Battles off Dunkirk.] THE GALLEYS OF FRANCE, The latter officer, afterwards an admiral, commanded in the West Indies, where he defeated and destroyed in 1667 an allied French and Dutch fleet superior to his own, and burnt the admiral's ship of the former. Though the duke had brought the fleet to the Nore, he did not leave the sea open to the Dutch, to observe whose motions he dispatched the Diamond, Captain John Golding, and the Yarmouth, Captain Ayliffe. These frigates happened to fall in with two direction ships, as the Dutch named them, each of 48 guns. One was commanded by a master, the other by Cornelius Evertzen the younger, and the four ships at once engaged. At the first broadside Golding was slain; but his lieutenant, Davis, managed the conflict so well, in concert with the captain of the Yarmouth, that both the enemies' ships were taken and brought into port. ("King James's Memoirs.") "26th April," Evelyn writes, "I presented 321 young Captain Evertzen (eldest son of Cornelius, Vice-admiral of Zealand, and nephew of John, now admiral, a most valiant person) to His Majesty ir his bedchamber. The king gave him his hand to kisse, and restored him his liberty." Charles did more, for he gave him his passport and fifty broad pieces of gold. In honour of the battle off Lowestoft, a medal was struck, having on its obverse side a fine profile of the duke, with the legend, "Jacobvs, Dux Ebor et Alban, Dom Magn. Admiralis Angliæ," &c. On the reverse was a view of the battle, in which the Royal Charles was finely depicted, with the royal standard flying at her mainmast head, a flag with an anchor at the fore, the union on her jack-staff and also at her mizen-top, and St. George's cross at the stern. Around the medal was the proud inscription, "Nec minor in terris, 3 Jvnii, 1665." CHAPTER LVI. THE FOUR DAYS' BATTLE OFF DUNKIRK, 1666. In this year the command of the fleet was entrusted to Prince Rupert and the Duke of Albemarle. At the pressing instance of the States-General, and to keep up the quarrel between two great maritime powers, to the end that both might be weakened, the King of France declared war against Britain on the 19th of January, and fitted out a fleet of thirty-six sail, besides galleys and fire-ships, under the Duc de Beaufort, his admiral, to leave Toulon and enter the Channel. but with no other dress than the rest, and a chayne locked about his leg, but not coupled." These galleys were frequently beautifully carved and gilded; and the diarist tells us that when they began to move, the bending of the slaves at their sweeps, "and the noyse of their chaines, with the roaring of the beaten waters, had something strange and fearfull to one unaccustomed to it." Holland had now a formidable ally. In the lapse of a few years Louis XIV. had replenished his treasury, created a naval force, augmented his Of these galleys we have a description in the army, and appointed magazines for military stores. diary of Evelyn. They were rowed by slaves, whose action the captain could command by a nod and a whistle. "The spectacle was new to me," Evelyn adds, "and most strange, to see so many hundreds of miserably naked persons, having their heads shaven close, and having only high red bonnets, a payre of coarse canvas drawers, their whole back and leggs naked, doubly chained about their middle and leggs in couples, and made fast to their seates, and all commanded in a trice, by an imperious and cruell seaman. One Turke he much favoured, who waited on him in his cabin, Colbert and Luvois, the former equal to Sully as a financier, were his ministers; Condé and Turenne, both in the prime of life, were his generals; so France at that time had just reason to be proud of herself. When Beaufort sailed for the Channel, the Dutch fleet under De Ruyter, Evertzen, and Van Tromp, to the number of seventy-six sail, was at sea when the duke was supposed to be entering the Channel-we say supposed, because, for many unaccountable reasons, he did not come to Belleisle-en-Mer, where he was to join the Dutch, till the end of September. The English fleet under Rupert and Albemarle did not exceed seventy-four sail when it came to anchor in the Downs on the 29th of May. Among the troops embarked on board the fleet were 300 men of the Guards, who marched from London on the 28th of March. Albemarle, who, from his successes under the Protector, somewhat underrated the Dutch, proposed to detach Prince Rupert with twenty sail-the whole of the white squadron-to the Isle of Wight, to oppose the Duc de Beaufort. Sir George Ayscue, who was well acquainted with the skill and valour of De Ruyter and Van Tromp, protested against the temerity of the resolution to weaken the strength of the fleet; but the superior authority of Albemarle prevailed, and the remainder of the fleet set sail to give battle to the Dutch, of whom they came in sight off Dunkirk on the 1st of June. The enemy cut their hempen cables at once, in their eagerness to engage, and the battle that ensued is one of the most memorable that has yet been recorded in history, whether we consider the length of its duration, four successive days, or the desperate courage with which both sides maintained it. By the most heroic valour, the Duke of Albemarle made every atonement for the rashness of the attempt; and no youth, not even the fiery and headlong Rubert, could have exerted himself more than did this old soldier of the Commonwealth, who had now attained the highest honours that can accrue to a subject, and was then in the decline of life. By eleven o'clock on the morning of the 2nd of June, it was known by a dispatch from Albemarle that a battle had begun, and orders were given to dispatch at once 200 more soldiers to the fleet. "Down to Blackwall," says Pepys, "and there saw the soldiers who were by this time getting most of them drunk-shipped off. But, Lord! to see how the poor fellows kissed their wives and sweethearts in that simple manner at their going off, and shouted, and let off their guns, was strange sport." And all the 3rd and 4th the din of cannon was heard in the air at London, as both Pepys and Evelyn tell; but a letter from the Governor of Dover Castle asserted that what was taken for cannon was only thunder. Favoured by the same wind which bore Prince Rupert to the Isle of Wight, to look for a foe who never appeared, the whole Dutch fleet, as we have said, now stood confidently towards the uselessly diminished armament of the Duke of Albemarle, then amounting to between fifty and sixty sail; and the wind was blowing so keenly from the southwest that his fleet careened so much as to render the lower tier of guns useless. De Ruyter had under his orders an armament carrying 4,716 guns and 22,000 men. He led in person the squadron of the Maese. That of North Holland and Friesland was led by Evertzen, and that of Zealand by the younger Van Tromp. Notwithstanding his great supe riority in strength, De Ruyter, in a letter to the States-General, confesses that, in the battle which ensued, and which lasted so many days, the English were always the assailants, and that it was they who began the action "by attacking the Dutch as they lay at anchor, between Dunkirk and the North Foreland, and with such impetuosity that they were obliged to cut their cables to put themselves in a posture to receive them." As The battle was begun by Vice-Admiral Sir William Berkeley, who, when leading the van, carried his ship, the Swiftsure, into the thickest of the enemy, who attacked her on all sides. Being a second-rate, she was ere long compelled to strike, and, with two others, was taken by the Dutch boarders, who found Sir William lying dead in his cabin and covered with blood. He lay on the table, with a musket-ball in his throat. ship after ship engaged, the Dutch directed their fire chiefly at the sails and rigging of the English, seeking to disable them, and as they made plentiful use of cross-bar and chain shot, they were found very destructive. The English had the advantage of the wind, but we are told that it increased so much during the action, that they could make no steady use of their matchlocks; but this contingency must also have affected the Dutch. De Ruyter obtained an opportunity for tacking with advantage, while the English cannon made the most dreadful havoc among the squadron of Van Tromp, whose own ship was so shattered, as well as that of Vice-Admiral Van Neez, that he was compelled to shift his flag on board another, commanded by Jacob Swartz. De Ruyter, upon coming to his assistance, soon shared the same fate, his ship being almost beaten to pieces; while that of Count Tralow was blown up with nearly all on board, the shattered remains of men and blazing splinters falling in a shower upon the con tending ships. The Prince of Monaco, the Count de Guiche, and a few others contrived to get overboard in time to reach in safety the ship of Captain Van Gueldre. Struggling against the wind and the enemy, Van Tromp behaved with the most un paralleled bravery; and the "History of the United Provinces " asserts that he sank one English ship of fifty guns, another of seventy, and burned three others of seventy guns each, which is probably an exaggeration, though this account is followed by Rapin, who was always favourable to the Hollanders. The greatest loss the Dutch sustained he asserts to have been the death of Vice-Admiral Evertzen, who was slain by a cannon-ball. Prior to this event his squadron had surrounded the Essex and the Henry, commanded by Sir John Harman, whose intrepid conduct is worthy of record. The Essex, a third-rate, was taken; the Henry, being assailed on both sides and raked fore and aft, Admiral Evertzen hailed her through his trumpet, and offered quarter. 323 men-of-war, of which ten were sunk and six taken; the loss of the Dutch was fifteen ships. The London Gazette of the 7th of June, 1666, states that the Duke of Albemarle "had all his tackle taken off by chain-shot, and his breeches to his skin were shot off." Campbell states that he "was much blamed for his rashness and great contempt of the Dutch; but he thought that fighting was, almost on any terms, preferable to running away in a nation who pretend to the dominion of the sea." Darkness alone parted the combatants, and the whole night was spent in repairing and refitting. By daybreak on the morning of the 2nd of June the cannonading was resumed; but previous to this a council of war had been held, by candlelight, "No, sir," replied Sir John Harman; "it is not on board the head-quarter ship, wherein the Duke come to that yet." Evertzen fell by the next broadside, and in the confusion consequent to this occurrence the Henry fought her way off. Three fire-ships were then sent to burn her. One of these grappled her on the starboard quarter; but the smoke was so thick that her crew could not draw the grappling irons, when they were hooked, until the flames burst forth, when her boatswain resolutely leaped on board, disentangled the iron, cast off the fire-ship, and regained his own. Scarcely was this courageous act effected when she was grappled on the port side by another fireship; her sails and rigging took flame; destruction seemed inevitable, and as some of her crew prepared to jump into the sea, Sir John Harman drew his sword, and threatened to kill the first man who attempted to quit the ship. This stern energy restored order; the fire-ship was cast off; the flames were extinguished, and Sir John Harman, though his leg was broken by a shot, says one account-by a burning yard, that fell from aloft, says another-continued on deck giving his orders, by which the third fire-ship was sunk and sail made on the ship. Crippled though she was, he got her into Harwich, where she was repaired in sufficient time to share in the subse- | quent actions. of Albemarle delivered this opinion :— "That if we had dreaded the number of the enemy yesterday we should have fled; but though we are inferior to them in ships, we are in all things else superior. Force gives them courage. Let us, if we need it, borrow resolution from what we have formerly performed. Let the enemy feel that though our fleet be divided (referring to the absence of the White Squadron), our spirit is entire. At the worst, it will be more honourable to die bravely here on our own element than be made spectacles to the Dutch.. To be overcome is the fortune of war; but to fly is the fashion of cowards. So let us teach the world that Englishmen would rather be acquainted with death than fear!" These noble words elicited a burst of applause ; every captain repaired to his ship, and the action was at once renewed with, if possible, increased fury, a few hours' pause only occurring by the intervention of a calm, till about noon, when a breeze sprang up. Van Tromp, before the wind, rashly bore into the midst of the English fleet, and being raked on all sides, had a narrow escape, and had once more, as on the preceding day, to shift his flag. Admiral Vander Hulst, who bore up to his assistance, was killed by a musket-shot; and had not De Ruyter, De Witt, the original inventor of chain-shot, was with sixteen newly-arrived ships, borne in to his on board the Dutch fleet, which now lost another assistance, the great Van Tromp had been then great officer in Vice-Admiral Stackhoven. John taken or sunk. He and De Ruyter, though rivals Campbell, in his "Lives of the Admirals," 1742-44, in glory, and enemies from faction, exerted themasserts that the battle of the 1st of June, 1666, selves in emulation of each other; but by this was the most terrible fought in this war. It was reinforcement of the Dutch, Albemarle found himby no means easy to say who were the victors self overmatched, and their historians state that upon the whole, or what was the loss of the three of his ships were burned by their own crews vanquished." and abandoned. Hard pressed now, he bore in The loss of the English was computed at sixteen for the coast of England. With sixteen of his 66 beating in every ship, the seamen waving in defiance their hats and the officers their plumed beavers. With equal valour, and on more equal terms, the fight began once again; and after a long cannonading the fleets came to closer quarters, and then the roar of matchlocks and pistols began. On this morning the Dutch fleet mustered eightyeight fighting ships, nineteen fire-ships, and ten yachts. Both parties were anxious to end this most protracted battle, and fought with incredible ardour. The ship of the Dutch Captain Uytenhoff was set on fire, and burned to the water's edge; those of Van Tromp and Sweers were quite disabled, and so to stop the blood for more than half an hour, till another musket-ball struck him in the neck, and, falling, he expired at his post ("La Vie de Michel de Ruyter "). The action continued till seven in the evening, when, fortunately for the survivors, the intervention of a dense fog put an end to it; the Dutch put off to sea, and the English ships crept into their own harbours. It is impossible to say if victory lay with either, yet both claimed it. A day of thanksgiving was appointed in London, where bonfires were lighted and great rejoicings made. Echard states that the English lost only nine men-of-war, and the Dutch fifteen, with twenty-one captains and above 5,000 seamen killed. The |