Chapter XIV: More Glory Abroad

While we have been watching our little domestic puppet show and have seen how the figures were being moved by the dextrous fingers of some hidden French performer, what has been happening upon the large stage of the world? Great and wonderful things have happened. A little half-pay lieutenant, of humble parentage, bad manners, ungrammatical language, but inordinate ambition, has hewn his way upward until as commander-in-chief of the French armies he has made all the land surrounding the country of his adoption into little tributary republics, has obliged the Sphinx to listen to his oratory, and has caused his frightened enemies to forget their mutual dislike to such an extent that they combine into the second coalition of England, Prussia, Russia, and Turkey. The Batavian Republic, bound to France by her defensive and offensive treaty, found herself suddenly in war with the greater part of the European continent. Now if there was anything which the new assembly of moderates did not wish, it was another outbreak of hostilities.

Once more a strong British fleet was blockading the Dutch coast. The Dutch fleet, bottled up in the harbour of Texel, was again doomed to inactivity. As for the army, it was supposed to consist of 20,000 men, but the majority of the soldiers were raw and untrained recruits and useless for immediate action upon any field of battle.

Often during the previous years the French had contemplated an invasion of the British Isles. This game of invasion is one which two people can play. And on the 27th of August, 1799, the directors, who were patiently working their way through the mountains of official red tape demanded by the over-centralized Batavian Government, were informed by courier from Helder that a large hostile fleet had been sighted near the Dutch coast. Frantic orders were given to Daendels to take his army and prepare for defense. But the general, in no mild temper, reported that he had neither "clothes for his men, nor horses for his cavalry, nor straw for his horses." And before he had obtained the money with which to buy part of these necessaries the British fleet had captured the Dutch one and had thrown 15,000 men, English and Russian, upon the Dutch coast. A week later these were followed by more men, until half a hundred thousand foreign soldiers were upon the territory of the Batavian Republic and within two days' march from Amsterdam.

Daendels, with such men as he could muster, bravely marched to the front, and from behind dikes and in the narrow streets of ancient villages opened a guerilla warfare upon the invaders. French troops were reported to be on their way to help the Batavians, but could not arrive before a couple of days. The country was in a dangerous position, and yet the British-Russian invasion petered out completely, and, full of promise, was changed into a complete failure. This was due partly to the dilatoriness of the English commander and to the bad understanding between Englishman and Russian. But worst of all, the allies, for the second time, committed the blunder which had cost them so dearly just before the battle of Verdun. The young Prince of Orange had joined this expedition, and some enthusiast (if not he himself) had thought to improve the occasion by the issuing of a high-sounding proclamation. This document treated the entire revolution as so much personal wickedness, as the machinations of vicious and ambitious people who desired to change the country's government merely for the benefit of their own pockets. It called upon all fatherlanders to drive the French usurpers out and to return to their old allegiance to what the proclamation was pleased to call their "sovereign ruler." This sovereign ruler was none less than old William V. But if there was anything which the people as a whole did not desire, it was a return to the days of that now forgotten Stadholder. Federalists and unionists were bad enough, but the comparative liberty of the present moment was too agreeable to make the citizens desire a repetition of those old times when all the voters and assemblymen of the present hour were merely silent actors in a drama which was not of their making and not of their approval. And with quite rare unanimity the Batavians rejected this proclamation of their loving Stadholder and made ready to defend the country against the invader who came under the guise of a deliverer.

The hereditary Prince settled down in the little town of Alkmaar of famous memory and waited. He waited a week, but nothing happened except that the troops of the allies, badly provisioned by their commissary departments, began to steal and plunder among the Dutch farmers. And when another week had passed it had become manifestly clear that the Prince and his army could not count upon the smallest support from the Batavians. By that time, too, the French army had been greatly strengthened. Commanded by the French Jacobin Brune, who loved a fight as well as he did brandy, the defences of the republic were speedily put into excellent shape. Krayenhoff, our friend of the revolution of Amsterdam, now a very capable brigadier general of engineers, inundated the country around Amsterdam, while the English, under their slow and ponderous commander Yorke, were still debating as to the best ways and means of attack. When finally the allies went over to that attack they found themselves with the sea behind them, with sand dunes and impassable swamps on both sides, and with a strong French and a smaller Batavian army in front of them. And when they tried to drive this army out of its position they were badly defeated in a number of small fights; and a month after they had marched from Helder to Alkmaar they marched back from Alkmaar to Helder, shipped their enormous number of sick and wounded on board the fleet, and departed, cursing a country where even the drinking water had to be transported across the North Sea, where it always rained, and where, even if it did not rain, the water sprang from the soil and turned camps and hospitals and trenches into uninhabitable puddles.

The Batavian army was proud of itself and was praised by others. The men had stood the test of the war much better than people had dared to hope.

But what good, apart from a little glory, had all their bravery done them? On land they had beaten the English, but in far-away Asia the British fleet had taken one Dutch colony after the other, until of the large colonial empire there remained but the little island of Decima, in Japan. Upon a strip of territory of a few hundred square feet the old red, white, and blue flag of Holland continued to fly. Everywhere else it had been hauled down.