their differences and made an effective truce as soon as ever danger is near. ”

“ His first attempt was to isolate Holland, and having purchased the King of Sweden, he bribed Charles II of England, uncle of William of Orange, to enter into a secret treaty against the Netherlands.
The principal events of the war are narrated by Davies, who shows how the old spirit of the Dutch returned to them in this supreme hour of new peril to their liberties.
The Dutch, though, in defence of their religion and liberties, they had beaten the first soldiers in the world, were never essentially a military nation ”

“ If the Dutch, by their own vigor, and the assistance of allies, were able to defend themselves, and could bring the war to an equality, the French arms would be so employed abroad, that no considerable reënforcement could thence be expected to second the king’s enterprises in England. And might not the project of overawing or subduing the people be esteemed of itself sufficiently odious, without the aggravation of sacrificing that state which they regarded as their best ally, and with which, on many accounts, they were desirous of maintaining the greatest concord and strictest confederacy? ”

“ He knew that Louis the Fourteenth felt irritated at the Dutch Republic’s action in preventing his acquisition of the Spanish Netherlands; but he did not know that the French King would resent that action, and make gigantic preparations for crushing the Dutch Republic. Never before had such tremendous efforts been made by a great nation to destroy a weak neighbor. The war was to be short and decisive, and the insolent “traders”—that was the name the haughty French King gave to the citizens of the Netherlands—were to be punished radically. ”

“ And though the differences between England and the States on the one hand, and France on the other, led the Spanish party to offer another truce, the Dutch were disinclined to forego the advantages which, in their opinion, they were obtaining and consolidating by the continuance of hostilities, for every year made the Dutch East India Company more powerful, its trade more lucrative, and its influence more secure. ”

“ The French revolution added a third party to the factions which divided Holland, and it may be doubted whether the majority of the Dutch nation entered cordially into the war with France. The republican party looked up to France as the only power capable of delivering them from the yoke of the stadtholder, and the influence of England; and it is well known that when the Austrian and British troops bravely disputed every inch of ground, the Dutch forces opposed a very feeble resistance to the French army. ”

“ England has time and again made charges that she was assisting Germany in spite of her neutrality. On the other hand England has several times seized food supplies that belonged to Holland, saying that she was importing them to send them on to Germany.
In spite of these difficulties, such as seizing Dutch boats, because they carried Germans and Austrians going home to fight for their country, the Queen of [Pg 139] Holland, backed by her country, has shown an abundance of common sense. ”

“ Our course should be to stand aloof. The English are covetous and enterprising, the Germans are covetous and beggarly, and we should not present our trade to to the one and our florins to the other. We can easily get ample guarantees from France, and a substantial barrier on the Flemish frontier. There is no price which Louis will not pay for our neutrality.” So I find that the Dutch party which was unfriendly to the war argued during the interval between the succession of Philip and the outbreak of war. ”

“ We may therefore conclude that the wealth and defencelessness of the Dutch Netherlands lured on the enthusiasts and intriguers of Paris to an enterprise the terrible results of which were unsuspected by them. Nothing is more remarkable than the full assurance of victory which breathes in the letters of Dumouriez, the despatches of Lebrun, and the speeches of the French deputies. ”

“ Declarations of neutrality cannot be relied upon. If England and France intend the war between Germany and Poland to lead to a conflict, they will support Holland and Belgium in their neutrality and make them build fortifications in order finally to force them into cooperation.
“Albeit under protest, Belgium and Holland will yield to pressure.
“Therefore, if England intends to intervene in the Polish war, we must occupy Holland with lightning speed. We must aim at securing a new defense line on Dutch soil up to the Zuider Zee.
“The war with England and France will be a life-and-death struggle. ”

“ The report made to Parliament created a bad impression in England, and led to all the old complaints against the Dutch being raked up once more: the massacre of Amboina, the seizure of Pulo Run and other high-handed acts in the East Indies, their monopoly of the fisheries on the British coasts, their attacks on the English whalers off Spitzbergen, and their attempts to drive out English trade from the Baltic, from Russia, and elsewhere. ”

“ If one searches through history, one can never find a single case in which public opulence can he traced to foreign conquest, in which the cost to the public of occupying and maintaining such conquests has not been greatly in excess of all the profit which private interests have secured from them. This is clearly discernible in the conquests of Spain, France, and even England. The trading companies of the Dutch effected the financial ruin of Holland.
In 1639, another Spanish fleet was annihilated by Tromp in a naval battle off the English Downs. ”

“ German troops are lined across her border, ready to walk over her prostrate body as they walked over the body of Belgium; to shoot her civilians if they express sympathy for themselves against the German enemy; to burn down her schools, her libraries, and her cathedrals, as the Germans burned down those in Belgium. Holland is cowed.
A brave race are the Dutch. They faced Spain in its pride and power, with the help of England. They fought and died for liberty to speak and to worship. ”

“ Meanwhile both nations had been getting sick of the war. The Dutch were suffering terribly from the serious interference with their commerce and carrying trade and from the destruction of the important fisheries industry, while the English on their side were shut out from the Baltic, where the King of Denmark, as the ally of the United Provinces, had closed the Sound, and from the Mediterranean, where Admiral van Galen, who lost his life in the fight, destroyed a British squadron off Leghorn (March 23) . In both countries there was a peace party. ”

“ In quick succession there arrived news of the definite refusal of the Duke of Brunswick to come forward, of the incredible apathy of the Dutch, and of the demoralization of the Allies in their continued retreat. To add to their misfortunes, nature gripped that land of waters in a severe frost, so that the Dutch loyalists were unable, even if they had the hardihood, to let loose the floods against the invaders. In endless swarms these pressed on from the South, determined now to realize Dumouriez' dream of conquering Holland in order to appropriate its resources, pecuniary, naval, and colonial. ”

“ The British intend soberly and sanely to do their utmost to make a repetition of the present war impossible. To secure this they may find it necessary to have Germany out of the North Sea. But they have no desire whatever to take either the Frisian Islands or East Friesland, if Holland will save them that trouble.
Now, suppose the Dutch will not think of this now. Suppose, for the want of their aid, the Allies are unable to press the war to the complete regimentation of Germany, what will be the position of Holland in twenty years' time?
[Enlarge]
She will stand between England and Germany. ”

“ The peace recently concluded by James with Philip and the archdukes placed England in a position of neutrality in the war now waging in the clove islands between Spain and the republic's East India Company. The English in those regions were not slow to avail themselves of the advantage. The Portuguese of Tydor received from neutral sympathy a copious supply of powder and of pamphlets. The one explosive material enabled them to make a more effective defence of their citadel against the Dutch fleet ”

“ Its neutrality in the present war is based on the same reasons. Furthermore, public sentiment is rather anti-English, partly as a result of the resentment of English aggression during the Napoleonic wars, which almost ended in the loss to Holland of its colonies, and partly as a result of the intense sympathy felt for the Boers, who are of Dutch descent, during the South African War. At the same time they have no particularly strong liking (p. 210) for Germany, suspecting it of having designs on their absolute independence, which the Dutch guard most jealously. ”

“ The Stadtholder fled to England, and the Dutch revolution was effected.
It is very possible that many of those who formed and developed the French revolution were men of high purposes and patriotic ends. But France was bankrupt, its finance aggravated the mischief, and at first, constrained to defend itself, and then led to aggressive war, it naturally made war support itself. The Dutch paid dearly for the revenge which they took on William. ”

“ Until the conclusion of a general European peace there should exist an offensive and defensive treaty between the two countries. Against England this treaty would be binding forever. Flushing must receive a French garrison. A number of small cities in the Dutch part of Flanders must become French. The colonies must be opened to French trade. The Dutch must equip and maintain a French army of 25,000 men, and fifty million guilders must be paid outright, with another fifty million to come in regular rates.
The Batavian Republic now could make up a little trial balance. ”