Chapter XIII: The Algerine Pirates and the Third Dutch War (2)

The value of the opinion attributed to Sandwich was demonstrated on the morning of the 28th of May. The French look-out frigate reported that the Dutch fleet was at hand. The morning was hazy, and De Ruyter was close on before he was seen from the flagships. So little was the Duke of York prepared for a risk of which the probability must have been patent to every thinking man in the English fleet, that a number of the boats were getting water. That the ships had not supplied themselves during the seven days they had been lying idle, speaks volumes for the slovenly stupidity of the management in the French and English squadrons. The conduct of the battle is worthy of what had gone before. The moment the Dutch were known to be coming on, the allies did what they ought to have done earlier. They got under way, but of course they had to do in hurry and confusion what they might have done coolly and in good order. The wind was blowing from the N.E. in the early hours of the morning. If it had held steady, De Ruyter would have been upon his enemies before they had time to get into any kind of order, but it fell for a short space, and then shifted round towards the south. This pause gave the allies time to cut their cables and get under way. In the very act of preparing for battle they divided themselves into two, thereby committing the most fatal possible blunder in the presence of a capable enemy. The Blue Squadron was anchored to the north. To the south of it was the Red Squadron, and south of that again the White. In the usual order of sailing it would have fallen to this last to lead. If the Duke of York meant to allow the Blue Squadron to lead, he should have made his meaning perfectly clear beforehand, since, in the absence of particular instructions, d'Estrées would naturally act on the general sailing orders. But if the White Squadron was to lead, it must, with the wind at N.E., stand out to S. of E. on the port tack. This was the course taken by d'Estrées, and, unless he was told not to take it, he was right, both because he followed the regular sailing orders, and because this course would lead him to the open sea. But while d'Estrées was steering south-east, the Blue Squadron, with the Red Squadron after it, was standing to the W. of N. They went out on the starboard tack. Why this course was followed does not appear. It presented no possible advantage, but had, on the contrary, the serious drawback that it carried the English ships near the coast, where they were in imminent danger of being cooped up between the enemy and the shallow water. Haste and want of thought, or confused directions from the Duke of York, probably account for the blunder.

When once it had been made, the allied fleet lay at the mercy of Michael de Ruyter. The course followed by the White Squadron was carrying it away to leeward, whence it could not return except by tacking against the wind. The Dutch admiral could therefore afford to neglect it and employ the main strength of his force in attacking the English. De Ruyter's fleet had come down in line abreast, stretching from north to south. The ships at the northern end formed the squadron of Admiral van Ghent. De Ruyter himself commanded in the centre. The left wing, or most southerly end of the line, was the squadron of Bankert. The Dutch admiral ordered this officer to follow and watch d'Estrées. Bankert's duty was not to force close action with the French admiral, but to keep himself to windward and check every attempt of the enemy to return to the support of the Duke of York. This duty he performed so thoroughly that the French were thrown out of action all day long. Our ancestors accused d'Estrées of want of personal courage, or at least of disloyalty to his ally, but it may be that he could not help himself: having once fallen to leeward, his squadron had not the seamanship to work back against the Dutch.

While d'Estrées and Bankert were engaged in a distant cannonade, a furious battle was raging between the squadrons of Van Ghent and De Ruyter on the one hand, and the Blue and Red Squadrons on the other. Whether he deliberately planned to do it or not, De Ruyter contrived to concentrate a superior force on the English line. In the order in which we went into action, the ships at the head of the line were commanded by Sir John Kempthorne. Next to him came the Earl of Sandwich, with his flag in the =Royal James=. Sir Joseph Jordan followed the Admiral of the Blue. Then came Sir John Harman, with the rear ships of the Red Squadron. Then the Duke of York, and then Sir Edward Spragge. It would appear that the Dutch attack was directed mainly on those parts of our line which were immediately about the Earl of Sandwich and the Duke of York. I am not aware that this is anywhere stated, but as it is said, on the authority of eye-witnesses, that the Dutch had a superiority of three to two in the battle, and as they certainly could not have had this advantage after detaching the ships under Bankert if they had engaged from end to end, I conclude that they managed to be superior at the point of attack, though only equal in number to the English fleet, by concentrating in this way. It is made further probable that this was the case by the fact that, after the battle had lasted some time, Sir Joseph Jordan tacked with his division of the Blue Squadron, gained the wind of the Dutch, and came to the support of the Duke of York, who was hard pressed. It is said, indeed, that Jordan had previously beaten off his own immediate assailants, but the conduct of the Dutch in the other parts of the battle renders it improbable that Sir Joseph would have been in any condition to manoeuvre if he had been seriously attacked. The probabilities are, that a few vessels only were employed to watch rather than attack Jordan, and that the main strength of the Dutch was concentrated on the flags of Sandwich and the Duke of York. It is certain that at these two points the English suffered very severely. As De Ruyter bore down on the English line, he summoned his steersman, or, as we should say, quartermaster, to him, and, pointing with his finger to the Duke of York's flagship, the =Prince=, said, "That's our man." The _Seven Provinces_, in which, as in the former war, De Ruyter had hoisted his flag, was brought to within pistol-shot of the =Prince=, and the two admirals set an example of fierce and close fighting to their fleets. The Dutch boasted that the broadsides of De Ruyter were fired with the rapidity of volleys of musketry, and, as he had no doubt kept his old crew and many of his old officers about him, he may well have had them in a high state of efficiency. The gunnery of the English fleet was generally good, and there was abundance of courage, but the discipline had fallen from the standard of former years. The =Prince= was cut to pieces without being able to inflict equivalent damage on the _Seven Provinces_. The Duke of York's mainmast was shot down, and his vessel otherwise so damaged that he transferred himself and his flag to the =St. Michael=, of which Sir Robert Holmes was captain. Although a regular corps of naval officers was being formed, it had not yet been made the rule that a man who served as admiral on a particular service was always entitled to that rank, and Holmes, who had been a flag-officer in the former war, was only a captain at Solebay. The =St. Michael= was nearly as badly mauled, before the day was done, as the =Prince= had been, and the duke was again compelled to transfer his flag to the =Loyal London=, the flagship of Sir Edward Spragge. While the centre of the English line was thus being broken down under the strenuous attacks of De Ruyter, the Earl of Sandwich was hotly beset by Van Ghent. The Dutch admiral himself fell in the heat of the battle, but the =Royal James= was none the less furiously assailed. Whatever the defects of his character may have been, Sandwich fought his ship on this the last and most glorious day of his life with determined courage. The Dutch steered fireship after fireship down upon him, but they were one after the other sunk by his guns. At last the enemy succeeded. A shot from the top of one of the Dutch ships wounded the left foot of Richard Haddock, the captain of the =Royal James=. He limped into his cabin, and was under the hands of the surgeon, who was cutting away some loose skin and one of his toes, when he heard the cry that a fireship had at last grappled the =Royal James=. It was said that Haddock made his way out of the cabin to the admiral on the quarter-deck. The amount of damage suffered by the ship makes it probable that some of her spars had fallen, bringing down the sails with them, which would be hanging over the side, and that they caught fire in the flames of the fireship. It is at least certain that the =Royal James= was blazing in a moment, and it is difficult to account for the rapidity of the conflagration in any other way than this. Haddock, so the story runs, implored the admiral to throw himself overboard and endeavour to escape by swimming, but Sandwich, stung by the Duke of York's unmannerly sneer at his well-proved courage, chose to perish in his ship. It is probable that this is a legend invented by someone unfriendly to the duke, for the purpose of increasing the glory of Sandwich. If he had stayed, he would have been burnt in his ship. But his body was picked up some days afterwards, so disfigured that it was only recognised by the star on his coat. The great majority of the officers and men of the =Royal James= perished with the admiral. Haddock was picked up, and it is said by the Dutch that one of the lieutenants was taken out of the water by their boats. They put into the mouth of this officer a confession of his admiration for their fighting, and a statement that this battle exceeded anything seen in the previous war. "It is not yet midday," he is reported to have said, "and more has been done than in any of the Four Days' Battles." Whether any imprisoned English officer said these words or not, it is true that the battle of Solebay was extraordinarily fierce. So savagely had both parties fought, that in the early hours of the afternoon they were exhausted. It was probably not long before this that Jordan came to the relief of the Duke of York. He was foolishly enough abused in the House of Commons as if he had deserted his own admiral, but his movement was undoubtedly correct. It relieved the pressure on the centre of the English line, and prevented De Ruyter from overpowering our fleet as completely as he might have done but for this interruption. Jordan could, however, do no more than relieve the over-taxed Red Squadron. De Ruyter was able to draw off, leaving the English so crippled that they were utterly unable to follow, and the French, true to their character throughout the whole battle, made no effort to pursue.

Very persistent but also rather foolish attempts have been made to represent the battle of Solebay as a victory for us. It was not that, nor even a drawn battle. It is true that the obstinate valour of the officers and men averted an utter defeat. On our side, Solebay was a sailors' battle, to adapt a phrase usually applied to armies. With the exception of Sir Joseph Jordan's movement to support the Red Squadron, there was no sign of skilful management among our leaders. De Ruyter, on the contrary, showed the qualities of a great commander. Though inferior in numbers on the whole, he took advantage of his enemy's blunder to be superior at the point of attack, and he pressed his assault so fiercely home as to inflict the maximum of damage. Then, having crippled his enemy so effectually that no counter-attack was probable for some time, he took his own fleet home damaged, but still in a state to serve. Indeed, so little was he disabled from keeping the sea, that he met and convoyed home the returning East India ships. The fruits of victory were his.

Although the whole of the summer remained to the allies, nothing was done against the Dutch. The French and English squadrons did indeed pay a visit to the coast of Holland, but they made a very short stay there, and the trade of the States was not seriously interrupted. The internal condition both of Holland and England had much to do with suspending hostilities. In the Low Countries revolt broke out against the Loevenstein Party. The partisans of the Prince of Orange succeeded not only in replacing him at the head of the army and navy, but in restoring to him the whole extent of his authority as Stadtholder. The De Witts were cruelly murdered by the mob, and their party effectually destroyed for the time. Although the revolution was accompanied by circumstances of atrocious barbarity, it was on the whole beneficent to Holland. William III. made no attempt to undo what the Loevenstein Party had effected for civil freedom and religious toleration, and he gave his country what it needed if it was to be saved from the invader--that is to say, unity of military command. Having no jealousy of the army, he was able to apply himself with whole-hearted vigour to making it efficient. Holland rose against the French, as it had risen against the Spaniards. The dykes were opened, and the country put under water. During the interval of leisure provided by this desperate measure, much was done to make the defence of the country once more possible. In the midst of so terrible a crisis as this, the naval war was inevitably neglected by Holland. De Ruyter had done enough to avert the danger of invasion from the sea, and offensive operations against England would have served no useful purpose. So hard pressed, indeed, were the Dutch, that they were compelled to land the powder from the ships to be used by the soldiers.

In England other causes were at work to prevent the Government from pushing the war. The king found that the old jealousy of Holland had been replaced, at least for the time, by another and more pressing emotion. The growth of the power of France, the aggressive policy of its king, the danger to a neighbouring Protestant State, combined with the king's obvious intention to favour the Roman Catholics as shown by his Proclamation of Toleration, had frightened the nation into one of its paroxysms of fear of Popery. Parliament showed an obstinate determination to give the king no help in this war. It called in question his right to suspend the penal laws against dissenters, and the session was devoted to passing the Test Act, which was especially meant to exclude Roman Catholics from all offices under the Crown. Although it was one of the secret articles of the king's treaty with France that he was to proclaim himself a Roman Catholic whenever a favourable opportunity occurred, he was compelled to allow the bill to become law, for fear that an obstinate refusal would provoke an explosion of disloyalty to the Crown. Hitherto the Parliament had been profuse in declarations of loyalty to the king's person. It drew careful distinction between him and his servants, and always professed to be inspired by a tender anxiety for his safety, even at the moment that it was engaged in defeating what it well knew to be his policy. According to his usual custom, Charles escaped the peril by bowing to it, and by sacrificing his servants. Among those who were thrown over to pacify the House of Commons was the Duke of York. On the passing of the Test Act he resigned his commission as Lord High Admiral, and was therefore necessarily removed from the command of the fleet. He was replaced by Prince Rupert. The choice of his cousin to command at sea was probably due less to any confidence the king had in his ability than to the prince's rank. As the English fleet was to co-operate with the French, it was desirable to have someone at the head of it whom a French noble would recognise as his social superior. Louis XIV. had given strict orders to his officers to avoid disputes with the English, but it is very doubtful whether even the commands of his own king would have been enough to compel the Count d'Estrées to render ready obedience to Spragge or Jordan.

Although he was hampered by the reluctance of his Parliament to vote him money, and by the growing unpopularity of the French alliance among Englishmen, the king made an effort in the following year to push the war against Holland. Six thousand soldiers were collected at Yarmouth, to form an invading army ready to be landed on the coast of Zeeland or North Holland, in order to attack the Republic from behind, while the French troops were pressing on it from the Rhine. Before it was safe to attempt to land these men on the Dutch coast, it was absolutely necessary to dispose of the fleet of De Ruyter. The crushing burden thrown upon them by the French invasion made it hard indeed for the Dutch to maintain an adequate force at sea. If they could have devoted the whole resources of the State to the naval war, they might perhaps have been able to meet the French and English on equal terms. But this was far from being the case. Their resources did not do more than enable them to fit out such a fleet as might, "by the help of God and a good admiral," prevent the enemy from landing an army on their coast. Happily for them, and for England also, since the success of King Charles's mean personal policy would have been the establishment of France in overwhelming strength in the Netherlands, the good admiral was not wanting to Holland. Michael de Ruyter was admirably fitted for the work he had now to do. He had to fight a defensive campaign. A rash man might have yielded to the strain, and have risked the existence of Holland by fighting an imprudent battle. But De Ruyter, though he was one of the few commanders who grew bolder as he grew old, was never rash. On the other hand, a timid man might have been oppressed by the responsibility of his position, and might have been reluctant to fight, even when a fair opportunity presented itself. De Ruyter had just the needful combination of cool, self-possessed caution which made him refrain from blindly rushing at a threatening danger, and of intrepidity which nerved him to strike hard when he saw that a blow could be successfully delivered. He was the last man in the world to endeavour to behave after the fashion recommended by our own Admiral Herbert some twenty years later--namely, to get behind a sandbank, and trust to the effect which the knowledge that the fleet was "in being" was likely to have on the mind of an enemy. Nor was it in his nature to attack feebly when the time for fighting had come. Therefore it was that he stood vigilantly on guard during the summer of 1673 amid the shallows of the Dutch coast, watching the operations of the superior allied fleet, leaving them unmolested when nothing was to be gained by attack, and striking, when the time for blows had come, with might and main. The success he achieved may be regarded by us not only with the admiration due to a valiant and skilful enemy, but with something not remote from patriotic approval. He won, it is true, against an English fleet, but his victory was gained in the real interest of England.

It was obviously the interest of the Dutch to cripple the naval force of England before it could be again united with that of France. Since it was impossible for them, with their then diminished resources, to do this by being beforehand with a powerful fleet, they resolved to make the attempt to effect the purpose indirectly. A scheme, of which De Ruyter himself can hardly have approved, was formed to block the approaches of the Thames by sinking heavily-laden ships in the Channel. With this purpose in view, De Ruyter came on our coast early in May, with a force of 31 ships of the line, 14 frigates, and 18 fireships. He came as far as the Gunfleet, but no attempt was made to put the plan into operation. The naval preparations of the English Government had been timely. It had a sufficient force lying outside the banks to oppose De Ruyter's squadron. When this was known to be the case, the Dutch admiral fell back to his own coast. The States General, with the approval of the Prince of Orange, decided on making no more attempts at offensive warfare for the present. The only fleet Holland could afford to equip was stationed at Schooneveldt, a good anchorage between shallows on the coast of Zeeland. Here it was ordered to lie, and keep watch on the movements of Prince Rupert.

Shortly after De Ruyter had returned to the coast of his country, the French squadron arrived in the Downs. It was still under the command of d'Estrées, and consisted of 27 ships of the line and some smaller vessels. The strength of the English fleet was 54 ships of the line, and it was divided into two squadrons--the Red, under the command of Rupert, and the Blue, of which Sir Edward Spragge was now admiral, in succession to Sandwich. The Dutch fleet had been raised to a strength of 55 ships of the line, 14 frigates, 25 fireships, 14 yachts, and 7 galliots--115 vessels in all. But more than half of these were small. De Ruyter had only 55 battleships to oppose to the 81 of the allies. The odds were very long. No English admiral has ever had to fight against such a superiority of real force. Although bad administration and the example of the Court had done much to injure the discipline of our fleet, it was still far from being as inferior in efficiency to the Dutch as the Spanish and French fleets of Nelson's time were to us. In the allied fleet the English were just equal to the Dutch, leaving the whole French squadron to give the allies a superiority of power. The French were still inexperienced, and for that, together with other reasons, they proved of little use in the campaign. Yet they were certainly not so inferior to the Dutch as the Spaniards of the Great War were to ourselves, and De Ruyter cannot have known that they would not exert themselves fully.

So soon as the whole allied force was collected in the Thames, it stood over to the Dutch coast. The conduct of the French at the battle of Solebay had filled the English seamen with suspicion, and it was decided to put them on this occasion where they could not go off on a tack by themselves. Prince Rupert took the van with the Red Squadron. The French, who still formed the White Squadron, were placed in the centre, with the Blue Squadron under Sir Edward Spragge in the rear. Our ally was thus sandwiched between two trustworthy English forces. De Ruyter was found at his anchorage at Schooneveldt. Relying, as he reasonably might, on his superior numbers, Prince Rupert decided to make an attempt to draw the enemy out to the open sea, where he could be crushed. A light squadron of thirty vessels, including eight French, was sent in with eight fireships to attack the Dutch at anchor. The wind was from the S.W., and the occasion appeared favourable. Rupert's effort to draw the enemy proved successful in a way he had not foreseen. De Ruyter was not the man to lie in a hole and to think that it was enough to preserve himself in being, in order to make himself felt by the enemy. He could rely on the zeal of his squadron. A vehement letter of appeal from the Prince of Orange to the officers and men on the fleet had been read on every ship. It called on them to remember that the very existence of their country was now at stake, to throw aside all selfish care for their own lives, and to sink all personal animosities for the sake of Holland, This appeal to the patriotic feeling which is profound in the Dutch heart had been becomingly answered. De Ruyter had set his fleet a good example by putting his personal grievances aside. The Stadtholder had appointed Cornelius van Tromp to succeed Van Ghent. Tromp was an ardent partisan of the House of Orange, and was very popular with the seamen, but he was no friend to Michael de Ruyter. His disobedience in the last battle of the previous war had almost caused a crushing disaster, and there had been an open quarrel between the two. When, however, Tromp was named by the Stadtholder as third in command of the fleet, the admiral promised to forgive what had passed. Tromp was ordered by the prince to obey his admiral, and the two were publicly reconciled. As no more is heard of the insubordination of Tromp, he must be supposed to have been sincere in the promises he gave, not to remember the stinging rebuke of De Ruyter in the former war.

When, on the 28th May, the allied light squadron was seen to be approaching, the Dutch prepared to meet the attack by a counter-blow. Their anchors were apeak, and they were ready to get under way at a moment's notice. They stood out on the port tack to the N.W., Tromp's division, which was the rear according to the formal division of the fleet, being the van in the action. De Ruyter was in the centre, and Bankert commanded in the rear. So prompt was the action of the Dutch that the allied light squadron had not time to run back to the protection of the fleet before the enemy was close on it. It fled in disorder and with loss. The allied commanders were no less completely surprised by the vigour of De Ruyter's counter-stroke. They had calculated that the enemy would be too frightened to take the offensive. They thought they had to deal with a terrified opponent, who would have to be slowly and with difficulty worried out of his lurking-places. Under this delusion they lay at anchor in some disorder. When, then, De Ruyter stood out to attack them, they had to get under way in a hurry, and their line was badly formed when the enemy was upon them. Both fleets stood out to sea on the port tack, heading to N.W. The Blue Division was hotly engaged by Tromp, and De Ruyter pressed hard on the French in the centre. Bankert was opposed to Rupert with the Red Squadron in the rear. The fight was hottest in the van and centre. The Red Division was comparatively little engaged. According to the French accounts, d'Estrées, seeing that Rupert was not pressing hard enough on the squadron of Bankert, ordered some of his own ships to bear down on the Dutch rear, and they succeeded in cutting it off from the centre. Then De Ruyter, seeing what had happened, tacked with his division, and, running through the French ships, rejoined Bankert. His next move, according to the same authority, was to turn again to the north and follow Tromp, who in the meantime had continued on the first course engaged with Sir Edward Spragge. It was the fortune of these two to be pitted against one another in all the battles of this campaign. The battle ended in the evening without decisive result. De Ruyter anchored near West Kappel, and the allied fleet stood over to the coast of England. This was but a lame and impotent conclusion after the vigorous movement with which the French credit themselves. One suspects that the Dutch version is nearer the truth--namely, that Bankert, finding himself not severely pressed by Rupert, stood on to assist De Ruyter against the White Squadron, and that the allies were timidly handled throughout. Certainly, with eighty-one ships and the weather-gage they might well have done more against fifty-five enemies to leeward.

The Dutch admiral may perhaps have hoped to do sufficient injury to a portion of his enemy's fleet to induce him to return home in order to refit. But the allies continued on the coast, and De Ruyter, who must by this time have seen clearly that he was not called upon to contend against great energy or faculty, decided not to wait to be attacked. Seven days after the battle of the 28th of May, on the 4th of June, he had a favourable wind from the N.E. The deputies of the States accompanied their fleets as well as their armies, but were apparently less timid when sea-fighting was concerned than they were often found to be on shore. Though the odds were long against him, the field deputies gave their consent when De Ruyter asked leave to attack. On the afternoon of the 4th he bore down from windward. As on the former occasion, the fleets engaged headed to the N.W., with the rear divisions in the van. The French were no longer in the centre of the allied fleet, but had resumed the van, the place they had held at the battle of Solebay, which, as the fleets engaged, was in fact in rear of the line. In this, as in all his battles, De Ruyter aimed intelligently at concentrating on a part of the enemy's line, in order to counterbalance a general inferiority in numbers. The brunt of the fighting fell on the two English divisions, the Red and the Blue. Our own historians of the war, who for slovenliness in the use of terms, vagueness of description, and mendacity of assertion are nearly unequalled, maintain that the advantage rested with the allies. Rupert, they say, artfully endeavoured to draw the Dutch off their own coast by slanting to leeward. The substantial facts covered by this plausible apology are that the Dutch and English cannonaded one another until dark; that the English suffered as severely as the enemy, that the French did nothing, and that on the following day the Red and Blue Squadrons were found to have suffered so much that the allies returned to the Thames to refit. Tromp went back to his own coast, having gained the fruits of victory. He had driven a fleet, more than half again as strong as his own, off the coast of the Low Countries, had stopped an invasion, and had cleared the road for trade.

The utter failure of Rupert and d'Estrées to sweep the Dutch fleet out of the road might have convinced the English Court that the time had not come for an invasion of Holland from the sea. Yet, unless something was done, the war would soon appear as ridiculous to Englishmen as it was already odious. The ships were refitted, 4000 soldiers were embarked in the men-of-war and 2000 others in transports. Then the whole force was sent back to the coast of Holland, in order, apparently, to try whether, since it had been found impossible to beat the Dutch fleet first and land the soldiers afterwards, it might not be possible to do both things at once.

On the 23rd of July the allies were again on the coasts of the Low Countries, about the mouth of the Maas. From this point they prowled along as far as the islands beyond North Holland and then back again. De Ruyter had been reinforced till he had under his command about seventy ships of the line. As the English and French had also been strengthened till the first numbered sixty and the second thirty battleships, the superiority of the allies was still considerable. True to his policy of not fighting rashly, De Ruyter followed the enemy as they sailed to and fro, keeping his own ships in the dangerous banks and shallows, where the sharper-keeled French and English vessels dared not follow. But he was still resolute to strike so soon as he had a fair opportunity. It came on the 11th of August, when both fleets were close to the Texel. On the 10th the wind was blowing from the sea, and Rupert pressed in as close as he dared. During the night De Ruyter slipped between the allies and the land and anchored near Camperdown. In the morning the wind had shifted to the S.E., giving the weather-gage to the Dutch. De Ruyter had the permission of the States to give battle, and he came down with his seventy against the ninety of the allies. Both fleets were heading to the south, on the port tack. The French were now actually in the van. The Red Division was in the centre, under the direct command of Rupert, with John Harman as vice-admiral and Chicheley as rear-admiral. Sir Edward Spragge commanded the rear, with Kempthorne as second, and the Earl of Ossory, the son of the Duke of Ormonde, who served as a rear-admiral not because he was a seaman, but because he was a gallant gentleman, for whom the king had a liking, and the son of a great noble. In the Dutch fleet Bankert led the first division, De Ruyter was at his place in the centre, and Tromp was once more opposed to his old foe Spragge in the rear. The plan of the Dutch admiral was identical with that which he had followed in the previous battles of the war. He decided to concentrate his efforts on the Blue and Red Squadrons. He did not do the French the honour to deal with them seriously. Ten vessels were told off under Bankert to watch them, and then De Ruyter fell with the sixty left to him on the sixty English. The battle broke into three separate engagements. Bankert engaged the French at some little distance. Being much more numerous than their opponents, it was in the power of the French to stretch ahead, to make the leading ships turn to windward, and so put Bankert between two fires. They made the attempt to carry out this obvious movement. The leading subdivision of the White Squadron, commanded by M. de Martel, turned to windward and gained a position from which it could have fallen on Bankert. But the intrepid and steady Dutchman was not minded to remain passive till he was taken between two fires. He put his helm up and ran through the French ships still to leeward of him. The French say that the fighting at this moment was hot, and that they almost succeeded in destroying Bankert's vessel with a fireship. It would have been unspeakably disgraceful to them if there had not been hot fighting; as it is, their inferiority to either the Dutch or English seamen in the contending fleets is demonstrated by Bankert's success in carrying out a movement which could never have succeeded against a skilful enemy. It is likely that the heat of the action was felt much more acutely by the French than the Dutch. Bankert's captains must have been very much wanting to themselves if they did not rake the French ships as they passed through with tremendous effect.

When Bankert broke through the French fleet, he found Rupert and De Ruyter to the northward and a little to the leeward of him. The English admiral had not waited quietly for the enemy to bear down upon him. He sheered off a little towards the sea, for the purpose of drawing the Dutch out. The intention was to entice them to such a distance from their own coasts, that they might not be able to run back speedily and take refuge among the shallows. It was a somewhat poor-spirited device, since the most effectual way of preventing the Dutch from returning to their sandbanks would have been to get between them and the land. Rupert's ships were the more weatherly, and, if he had kept his wind and had pressed harder on the Dutch, it is possible that he might have worked through them as Monk had done in the last of the Four Days' Battle. In any case, severely crippled Dutch vessels must have drifted down on his line, and if he had remained steady he might have taken them, whereas by edging away he made them a present of a margin of safety. Moreover, he laid himself open to a peril which he may be excused for not having foreseen. When Bankert had run through the French and found the two central divisions to leeward of him, it was in his power to join De Ruyter by simply putting himself before the wind and coming down. This he did, and his arrival enabled the whole of the Dutch centre and van to concentrate on the Red Squadron. This misfortune might have been averted by the French. The wind which carried Bankert to leeward would equally have carried them. But the French did nothing, and, in fact, took no further part in the action. They remained idle until late in the evening, when the battle was over and the victory had fallen to De Ruyter. As the Dutch admiral pressed closely on Rupert, he had broken through the Red Squadron towards the rear. When Bankert's squadron joined him, he was able to concentrate thirty of his ships upon twenty of ours. If the gunnery of the seventeenth century had not been very wild, these vessels must infallibly have been destroyed. If the Dutch fleet under the command of Admiral de Winter in 1797 had been able to bring a force proportionately superior to bear on the ships of Duncan, he would most certainly have ruined them. But in the earlier century the fire of ships' guns was still very ineffective, and therefore Rupert escaped destruction, though he did not escape defeat. The English squadron was compelled to fall away to leeward, and to look about for the help of the Blue Squadron in the rear.

While the French were demonstrating their entire worthlessness as allies, and while Rupert was being overpowered, the Blue Squadron and its immediate opponent, the Dutch division of Tromp, were carrying on a desperate battle by themselves. The story reads like a passage out of a mediæval chronicle. It has been pointed out already that Sir Edward Spragge had been pitted against Tromp in the two previous battles of the war. A species of personal rivalry had grown up between them. While the fleet was refitting in the Thames, Spragge had visited the Court, and there, perhaps provoked by some jest, or perhaps merely in ostentation, had promised the king that he would bring Tromp home prisoner from the next battle, or would lose his life in the attempt. Having given the promise, Spragge was the man to endeavour to keep it. When the battle began, he fixed his attention exclusively on his own conflict with Tromp. As the Dutch bore down, he did not continue his course in the wake of the Red Squadron as he should have done, but lay-to to wait for Tromp. Lying-to means that a ship braces some of her sails round so that the wind blows them against the mast, while the others are still kept in such a position that the wind blows behind them. The two kinds of pressure neutralise one another, and the ship, instead of forging ahead, begins to drift slowly to leeward. She does not remain stationary, because the wind is always pushing her sideways against the water, and, although she moves very slowly, yet she will drift some miles in the course of a few hours. The result of Spragge's action was to separate his squadron by a long distance from that of Rupert. The prince continued moving to the south, though with a slant towards the west. Spragge floated slowly away to the west. He did not go alone. Tromp, who was at all times ready enough to separate his squadron from that of his commanding officer, could not resist the temptation offered, and he accepted the challenge thrown out to him by the English admiral. He bore down, and the two squadrons engaged ship to ship. There was no manoeuvring, no attempt on either side to gain an advantage by skilful fence. Each side laid on the other with might and main. Spragge and Tromp engaged ship to ship. Spragge's flag was flying in the =Royal Prince= and Tromp's in the _Golden Lion_. So well were the two matched that they had soon beaten one another to a standstill. Then Spragge transferred his flag to the =St. George= and Tromp his to the _Comet_. Then they renewed their duel. Before long the =St. George= was as complete a wreck as the =Royal Prince=. Once more Sir Edward Spragge prepared to shift his flag, but he was destined to fulfil the alternative promise he had made the king. He was not to bring Tromp back a prisoner, but to give his own life in the effort to take him. His boat had hardly gone ten times her length from the side of the =St. George= when it was struck by a cannon-shot, which took a great piece out of the bottom. The crew made a manful attempt to regain the =St. George=, baling the boat and rowing hard. But the damage done was too great The boat went down before they could again reach their ship. Sir Edward Spragge was drowned. Of the short list of English admirals who have died in battle, the majority have fallen in action with the Dutch.

The erratic valour of Sir Edward caused no small embarrassment to his chief. When he turned towards the Blue Division, Rupert found it miles to leeward of him and in no position to give him any support. The White Division showed no sign of coming to his assistance, but lay idle to windward, where it was in vain for the prince to endeavour to reach them. He made no attempt to reunite with his untrustworthy allies, but, turning off before the wind, bore down in the direction of the separate battle raging between the squadrons of Tromp and Spragge. De Ruyter accompanied him, and for a time the battle ceased between the two centre divisions. It may be that their powder was becoming exhausted. The two ran down side by side together, each aiming to regain touch with the rear division of his own fleet. This was effected towards evening, and, the fleets being together again, the action was resumed. The superiority of force was now with the Dutch, for the Blue Division had been very severely cut up in the action with Tromp, and De Ruyter, having been joined by Bankert's squadron, had the whole of his ships together, and excelled the English by some ten vessels. The renewed action lasted until about seven o'clock in the evening, when De Ruyter drew off. From the French accounts it appears that they joined Rupert about this time. Whether De Ruyter withdrew because he saw the French coming down, or whether the French plucked up heart of grace on seeing that the Dutch had retired, is uncertain.

This battle ended the war, and it also ended the possibility of a co-operation between the English and French fleets. It was the firm belief of every man in the navy, from Prince Rupert downwards, that our allies had betrayed us. The nation was convinced that the fleet was right, and it came to be taken for granted that the Count d'Estrées had deliberately allowed the English to be overpowered. It was said that he acted on express orders from his king, directing him to keep his squadron out of action and to leave the Dutch and the English to exhaust one another. No evidence that any such orders were given has been produced. If it is improbable that they ever were given, the reason is rather that they would have been thoroughly silly than that they would have been base. King Louis and his ministers were quite intelligent enough to see that if they allowed the Dutch to destroy the English, they would have to deal with them single-handed. There is no need to attribute so much unscrupulous, and withal silly, cunning to the French Government. The inexperience of d'Estrées, and the natural dislike of Englishmen and Frenchmen for one another, at least in that century, account quite sufficiently for the failure of the allies to co-operate with success. The French must have been perfectly well aware that the English king's alliance with their master was odious to his subjects. They knew that the English considered them the supporters of Popery, and they, for their part, looked upon the English as heretics. In this war the English wished success to their enemy and defeat to their friend. A coalition is seldom successful in war, and, when it is conducted under such conditions as these, is inevitably doomed to defeat.

The battle of the Texel was the end of the war in Europe. When the fleets drew off from one another on the evening of a long day's fighting, there was no list of prizes to show on either side. The loss of life in the English fleet was great, for the ships were crowded with the soldiers who were to have been landed on the coast of Holland, and the slaughter had been proportionately severe, but no vessels had been lost. Still, the victory was undoubtedly with De Ruyter. The allies retired, giving up even the pretence of an attempt to land men or maintain a blockade on the Dutch coast. He had, therefore, gained the main object for which he fought; and if that does not constitute victory, it is difficult to attach a definite meaning to the word. The terms on which the allies stood to one another made it certain that they would not act together again, and, if De Ruyter did not know that on the evening of the battle, he must have learned it before very long. The relations of the French and English were patent to all the world. There is a story that a Dutch sailor, whose comrade expressed some surprise at the inactivity of the French, explained it by saying, "Why, you see, they have hired the English to do their fighting for them, and have no business here except to see that their servants do their work." That sailor may not impossibly have been an invention of the Dutch press, which was able and active. But the opinion put into his mouth was not unlike what was being said in England. Englishmen felt that the king had sold himself and them, to do the work of Louis XIV., and the war was intensely unpopular. As was usual with Charles, he yielded immediately that the opposition of his Parliament and people began to be dangerous. The war was first allowed to die down, and then peace was made in the beginning of 1674.

The fighting which took place outside the North Sea was not important in this war. Some colonial posts were taken and retaken between the English and the Dutch in the West Indies. Sir Tobias Bridge, who commanded for us, and Evertszoon, who led for Holland, however, did not come to an engagement. A more interesting passage of warfare took place far to the south in the Atlantic. The island of St. Helena had been early occupied as a watering station and storehouse by the East India Company. It had once before been taken by the Dutch, and retaken by us. The Dutch were then, and for long afterwards, in possession of the Cape of Good Hope, and it was an obvious object of policy with them to secure possession of all those places on the road to Asia which could be used for the purpose of refreshing a fleet. They were always ready to endeavour to correct the oversight by which they had allowed the island to fall into our hands. In 1672, when the news of the outbreak of the war reached the settlement at the Cape, an expedition was at once despatched against St. Helena. It was beaten off in the first attempt to land, but one of the English planters turned traitor. A convenient landing-place was pointed out by this man. The Dutch were able to reach the higher ground, and once there they soon made themselves masters of the East India Company's little fort. The governor, whose name was Beale, took refuge in a ship then at the anchorage, and fled to Brazil. On the coast of Brazil he fell in with a squadron consisting partly of the king's ships, the =Assistance= and the =Levant= and the =Castle= fireship, and partly of two vessels belonging to the East India Company. It was under the command of Sir Richard Munden. At that time, and indeed to the very close of the eighteenth century, the voyage to the East Indies was expected to last six months. Vessels on their way out, or on their way home, always put in to the Portuguese ports in search of fresh vegetables and water. Sir Richard Munden had been despatched to protect the home-coming East India trade from capture by the Dutch "Capers" or privateers, which were sure to lie in wait for them at the approaches to the Channel. He would naturally go down to meet them where they could be expected. The arrival of the fugitives at once showed Munden that he had an even more pressing duty to perform. If St. Helena was not recovered from the Dutch, the home-coming trade would almost certainly sail into their hands and be lost altogether. He was an officer of great spirit, a Tarpaulin seaman of the best stamp, whose tombstone in Bromley Church records, that though he died at the early age of forty, he had "what upon public duty and what upon merchants' accounts, successfully engaged in fourteen sea fights." Munden prepared to retake the island. Among the fugitives who had reached Brazil with Governor Beale was a negro named Black Oliver. Black Oliver was known to possess an exact knowledge of the landing-places and interior of the island. He had been sold by his master to a Portuguese, but Munden redeemed him and took him as guide. The English squadron reached the island of St. Helena on the afternoon of the 14th of May 1673. It was not observed by the Dutch. By the advice of Black Oliver, it was decided to land at a spot, afterwards named Prosperous Bay to record the success of the enterprise. The command of the landing-party was given to Richard Keigwen, a Cornishman, who was first lieutenant of the =Assistance=, and who afterwards had a curious and varied career in the service of the East India Company. The plan was to climb up the cliffs surrounding the bay, and then go on to the high ground on the side of James's Valley, where they would be in a position to dominate the settlement at the only convenient anchorage in the island. It was no easy work to get up the cliffs. There was no path, and, in order to effect the ascent, it was necessary to send one of the party on in advance, who climbed up the precipice with a ball of twine in his pocket. As the climber made his way up, his comrades below called out to him, "Hold fast, Tom!" and the name has remained attached to the cliff. Tom made his way to the top, and then, by use of the twine, hauled up a rope. The rest of the party now scrambled up after him. If the Dutch had been on the alert, the enterprise would have been physically impossible, but they were quite unaware that the English were in the island. The party marched past Longwood, destined in after times to be the prison of Napoleon, and then seized the summit of Rupert's Hill on the east side of James's Valley. At the same time, Richard Munden brought his ships round to the anchorage, and the Dutch, attacked both by sea and land, were compelled to surrender.