The Rise of the Dutch Kingdom by Hendrik van Loon (classic fiction .txt) 📖

to prove to all the world that France was still the same old France of five years ago and had no intention of again submitting to the ancient royalistic yoke? And had not the Batavian Club celebrated this great event with much feasting and toasting, and had it not sent delegates to Paris to compliment the directors upon the brilliant success of their great coup? Glorious France had given the example. The free Batavians could but admire and follow. The French coup d'état of the 4th of September, 1797, was followed by the Dutch coup d'état of the 22nd of June, 1798. But the Dutch one, with all the satisfaction which eventually it caused the Patriots, was not to be a home-made dish. The ingredients were those ordinarily used in the best revolutionary kitchens of Paris. They were cooked under the supervision of the most skilled French cooks, and they were tasted by the connoisseurs of the French Directorate, who had promised to savour the dish personally to make it most palatable to the Dutch taste. Then, sizzling-hot from the French fire, it was carried to Holland and was served to the astonished assembly right in the middle of their endless discussions. Why, reader, this appeal to your culinary senses? I want you to stay for the appearance of this famous râgout à la Directoire. But it will not be ready before another chapter. If now I hold out hope of a fine dinner to be served after five or six more pages, I can perhaps make you stay through the next chapter, which will be as gloomy as a rainy Sunday in Amsterdam. IX GLORY ABROAD

There was no glory abroad. Naval battles have often been described. Sometimes they are inspiring through the suggestion of superior courage or ability. Frequently they are very dull. Then they belong in a handbook on naval tactics, but not in a popular history. We shall try to make our readers happy by practising the utmost brevity. Paulus was dead, and the new leaders of the navy department were inefficient. They did their best, but private citizens are not changed into successful managers of a navy over night. On paper (patient paper of the eighteenth century, which had contained so many imaginary fleets) there were over sixty Dutch men-of-war. Salaries were officially paid to 17,000 sailors and officers. Of those not more than a score knew their business. The old higher officers were all gone. They were sailing under a Russian flag. They were fighting under the British cross or eking out a penurious half-pay life in little Brunswick, near their old commander-in-chief. As for the sailors, they had had no way of escaping their fate. Poverty had forced them to stay where they were or starve, and they had been obliged to take the new oath of allegiance to support their families. Their quarterdeck now was beautiful with the new legend of Fraternity, Equality, and Liberty painted in big golden letters. Their masts still flew the old glorious flag of red, white, and blue, but now adorned with a gaudy picture of the goddess in whose name war was being waged upon the greater part of the civilized world. At times the men could not stand it. Many a morning it was discovered that the flag had been ruined over night. A hasty knife had cut the divinity out of her corner and had thrown her overboard. But cloth was cheap. A new flag was soon provided, and the goddess of liberty was sewn in once more. To find the culprit was impossible, for upon such occasions the whole fleet was likely to come forward and confess itself guilty. So there the fleet lay, with mutiny averted by the near presence of a French army, and forced to inactivity by the blockade of the British fleet. The admiral of the Dutch squadron was the same Brigadier General de Winter who the year before had tried in vain to reach the ocean. If you look him up in the French biographical dictionary you will find him as Count of Huissen and Marshal of the Empire. In plain Dutch, he was just Jan Willem de Winter and an ardent believer in the most extreme revolutionary doctrines. He had had a little experience at sea, but he had never commanded a ship. Personally brave beyond suspicion, but not in the least prepared for the work which he had been called to do, he had again assumed the command with the cheerfulness with which revolutionary people will undertake any sort of an impossible task. His instructions were secret, or as secret as anything could be which during a number of weeks had been carefully threshed out in all the leading patriotic clubs. The whole plan of this expedition of which Admiral de Winter was to be the head was of that fantastic nature so dearly loved by those who are going to change the world over night. England, of course, the stronghold of all anti-revolutionary forces, was to be the enemy. And, by the way, what a provoking enemy this island proved to be! The churches of the Kremlin could be made into stables for the French cavalry; the domes of Portugal might be turned into pigstys; the palaces of Venice could be used as powder magazines; the storehouses of Holland might be changed into hospitals for French invalids; where French infantry could march or French cavalry could trot, there the influence of France and the ideas of the French could penetrate; but England, with many miles of broad sea for its protection, was the one country which was impregnable. French engineers could do much, but they could not build a bridge across the Channel. French artillery could at times perform wonders of marksmanship, but its guns could not carry across the North Sea. French cavalry had captured a frozen Dutch fleet, but the sea around England never froze. And French infantry, which held the record for long distance marches, could not swim sixty miles of salt water. The fleet, and the fleet alone, could here do the work. At first there had been talk of a concerted action by the French, the Spanish, and the Batavian fleets. But the Patriots would not hear of this plan. Single-handed the Dutch fleet must show that the spirit of de Ruyter and Tromp continued to animate the breasts of all good Batavianites. On the 6th of October, 1797, the fleet sailed proudly away from the roads of Texel. The Brutus and the Equality, the Liberty, the Batavian, the Mars, the Jupiter, the Ajax, and the Vigilant, twenty-six ships in all, ranging from eighteen to seventy-four cannon, set sail for the English coast. For five days this mythological squadron was kept near the Dutch coast by a western wind. Then it met the British fleet under Admiral Adam Duncan. The British fleet was of equal strength—sixteen ships of the line and ten frigates. But whereas the Batavian fleet was commanded by new officers and manned by disgruntled sailors, the British had the advantage of superior guns, superior marksmanship, better leadership, and a thorough belief in the cause which their country upheld. Off the little village of Camperdown, on the coast of the Department of North Holland, the battle took place. It lasted four hours. After the first fifty minutes the Dutch line had been broken. After the second hour the victory of the British was certain. Two hours more, for the glory of their reputation, the Dutch commanders continued to fight. Vice-Admiral Bloys van Treslong, descendant of the man who conducted the victorious water-beggars to the relief of Leyden in 1574, lost his arm, but continued to defend the Brutus until his ship could only be kept afloat by pumping. Captain Hingst of the Defender was killed on the bridge. The Equality suffered sixty killed and seventy wounded out of a total of one hundred and ninety men. The Hercules, set on fire by grapeshot, continued to fight until her commander had been mortally wounded and the flames had reached the powder-house, forcing the men to throw their ammunition overboard. The Medemblik, rammed by one of her sister ships, lost fifty men killed and sixty wounded, lost its mast, and was generally shot to pieces before the fight had lasted two hours. And so on through the whole list. Personal bravery could avail little against bad equipment and an indifferent spirit. Ten vessels fell into British hands. One ship, with all its men, perished during the storm which followed the battle. Another one, on the way home, was thrown upon the Dutch coast and was pounded to timber by the waves. All in all, 727 men had been killed and 674 wounded. A few ships, after suffering terribly, reached Dutch harbours.

And for the first time in the history of the Dutch navy, a Dutch admiral was on board a British ship as a prisoner of war.

X COUP D'ÉTAT NO. I

Citizen Eykenbroek was in the gin business—an excellent and profitable business which needs close watching, otherwise your workmen will drink the result of their handiwork and all the profits will be lost. Citizen Eykenbroek had not watched. Citizen Eykenbroek had failed. Wherefore, since he had a wife and children, it behooved him to look for another means of livelihood. Citizen Eykenbroek became a speculator in army provisions. Again a profitable business, but not a success as a course in applied ethics. However that be, or perhaps because of all that, Citizen Eykenbroek was the appointed man to act as intermediary between the grumbling Dutch Patriots and the French radicals who held sway in Paris. Armed with credentials given him by the Jacobin Club of Amsterdam, this honourable citizen, with two fellow-conspirators, hastened to Paris.

Since as a speculator in army requisitions he often made the trip to the French capital, his disappearance caused no surprise; and although the Batavian minister in Paris heard of one shabby individual's arrival, he saw no occasion to pay any attention to it. Citizen Eykenbroek, who had not expired when he had told his first lie, did not mind telling a few fibs, and at once he was very successful with the French radicals. His first offer of four hundred thousand good Dutch guilders as a reward for a suitable revolution which would bring all power into the hands of the unionists he gradually increased until it reached the sum of eight hundred thousand. Since no one in Holland had given him the right to offer any monetary reward for the French services, he might easily have made it a few millions. Having paved the way by creating such visions of wealth, Eykenbroek set to work. The great grief of the Dutch Jacobins was the French minister in The Hague. This dignitary, Noel by name, was not in the least a radical. He understood that in this complacent republic little could be gained by decapitational measures, but very much by moderation, the encouragement of trade, the promotion of commerce; and like his friend Cochon, a year or so before, he strongly advised against killing the goose that might again lay so many golden eggs. The Batavian Republic as a thriving commercial commonwealth was a much better asset to the French Republic than the same republic playing a game of revolution, which was very distasteful to the richer classes of the nation. And upon several occasions Noel had firmly reminded his patriotic Dutch friends that, come what may, he would not stand for any works of violence. "Remove Noel," therefore, was one of the most important instructions which Citizen Eykenbroek had taken to Paris upon his memorable voyage. And behold! the promise of half a million in cash at once did its work. The French Directorate suddenly remembered that Citizen Noel had married a Dutch lady. It was not good for France to be represented by a minister who was attached to the republic