Broadside (2009) - full transcript
The newly restored English monarch, Charles II, leads his country into the fiercest trade war in the age of sail as well as concentrating on the inner workings of the king's court including...
- in the 17th Century,
Dutch and English battleships
in miles long formations,
unleashed mile and
broadsides against each other
in years of ruinous and wretched war.
- These battles are enormous.
There's a hundred ships in each side.
There are thousands of men involved.
If you lose this naval battle,
the Dutch will lose their trade.
They'll go bankrupt.
The English will go bankrupt.
They will lose the war.
This is not about small beer.
This is big business.
- The English and the Dutch
fought the largest sea
battles in the age of sail,
with firepower unequalled by
any artillery force on land.
In the balance, hung each
country's role in world trade
for the next two centuries.
- The Dutch and the
British are the two great
commercial powers of the world.
Their merchants are fanning
out across the globe,
from the west to the East Indies,
and they're running into each other
and shooting each other up.
- All over the world,
these emerging empires collide,
but as these countries compete
for market shares abroad,
they must also forge
personal liberty at home.
People in both countries,
for the first time
in the modern era, are
demanding that their governments
guarantee personal freedoms,
including freedom of religion.
- Because of the religious
conflicts in Europe,
the Dutch had the realisation
that there had to be toleration.
There had to be liberty of conscience.
There had to be freedom of the individual.
- While the Dutch
guarantee religious freedoms,
England wavers between modest toleration
and a state religion strictly enforced.
How these superpowers tolerated religious
and personal freedoms
would affect the lives
of people in both societies
within their own borders and on an island
far from the centre of
the world, Manhattan,
and in a country that would
embrace these freedoms
in its constitution a century later.
But until there was stability
within and between countries,
personal freedoms were far from secure.
And in the first half of the 17th Century,
religious wars ravaged Europe.
Catholic Spain's armies
attacked Protestant Holland.
Religious quarrels in England
erupted into a civil war.
Thousands were killed.
In England, the king, Charles I,
fought with his parliament over taxes
and with his people over religion.
- Charles I was regarded by his people
as being a tyrant who raised taxes
without the consent of Parliament
and who was also trying to push
The Church of England into
the direction of Catholicism,
and this was a country that
was very, very anti-Catholic.
- For almost a century,
the English viewed Catholic rulers
as arbitrary and despotic.
When Charles I tried to
change religious practise,
his people rebelled.
- There was widespread
rioting in 1640 and '41
against some of the religious innovations
that he tried to introduce.
Also against some of
his Catholic advisers,
and that fed into 1642 with
the outbreak of the civil war.
- The army raised by Parliament
to oppose King Charles I took
on a political life of its own.
It's zealous commander, Oliver Cromwell,
after defeating royal armies,
demanded Charles be tried and executed.
- When the king's head
was actually chopped off,
the soldiers cheered and
a great groan went up
from the rest of the crowd.
- With the death of Charles I,
Cromwell soon annihilated
an army led by the king's son, Charles II.
Charles II narrowly
escaped capture and sailed
into years of long exile.
Cromwell soon emerged as the leader
of both the army and Parliament,
who made him Lord Protector,
a dictator by any other name.
But Cromwell could not live forever.
- So in 1658, Oliver Cromwell dies,
and the years from 1658
to 1660 are complete,
utter political and economic chaos.
And by the end that
period, popular opinion
in England believes that the only way
to restore stability in England is
to return to the monarchy.
- It may seem strange to anybody
who's a citizen of a modern republic
that the British should have a republic
for just 11 years and then give it up a
and bring back their monarchy,
but our only republic in
Britain was not produced
by revolution by the
people as in France or by
throwing off the foreign
tyranny, as in America.
It was produced by a small minority
of the population who wanted to have
a radical religion and radical politics,
and what the people wanted
was to have back the king
and the aristocracy and the old church,
and so they got it.
- The road was lined 30 people deep
all the way from Rochester to London,
and the crowds got denser and
denser as you got to London.
It really was an an immense
sort of emotional release,
really, with the king's return.
This was England returning to normal,
finally getting over a very bad dream.
Returning to the natural rule of monarchy.
- 1660, Charles
II was no longer a footnote
to history but at its centre.
To make certain his view
of the civil war endured,
Charles entrusted Samuel
Pepys to record his story.
It is Samuel Pepys's secret diary
that gave later generations
the most intimate view
of the reign of Charles
II, often word for word.
- Well, Mr. Pepys, we thank you
for transcribing our story.
It was a very brutal and bloody time.
- Oh, it is my pleasure, Your Majesty.
It is a story that should
be comprehended by all.
- Charles met Lady Castlemayne
shortly after he returned from exile,
the daughter of a loyalist aristocrat
who lost his fortune in the civil war,
she became Charles' principal mistress
for the next ten years.
- So after the battle with Cromwell,
his troops all around, how did you escape?
- I took the resolution of
putting myself into a disguise.
With an ordinary pair
of grey cloth breeches,
a leather doublet and a green jacket.
I also cut my hair very short.
As soon as I was disguised,
I chose to trust Richard
Penderel, a Roman Catholic.
- Would not Cromwell's troop rumble
every Catholic house in the country?
- Yes, but I knew they had
hiding holes for priests.
Penderel told me it
would be very dangerous
for me to stay either in the
house or go out into the wood,
as the enemy would be
certain to search both.
But he knew of one way
to pass the next day,
and that was to get up
inside a great, big oak.
- Was not the oak in the wood?
- No, it was separate and in plain sight,
and so less suspicious.
We could view all around
without being seen.
Soldiers going up and down looking
for persons escaped.
- And all the Penderels
pretending perfect ignorance.
Very brave.
Charles has rewarded them on his return.
- In later consultations, Colonel Lane
said that he had a sister
who had a fair pretence
of going to Bristol to a cousin of hers
and that she might take
me there as her servant.
And from Bristol I might find shipping
to get me out of England,
which, with God's help, I did.
- In the
first years of his reign,
Charles II worked to rebuild
his power, wealth, and prestige.
In 1664, he begins to
focus on foreign affairs
and to work that blunt tool of
state craft, military force.
In America, he has just
granted his brother, James,
Duke of York, all of the land centred
on the Hudson River,
but the Duke's new claim
is not without problems.
It includes a colony, New Netherland,
owned and governed by the Dutch.
It is that defect Charles now addresses.
- Charles, you have served James
a generous slice of America.
- Yes, but even a small swallow
of the Dutch will be a
challenge to keep down
for the Duke of York.
- And that, no doubt,
depends on our canonicals.
He seems quite ready for
his private instructions.
- Your majesty, Lady Castlemayne.
- Colonel Nichols.
As we publicly directed,
you are to observe
and report to us the sentiments
of our bleak government in Massachusetts.
- I will insinuate myself
into the good opinion
of the principal persons
there, your majesty.
- Privately.
The greater goal of your endeavour
is the seizing of Manhattan,
reducing that people
to an entire submission
and obedience to us.
Secure that whole
region, so that the Dutch
may no longer exercise that trade,
which they have wrongfully
possessed themselves of.
Trade now vested in our
brother, the Duke of York.
- Colonel
Nichols departs for America,
with secret orders from
Charles to take over
the Dutch colony at Manhattan.
The Dutch call their territory between
the English colonies and
New England and Virginia,
New Netherland.
For two generations, the
Dutch have shipped fur
and foodstuffs down the mile-wide
Hudson River to New Amsterdam,
The colony's largest port, at
the tip of Manhattan Island.
Manhattan supports farms,
orchards, and land for grazing.
By 1664, over 2,000 Dutch
colonists live in New Amsterdam.
After decades of conflict,
they now live among and trade
peaceably with Native Americans.
As summer of 1664 ends,
the harvests begin,
and the whole of New Amsterdam
breathes a festive air.
But suddenly, on this balmy August day,
an alarm sounds as war
ships appear in the harbour.
The militia rushes to
battle stations in the fort.
Inside the fort, they await orders from
Peter Stuyvesant, the Director General
of this remote Dutch outpost.
- How many ships?
- Four.
- Guns?
- About 100.
- Troops?
- A thousand plus one-thousand more
Long Islanders with a hundred horse.
More gathering are Brooklyn by the hour.
- What say our towns to every third man?
- They will not come.
- What say our Burgermeisters?
- They will not fight.
- My son?
- He will not.
- Our troops are 200?
- 150, General.
Fifty sick.
- I have ill feelings
about this day myself, Lieutenant.
We have powder on short
for only a few hours.
We must delay.
Delay in the hope of timely
reinforcements from the fatherland.
Send the English general our request
to know the purpose of his coming.
He has not, as yet, to our great surprise
given us any knowledge of his purpose.
With 100 peace-loving guns,
I'm sure he means no prejudice against us.
- Lieutenant, in His Majesty's name,
I do demand the town upon the island
commonly known as Manhattan
with the fort there,
rendered to His Majesty's
obedience and protection.
Tell your director general
that we do not wish
the effusion of Christian blood,
but without complete submission,
you will provoke the miseries of war.
- Stuyvesant had little
military experience.
He really was an administrator.
So when the frigates arrived,
he tried to save New Amsterdam,
because he knew he couldn't defend it.
It's quite clear that if
Stuyvesant had decided to fight,
that New Amsterdam would
have suffered very much.
His only chance was to play for time,
and there was hope that relief forces
from The Netherlands could come in
and take over accordingly once again,
and that exportation was
not unrealistic at all.
- Finally, the
threat of overwhelming force
and generous terms from
Nichols convinces Stuyvesant
to surrender without firing a shot.
- So giving up New Amsterdam
was the right decision.
It saved the town.
- The terms
maintained property rights
and as important, Dutch religious freedom,
and as the Dutch swear allegiance
to their new sovereign,
Manhattan gets a new name, New York,
after it's prince and
patron, James, Duke of York.
Charles II is confidently
provoking The Netherlands,
one of the largest maritime
powers in the world.
He knows that Cromwell's navy had defeated
the Dutch in a war ten years before,
while he was in exile.
What he does with the
navy now will inevitably
be compared to what Cromwell did with it
in the first Anglo-Dutch War.
This war, ostensibly about trade,
was as ruinous as it was inconclusive.
While the English were victorious
in the home waters of the North Sea,
the Dutch defeated them
in the Mediterranean,
destroying English
trade, and in the Baltic,
threatening the supply of
English shipbuilding materials.
- The Dutch idea, essentially was that
you just sailed at the enemy head on.
You ran alongside.
You fired off a few guns as you approach.
But basically, it came down to boarding.
That was what the Dutch expected,
and that was what the Dutch were good at.
- The English discovered
the only answer to this
was not to try and do what the Dutch did,
but to do something else.
In the first Anglo-Dutch
War, the English ships
were bigger and more heavily armed.
They had a firepower advantage,
and that could best be
used by forming a single
line ahead and firing broadsides.
And once you've knocked
the Dutchmen's masts away,
they don't manoeuvre very well.
If you kill the crew, cripple the ship,
you win the battle.
So the English pioneered a
firepower-based tactical revolution.
- Off the
southeast coast of England,
near Gabbard, Cromwell's navy used
the in-line formation for the first time.
It resulted in one of the worst
defeats in Dutch naval history.
- They carefully arranged
themselves in line.
The Dutch came at them in the same group
of unorganised squadrons, and the English
just chopped them to pieces,
firing at them at long
range for hour after hour.
- Seventeenth Century naval warfare
is attritional combat.
It's not decisive.
It's not knockout.
You don't sink the enemy
ship with a single shot.
You knock it to pieces and kill the crew.
So it takes forever.
It takes hours and hours
to resolve these battles.
Men were being knocked over by large,
jagged pieces of wood, often
referred to as splinters,
but not the sort you get
in your finger while
you're doing carpentry.
This splinter will be 6 feet long.
It'll weigh 100 pounds,
and it'll be razor sharp,
and if it hits you, it
won't stick in your finger.
It'll cut you in half.
- Seventeen
ships sunk or captured.
Thousands killed and wounded.
After two years of war and the
horrendous losses at Gabbard,
the Dutch people looked to
their government for relief.
Two powerful factions in The
Netherlands vie for power.
One faction, rich Burgers,
the merchant elite,
want desperately to end the war.
Opposed to the wealthy
merchants was The War Party,
called Orangists, let by
Prince William of Orange.
Because his wife, Mary Stuart,
was the daughter of Charles I,
William had naturally
supported the English monarchy
during the civil war.
He died of smallpox just a few days
before Mary gave birth to
their son, William III.
William II's death left
the Orangists leaderless
and allowed the Republican Burgers
to gain control of the government.
The merchant elite, hating the war
that crippled their trade, installed
their own leader, Johan De Witt.
- De Witt was appointed in 1653
in a period of severe crisis.
The Dutch were involved
in a war against England,
a war that they were
not capable of winning.
Their fleet was simply not strong enough.
Johan De Witt was a very young lawyer
from the city of Dordrecht,
and he soon proved
to be very capable, and what he believed
is that a true Republican
regime should not
be democratic in our
modern sense of the word.
It should basically be an aristocracy
led by well educated and
well-off reagents like himself.
- The war is a disaster.
We must end it.
We can make our best terms now.
Cromwell will be happy
enough to make peace with us,
his Protestant brethren, and make war
on the Antichrists in Spain.
Then we must build a fleet that can take
English broadsides and give back in kind.
- De Witt was really eager
to conclude a peace treaty
and Cromwell, surprisingly,
let him off the hook.
The conditions, more or less,
imposed on the Dutch
were remarkably lenient.
- Cromwell wanted to end
the destructive war with the Dutch,
but more importantly, he
wanted to keep the Orangists,
who were supporting Charles II in exile,
from gaining power in The Netherlands.
- The key to the peace treaty
is not any sort of economic issue.
It's the seclusion of the Prince of Orange
from power in The Netherlands.
That, for Oliver Cromwell,
is the key element
of the peace, and it's
something which John De Witt
is only too happy to accede to.
- With the treaty, William III,
only 3 years old, is
formally excluded from power.
When Charles II was
restored to his throne,
he tried to pursue Johan
De Witt to reinstate
his nephew, William, to his
hereditary titles and privileges.
De Witt refused and even excluded Charles
from a role in William's education.
There was no love lost
between De Witt and Charles,
but Charles had larger
problems at his restoration
than the education of his nephew.
- One of the great problems for the
restored Stuart monarchy is poverty.
The king has no money.
The state isn't going
to give him very much.
The royal revenues aren't very great.
So where does the money come from?
Everybody believes there's
only so much trade.
You can't make new trade.
You just grab the trade
from somebody else.
Who has the trade?
The Dutch.
Do we like the Dutch? No.
They're Republicans.
They're not really our
kind of people at all.
So let's go and grab the
trade from the Dutch.
- Just as
Charles II had sent Nichols
to seize New Amsterdam, he also approved
a raid on Dutch outposts down the coast
of Africa by Robert
Holmes, who, like, Nichols,
had supported his cause during his exile.
- The classic restoration military
hatchet man is Robert Holmes.
He is an old cavalier from the civil war.
He then takes to the sea, and he's kind of
a mixture of a courtier and a pirate.
Robert Holmes is given war ships
and is sent down to West Africa
to wreck havoc among the Dutch markets,
and basically chase them away.
- Secretary Roche, direct our ambassador
to entreat Charles what
calls for this irresponsible
violence from his subject, Robert Holmes?
Along the coast of Africa,
he has plundered our trade
and possessed himself
of our ships and forts.
- An appeal will amuse the king.
No doubt, Holmes sailed
under the royal instruction
of James, just as Nichols
enjoyed the complacency
of the king himself!
- Our public stance will be to demand
restoration and reparation and
to insist Holmes and Nichols
be arrested upon their return.
However, to effect a
more direct restitution,
we shall send the De Ruyter
with our Mediterranean fleet to Africa.
And then, God willing, to America.
- De Witt had
recruited Michiel De Ruyter
to command the Dutch Mediterranean fleet.
He was experienced, highly
skilled, and above all, loyal.
- The English had captured
some Dutch forts in West Africa.
They had done that in a period of peace.
Johan De Witt decided
that it would be good
to send a fleet in the Mediterranean
to recapture it, but how
could you keep this secret?
Every decision would be
mentioned to the English,
certainly if you paid some money.
- De Witt knows several Dutch
legislators have been selling
Dutch secrets to the English.
So the Dutch leader sends these spies,
one by one, to the next meeting.
After they are gone, De Witt attaches
the orders to send De
Ruyter, his trusted admiral,
with the Mediterranean fleet to Africa.
- It is in the official minutes,
but people are not going to read minutes,
and the instruction for De Ruyter
was immediately sent to
Spain and reached him,
and he immediately sailed to West Africa.
- Charles knows nothing
of De Ruyter's counter raid to Africa,
but might approve of it if he did.
He needs war fever to
get Parliament's support.
He already has General
Monck, the head of the army,
who restored Charles to
his throne in a war lather,
and while Charles feigns
ignorance of Holmes' raid,
Monk goads Samuel Pepys,
an influential member
of the Navy Board, to
support the war program.
- General Monk, now our Lord Albemarle,
this is Mr. Samuel Pepys, the
Earl of Montague's cousin.
Clerk of the Navy Board
and a very clever fellow.
- We assured the ambassador
on our princely word
that we gave no commission
or order to Captain Holmes
to demonstrate on Africa.
Nor do we know upon what
grounds he proceeded
to that act of hostility.
- Well, I spoke with
Holmes before he sailed.
He discoursed of the good effects
in some kind of a Dutch
war, saying that the trade
of the world is too little for us too,
and therefore, one must doubt.
- The Dutch have too much trade,
and we resolve to take it from them.
- They were no friend to our king
in exile until his restoration.
- It was so.
For years to indulge Cromwell's ill will,
the Dutch shunned me as they would a leper
with intemperate decay.
On news of my return as king,
they celebrates us in the
Hague with feasts and dance,
and they gave us a yacht.
- What a pusillanimous people.
- I tremble still to thoughts of Amboina.
- Over a half century ago,
in Indonesia, at their
trading post at Amboina,
the Dutch capture a spy who
implicates English merchants
in a plot to seize the fort.
The Dutch arrest, torture
to confession, and behead
the alleged English conspirators.
- It was just something that really burnt
into the English psyche.
There were poems about Amboina.
There were plays about Amboina.
- Amboina can again repeat anywhere
the Dutch hold power.
- The only laws they respect derive from
the broadsides of cannon.
- All the court is mad for a Dutch war.
It seems in our whole kingdom,
I am the only soul for peace.
- As an outsider
to Charles' inner circle,
Pepys may not appreciate the irony
in Charles' peaceful sentiments.
He does not know Charles authorised
the Nichols and Holmes
raids, but De Witt knows
and has already sent De
Ruyter to reclaim Africa,
and De Witt does not intend to stop there.
- Where is Holmes now?
- Portugal.
Off the coast near Lisbon.
- When will he arrive back in England?
- Two months.
De Ruyter has already retaken Gorée
and a number of English ships.
He will sweep the coast by December.
- Here, further orders to De Ruyter.
After Africa, to the Caribbean.
Inflict by way of reprisal
as much damage as possible
at Barbados, New
Netherlands, Newfoundland.
Seize as many merchant
men and stores of sugar
and tobacco as you can bring home.
Demolish those you cannot.
Ransack their plantations.
Destroy their fisheries.
Then pursue home by the shortest course,
north about England.
- News of De
Ruyter's successful counter-raid
down the coast of Africa reaches England
at about the same time as Holmes returns.
Now a war with the Dutch
is virtually certain.
- I hear fully the news of our being
beaten to dirt at Guinea.
De Ruyter with his fleet
hath proceeded to the taking
of whatever we have, forts,
goods, ships, and men.
All of Holmes' work is undone.
- Not all, he has arrived at
Plymouth with many prizes,
gold, ivory, Dutch ships.
- What says Holmes of the reports
of cowardice of his captains?
- He comes now.
Ask him directly.
Monk! How goes it?
- Holmes, welcome home.
Mr. Pepys.
So how big the treasure?
Hundreds of thousands of pounds.
We shall have a count soon.
The Prize Commission sniffs over the ships
as a scavenger over a meaty carcass.
- Major Holmes, I should warn you,
some claim that you exceeded your orders
to protect our trade only.
- Protect our trade?
We have no trade to protect.
No, I went to bash the
Dutch over their head
and steal as much of their
trade by force as I could.
That's what I interpreted
my instructions to mean.
- And that is certainly what
they were meant to mean.
- And that's what I did.
- Does De Ruyter's raid trouble you?
- Sir, that my captains may
have yielded too easily?
Well that is conjecture
for Whitehall warriors.
Broadsides look very different at 50 feet.
De Ruyter's success means there
will be war and great opportunity.
- I worry of our shortage
of money to fund our navy.
- We will take our funding
from Dutch merchant men.
The king sends Allen to
meet the Smirnoff fleet.
Many rich prizes.
Let us hope.
Good day, gentlemen.
- Pepys has many firm opinions
for one with no experience.
- He is an irritating fellow,
but he has a pretty wife who I feign
to be free and friends
with, perhaps after the war.
- Pepys diary records his shock
at Holmes attention to
his wife at parties,
as it records his dismay at the rush
into an ill-advised war.
- The English made an attack, again,
unprovoked and without declaration of war
on a big Dutch merchant
fleet, and, of course
the Dutch were enraged
and the Dutch knew now
that they couldn't
possibly avoid major war.
- The attack not against our outposts,
but against the heart of our commerce
from the Mediterranean means we are
de facto at war with England!
- Ya!
For your approval, orders
to the admiralties.
After consideration, it is resolved
and concluded to authorise you to attack,
conquer, and ruin the English everywhere!
Both in and out of your, on land and sea,
with whatever force through God's blessing
you may now have under our authority!
Charles will have his war!
- Charles wants war,
but the war he wants, short,
decisive, and profitable,
may not be the war he gets.
The navy is already spending Parliament's
largest authorisation ever,
over 2-million pounds,
and Charles knows the
danger many will encounter,
including his own brother, James,
and his longtime friend and companion
in exile, Lord Falmouth.
- Falmouth.
Falmouth!
Riley, our painter, claims
this to be my portrait.
If they're not fish, I'm an ugly fellow.
- Oh, no, Your Majesty.
It is just Riley's irregular palsy.
As he recovers, so will your portrait.
- Falmouth,
I very believe thou art
the wickedest dog in all England.
- For a subject, your
majesty, I believe I am.
- Here's James and his guards.
- Then, you
majesty, I will take my leave.
- My dearest Falmouth, take care of James.
Until we breed our
queen, he is all we have.
- Charles' concern
for his brother, James,
is not only personal, but dynastic.
Charles' two-year marriage
to Catherine of Braganza
has produced no heirs.
Though James is next
in line to the throne,
he will still sail with
and command the fleet
with his best captains,
like Monk and Holmes.
- Your Majesty.
- General Monck, our brother, James,
has discoursed on the good effect
in the last Dutch war
of formations in line.
- Yes, Your Majesty, and signals.
If we get the weather wind, we form
into a line of three squadrons.
With full fleet, 8 miles long.
- Ships in
battle formation usually sail
and attack at an angle to the wind.
If their opponents were
sailing on the same tack,
the upwind fleet was the fleet
on the side closer to the wind.
The downwind fleet was the fleet further
from where the wind was blowing.
The upwind fleet was said
to have the weather wind.
The downwind fleet was
said to be to the Lee.
If any ship to Lee tried to grapple,
it would sail into the wind, lose speed,
and be subjected to broadsides from
more than one ship.
- What if the Dutch try to grapple?
- Oh, as long as we have the wind,
we can stay back and use our
heavy cannons to full result.
No ship of ours blocks the
field of fire from any other.
- What about you old pirates, Holmes?
Can you be taught new tricks?
- Yes, Your Majesty.
As long as the Dutch attack
in piecemeal squadrons,
we can stand off and stomp them.
- They will plaster about
their many admirals.
As long as one Dutch city
distrusts the others,
which is to say, long
enough for us to prevail.
We wish you all good fortune.
- Your Majesty.
- The Dutch fleet is not really
a national navy.
They have five different admiralties.
The two biggest one are
Rotterdam and Amsterdam,
which is both Holland, but
Rotterdam and Amsterdam
are great rivals, and the
third big one is Zeeland.
Admirals from different admiralties
don't have an agreed order of seniority.
They had a serious political problem there
in actually trying to
impose unity on this fleet.
- Under De Witt's leadership,
the competing Dutch cities
have agreed to do one thing.
Build a strong navy.
The result is dozens of
large war ships that can,
as De Witt had urged 10 years ago:
- Take English broadsides
and give back in kind.
- These new ships
were coming into service
just as the second Dutch war started.
The English were actually
not sufficiently aware
that the Dutch were catching up with them
in terms of building serious war ships.
- The biggest class was
between 160 and 170 feet,
and they carried up to 80 guns.
That was still a little bit
less than what the English had,
but on the other hand, our
guns were a little bit heavier.
When the ship fired one broadside,
that was all the guns
on one side of the ship,
it lost a half-ton in weight.
It must've been terrible
to watch and to hear.
- De Witt's new
fleet is not quite ready
in early 1665, and more
important, De Ruyter,
the one leader all
admiralties will follow,
is not back from his raid to the Caribbean
and the east coast of America.
Looking for a reliable
stand in for De Ruyter,
De Witt appoints Baron Van Obdam
to command the Dutch fleet.
Obdam has seen success in
the Baltic Sea between wars,
but now faces a battle
of unprecedented scale.
The Dutch and English fleets
each have over 100 ships
and 20,000 seamen, but
while the Dutch war ships
capable of firing half-ton broadsides
are not yet in service, the
English already have 27.
As important, the English have
developed tactical manoeuvres,
to use their superior fire
power to devastating effect.
- The English had two manoeuvres
that they used to change course.
The first was just tacking in succession.
The first ship in the line tacked
and everyone followed him
around at the same spot.
Tacking from the rear meant that the ship
that initiated the move was the ship
at the tail end of the line,
and as soon as he started,
all the others tried to do so as well.
- Tacking from
the rear took extraordinary
coordination, signalling, and skill.
When the English began doing the manoeuvre
with fleets of 100 ships, even the Dutch,
no mean sailors themselves, were in awe.
- The English fleet moved north
a little bit off Lowestoft.
Both sides were actively seeking a battle.
The Dutch commander, Obdam,
knew that he was outgunned,
but he needed a battle
to drive the English
from the sea before that rich,
East India convoys came home.
Off Lowestoft, fleets met
in two head-on passes,
and at the end of the second pass,
the English were able
to tack together and get
on the same tack with the
Dutch and to windward of them
and then pounded them
to pieces the same way
they had at the Battle
of the Gabbard in 1653.
Right at the heart of it, James' flagship,
The Royal Charles,
engages Obdam's flagship,
and it's one on one, and
eventually, Obdam is killed.
His flagship blows up.
The Dutch don't know who's in command.
So they flee.
The English chase them,
and but for an unfortunate
order given by one of James's courtiers,
the war might well have
been over that night.
- To keep
James out of harm's way,
one of his courtiers halts
the pursuit of the Dutch.
Earlier in the battle, three members
of the court standing close to James were
cut to pieces.
One of those killed was Charles'
dearest friend, Falmouth.
- Hold there.
The king receives no audience.
He mourns Paul Falmouth, as we all do.
I am troubled for the king.
He has not eaten well, nor
slept, these last few nights.
Pray for him.
- The king, it seems, is much troubled
at the fall of My Lord of Falmouth.
- Wish him not alive again Pepys.
He was a man of too much pleasure
to do the king any good
or offer any good office to him.
- But he was a man of great honor
and it shows in his going with the Duke.
The most that ever any man did.
As did Sanson, the same,
our bravest admiral,
who I am impositioned humbly to replace.
- But the Duke has determined
the flag will go to Harmon.
His own captain.
- Harmon?
Harmon?
Harmon!
I do see that I have enemies about me!
They do me prejudice.
They will not suffer me to rise.
I can't continue.
I must, I will resign!
- A rash, proud cock sill.
He will not be dissuaded.
His home's so rich, he seeks occasion
of leaving the service.
- The Duke will take his resignation now
with some disgust, but
by the next fleet season,
all will be friends.
Holmes will have a good ship again,
and honours too, no doubt.
- While England
mourns a few courtiers,
the Dutch mourn a calamity.
- The Dutch, in that particular case,
lost about 17 vessels
one way or the other,
and something like 5,000 plus dead.
Now these are large
numbers when talked about
of people coming from
maritime communities,
and they make a huge dent in societies.
It's not just the size of the losses,
it's the relative impact it
has on coastal communities.
The first result of the Dutch
war is a terrific victory
for the English off Lowestoft.
One of the great naval
victories of British history,
And the Dutch are trounced.
The trouble is, being a naval battle,
they just sail home and
start getting repaired.
- Charles
keeps pressure on the Dutch
by bribing the German Bishop of Munster
to attack the Dutch on
their eastern border.
Munster has had territorial
disputes with the Dutch
and is eager to exploit
their weak land defences.
With the Dutch army
unprepared for the assault,
the bishop quickly occupies several towns.
Everything is going Charles' way,
but then, out of nowhere, the plague.
- The plague hitting London in 1665
and people were dropping
dead in the streets
like leaves were falling
off trees in autumn.
- But Lord, what a sad time it is to see
poor wretches in the streets.
Over 7,000 dead in one week.
The biggest bill yet, which
is very grievous for us all.
- The plague is the beginning
of a reversal of English fortune.
Early the next year, even the attack
by the Bishop of Munster goes bad.
It convinces King Louis XIV of France
to honor his defencive
treaty with the Dutch.
Louis has the largest and
best trained army in Europe.
His navy is not as large as England's,
but it tips the strategic
balance in favor of the Dutch.
- The French, under Louis XIV,
the strongest power in Western Europe,
now come in on the Dutch
side and declare war
upon Britain, and that means that Charles
is back to square one with
twice as many enemies as before.
- The spirit of the Dutch soars
with the announcement of
their new French alliance,
and they finally commission
their powerful warships.
As important, De Witt can
deliver these new ships
to a leader he can trust,
De Ruyter has returned.
- After the Battle of Lowestoft,
the Dutch flag officers met and decided
that they needed to
adopt the English system
and needed to adopt it
as quickly as possible.
- De Witt and
De Ruyter review the fleet,
which now includes the newly
commissioned war ships.
They then meet with Cornelis Tromp,
second in command, and Cornelis Evertsen,
a young captain who fought at Lowestoft.
- With France now with us,
we have a new war.
At least our dear friend, the Munster
has something to think about.
- Charles has no money to pay him.
Louis will send Munster home.
But what will Louis do by sea?
What think you, Tromp?
Thank you for joining us.
My job was to have been
yours after Obdam perished.
It is a noble patriot to
give service to his country.
- Nobel indeed.
I am here.
De Witt knows how to persuade
or twist arms as need be.
To answer, Louis will
do as little as possible
and still preserve his honor.
He may distract some of the English fleet.
- Good.
Evertsen, you were at Lowestoft.
What caused that difficulty?
- The English formation.
Unified, in line, using their big guns.
They turned in unison.
The whole fleet.
With the debts, our small squadrons were
like so many nets for swatting.
- But we have always been able
to close on board.
- If they have the weather
wind, we never will.
- This is troubling.
Coming off fighters we have
done for a hundred years.
- Not and win.
All the captains feel as I.
- Tromp, what think you?
- The young captains are right.
So many times, half our
fleet cannot fire because
our own ships are in the way.
- Do it bother that we
imitate the English system?
- No, they are not so clever.
Even a blind hog will find a truffle.
- Well, let us hope
that that the blind hogs
are at the tillers this summer.
- While the
Dutch practised their new
tactical formations, Charles plans to send
part of his fleet under
his cousin, Prince Rupert,
to block the French fleet
sailing into The Channel
while reserving the
larger part of his fleet
to face the Dutch under
the Duke of Albemarle,
but splitting the fleet is a risk.
The Dutch will almost certainly
outnumber Albemarle's squadrons.
So Charles needs his best captains to sail
with Albemarle and he recruits
Holmes back into service.
- Well, Sir Robert, your
knighthood sits well on you,
as does your new ship, Defiance.
Both are great honours, Your Majesty.
I hope to give you many
victories in return.
- You will, I'm certain.
Your squadron is manned and fitted?
- Within the week.
I go with Albemarle's group,
duties to which I must now attend.
Your Majesty.
- Monck, I say, I mean, Albemarle,
you have been Duke since our restoration.
I will reform my mind to Albemarle.
- Your Majesty may call me as he pleases.
My wife even calls me Monck
still in our bedchamber.
- The Duke of Albemarle, the
name doubly reforms me then,
so as to avoid your bedchamber.
Too crowded for us three.
Albemarle, what think you
of our split of the fleet?
- Until we know the French positions,
a necessary evil, Your Majesty.
We cannot let the French
combine with the Dutch.
- Aye, and we have recent intelligence,
says that French ships
are boarding soldiers
for attack in Ireland.
You have 70 ships in your squadron.
- When all are manned
and fitted, Your Majesty.
As of now, the number
available stands near 60.
- So if the Dutch stay in
port until the French come up,
we will be ready.
- And if the Dutch come sooner,
Your Majesty, do I fight?
Or wait?
- You make that decision, Monck.
I mean, Albemarle.
As the situation dictates
and as you see fit.
- We will look for
opportunities, Your Majesty.
As at Gabbard and Lowestoft.
- Splendid!
- The Duke of Albemarle knew
that he was outnumbered.
He had warned the king,
and the kind simply said,
"You should do what you think prudent."
And that was a terrible mistake,
because the Duke of Albemarle took
that to be an order to attack.
The weather was rather poor.
The seas were rough.
The Dutch were at anchor
and could not imagine
that the English would attack.
The wind, which was blowing
hard from the southwest,
would heel the English ships over so far
that they would not be
able to use their biggest
guns on the lower deck.
- But Albemarle
sees an opportunity,
turns his fleet and heads straight
for an exposed Dutch squadron.
The Dutch finally realise that
the English are attacking.
The Dutch squadron under Tromp
cuts its anchor cables and
get underway just in time.
- The fleets then engaged
in a running fight
for several hours, but
the seas were so rough
that the damage was not very great.
Albemarle's intention
had been to overwhelm
this exposed division of the Dutch.
In that, they completely failed.
- As Albemarle approaches shallows,
he signals his fleet to tack,
but one English squadron
does not see the signal
and keeps on going.
Just then, disaster strikes the Dutch.
- Cornelis Tromp's
flagship, The Hollandia,
was involved in a collision
and was completely disabled.
The English admiral made
straight for Tromp's flagship
through the Dutch fleet.
- But Albemarle, already heading
in the opposite direction,
cannot support this bold move.
The Dutch grapple the English attacker.
The first Dutch marines
on board the English ship
encounter fierce
resistance, but the marines
from a second ship lay down
planks and board in force.
It is soon over.
The Dutch capture three English ships.
As night falls, the English
admiralty sends a fast boat
down the channel with an
urgent message for Rupert.
"Battle begun. Return without delay."
- The weather on the second day
was much quieter than
it was on the first day,
and it was a hot day.
The Dutch fleet with the Lee gauge was
at a considerable
disadvantage, and the smoke
from the guns tended to drift down.
So that they frequently couldn't see
what was going on as well
as the windward fleet.
- De Ruyter wants
to gain the weather wind.
He leads the Dutch fleet to break through
the English line, but the rear squadron,
Tromp's squadron, does not
get through and is surrounded
by English war ships.
- De Ruyter realised that
Tromp was in difficulty.
So he gathered a small
squadron and sailed straight
to Tromp's position and
drove off the English ships
that were attacking him.
- By the end of the second day,
with many ships damaged,
Albemarle disengages
and sails north.
- The English, on the third day, realised
that they had to retreat.
Albemarle sent all of the
damaged and smaller ships ahead,
as best they could, and he gathered up
16 of the largest ships,
each of which could bring,
perhaps, six to eight guns bear on stern,
and drew them up in a line abreast.
- The Duke
of Albemarle's heavy guns
keep the Dutch at bay
until the early afternoon,
when he sites Rupert's
squadron and sails to join it.
- The English pilots,
in all the confusion
of the battle, had lost
track of where they were,
and they ran the fleet
straight onto Galloper Sand,
a nasty sand bank.
Many of the big ships struck.
All of them got off except one,
The Royal Prince, a 92-gun, three decker.
- The Dutch
easily capture the Prince,
but De Ruyter orders
it burned, not wanting
to spare any ships taking
it into port as a prize.
He needs his full force of
ships, now numbering about 70,
for the next day's battle.
- At the beginning of the fourth day,
the Dutch held the wind.
- Albemarle and Rupert decide
to attack to regain the wind.
The English fleet has over 50 ships,
including Rupert's, that are undamaged,
have a full supply of ammunition,
and without casualties,
have full crews.
- The English ships
broke through the Dutch
and gained the wind, and in the process,
split the Dutch fleet.
At one point, late in the day,
it appeared that the English
were winning the fight.
- As De Ruyter sails north,
he looks like he is
abandoning the beleaguered
ships and taking the rest
of his fleet back to port.
- The English believed
that the Dutch were retiring,
but De Ruyter suddenly tacked again
directly on the English fleet with all
of the strength that he
had, and for the first time
in the battle, the Dutch were able
to make their numbers tell.
At this point, the
English were overwhelmed.
The fleet fell into disorder,
and several ships were captured.
- The English
withdrawal into The Thames.
De Ruyter, out of
ammunition, heads home too.
The carnage of this battle,
almost 4,000 killed,
and an equal number
wounded, but the Dutch win
their first important victory
of the second Anglo-Dutch War.
- It was one of the greatest victories
that the Dutch ever won over the English.
They wrote about it in songs
and struck metals for it.
- Both sides
learned valuable lessons
from the Four Days' Battle.
The English now clearly saw
that with their new ships,
the Dutch fleet had
much greater firepower,
and adopting English tactics,
they now fought in line.
The Dutch learned that
even when outnumbered,
the English would fight.
The Dutch are soon to
learn another lesson.
No naval victory confers
a permanent advantage.
As long as the English
can refit damaged ships
and commission new ones,
there will be another massive,
bloody, ruinous battle.
The war is far from over.
In the first Anglo-Dutch
War, Dutch and English
battleships in miles long formations,
unleashed thousands of broadsides
in two years of ruinous war
before finally a fragile peace.
In the decade that followed, the English,
tired of civil and religious conflicts,
invited their exiled king, Charles II,
to return and restore
his interrupted monarchy.
Upon his restoration, Charles took control
of a formidable navy, a navy he believed
he could again use against the Dutch
to regain his power, prestige, and wealth.
- The greater goal of your endeavour
is the seizing of
Manhattan, so that the Dutch
my no longer exercise that trade
which they have wrongfully
possessed themselves of.
- The Dutch
leader, Johan De Witt,
soon responded.
- Authorise you to
attack, conquer, and ruin
the English everywhere!
Charles will have his war!
- The short,
profitable war Charles wanted,
was not the war he got.
His first brilliant victory at sea
brought the French King
Louis XIV into the war
on the side of the Dutch.
- The French, under Louis XIV,
the strongest power in Western Europe,
now come in on the Dutch side,
and declare war upon Britain,
and that means that Charles is back
to square one with twice
as many enemies as before.
- Ships from Louis' navy
supplement's De Witt's newly
commissioned battle ships,
under the command of the
Dutch Admiral De Ruyter.
De Ruyter had made the crucial decision
to adopt the English
in line battle tactics.
- The English formation, unified,
in line, using their big guns.
They turned in unison, the whole fleet.
- With De
Witt's shipbuilding program
adding dozens of battleships
to the Dutch fleet
and training with in-line tactics,
the Dutch met the English,
once again, in June of 1666
for an epic battle.
- These battles are enormous.
There's a hundred ships on each side.
There are thousands of men involved.
The battles go on for hours,
and in the case of the four days,
you guessed it, four days.
- The Dutch
drove the English fleet
from the sea.
The Dutch celebrated their
victory in the Four Days Battle,
but this victory, just
as so many of the earlier
English victories at sea, is ephemeral.
No sea battle would decisively win a war,
if the opposing fleet could
sail back to a home port,
repair, refit, rearm, and sail again.
- Both sides believed
that they had done much
more damage to the other
than they actually had.
The Dutch were sure that the English
had lost a good 20 or 25 ships,
and that the English had
been fatally weakened.
- But the English
had lost only 10 ships.
They quickly repair the ships damaged
in the Four Days Battle and provision
several new, large ships
that had been previously
sidelined for lack of men.
- The crew in a
warship in this period
comprises enough sailors
to man half of the guns.
That's going to be at least 500 men.
You'll then have at least 100 soldiers
up on the upper deck as marines.
In the main, they'll be using
muskets to repel boarders.
This is closed-quarters fighting.
- To get full crews,
the English navy resorts to
a system called impressment,
legally sanctioned, where teams of sailors
are sent to hijack able-bodied men.
- Dear Duke, I am mightily
troubled all this morning
about men that they have
pressed these two last nights.
Persons wholly unfit for sea.
- We need men.
They adapt to the life of the sea.
I have lived it.
It is not so bad.
- But without press money, it is contrary
to all course of law.
- Are you saying you will not pay them?
In war, we have expenses.
All are delayed.
Pepys, you are the clerk of the navy.
Record it and ensure their press money.
- It's really very much up to the captain
of each individual ship to send a gang
to find as many men as he can.
Once they get out there,
once they go into a tavern,
for example, and try to recruit seamen,
they're likely to meet a
certain amount of opposition,
which means that there
will be huge, great battles
in the street, perhaps, and not
just the sailors themselves,
but their wives and
girlfriend, even their children
might get into the a battle
with the press gang, as well.
- Press gangs
usually haunted sea ports,
but during war, with severe shortages,
even London would get a visit.
Sometimes their indiscriminate kidnapping
affected the navy itself.
- Yeah, how about our own
men at the naval office?
Pressed by officers of the
fleet into the service?
Even men on our ordinance
ships are pressed
while taking powder and
cannon shot to the fleet.
- Let me know when your men are pressed.
- Thank you, your Lordship.
It is only that I am troubled by Holmes.
- In his secret
diary, Pepys describes
his personal and professional
conflicts with Holmes,
worrying that Holmes might
challenge him to a duel.
- Last evening, at Lord Batton's,
he said, in front of
several, he thought my wife
the fairest to be fair with.
- He said that with ladies present?
- No, just among the men,
but it vexes me all the same.
- Do not worry, Pepys.
He is gone to the Isle
of White in two days.
Can you defend your wife,
or at least keep her locked up until then?
- I can!
I hope.
- And when the press gangs again act
against our common purpose, let me know.
- I will.
I will.
- The impressed crews,
over 2,000 men, enable many
ships, including the 100-gun
first-rate battle ships,
to join the fleet.
Charles sees the greater
fire power of this fleet
as a way to reverse his bad fortune.
With the expenses of the war mounting,
he needs one great, final battle
to destroy the Dutch fleet.
Less than two months after
the Four Days Battle,
English and Dutch fleets
again sail into the North Sea,
both looking for a decisive victory.
- The English were the stronger,
and the Dutch didn't realise it.
The winds were very light,
so this was a battle
that took place,
literally, in slow motion.
- St. James Day Battle is
classic British naval tactics.
Linear combat, fire power,
degrade the enemy by bombardment,
until the enemy breaks and runs.
A French observer on the Dutch ships said,
"Look, you'll never
beat the English at this"
"because they hold a tight line."
"They manoeuvre in close quarters."
"They're disciplined."
- While the English fight
to their best tactical advantage,
the Dutch make grave tactical errors.
De Witt persuades De Ruyter
to reserve a few large battleships
at the beginning of the
battle, a tactic good against
a smaller fleet but disastrous
against the larger English fleet.
And Tromp, ignoring the
battle plan to stay in line,
breaks ranks to chase
after an English squadron.
- It became a major defeat
for the Dutch navy and De Ruyter.
Perhaps the biggest
defeat ever live to see.
So after the battle, De
Ruyter was really angry.
- Robertson, you know I should fault
De Witt and his policies,
but his mettling directions
were almost as disastrous
as Tromp disappearing.
- What directions? We
fought the English in line.
- He asked me to keep
some of our flagships
from full engagement at the
beginning of the battle,
which I agreed to because I thought
we would outnumber the English.
- But they outnumbered us.
- Ha, ha, we were not prepared for that.
They refitted their fleet,
added new battleships.
My friend, I drove the
Royal Charles from the line,
but another 100-gun
battleship took its place!
We could not stand it alone
with Tromp gone God knows where.
- Outnumbered and
outgunned, where was Tromp?
- Here he comes now with De Witt.
I, too, would like to know that.
- Tromp, you're back.
What happened to you?
- Happened? A battle is what happened.
- We all agreed to stay in line
because we have had some
success with this system.
Not only were you not in line,
but you were nowhere to be seen.
- My squadron had the opportunity
to take out the entire
English Blue Squadron,
an opportunity I could not ignore.
- But our battle plan was clear.
Stay in line.
Broadside volleys, tack
together, stay together!
You, yourself, endorsed
this plan and signed it!
- I did, but I thought we could
take a dozen ships or more,
so I went after them.
- Where are these ships?
- We had not enough time,
and after our main fleet retired,
their whole fleet came after us.
We were fortunate enough to
sail around them to home.
- Your new battle plan almost
proved to be our undoing.
With your ships, we could've matched
them broadside for broadside,
but when you abandoned
your position, you left us exposed!
We were fortunate to save the fleet!
- But we lost only two ships.
- Two ships! And thousands of men!
Men that need not have been killed!
Even more, you cost us the battle!
We lost, when we could've won!
And now the English control The Channel!
- De Ruyter, I know you are angry,
but we will refit and rebuild
and be ready next season.
- Tromp, I want your
resignation as soon as possible.
- But we can work this together!
- You have it now.
- De Witt knows
that despite his best efforts
at reconciliation, his
political opponents,
the Orangists, the party
loyal to William of Orange,
will blame him for Tromp's dismissal.
Tromp himself is an Orangist,
and for the Orangists, Tromp is a hero.
And De Witt has other ongoing
conflicts with the Orangists.
- De Witt has one major problem
in his domestic policies,
and that is William III.
William III is slowly
but surely coming of age.
The Orangists are, once again, stirring
and demanding more rights for William III,
and De Witt is trying to postpone
this as much as possible,
but he knows that at some
stage, it would be unavoidable
to at least give him something.
- But domestic
policies can wait.
De Witt's crisis now is
the war with England.
After the St. James Day
Battle, Charles' navy
is in command of the sea.
It can stop any ship from
entering or leaving Dutch ports,
and the English look for opportunities
to damage Dutch commerce.
- The English
learned from a discontented
Dutch captain, that there
were storehouses in Vlieland.
The English selected Sir Robert Holmes
to destroy the Dutch storehouses.
- In the anchorage behind
it, they find a huge
fleet of Amsterdam merchant
ships, and they burn the lot.
It was reckoned to have
been a million pounds
worth of losses to the Dutch economy.
- Holmes, your
raid has destroyed more
Dutch ships than all our battles.
How many ships burnt?
- 150 with a few guard frigates.
- And the town?
- We found supplies there and took them.
Unfortunately, our men
began capturing goods
from every house and
would not return to ship.
- How could you get them
back in order and boarded?
- With the men in such high spirits,
there was only one way.
We burned the town.
With all possible booty
going up in flames,
they returned to the ship.
- And what are you going to call
this great victory, Sir
Robert. the Vlie Apocalypse?
- Nothing quite so fancy, Your Majesty.
Simply, Holmes Bonfire.
- This is Sir Robert
Holmes' great triumph.
Holmes's Bonfire, the English called it.
It's still remembered in
Holland as a great disaster.
- Before De
Witt can respond to Holmes'
escalation of the war
on land, a disastrous
conflagration destroys
the heart of London.
The Dutch see it as the hand
of God punishing an evil people
in retribution for Holmes Bonfire.
With over 10,000 buildings
destroyed and thousands homeless,
The Great Fire of London is a catastrophe
on a scale far beyond Holmes Bonfire,
and for Charles, a financial fiasco.
With the Dutch economy
in wholesale shambles
and the English capital smoldering,
Louis XIV sees an opportunity to assert
his tenuous claim to territory
near the Dutch border.
- Louis XIV has ambitions
to strengthen his
frontier to the North
by annexing large parts
of what's now Belgium.
It's then The Spanish Netherlands.
- In May 1667, Louis XIV finally invaded
The Spanish Netherlands, and this was
of the utmost importance to Johan De Witt
because Johan De Witt
would want to maintain
The Spanish Netherlands as a buffer
between the Dutch Republic and France.
- So although Charles
II doesn't do anything
to force the Dutch to make peace,
this advancing French
army undoubtedly does.
- De Witt
soon agrees with Charles
to begin negotiations at Breda
in the south of Holland.
With negotiations underway, Charles plans
to exploit the French build
up on the Dutch border,
as he reviews naval
strategy with his brother,
James, Duke of York.
- James what options have we this season?
- Without more funds,
the navy will not sail.
The men are owed two years' pay
and will not sail again without it.
The ships need repair and fitting out,
but we have no credit with our suppliers.
Perhaps Parliament will vote more funds.
- They will not.
They will only mettle and fuss.
They might even hold
those funds already voted.
But if we hold out in Breda,
we'll get a payment from
the Dutch to end the war.
They feel the hot breath of Louis's army
on their southern border.
- The English understood the position
Johan De Witt was in.
He still had this war at
hand with the English,
when his ally was, in fact,
threatening his position.
The English negotiated,
well, actually, instructed
to delay the negotiations
as much as they could
to put more pressure on De Witt.
- We could send some frigates out
to raid Dutch merchants in
The Channel while protecting our own.
- But we have little choice
but to lay out our big
ships in The Medway.
- It is a small risk.
With peace so close, the Dutch will not
expend a fortune to put their
feet to sea for another year.
- Charles II is gambling
with a bit of French help
he's going to be able to pull off
acceptable peace terms,
but meanwhile Johan De Witt is doing
a bit of gambling of his own.
- Charles is bankrupt and cannot
send his fleet out this season.
- We will then blockade him and
take all his merchant ships.
- Yes, and more.
We will attack their fleet as it lies.
- But we cannot navigate The Medway.
It is treacherous with tides.
- We have hired, and I
can recommend to you,
our English pilots, now in our service,
with good knowledge of The Medway.
- Though De Witt recruited
English pilots as guides,
his admirals must still
navigate treacherous shoals
up river for miles.
It will be 10 miles before they reach
the big English ships
protected by the guns
of Upnor Castle, the major
fort protecting the fleet.
- Are not their forts and defences strong?
- Sheerness is unfinished.
If we get to Upnor, we will
have destroyed a dozen ships already.
- But before they get to Upnor,
downriver, near Gillingham, the Dutch
must breach a formidable
barrier spanning The Medway,
The Gillingham Chain.
In a desperate attempt to protect
their unmanned battle fleet, the English
have barricaded the
river with a thick chain.
Supported by four
platforms, the chain forms
an underwater barrier reinforced by
half-sunken ships, cables,
and broken timbers.
- The English fleet is
more dangerous at sea
than moored in The Medway,
and we have many times
boldly fought them there.
- But have we not already begun
our negotiations at Breda for a truce?
And then a treaty?
- We have.
But this raid will be our best
plenipotentiary for peace.
- Charles knows
his ships are vulnerable.
They have no crews, and their cannons
are already in storage ashore.
- My illness, the fever and
the swelling have come back.
It might prevent my going.
- We need you, De Ruyter.
Go as far as you can and hand
over to my brother, Cornelis.
He will project our plan wisely and well.
- Charles soon
learns his gamble has failed.
The Dutch fleet sails.
Charles orders the Duke
of Albemarle to command
the defense of The Medway.
Albemarle deploys guns along the river
and moves a few warships to
point-blank range at the chain.
But the navy that
England has depended upon
to crush invasions,
like the Spanish Armada
a century before, still
lies immobile and unarmed.
While the Dutch fleet, with ten times
the firepower of the Spanish Armada,
anchors at the entrance to The Medway.
The next day, the Dutch
sail into The Medway
easily destroying the weak
defences at Sheerness.
But they must still get
past the Gillingham Chain.
At first, the Dutch fleet is dangerously
clogged up at the chain.
But needing to break through,
one ship after another
hurls into the chain
but is stopped by the barrier.
And withering broadsides.
Finally, a ship catches
a favourable breeze,
builds up speed, rams
the chain, and breaks it.
With the chain broken,
nothing can stop the Dutch.
Within minutes, they set fire
to the ships at the chain,
the last English crews
surrender, and the Dutch capture
the virtually undefended Royal Charles.
News at its loss causes
pandemonium in London.
- No sooner up, that I
hear the sad news confirmed
of the Royal Charles, which
put me into such a fear
that at two hours' warning,
I sent my father and my wife
into the country by the coach this day
with about 1,300 pounds in
gold in their night bag.
Pray God give them good passage.
- One of
the Royal Navy's largest
and most prestigious
battleships, crucial to victories
at Lowestoft and St. James,
is now in Dutch hands.
That night, without crew or
cannon for most of the fleet,
Albemarle reinforces Upnor
Castle with artillery,
which he personally commands.
The next day, De Ruyter
comes in with men of war
and fire ships packed with flammable oil
and stacks of incendiaries.
The war ships anchor in
the gauntlet from hell,
engaging the fort and
the batteries all day
and into the night.
The Dutch fire ships are
now floating fire bombs.
Their crews grapple the
large English battleships,
set them on fire, and leap into lifeboats.
On the final day, as Albemarle
brings in more heavy guns,
the Dutch sail back down The
Medway with the Royal Charles.
- To capture the fleet flagship.
To burn three other big ships
was a huge naval victory in itself,
but even more than a
naval victory, I mean,
it would've been one thing
if they'd lost those ships
in open battle, it would've been bad,
but at least it wouldn't
have been dishonourable.
But to lose them not
even properly defended,
it was politically
catastrophic for the king.
- The English were really in no position
to delay negotiations any further.
The political and economic
and financial damage
that Charles and his regimen
had sustained was enormous.
The Dutch, on the other
hand, were happy to conclude
a peace treaty that would
guarantee their trading rights
and then take steps to stop
Louis XIV from conquering
the whole of The Spanish Netherlands.
- De Witt wants
a quick end to the war.
He proposes the two most
profitable trading areas,
Suriname and Pulo Run, remain Dutch.
Suriname and South America
for sugar production,
Pulo Run in the East Indies
for valuable spice monopolies,
but to ensure fast
response, De Witt sweetens
the agreement for Charles by ensuring
two areas remain English,
Cape Coast Castle,
a centre for the slave and ivory trade
in Africa, and New York.
New York will remain English.
- Frankly, the Dutch
thought they had bigger
economic fish to fry.
They were much more concerned
with the East Indies
and with the West Indies
than they were with this
tiny and relatively unimportant province
where they were losing
the demographic battle,
in any event, to the English.
- Charles now
controls the Eastern Seaboard
of North America from Carolina to Maine.
- So one could say that the defeat in 1667
enabled the British to build
their empire in America.
- But implanted
three years earlier,
in surrender terms of the
Dutch Director General
of New Amsterdam, Stuyvesant,
was a crucial guarantee.
Freedom of conscience.
The inhabitants of New
Amsterdam, now New Yorkers,
had secured a freedom
of religious expression
enjoyed nowhere else in America.
That guarantee would be explicitly
renewed several times in the next century,
most visibly in The Bill of Rights of
The United States Constitution.
The peace after Breda gave
both the Dutch and the English
the tranquillity they needed
to rebuild their economies,
but neither could ignore the
rampant power of Louis XIV.
Charles and De Witt form
an alliance with Sweden
that forces Louis XIV to withdraw from
The Spanish Netherlands.
Charles still hated the Dutch,
but he wanted to teach Louis XIV a lesson.
If Louis wanted to take over
The Spanish Netherlands,
he needed to partner with Charles.
Louis is finally persuaded.
- The French now want to fight the Dutch.
They think the Dutch are
becoming a nuisance to them,
and it's necessary to annihilate them.
Charles thinks that
everything has changed,
everything that made him lose
the last time is now gone.
- This time,
Charles will have Louis XIV
as an ally, using his massive
army against the Dutch.
After preliminary
diplomacy, they negotiate
an alliance through
Charles' sister, Henrietta.
- Princess Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans,
was, in fact, the youngest
sister of King Charles II,
and Princess Henrietta's husband
was the younger brother of Louis XIV.
So it was younger brother
marries younger sister.
They're first cousins, dynastic marriage,
and Princess Henrietta and her husband
weren't very happy
together, and they tried
to give her something of a
life, making her a diplomat,
and they sent her to England in 1670
to Dover Castle to meet her brother,
who was 14 years older, in
order to negotiate a treaty
on behalf of Louis XIV.
Louis wanted to invade and
overtake The Spanish Netherlands,
and he wanted the agreement
that he would do this by land,
and that Charles II, who had
already fought the Dutch,
would do the same by sea, and in return,
Louis would give Charles II
a lot of much-needed cash,
but also there was a secret clause,
which was that Charles II had to promise
to become Roman Catholic.
- Charles himself is pretty broad minded
where religion is concerned.
Parliament, on the other
hand, wants to have
a thoroughly intolerant national church,
which forces everybody to
worship in it or get arrested.
- While Charles
disliked Parliament's
harsh religious policies, he did not flirt
with Catholicism to promote
religious toleration.
He wanted financial
support from Louis XIV,
and to get it, he would promise leniency
for English Catholics,
and he would even promise
to become Catholic himself.
- My dearest, I again, thank you
for your good counsel.
We have come a long way from our
treaty with the Dutch and Swedes.
- You were right to
secure your kingdom then.
Louis' cold answer was
as good as a refusal, but
now the league between you and Louis
is so durable that nothing
in the world shall divide your majesties.
- And it was you who convinced him
of my resolve to declare myself Catholic,
and to be reconciled
to the church of Rome.
Without the aid of the
most Christian king,
we would not be able
to fulfil this design.
- We must, of course, keep the whole
matter an absolute secret.
Only those that you trust can even know
of our plans for the Dutch.
- Many understand that a war with Holland
would, in all respects, suit
with the interests of England.
- And we can ensure our nephew, William,
that he will be compensated
for any of his losses?
- William will be as glad as ourselves
to see De Witt gone.
Ah! What comes here?
- Henrietta took with her,
her maid of honor, Louise
de Kéroualle, and the
treaty was meant to take five days.
In fact, they had such a
jamboree at Dover Castle,
because everybody was
there, that the treaty,
the time, extended to 14 days.
It was a huge party.
When the time came to leave,
the king, and his sister,
Princess Henrietta,
dreaded saying goodbye,
and the princess asked Louise
to bring her jewel box to the king.
- Now Charles, what would
you like from my jewelry box?
- This is the jewel I covet.
- Louise and the
princess set off back to France,
and Louise was then invited
to the English Court,
and the King of France, Louis XIV,
wanted to send her because
he wanted to discover
if his cousin, Charles II, was really
going to become Catholic, and the only way
to have a proper spy was
a spy in the bedchamber.
- In the treaty,
Charles got what he wanted most
from Louis, money, hundreds of thousands
of pounds for the navy.
Enough to refit his 60 biggest ships
and an advance payment of 160,000 pounds
for declaring himself Catholic
at some unspecified future time.
- It's a rather nice
example of Charles II's
layers of deviousness actually.
If there's one thing
that will blow his credit
sky high, it's the announcement that he's
going to turn himself a Catholic.
But he didn't, but what if
Louis XIV decides to reveal it?
- So the plan is for a surprise attack
in which the British attack the Dutch
from the sea, and the
French attach from the land.
Also, Charles believes
that with this overwhelming
victory, he'll be so rich
on captured Dutch colonies
and Dutch shipping, it'll
make him stronger at home.
He won't have to ask
Parliament for money again.
- Charles wants independence
from Parliament at home,
and through his nephew,
William of Orange, a controlling
influence on the Dutch state.
- What Charles hopes to
have happen as a result
of the Treaty of Dover is to overturn
the Dutch Republic and promote his nephew,
William of Orange, to be Stadtholder
and Captain General of The Netherlands.
- As Charles
begins his Dutch strategy
to replace De Witt, his
nephew, William III,
at first is receptive.
- Your Majesty,
dear uncle Charles.
Let me know your desires,
and I am confident
that as long as they are not
hostile to the foundations
of this republic, I shall be
able to obtain them for you,
in spite of De Witt, who
will be thereby worsted
while I and my friends,
in whom His Majesty
can place his trust, will
be placed at the helm.
- But during
a visit later that year,
Charles attempts to persuade
William to become Catholic.
William vehemently
rejects Charles' proposal.
Becoming Catholic would betray
his religion and his country.
With William so agitated, Charles decides
to keep his grand schemes
with Louis XIV secret.
- The problem for the Dutch Republic
is that the traditional
leaders of the Dutch Army
were the members of the House of Orange.
So building up a land army meant giving
political power and military
power to his political enemies.
So what De Witt hoped to do was to have
an incredibly powerful navy
and the triple alliance
which he thought would
keep France contained.
So he was completely double crossed
and outmanoeuvred by Charles II.
- De Witt's weak army policy,
whatever the motivation, is now
his greatest political liability.
He can no longer ignore Orangist demands
to mobilise an army, an army
that William III will now command.
He invites William, De Ruyter,
and his brother, Cornelis
into his war cabinet.
- The question is not will
there be war, but how soon?
- Avchen has already beaten
off an English attack
on the Smirnoff convoy.
- It's Charles' way of declaring war.
He even sent Robert
Holmes to lead the attack,
to make certain we would
understand what he meant.
- The English declaration
will come in the next month.
- Our ambassadors report
rumours of a French treaty.
- When I visited Charles
last, he denied it,
but Louis's army contradicts
that now, 80,000 infantry,
25,000 cavalry marching on Maastricht.
- That is not a training exercise.
The French also will declare soon.
- The French outnumber
our troops three to one.
When Munster and Cologne invade,
our disadvantage will be four to one.
- Our only hope is to
split their alliance.
De Ruyter, take the fleet and attack
the English as soon as possible.
The French will not engage.
If we can sting the English,
they will hate their allies.
Roche, send ambassadors to
Louis and offer land and money.
15 million gilded if need
be to stay his attack.
William, mobilise as
large an army as possible.
Prepare the sluices.
See if we can hold at any
fort or line and reinforce it.
Louis will not take our first offer.
Gentlemen, we must be
ready for a bad year.
Cornelis!
You know we will be blamed.
The Orangist pamphlets
call for our heads already,
and we're not even at war.
Take care.
- De Witt knows the Orangists
want him and his brother gone.
And he also knows that a few of them
may resort to violence.
But he still hopes for
an early naval victory,
as the war begins in the spring of 1672.
- 1672 for the Dutch
Republic, what we call
The Rampjaar, The Year of Disaster.
The country is invaded
from the south by France,
from the east by city states
of Munster and Cologne
in Germany, and from the west, threatened
by the combined allied fleets
of the English and French.
- So the Dutch are
literally on their knees.
This army is coming in almost unopposed,
and even if it was
opposed, it was the best,
the biggest army in Europe.
They're coming from the
south at the same time
that the navy is occupied at sea.
The Third Anglo-Dutch
War is very different
to the previous two.
It's not so much a war about trade.
It's war of conquest.
The declared objective of the allies,
and by the allies I'm talking
about England and France,
is to literally wipe out the Dutch state.
That's what they intend to do.
- In a desperate attempt
to save the Dutch Republic, De Witt
has sent his best admiral, De Ruyter,
to attack the combined Anglo-French fleet.
This fleet, sailing under the command of
James, Duke of York, is the most powerful
battle-fleet yet assembled.
At daybreak, near Solebay, De Ruyter finds
the combined English and French fleet
at its most vulnerable,
anchored and loading supplies.
As the Dutch close in, the French squadron
sails south as planned
earlier with the Duke of York.
De Ruyter now sees his chance for victory.
He sends his smallest squadron
to block the French and
concentrates his larger squadrons
on the English, who are now outnumbered.
As they sail north,
the English are trapped
between land, the superior Dutch force,
blasting them from windward,
and just ahead, Red Sand Shoals.
In utter desperation,
the English tack away
from the shoals and directly
into a massive melee
with the more numerous Dutch.
The Dutch inflict heavy
damage on the English fleet,
including the Royal
James, one of the largest
of the English first-rate 100-gun ships,
which they board, capture, and burn.
As the larger French fleet
sails back toward the battle,
De Ruyter collects his fleet and sails
into the North Sea with one
of his greatest victories.
De Ruyter's fleet inflicts so much damage
on the English fleet that it eliminates
the possibility of an
Anglo-French invasion
by sea for the rest of the year.
But on land, the Dutch Year of Disaster
continues unabated.
Louis XIV's army advances
virtually unopposed
through the eastern Dutch provinces
to the boarders of Holland and Zeeland.
De Witt, blamed for the catastrophe,
rapidly loses the last vestige
of political support and resigns.
William III takes over the
command of all Dutch forces
and organises their last desperate stand.
- William III now was Stadtholder
and commander of the army,
and the only way the
republic was going to survive
was to flood the whole
area, from the big rivers
to the middle of The Netherlands.
So they flooded it.
The French could still have crossed
if they had realised what was happening,
but by the time they tried to cross,
the water was to the
depth of the horses' necks
and they couldn't get their army across.
- The Dutch situation
really was desperate.
They are still politically
heavily divided,
and as this war unfolds, the Orangists
get more and more powerful,
and in the middle of the war,
De Witt and his brother
are thrown out of power,
lynched by an Orangist mob,
and hideously murdered.
- Johan De Witt, the bold,
intelligent, patriotic leader of the Dutch
for two decades, is dead.
He stopped a war the Dutch could not win,
the first English war,
and was the architect
of the peace they did
win after the second war.
He made the cumbersome
Dutch Federal system work,
while preserving their hard-won
personal and religious freedoms.
It was a horrific death
for a national hero,
at the hands of a mindless mob.
- Our deepest sympathy with you Michiel.
The De Witts were your
dear friends and comrades,
and they always placed their trust in you.
Johan was my mentor too, and
I only wish he were here,
to counsel this in this perilous time.
- No one would ever prove
William III's complicity
in De Witt's death.
The fate of the nation now
rests with his leadership.
He is ready to take charge and
has a strategy for survival.
- Can you mend with Tromp here?
- Mend with must.
Our enemies beset us.
- I will follow you, Admiral, and obey.
- We must take the English
out of the war, and soon.
- We can strike before they expect us.
- And the French will not fight.
Louis will order them
to stand off and watch,
while the English and us grind each other.
- Good, if you can stop
the English from landing
a force this year, we can survive on land
south and east, with
God's help and protection.
Tromp, De Ruyter, the
eyes and hearts of all
the inhabitants of his
country, indeed, of all the
Christian world, follow your fleet.
Evertsen, Charles, my uncle,
speaks of you with affection.
He calls you "Kees the Devil".
- He was gracious to me
just before the last war.
Released me after capture
because our family
was kind to him during his exile.
- Evertsen, we need you with
De Ruyter again this season,
but when it ends, you will
have a special commission,
to seize the English East
Indies convoy as it returns.
- Where?
- Near their base at St.
Helena on the South Atlantic.
- And if I miss there?
- Go west to America,
and do what damage you can.
- At the end of the year,
Evertsen's expedition sails,
but it has the misfortune of running
into a more powerful
English fleet at Cape Verde.
The larger English fleet blocks Evertsen
from the South Atlantic.
So he sets sail for America.
Approaching Martinique, he sees a fleet
on the horizon.
- And as he closed with
it, he prepared for battle
and was relieved when this
other fleet of six ships
raised the State's General's flag.
He had blundered by sheer fortune
into another fleet from Holland
from the Admiralty of Amsterdam.
- The Dutch fleets combined
to raid English plantations in America.
- The expeditions were very successful.
They leapfrogged up the island chain,
destroyed a large piece of
the English tobacco fleet,
and decided to sail on.
- Their next stop is New York.
- We arrived off Manhattan
at the end of July
and met with a Dutch
delegation from Brooklyn
and Vlissingen.
They pleaded with us to
restore their government.
We dispatched a sloop to the commander
of the English fort with a demand
for his immediate surrender.
They responded arrogantly, asking by whose
authority we made our demand?
I told them, "You can see by our ships
"and our flags who we are."
"Our commission issues from
the barrels of our cannons."
With no word from them,
we loaded our marines
into boats to land, about 600, and began
to shell the fort.
After an hour, they raised a white flag.
- While Evertsen
sets up a new government
in New Netherland, the war
across The Atlantic continues.
Charles needs a victory.
The war now in its
second year is unpopular.
Dutch privateers decimate English trade.
Parliament reluctantly votes funds
to continue but will not support
another year of war
without a decisive victory.
In addition, Parliament passes an act
requiring all high office holders
to swear an oath condemning Catholicism.
Unwilling to submit to the oath,
James, Duke of York,
resigns from the navy,
leaving Charles with Prince
Rupert to command the fleet
for the planned invasion
of The Netherlands.
- This time, the English want
to invade Holland themselves.
They actually have an invasion
army ready to go across.
They have boats to go
across, and this time,
the Anglo-French fleet is
meant to support that invasion.
- But the
invasion cannot take place
until the Anglo-French fleet
knocks out De Ruyter's fleet.
- All summer, De Ruyter very skillfully
kept his smaller fleet
behind his own shoals
and avoided a major battle.
I mean, a couple of smaller conflicts.
In August, De Ruyter has come out
to escort in the returning
East India fleet.
- The large Anglo-French fleet
sails in battle line to destroy De Ruyter.
But their formation soon falls apart.
- The rear squadron dropped back
to fight the Dutch admiral
of the rear squadron, Tromp.
The French do very little all day,
and, of course, it's
said that they've been
under orders from Louis XIV not to fight,
to let the English and
the Dutch hammer it out.
So Prince Rupert's squadron in the centre
is left on its own against
De Ruyter's squadron.
As a result, the Dutch
achieve their objective.
They keep the control of the sea,
and Rupert has to retire back to Britain,
with the inevitable
recriminations afterwards,
the accusations against the French,
accusations against Rupert himself.
- The English
Parliament has constantly
opposed fighting on
the side of the French.
With political pressure from all sides,
and insufficient subsidies from Louis,
Charles agrees to peace
with his nephew, William.
- My captains, I applaud you,
as do our thankful people.
With this treaty, England departs the war.
- We have taken Charles
off the French payroll
and put him on ours, at
20% of what he demanded
less than a year ago!
- Evertsen will be unhappy
we returned New Amsterdam,
and saluting their flag
always stuck in my throat.
- But for a small indemnity
and a point of etiquette,
we can save our country
from Louis's grasp.
Neither Zeeland nor Holland
wanted New Amsterdam.
It could not be held profitably.
- The English duplicate themselves
so quickly, like rabbits.
Soon their whole colony will suffocate
under the small turds
of their Anglo babies.
- Since the whole war
had been fought at sea,
it was easy to make peace on the terms
of no gains on either side.
The idea of New York did
cross some people's minds,
but the Dutch weren't terribly interested.
They had bigger fish to
fry, in economic terms,
in other parts of the world.
- We yield New Amsterdam,
but we gain clear title
to Suriname and four
sugar islands and rights
to many fisheries, and I am, of course,
Charles's favourite again.
He writes, "I would have
you know that although"
"my own affairs oblige
me to hasten the peace,"
"I could not have had
any comfort nor security"
"in it, if it did not
see you so established."
- There's talk of
James's daughter for you.
So who can tell?
- Yes, you might be the
next King of England.
- William
now has supreme command
of both army and navy,
as well as the highest
civil office in every province.
He builds alliances with Spain and Austria
and leads large allied armies to lift the
French siege of Dutch cities.
He wisely lets De Ruyter continue his
extraordinary command of the navy.
Winning victor after
victory against all odds,
De Ruyter assures his
place among the great naval
commanders in the history of the world.
Meanwhile, Charles attention
is drawn to domestic concerns.
- We'll never know
quite how much influence
Charles's girlfriends had.
One of the most apparently influential was
Barbara Villiers Castlemayne.
She's certainly got a
temper, and she's certainly
got plenty of ambition,
and the king dotes on her.
He's in love with her
all through the 1660s.
- Pepys, see there, my competitor
for the king's affection.
Louis' spy and whore.
- No, she can no longer serve Louis now.
Charles makes her an English Duchesse.
- Duchess!
Or is that now the title for
a whore with a high price?
- The king will soon acknowledge her son
and establish a living for him.
- As he did mine, after I threatened
to bash our baby's brains out.
- Right here at Whitehall,
during a ball, as I remember.
You have flair, my lady.
Ah, here comes The Duke of York.
- Yes, he beats
the bushes for a new wife.
- It was James, Duke of York,
who was the key to William
III's future as king.
James gave his daughter,
Mary, in marriage to William,
and as important, James
publicly announced himself
Catholic soon after his first wife died.
- Oh here also comes
Charles and his French whore.
I leave you with them.
- The girlfriend of
Charles II who was really
hated by the English
and suspected of being
massively influential, was the one he had
all through the 1670s and until his death.
Louise de Kéroualle, who he
makes Duchess of Portsmouth.
- James, I have for you the perfect match.
Mademoiselle Delboeuf,
the daughter of the Duke.
- How does she compare to the widow
of the Duke de Guise?
She is De Guise's opposite.
Young, pretty, smart, without the baggage
of a large fortune of her large family.
- But James still needs a large fortune.
I was feeding the birds
at St. James's Park,
attended only by Lord Berkeley.
James rode up surrounded by his guards.
The Duke feared my life
might be endangered
by so small attendants.
"What kind of danger, James?" Said I.
For no man in England would
end my life to make you king.
- Charles II died
of natural causes in 1685.
His legacy, Charles
created the Royal Navy,
the cornerstone of
British global dominance
for the next two centuries.
He acquired trading posts
in New York and Africa
that ensured England access to
the wealth of two continents,
sidestepping an obstinate parliament,
he secured religious
freedom for his new colonies
in America, the Carolinas,
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
And for his brother, James, he delivered
the British throne intact.
- James II, of course, was a Catholic,
and to be a Catholic
in a Protestant nation
at this date is an exceedingly
difficult trick to pull off.
- James is not just a Catholic.
He's an authoritarian.
He wants to impose his
will on the country,
and that combination of his Catholicism
and his authoritarianism
leads to a revolt.
- With a large part
of the English nation
disaffected with James,
William III led a Dutch
invasion of England.
An extremely risky undertaking.
But with broad support in England,
including the English Army and Navy,
William's bold move was successful.
William and his wife,
Mary, James' daughter,
became the King and Queen of England.
- William III is a Dutchman,
and he brings with him
Dutch ideas about finance and capital
and about the modern state.
Under William III, England
goes from a ram shackled,
poor country to a remarkably
rich and resilient country
capable of fighting for decades.
- He combines the English and Dutch forces
into a large coalition against Louis XIV.
This is then the theme
for the decades to come.
- It's William's constitutional state
that gives you the great
power of the 18th Century,
which allows the Royal Navy
to be wielded effectively
by a much richer and more powerful state.
So it's not about the navy.
The navy is fine under James and Charles.
It's the state that needs reforming.
That comes in 1688, and after that,
you can date the rise of
England to global power.
- William III also
extended religious freedom
by ramming a Toleration
Act through parliament.
Although it proscribed English monarchs
from being Catholic and restricted
some religious practises,
the Toleration Act virtually eliminated
arbitrary religious
persecution by the state.
A hard-won victory for freedom
of conscience and religion
in England and in all of
her American colonies.