While the secret treaty smoldered quietly like a lighted fuse, a more importunate flame burned in the open. This was an international League of Armed Neutrality designed for common resistance to British assaults at sea and personally conceived and sponsored by a newcomer on the scene, Catherine II, Empress of Russia, an adventuress in power whom Voltaire named the Semiramis of the North and the world would come to know as Catherine the Great. With a territorial appetite like that of Louis XIV, she wanted to expand her borders over Austria and Poland, from which she had already taken a piece and was to take two more in the three partitions of that country. Another of her aims was to overthrow the Ottoman regime in order to revive the Byzantine Empire under Russian patronage. Most of all she wanted a warm-water base in the Mediterranean. When Malmesbury was Ambassador in St. Petersburg before he came to The Hague, he actually succeeded in persuading his government to offer Catherine England’s precious Minorca if Russia would enter an offensive and defensive alliance and would succeed in mediating a just and honorable peace among Britain, France and Spain. Although it would have given her the prize she so long coveted, Catherine resisted the temptation because she suspected a trick in which too much would be asked of her in return, or, as she put it in a phrase that became a byword in diplomacy, “La mariée est trop belle. On veut me tromper.” (The bride is too beautiful. They want to deceive me.)
Holland was not alone in resentment of British interference with trade. “Every nation in Europe,” wrote Benjamin Franklin to the Committee of Secret Correspondence, “wishes to see Britain humbled, having all in their time been offended by her insolence.” Catherine wanted a league to voice this sentiment not only because joint force would obviously be stronger than single, but because she did not wish to stand out herself as too anti-British. She wanted to be accepted as mediator in what had swollen from a mere colonial to a general war: Catherine saw her mediation as enhancing her prestige, of which, like all Russian rulers, she was a little uncertain. Besides, like everyone else, she wanted a head start in American trade, which, also like everyone else, she expected to be a bountiful cascade as soon as the Americans were free of the British. She wanted, too, to increase exports to take advantage of the increased demand by the belligerents for Russian goods, mainly naval stores which were being shipped to France and Spain by the Dutch. Two fuses—armed neutrality and the still-hidden treaty of commerce—were creeping toward each other. When they met, as soon they would, their junction was to light the spark of war.
WHEN two Russian ships were seized by Spain off Gibraltar while penetrating a declared but not substantiated Spanish blockade, the Empress determined that she was the woman to bring order out of the maritime anarchy. She proclaimed her purpose on February 29, 1780, laying down five principles of neutrality which subscribers to the League would be expected to defend. Three of these specified that naval stores were to be exempted from contraband as before; that a declared blockade of a given port or ports would only be recognized if the blockading power assigned sufficient force to make it physically effective; that neutral vessels could navigate freely from port to port along the coast of belligerent nations. The remaining two principles concerned the property of belligerents in relation to contraband. Sweden and Denmark joined Russia as adherents of the League, announcing they would use their naval forces to protect their own ships under the declared terms. In the Netherlands, which had been invited to join, the League immediately became a divisive issue, setting Amsterdam against the Orangists and every faction at odds with every other. No agreement could be reached for eight months. The known unreadiness of the Dutch Navy to face British retaliation if the Netherlands opted for armed defense of neutrality was cause enough for hesitation. Amsterdam, determined to protect her commerce, was able to extract from the States of Holland a vote for adherence, but when at first the States General accepted it, the provinces of Zeeland, Gelderland and Utrecht protested. Under their pressure and the storms raised by Sir Joseph Yorke, who denounced the vote as a violation of the Treaty of Alliance of 1678 and went into his routine of demanding “satisfaction for the insult,” the States General disavowed the vote and reopened the debate. Sir Joseph and his government were not satisfied. Clearly the Dutch were turning more inimical in their feelings and acts. The refusal of Amsterdam to require John Paul Jones to restore his prizes and the refusal of the aids and subsidies claimed under the old treaties and the hostile vote for unlimited convoy registered just at this time in April, 1780, disqualified the Dutch, Britain said, from all former privileges under these treaties. The British government, having come to a decision, was ready for a fight. Their decision had been taken at a Cabinet meeting at which Lord North fell asleep when the problem was discussed and Lords Hillsborough and Sandwich dozed—the result, it was said, of making policy decisions after dinner. It would mean, as Malmesbury wrote to a colleague, that Britain would have to contend alone against four nations—the French, Spanish and Dutch and the American rebels, “three of which after herself were the most powerful at sea.” To fight against four at once seems not the most judicious choice of contest, but taking on the Dutch seems to have been welcomed by the British as a show of bravado, in spite of, and perhaps because of, their ailing performance in America. Besides, they were angry at the Dutch, never a mood for clear thinking. The need to cut off Dutch provisioning of the French fleet was felt to be even more important than supplying the Americans. The emotional feeling against the Dutch appears in the remarks of Malmesbury, who in advance of taking over from Sir Joseph Yorke seems to have imbibed the acrimony of his predecessor. The Dutch, he wrote nastily to a fellow-ambassador while still in St. Petersburg, are “ungrateful dirty senseless boors,” and “since they will be ruined, must submit to their fate.”
A more material motive than anger was present in British minds. Even the British, so disdainful of commerce, had joined the commercial crowd in greedily contemplating the prospect of “a new and lucrative trade with America.” Malmesbury included this candidly in his letter as one of the “contributing factors” in the decision for war on the Dutch, who would be the most serious competitor for American trade. Timing was an urgent concern. One did not know what the Dutch in their peculiar politics were going to do now about the Neutrality League, but if they were to join, armed neutrality must not be allowed to be the casus belli, for in that case the Dutch would have the advantage of fellow-members of the League as their allies. It became apparent to the British that if they were going to declare war, they must do so before and not after the Dutch joined the League, if that indeed was their intent.
In search of a more immediate pretext, they complained of Dutch failure to grant the aids and subsidies (among them the Scots Brigade) called for by the Treaty of Alliance of 1678. But they were afraid of taking any overt action that might precipitate the Dutch into the League. At this point a curious and welcome accident that no one could have foreseen helped them out of their dilemma. The draft treaty of amity of commerce with America, drafted by de Neufville, turned up along with correspondence connected with its origin, wet from a dunking in the sea but no less useful for all that. The American who had negotiated and drafted it with de Neufville had been William Lee, a meddlesome member of the large family of Virginia Lees. Congress had appointed him an envoy to Prussia and Austria, but he had not been accredited in Vienna or Berlin because they were not ready to place themselves in trouble with Britain by officially recognizing an American minister. Lee made his way to Holland, where he hoped to block the appointment of Silas Deane (to replace Adams) and divert the post to himself. Under the wing of the Amsterdam Pensionary Van Berckel, who was steaming with plans to promote Amsterdam’s trade, Lee was soon in contact with de Neufville and working with him on the terms of a treaty of amity and commerce patterned on the model drawn up for hopeful use with future allies by Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, William’s brother, in 1776. When it was completed, William sent it off in triumph to friends in Congress as his ticket for the dip
lomatic post. He had no authority to negotiate a treaty for his country any more than did Van Berckel or de Neufville for theirs, but no one worried about that for the moment. In Philadelphia the draft was submitted to Henry Laurens, a wealthy planter of South Carolina, lately President of the Congress. He was the man who had actually been appointed to The Hague to follow Adams. As he was about to sail in August, 1780, to his post, he took the draft of the treaty with him to examine the terms. Traveling not in convoy but in a lone packet (a passenger or mail ship), his ship the Mercury was chased by a British cruiser, H.M.S. Vestal, off Newfoundland. Quickly, Laurens emptied the diplomatic papers from his trunk, stuffed them into a bag weighted with shot and threw it overboard. Unfortunately, he had not deflated the air, so the bag floated, was sighted by an alert sailor on the Vestal and hooked on board. Boarders from the Vestal, on discovering Laurens’ identity as “a gentleman on his way to Holland to conclude a loan for the use of the persons calling themselves the United States of America,” arrested him on September 3 and carried him off to prison in the Tower of London, where he remained until the end of the war.
Discovery of the treaty in Laurens’ papers, and the correspondence associated with it, excited the British as a hostile act by the Dutch perfectly suiting their need. Here was proof, wrote Lord Stormont, now British Minister for Colonial Affairs, to Yorke, that Amsterdam was in direct contact with the Americans, conduct which he luxuriously described, as “to all intents and purposes equivalent to actual aggression.” Considering that the treaty was provisional and drawn by unofficial persons with no authority to act for either Holland or America, British intensity over the document was exaggerated—deliberately. They wanted to make a commotion that would frighten the Dutch out of entering the Neutrality League, and they carried on about the Laurens disclosure as if it were a plot to assassinate the King. If the States General were found to have had a hand in it, wrote Lord Stormont to Yorke, it could be used as a casus belli for a declaration of war. If the Netherlands under the influence of the French party entered the Neutrality League, the Laurens papers would “justify before the whole world any measure they [Britain] wished to take” and “give the properest direction to the war, by making it a particular quarrel between Great Britain and Holland in which no neutral power has any concern.” Yorke at once took up the agreeable task of conveying the British threat to the Prince. Publication of the affair, he reported, could not “fail to occasion a wonderful alarm in the country … and will thoroughly cool the ardour for the Northern League.” But Yorke pushed the matter rather too heavily, demanding in his most domineering manner that the draft treaty must be disavowed by the Stadtholder and that Van Berckel and his accomplices must be given exemplary punishment as “disturbers of the public peace and violators of the law of nations”; otherwise His Majesty would be obliged to take measures to uphold his dignity. Adams, not yet replaced, repeated that “the arrogant English were treating Amsterdam exactly as they had Boston.” With that fatal gift for the unlearned lesson, they produced the same result—unity against the oppressor, which in America had brought the fractious colonies into their first federation. Adams reported a wide expectation of war. On Christmas Day he wrote that a “violent struggle” gripped the Republic. Anti-English songs calculated to please the taste of sailors were sung in the streets. “A woman who sung it … the day before yesterday sold six hundred of them in an hour and in one spot. These are symptoms of war.” While debate on the Neutrality League resumed, the British issued an ultimatum claiming that the Dutch had failed to fulfill the terms of the Treaty of Alliance of 1678. On their part, the Dutch replied that since the treaty’s aids had been requested for a colonial revolt and not because of attack by a third party, the treaty did not apply. They rejected the ultimatum and on November 20, 1780, reached agreement to enter the League of Neutrals. Belligerents were officially notified of that decision on December 10.
Further indignity was added by the secret treaty as the case of a friendly nation treating with rebels, and also by the flow of contraband which the British could not stop, except by a drastic measure: the seizing of St. Eustatius to stop it at the source. This measure was suggested to his government, it is said, by Sir Joseph Yorke. Admiral Rodney was selected for the mission.
A rejected ultimatum requires some action by the party that issues it. On December 20, the British, as predicted, declared war on the United Provinces. They were able to convey instructions to their commanders at sea, in particular, Admiral Sir George Rodney, who was instructed to proceed against St. Eustatius, before the Dutch could notify the island to prepare for attack. In his speech to Parliament announcing the war, Lord North listed the wrongs suffered by Britain at Dutch hands. “In open violation of treaties” they had refused assistance to Britain to which she was entitled, they had furnished France with warlike stores, they had countenanced by Amsterdam an “insult upon this country by entering into a treaty with the rebellious colonies,” they had allowed John Paul Jones, a “Scotchman and a pirate [apparently equal offenses], to bring British ships into their ports and refit there,” they had permitted a “rebel privateer” to be saluted at St. Eustatius after it had captured two British ships “within cannon shot of their forts.” While Lord North exaggerated the crimes of the Andrew Doria, which had not, as we know, captured any British ships, much less two, his citing the salute of the Continental flag as one in his list of causes for war showed that de Graaff’s gesture rankled deeply in the British mind, not only in having given recognition to “traitorous rebels” but in treating the Americans, whom the British regarded as in some way lower-class, as equals.
Curiously, what seemed to annoy Lord North the most was the Dutch lack of preparedness, as if it made him feel guilty in taking the offensive. In spite of their provocations, he told the House, “they had not acted with any degree of prudence, made no preparation for war, in case of being attacked; and although they must have been aware that, in direct violation of every acknowledged law of nations, their merchants had constantly supplied Britain’s enemies with warlike stores and provisions, of which they had made the island of St. Eustatius the depot, yet they had not thought it necessary either to take any precautions against detection, or to guard against surprise by the British naval and military commanders in those seas, of whose vigilance and activity they could not have been ignorant.” Clearly, North would have felt better if Britain had declared war on a ready-to-fire opponent.
The peripheral, almost disregarded, war that followed, called by the Dutch the Fourth English War, was in world terms a small affair with disproportionate consequences. Locally, in the continued saga following de Graaff’s salute, it would bring down St. Eustatius and bring in a major actor, Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney—a central figure of British sea power, who by an act of omission was to play a critical part in the fate of the American war.
For Holland it would lead to capture by the British of colonies, trade and ships, and to the ultimate destruction of the Prince’s prestige when he was blamed for neglect of the navy, for delay in joining the Neutrality League and for everything else disastrous. As a result, the French party of the Patriotes secured political control, the Stadtholdership was overthrown and, through the prevailing of French influence, the United Provinces were incorporated into France by Napoleon in 1795, marking for the present the fall of the Dutch Republic after less than 150 years of its hard-won independence.
VII
Enter Admiral Rodney
WHEN Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney was given the mission to attack St. Eustatius, he was commander of the Leeward Island station of the British fleet in the West Indies and had long been angered by St. Eustatius’ daily operation as the principal source of supply to Britain’s enemies. A man of unforgiving character and vigorous action, he welcomed the opportunity for punishment. His orders, received January 27, 1781, when he was stationed off Barbados, at the eastern edge of the Windwards, informed him that Britain was now at war with the United Provi
nces and that in view of the “many injurious proceedings of the States-General of the United Provinces and their subjects, and for procuring reparation and satisfaction by attacking and subduing such of the Dutch possessions in the West Indies as the commanders of his Majesty’s land and sea forces shall be of opinion may be attempted with success,” the Admiralty proposed immediate action. They recommended as “first objects of attack St. Eustatius and St. Martin’s, neither of which it is supposed are capable of making any considerable resistance.” Rodney was authorized to consult “on procedures” with General Vaughan, commander of land forces which had been sent out a few weeks previously in anticipation of action. Material gain, the necessary justification for all warlike enterprise of the 18th century, was not overlooked: Because great “quantities of provisions and other stores are laid up there,” the Admiralty pointed out, and “may fall into our hands if we got possession speedily, the immediate attack and reduction of those islands” is recommended. Strategically, as Rodney wrote to Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, on December 25, Martinique, boasting the finest harbor in the Leeward Islands, “is the island most proper to attack.” British possession of that island could have made a real difference in the course of the war, but Britain’s immediate object was to cut off the contraband flowing from St. Eustatius to her enemies the French, as well as to the rebels in America. Two-thirds of the provisions and naval stores sent out from Britain under convoy, Sandwich had told the Cabinet in the September just past, ended up at St. Eustatius, from which they were shipped into French naval hands at Martinique. Well knowing this iniquitous trail, which his ships had often intercepted, and angered by the island’s withholding rope for repair of his rigging on a false plea of having none in stock, Rodney had conceived a hatred for St. Eustatius, and needed no prodding. He “lost not a moment’s time” in executing the order, he reported to the Admiralty. Troops were embarked, ships victualed and watered, guns and rigging inspected and readied, “the whole being kept a most profound secret” so that the blow should fall like “a clap of thunder.” Late in the evening of January 30, his squadron of fifteen ships sailed on its mission, reaching the harbor of St. Eustatius on February 3.