CHAPTER XV

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.

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_.

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.

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.