Anglo-Russian Invasion of Holland
Encyclopedia
The Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland (or Anglo-Russian expedition to Holland, or Helder Expedition) refers to the campaign of 27 August to 19 November 1799 during the War of the Second Coalition
, in which an expeditionary force of British
and Russian
troops invaded the North-Holland
peninsula in the Batavian Republic
. The campaign had two strategic objectives: to neutralize the Batavian fleet and to promote an uprising by followers of the former stadtholder
, William V
against the Batavian government. The invasion was opposed by a combined Franco-Batavian army of approximately equal strength. Tactically, the Anglo-Russian forces were successful initially, defeating the defenders in the Battle of Callantsoog (1799) and the Battle of Krabbendam (1799)
. Subsequent battles went against the Anglo-Russian forces, however, and after the Battle of Castricum
the British supreme commander of the invading force, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany
decided upon a strategic retreat to the original bridgehead
in the extreme north of the peninsula. Subsequently, an agreement was negotiated with the supreme commander of the Franco-Batavian forces, general Guillaume Marie Anne Brune
that allowed the Anglo-Russian forces to evacuate this bridgehead unmolested.
had been a member of the First Coalition
that opposed the revolutionary French Republic after 1792. In 1795, at the end of their Flanders Campaign
, the forces of stadtholder William V, and his British and Austrian allies were defeated by the invading French army under general Charles Pichegru
, augmented with a contingent of Dutch Patriot
revolutionaries under general Herman Willem Daendels
. The Dutch Republic was overthrown; the stadtholder fled the country to London; and the Batavian Republic was proclaimed.
Despite the conquest of the old Republic in 1795 the war had not ended; the Netherlands had just changed sides and now fully participated in the continuing conflagration. However, its role had changed. France did not need its army so much as its naval resources, in which France itself was deficient. In 1796, under the new alliance, the Dutch started a program of naval construction. However, manning the new ships was a problem, because the officer corps of the old navy was staunchly Orangist
. People like the "Hero of Doggerbank"
Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen
honorably withheld their services. The new navy was therefore officered by people like Jan Willem de Winter
, who were of the correct political hue, but had only limited experience. This directly led to the debacles of the surrender at Saldanha Bay
in 1796, and of the Battle of Camperdown
in 1797. In the latter battle the Batavian navy behaved creditably, but this did not lessen the material losses, and the Republic had to start its naval construction program all over again. This program soon brought the Batavian navy up to sufficient strength that Great Britain had to worry about its potential contribution to a threatened French invasion of England or Ireland.
The First Coalition broke up in 1797, but Britain soon found a new ally in the Russia of emperor Paul I of Russia
. The new Allies scored some successes in the land war against France, especially in the puppet Cisalpine Republic
and Helvetic Republic
where the armies of the Second Coalition
succeeded in pushing back the French on a broad front in early 1799. The British, especially Prime Minister William Pitt, were eager to maintain this momentum by attacking at other extremes of the French "empire". The Batavian Republic seemed an opportune target for such an attack, with the Prince of Orange lobbying hard for just such a full military effort to reinstate him, and with Orangist agents leading the British to believe that France's hold over the Batavian Republic was weak and that a determined strike by the British towards Amsterdam would lead to a massive uprising against the French. An added incentive was that a combined campaign against the Dutch had been a condition of the agreement with the Russians of December 28, 1798. In that agreement, Emperor Paul I had placed 45,000 Russian troops at the disposal of the Coalition in return for British subsidies. This convention was further detailed in an agreement of June 22, 1799, whereby Paul promised to furnish a force of seventeen battalions of infantry, two companies of artillery, one company of pioneers, and one squadron of hussar
s for the expedition to Holland; 17,593 men in total. In return, Britain promised to pay a subsidy of ₤88,000, and another ₤44,000 a month when the troops were in the field. Great Britain would itself furnish 13,000 troops and supply most of the transport and naval-escort vessels.
From the outset, the joint expedition that was now planned should not be a purely military affair. Pitt assumed that, like the Italian and Swiss populations, the Dutch would enthusiastically support the invasion against the French. According to the British historian Simon Schama
: "Once the Orange standard had been raised, he seems to have believed that the Batavian army would go over to the forces of the Coalition to the last man and that its Republic would collapse under the barest pressure." Ultimately, these expectations were disappointed.
under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby
. They were mostly made up of volunteers from the militia who had recently been permitted to join regular regiments. While a British transport fleet under admiral Popham
sailed to Reval
to collect the Russian contingent, the mustering of the British troops progressed smoothly. It was therefore decided not to wait for the return of Popham but to send a division under Abercromby to establish a bridgehead on which it was hoped the Russian troops and a second division under the designated supreme commander of the expedition, the Duke of York, could easily be disembarked.
The question was where this amphibious landing
could best take place. Several locations on the Dutch coast were considered. Many strategists preferred either the mouth of the Meuse
river, or the vicinity of Scheveningen, both of which offered an opportunity to quickly deploy the attacking forces and threaten the supply lines of the French army of occupation in the Batavian Republic. However, these locations had as a severe drawback the dangerous shoals before the Dutch coast that made it difficult to navigate these waters. The extreme north of the North-Holland peninsula did not have this drawback and a landing here could thus be supported by British sea power in the North Sea
. It also recommended itself to the planners of the invasion, because the area was only lightly fortified; a large part of the Dutch fleet (an important objective of the expedition) was based nearby and might be at least dislocated, if the landing was successful; and the terrain seemed to promise the possibility of an easy advance on the important strategic objective of the city of Amsterdam
. The area south of Den Helder
was therefore selected as the landing place.
The British did not make a secret of their preparations. The authorities in France and the Batavian Republic were therefore aware of them. However, the intended landing location was not known to them and they were therefore forced to spread their forces thinly to guard against all eventualities. The Batavian army at the time consisted of two divisions (each of about 10,000 men), one commanded by Lieutenant-General Daendels, the other by Lieutenant-General Jean-Baptiste Dumonceau
. The latter had taken up positions in Friesland
and Groningen
to guard against a landing from the Wadden Sea
or an incursion from the East. Daendels indeed was positioned in the northern part of North Holland, with headquarters at Schagen
. The French troops (only 15,000 of the full complement of 25,000 troops that the Treaty of The Hague (1795)
called for) were divided between Zeeland
(another logical landing spot, where in 1809 the Walcheren Expedition took place), and the middle of the country, strung out between the coast and Nijmegen. The entire Franco-Batavian army was placed under the command of the French general Brune.
The invasion met with early success. The depleted Dutch fleet, under rear-admiral Samuel Story
, evaded battle, leaving the disembarkation of the British troops near Callantsoog
on August 27, 1799, unopposed. General Daendels was defeated in the battle of Callantsoog when he tried to prevent the establishment of a bridgehead by the division under General Abercromby. This was due to the fact that he was forced to divide his forces, because of the nature of the field of battle, a narrow band of dunes, bordered by the North-Sea beach on one side, and a swamp on the other. Due to communication problems, his right wing was never fully engaged, and the forces of his left wing were fed piecemeal into the battle. The British made very good use of the support their gunboats could offer from close inshore. The naval gunfire inflicted heavy losses on the Dutch.
Daendels then concluded that the Helder fortresses were untenable and evacuated their garrisons, thereby offering the invaders a fortified base. This decision proved disastrous for Dutch morale: the sight of the flag of the hereditary stadtholder
, who soon joined the expedition, further undermined the already questionable loyalty of the Dutch fleet in the Zuyder Zee. When Adm. Story belatedly decided to engage the British fleet, he had a full-fledged mutiny on his hands, where the Orangist sailors were led by their own officers, captains Van Braam
and Van Capellen
. This led to the Vlieter Incident
, the surrender on August 30 of the fleet with 632 guns and 3700 men to Admiral Mitchell
, without a shot being fired. Later, the Prince went aboard Story's flagship, Washington to receive the accolades of the mutineers.
met with indifference by the people. A motley band of Orangist émigrés at the Westervoortsche Bridge near Arnhem, was easily put to flight on September 4 by a small detachment of the Batavian National Guard, proving that the invaders had to do the work themselves. Other Orangist incursions in the eastern Netherlands and Friesland met with even less success. Nevertheless, the Uitvoerend Bewind
of the Batavian Republic declared martial law
and under these emergency measures an aristocratic partisan of the stadtholder, the freule (baroness) Judith Van Dorth tot Holthuizen was convicted of sedition
and executed.
Meanwhile, the Franco-Batavian forces on the North-Holland front were being reinforced. General Brune brought up a French division under general Dominique Vandamme
and ordered general Dumonceau to bring up the main part of his 2nd Batavian division in forced marches from Friesland. The latter arrived on 9 September at Alkmaar
. The Franco-Batavian army now had about 25,000 men available against about 20,000 for the British. In view of this numerical superiority, and the fact that reinforcements for the British were expected any day, Brune decided to attack Abercromby's position.
The British prevailed at the Battle of Krabbendam
near Alkmaar on September 10, where the Batavians and French were routed. This defeat was partly due to sloppy staffwork that allocated one narrow road to the columns of both Batavian divisions that were supposed to converge on the hamlet of Krabbendam. This hamlet sat astride one of the few entry roads to the Zijpe polder
in which Abercromby had set up an armed camp. The polder formed a natural redoubt
with its dike acting as a rampart
and its circular drainage canal as a moat
. The straight and narrow road through Krabbendam formed one of the few easy entries, but it was easily defensible also. The original plan had this entry point attacked by both Batavian divisions, but because Daendels' division was forced to take a more easterly route, only the division of Dumonceau was brought to bear. This division could not be fully deployed due to the nature of the terrain and the Batavian forces were therefore again fed piecemeal into the battle. They were unable to prevail over the valiant defense of the British 20th Foot. Elsewhere, the French division of general Vandamme was likewise unable to overcome the obstacles of the canal and the dike behind it, that protected the British troops. Vandamme therefore failed to turn Abercromby's right flank as planned.
With Britain having naval superiority, both on the North Sea
and the Zuider Zee
, British reinforcements under the Duke of York (who assumed supreme command) and Russian troops under general Ivan Ivanovitch Hermann von Fersen
could easily be landed at Den Helder. The combined forces soon achieved numerical superiority with 40,000 men against 23,000 of the depleted Franco-Batavian army.
, where only a large dike defends the hinterland against flooding). Next to the dunes is a band of high land that can easily be traversed by a marching army. Further east, however, the terrain changes to former bogland and other low-lying areas consisting of former lakes that had been drained by the Dutch in the 17th century. These low-lying areas were criss-crossed by ditches and larger drainage canals, needed in the water-management
of the area, that formed serious impediments to manoeuvering forces, even when they were not inundated. Such inundations were however increasingly performed by the Dutch engineers the more the campaign progressed, to deny more and more freedom of movement to the Anglo-Russian forces. At the time of the Battle of Bergen
that commenced on September 19, most of those inundations were not yet completed, so that at that time the main obstacles were still the watercourses.
The Duke of York drew up a daring plan of attack that amounted to an attempt at double envelopment
of the Franco-Batavian army. He divided his forces over four columns. The rightmost column, under the Russian lt.-gen. Hermann, with 9,000 Russians and 2,500 British troops, starting from Petten and Krabbendam, had as objective the village of Bergen
. Next to it marched an Anglo-Russian force of 6,500 troops under lt.-gen. Dundas with as objective Schoorldam
. The next column, 5,000 men under lt.-gen. Pulteney had as objective the area of Langedijk
with the hamlets of Oudkarspel
and Heerhugowaard
. Finally, the fourth column, 9,000 infantry and 160 cavalry under lt.-gen. Abercromby, was intended to turn the Franco-Batavian right flank, by first attaining Hoorn
and then thrusting southward to Purmerend
.
The best-laid plans need proper execution, however, to be successful. In this the Anglo-Russian troops were lacking. The attack was supposed to start at dawn on the 19th, but the Russian right wing already started at 3 AM in pitch darkness. Though they gained an early advantage against the surprised French troops on the Franco-Batavian left wing, they also suffered needless losses through friendly fire, as the troops were unable to distinguish friend from foe. They eventually gained Bergen, but were counterattacked by French reinforcements marching north from Egmond aan Zee
. These threatened to turn the Russian right wing by marching along the beach. The Russians, driven out of Bergen, retreated in some disorder to their starting positions because of this threat of being out-flanked. In the confusion general Hermann was made a prisoner of war. The attack of the right-wing pincer therefore was a dismal failure.
The column of general Dundas (accompanied by the commander-in-chief, the Duke of York) made only slow progress after it started its advance at dawn, because of the watercourses it encountered that were difficult to cross, as the defenders had removed the bridges. While they were slowly advancing on Schoorldam, the defender of that position, general Dumonceau with the 2nd Batavian division, had time to launch a diversionary attack on the Russians attacking Bergen, which contributed greatly to the confusion in the Russian ranks. When Dundas finally arrived at Schoorldam, Dumonceau was wounded by grapeshot. What exactly happened on the Dutch side after that is unclear as his replacement, gen. Bonhomme, failed to make an after-battle report. However, the upshot was that the division fell back in some disorder on Koedijk
. However, the British failed to exploit this retreat, due to a counterattack from the Dutch, but mainly because the rout of the Russian troops on the right wing also forced a withdrawal in the form of an orderly rear-guard action of the troops of York and Dundas. They also eventually returned to their starting positions.
The third column, with generals Pulteney, Don
and Coote, likewise found the terrain difficult. This column was forced to use the road on a dike, called the Langedijk (long dike) that divides several polders. This dike was flanked on the right hand by a deep drainage canal, and on the other side the many ditches in the land also hindered easy deployment. The road led to the village of Oudkarspel
where the 1st Batavian division of general Daendels had built some fieldworks (the Dutch complained, however, that Brune had prohibited the full development of fortifications, which made the defense more difficult). The first attack on this strongpoint by Pulteney ended in disaster with the British fleeing in panic until they could be rallied behind another dike that gave some cover against the Dutch artillery fire. Several other British frontal attacks were also repulsed with great loss, and an encircling movement proved impracticable due to the canal. However, then general Daendels made the mistake of ordering an under-strength sally
from his redoubt by 100 grenadiers. Not only was this easily repulsed, but the rout of the grenadiers enabled the pursuing British, following hot on their heels, to penetrate the Dutch entrenchments and rout the entire group of defenders. This rout could only be stopped at the end of the Langedijk. The retreating troops suffered very heavy losses due to British artillery fire. Daendels finally personally led a counterattack with only one battalion of grenadiers, but by then the debacle on the British right wing had been communicated to Pulteney, who therefore was already withdrawing to his starting position. The British therefore made no net territorial gains, but they had dealt the Batavians heavy losses in casualties and prisoners.
Finally, the long march of the fourth column under general Abercromby went completely unopposed. He reached Hoorn without mishap and managed to surprise the weak garrison at this city. Hoorn was occupied and briefly the locals displayed the colors of the stadtholder. However, the planned march south from Hoorn, which was the point of the entire manoeuvre, as it would have enabled Abercromby to turn the right flank of the Franco-Batavian army, proved impossible because of the obstacles the defenders had prepared (This explains why Abercromby had not encountered opposition on his march to Hoorn). After the retreat of the other columns Abercromby received orders to evacuate Hoorn and likewise go back to his starting position. The citizens of Hoorn quickly took down their orange flags again. Abercromby's work had therefore been completely in vain, and would have been so even if the attack on the right wing had been successful. His route was simply too circuitous to be successful. A more direct route might have offered a better chance of success.
In sum, neither side made any territorial gains in this battle. The losses in personnel were substantial on both sides, however, but they appear to have been about equal.
, who at the time was in charge of improvising the defenses of that city, points out that for a few days Amsterdam lay quite defenseless against such an attack. In his opinion the campaign might have ended then and there. However, the British fleet had remained strangely passive. This changed in the days after the Battle of Bergen when the British belatedly occupied the undefended ports of Medemblik
, Enkhuizen
, and Hoorn, at the same time mastering the West Friesland
region between these ports. A number of islands in the Zuider Zee were also occupied, but by then the window of opportunity to capture Amsterdam had closed.
On land, the initiative still lay with the expeditionary force, that received new Russian reinforcements after September 19 that made up for at least the Russian losses. The Duke of York did not press the attack for about two weeks, however, because of bad weather, and this afforded an opportunity to the defenders to complete their inundations and other defenses. The Langedijk now became a narrow "island" in a shallow lake with the now-improved fortifications of Oudkarspel acting as an impenetrable "Thermopylae
." The 1st Batavian division of Daendels still defended this part of the front, but Brune was able to shift large parts of that division (especially its cavalry units) to his other wing. The eastern seaboard of the peninsula was made even more impenetrable by inundations, and a secondary line of entrenchments was prepared between Monnickendam and Purmerend
. The main effect of these defensive preparations was, that the low-lying eastern part of the peninsula became impassable to the expeditionary force and that henceforth operations would be limited to the relatively narrow band, consisting of the beach, dunes and the plain directly adjacent to them, roughly the area between Alkmaar and the sea.
The weather improved in early October and the Duke of York then made his plan for what was to become known as the Battle of Alkmaar
of 2 October 1799 (though "Second Bergen" would seem more appropriate, as the former city never was involved, and the latter village again became the center of the battle). The Duke of York's former left wing, under gen. Abercromby, was moved over completely to the extreme right wing, with the other columns moving to the left to make room. This had the effect of placing exclusively-British formations on both wings (Pulteney and Abercromby) and having mixed Anglo-Russian formations in the column next to Abercromby's under the new Russian commander, general Ivan Essen
. The fourth column (between Pulteney and Essen) was made up of British troops under general Dundas. York intended to have all three columns on the right wing converge on the Franco-Batavian left wing, which consisted of the French division of Vandamme near the coast (the 2nd Batavian division of Dumonceau -now commanded by Bonhomme- was placed in the Franco-Batavian center). The division of Pulteney was used as a screening force of the left wing, to deter Daendels.
The plan of attack could now be characterized as one of "single envelopment," with Abercromby's column intended to turn the French left wing by marching along the beach. To this end the start of the advance had to be delayed until 6.30 AM, when low tide allowed Abercromby to use the beach. The Anglo-Russian center advanced slowly but steadily, much hindered by the difficult terrain of the dunes on the right and the water-course-ridden plain between the dunes and the Alkmaar canal on the left. The Franco-Batavians fought a steady rear-guard action, falling back on Bergen (the French) and Koedijk (the Batavians), where they made a stand. In the afternoon the British brigade in Essen's column (gen. Coote) seemed to make a sudden dash in the dunes, but got too far ahead of the remainder Essen's column, which followed far more slowly, and the French launched a spirited counter-attack from Bergen in two columns under generals Gouvion and Boudet
to exploit the gap. They were driven back with some difficulty, but managed to retain the village of Bergen for the remainder of the day, despite continued Anglo-Russian attacks.
Meanwhile, the column of gen. Abercromby made very slow progress along the beach, mostly because the tide was coming in again, which narrowed the beach to a very small band, consisting of loose sand. The troops and horses were suffering severely from fatigue and thirst. In the course of the afternoon they were observed by the French who brought up sharpshooters at first, who made many victims, especially under officers. The French sent more and more substantial reinforcements through the dunes and eventually general Vandamme brought up a substantial cavalry force which he led personally in a charge against the British horse-artillery batteries that temporarily fell into French hands. This cavalry attack was eventually repulsed by a counter-attack led by Lord Paget
, who drove the French all the way back to Egmond aan Zee
.
By then night had fallen and major operations stopped. Abercromby had by then passed the latitude of Bergen, so theoretically the French were outflanked there. Though he did not have the strength to exploit this position at the time, general Brune felt sufficiently threatened by this that he decided to order a general strategic retreat from Bergen, and from his other positions of October 2, on the next morning. Both the French and the Batavians now fell back on their secondary line. Daendels retreated to the prepared positions at Monnickendam and Purmerend, after which Krayenhoff completed the inundations in front of this line. Bonhomme and Vandamme occupied a new line between Uitgeest
, Castricum
and Wijk aan Zee
. This guarded the narrowest part of the North-Holland peninsula, as in those days the IJ (bay)
still bisected the province. Here they awaited the next move of the enemy.
, Schermer
, and Wormer
, had been flooded, depriving the British from their rich farmland and the supplies that might have been obtained there. In consequence, most supplies had to be landed at Den Helder and then brought forward with much difficulty across roads that were almost impassable because of the incessant rains. Beside the troops, the hungry mouths of about 3,000 deserters and mutineers that the Hereditary Prince hoped to form into a Dutch Brigade, but that were not employed by the British, had to be fed. Provisions were running short.
The Duke of York (now headquartered in Alkmaar, which city had opened its gates to him on October 3) wasted as little time as possible in pressing the offensive. He knew that Brune had been reinforced with six French battalions, brought up from Belgium. His own forces were in steady decline, especially because of sickness. By the start of the next phase of the campaign: the Battle of Castricum
of October 6, his effectives were no more than 27,000.
Brune had divided his left wing into three divisions: Gouvion near Wijk aan Zee in the dunes; to his right Boudet around Castricum; and the 2nd Batavian division, still commanded by Bonhomme, around Uitgeest. In front of this entrenched line there were French outposts, in Bakkum and Limmen
, commanded by brigadier-general Pacthod. On the morning of October 6 these were attacked by the now-familiar three columns: Abercromby along the beach, Essen in the middle and Dundas on the left, while Pulteney still rather uselessly masked Daendels. The Anglo-Russians of Essen's column easily drove out the French outposts. The Duke of York appears to have had nothing more in mind than an armed reconnaissance, but their early success tempted the Russians to attack Castricum in force and this village was tenaciously defended by Pacthod. The village changed hands several times that day as Brune had Boudet bring up reinforcements. The fighting attracted reinforcements from the columns of Dundas and Abercromby, the latter personally bringing up his reserve-brigade to attack Castricum late in the afternoon
Brune then ordered a bayonet attack which drove back the British and Russians in disorder. They were pursued in the direction of Bakkum by French cavalry under general Barbou and a rout might have ensued had not the light dragoon
s of Lord Paget intervened in a surprise charge from a hidden dune valley. The French cavalry was now routed in its turn. They drew along the exhausted Franco-Batavian troops that had only shortly before retaken Castricum and a disorderly retreat was about to start
The advance of the British was, however, broken by a counterattack of the Batavian hussars under col. Quaita. This turned the tide in the battle. The Anglo-Russian troops in their turn now broke and retreated in disorder to Bakkum and Limmen, pursued by the Franco-Batavian cavalry. Only the quickly falling darkness ended the slaughter.
All this time the French of general Gouvion and the British column of Abercromby had been fighting a separate battle near the beach and in the dunes. Apart from an artillery duel, in which the Batavian artillery of Gouvion inflicted heavy losses on the British, this remained rather static, especially after Abercromby left with the British reserve to join Essen. The fight intensified against the evening when Abercromby returned and tried to attack. Gouvion held his line, however.
On the Batavian right wing of general Daendels, absolutely nothing happened that day, as the inundations made his lines impenetratable. There was a strange incident, however, when the British general Don
, under cover of a flag of truce, tried to get permission to cross the Batavian lines on a mission to the Batavian government. As on the Batavian left wing the battle had clearly started, Daendels considered this an abuse of the flag of truce. Besides, Don turned out to have papers on his person that could be considered to be of a seditious nature. Daendels therefore arrested Don as a spy and sent him to Brune's headquarters. Don was incarcerated in the fortress of Lille
and only years later exchanged for the Irish rebel James Napper Tandy
.
The strategic withdrawal was completed on October 8, though Prince William of Gloucester
, retreating from Hoorn, fought a rearguard action against Daendels in the following days. By mid-October, the situation of before September 19 had been restored, the Anglo-Russians ensconced in their natural redoubt and the Franco-Batavians besiegeing them. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, and early winter gales made provisioning by sea difficult. The Duke of York was now faced with the prospect of a winter siege in a situation in which his troops might well face starvation (on October 13 provisions for only eleven days were still available.). He therefore decided to approach Brune with a proposal for an honorable capitulation transmitted by general Knox on October 14.
The following negotiations were short. Brune at the behest of the Batavian government at first demanded the return of the captured Batavian squadron. However, the Duke of York countered with a threat to breach the dike near Petten, thereby inundating the countryside around the Zijpe polder. Though General Krayenhoff was not impressed by this threat (after all, he had spent the previous weeks flooding most of the peninsula himself, and knew that the process could be reversed without too much difficulty) and so advised Brune, the latter was more easily impressed (or feigned this; Krayenhoff also darkly mentions a gift of a number of "magnificent horses" by the Duke to Brune as a possible deal-clincher) and soon agreed to a convention that was very favorable to the Anglo-Russians. In this Convention of Alkmaar
that was signed on October 18 no more mention was made of the return of the ships. The Anglo-Russian troops and the Orangist mutineers were granted an undisturbed evacuation, which had to be completed before December 1. There would be an exchange of 8,000 prisoners of war, including Batavian seamen, that had been captured at the Battle of Camperdown
(Admiral De Winter
, who had been paroled earlier, was specifically included). The British promised to return the fortresses at Den Helder with their guns in good order. Except for the return of their prisoners of war, the Batavians thought they had got the worst of this exchange, but they were powerless to get a better deal.
An armistice went into force immediately and the evacuation was completed on November 19, when General Pulteney left with the last British troops.
The British public and Parliament at first were well pleased with the conduct of the British troops. Both Admiral Mitchell and General Abercromby were voted the thanks of Parliament and both received honorary swords, valued at 100 guinea
s, from the City of London
. Mitchell was appointed Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath (KB). However, when the failure of the expedition had sunk in and its cost had become clear, popular sentiment changed. In Parliament, the leader of the Opposition, Richard Brinsley Sheridan
severely castigated the government in a speech, delivered on 9 February 1800, in the House of Commons
For the Batavian Republic the material losses sustained during the expedition were severe. The Batavian navy lost 16 ships-of-the-line, five frigates, three corvettes, and one brig, out of a total of 55 ships. This surrender technically was accepted in the name of the Stadtholder by the British, a conceit they adopted for diplomatic reasons, but a number of the ships were later "purchased" from the Stadtholder by the British navy.
In France the expedition may have contributed (together with the initial French military reversals in Switzerland) to the fall of the Directoire
. They were driven from power in the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire
by Napoleon Bonaparte
.
War of the Second Coalition
The "Second Coalition" was the second attempt by European monarchs, led by the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria and the Russian Empire, to contain or eliminate Revolutionary France. They formed a new alliance and attempted to roll back France's previous military conquests...
, in which an expeditionary force of British
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
and Russian
Imperial Russian Army
The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of around 938,731 regular soldiers and 245,850 irregulars . Until the time of military reform of Dmitry Milyutin in...
troops invaded the North-Holland
North Holland
North Holland |West Frisian]]: Noard-Holland) is a province situated on the North Sea in the northwest part of the Netherlands. The provincial capital is Haarlem and its largest city is Amsterdam.-Geography:...
peninsula in the Batavian Republic
Batavian Republic
The Batavian Republic was the successor of the Republic of the United Netherlands. It was proclaimed on January 19, 1795, and ended on June 5, 1806, with the accession of Louis Bonaparte to the throne of the Kingdom of Holland....
. The campaign had two strategic objectives: to neutralize the Batavian fleet and to promote an uprising by followers of the former stadtholder
Stadtholder
A Stadtholder A Stadtholder A Stadtholder (Dutch: stadhouder [], "steward" or "lieutenant", literally place holder, holding someones place, possibly a calque of German Statthalter, French lieutenant, or Middle Latin locum tenens...
, William V
William V, Prince of Orange
William V , Prince of Orange-Nassau was the last Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, and between 1795 and 1806 he led the Government of the Dutch Republic in Exile in London. He was succeeded by his son William I...
against the Batavian government. The invasion was opposed by a combined Franco-Batavian army of approximately equal strength. Tactically, the Anglo-Russian forces were successful initially, defeating the defenders in the Battle of Callantsoog (1799) and the Battle of Krabbendam (1799)
Battle of Krabbendam (1799)
The Battle of Krabbendam of 10 September 1799 was fought during the Anglo-Russian Invasion of Holland between forces of the French Republic and her ally, the Batavian Republic, under the command of French general Guillaume Marie Anne Brune on one side, and a British division under general Sir...
. Subsequent battles went against the Anglo-Russian forces, however, and after the Battle of Castricum
Battle of Castricum
The Battle of Castricum saw a Franco-Dutch force defeat an Anglo-Russian force near Castricum, Netherlands. The battle was fought during the War of the Second Coalition against Revolutionary France between French and Dutch forces under the command of General Guillaume Brune and Herman Willem...
the British supreme commander of the invading force, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany
Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany
The Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany was a member of the Hanoverian and British Royal Family, the second eldest child, and second son, of King George III...
decided upon a strategic retreat to the original bridgehead
Bridgehead
A bridgehead is a High Middle Ages military term, which antedating the invention of cannons was in the original meaning expressly a referent term to the military fortification that protects the end of a bridge...
in the extreme north of the peninsula. Subsequently, an agreement was negotiated with the supreme commander of the Franco-Batavian forces, general Guillaume Marie Anne Brune
Guillaume Marie Anne Brune
Guillaume Marie Anne Brune, 1st Comte Brune was a French soldier and political figure who rose to Marshal of France....
that allowed the Anglo-Russian forces to evacuate this bridgehead unmolested.
Background
The Dutch RepublicDutch Republic
The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic and ultimately...
had been a member of the First Coalition
First Coalition
The War of the First Coalition was the first major effort of multiple European monarchies to contain Revolutionary France. France declared war on the Habsburg monarchy of Austria on 20 April 1792, and the Kingdom of Prussia joined the Austrian side a few weeks later.These powers initiated a series...
that opposed the revolutionary French Republic after 1792. In 1795, at the end of their Flanders Campaign
Flanders Campaign
This feature refers to the conflict that took place during the Wars of the French Revolution 1792–1801.For the Low Countries campaigns of the War of the Grand Alliance 1688–97 see Nine Years' War...
, the forces of stadtholder William V, and his British and Austrian allies were defeated by the invading French army under general Charles Pichegru
Charles Pichegru
Jean-Charles Pichegru was a French general and political figure of the French Revolution and Revolutionary Wars.-Early life and career:...
, augmented with a contingent of Dutch Patriot
Patriots (faction)
The Patriots were a political faction in the Dutch Republic in the second half of the 18th century. They were led by Joan van der Capellen tot den Pol, gaining power from November 1782....
revolutionaries under general Herman Willem Daendels
Herman Willem Daendels
Herman Willem Daendels was a Dutch politician who served as the 36th Governor General of the Dutch East Indies between 1808 and 1811....
. The Dutch Republic was overthrown; the stadtholder fled the country to London; and the Batavian Republic was proclaimed.
Despite the conquest of the old Republic in 1795 the war had not ended; the Netherlands had just changed sides and now fully participated in the continuing conflagration. However, its role had changed. France did not need its army so much as its naval resources, in which France itself was deficient. In 1796, under the new alliance, the Dutch started a program of naval construction. However, manning the new ships was a problem, because the officer corps of the old navy was staunchly Orangist
Orangism (Netherlands)
Orangism is a monarchist political support for the House of Orange-Nassau as monarchy of the Netherlands. It played a significant role in the political history of the Netherlands since the Dutch revolt...
. People like the "Hero of Doggerbank"
Battle of Dogger Bank (1781)
The naval Battle of the Dogger Bank took place on 5 August 1781 during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, part of the American War of Independence, in the North Sea...
Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen
Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen
Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen , or Count of Doggersbank, was a Dutch naval officer. Having had a good scientific education, Van Kinbergen was a proponent of fleet modernization and wrote many books about naval organization, discipline and tactics.In 1773, he twice defeated an Ottoman fleet while in...
honorably withheld their services. The new navy was therefore officered by people like Jan Willem de Winter
Jan Willem de Winter
Jan Willem de Winter was a Dutch admiral of the Napoleonic Wars.De Winter entered naval service as a young boy. He distinguished himself by his zeal and courage, and at the revolution of 1787 he had reached the rank of lieutenant. The overthrow of the patriot party forced him to fly for his safety...
, who were of the correct political hue, but had only limited experience. This directly led to the debacles of the surrender at Saldanha Bay
Battle of Saldanha Bay (1796)
The designation Battle of Saldanha Bay refers to the surrender without a fight of a squadron of the navy of the Batavian Republic under the command of Rear-Admiral Engelbertus Lucas to a Royal Navy squadron under the command of Vice-Admiral George Elphinstone at Saldanha Bay on August 17,...
in 1796, and of the Battle of Camperdown
Battle of Camperdown
The Battle of Camperdown was a major naval action fought on 11 October 1797 between a Royal Navy fleet under Admiral Adam Duncan and a Dutch Navy fleet under Vice-Admiral Jan de Winter...
in 1797. In the latter battle the Batavian navy behaved creditably, but this did not lessen the material losses, and the Republic had to start its naval construction program all over again. This program soon brought the Batavian navy up to sufficient strength that Great Britain had to worry about its potential contribution to a threatened French invasion of England or Ireland.
The First Coalition broke up in 1797, but Britain soon found a new ally in the Russia of emperor Paul I of Russia
Paul I of Russia
Paul I was the Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801. He also was the 72nd Prince and Grand Master of the Order of Malta .-Childhood:...
. The new Allies scored some successes in the land war against France, especially in the puppet Cisalpine Republic
Cisalpine Republic
The Cisalpine Republic was a French client republic in Northern Italy that lasted from 1797 to 1802.-Birth:After the Battle of Lodi in May 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte proceeded to organize two states: one to the south of the Po River, the Cispadane Republic, and one to the north, the Transpadane...
and Helvetic Republic
Helvetic Republic
In Swiss history, the Helvetic Republic represented an early attempt to impose a central authority over Switzerland, which until then consisted mainly of self-governing cantons united by a loose military alliance, and conquered territories such as Vaud...
where the armies of the Second Coalition
War of the Second Coalition
The "Second Coalition" was the second attempt by European monarchs, led by the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria and the Russian Empire, to contain or eliminate Revolutionary France. They formed a new alliance and attempted to roll back France's previous military conquests...
succeeded in pushing back the French on a broad front in early 1799. The British, especially Prime Minister William Pitt, were eager to maintain this momentum by attacking at other extremes of the French "empire". The Batavian Republic seemed an opportune target for such an attack, with the Prince of Orange lobbying hard for just such a full military effort to reinstate him, and with Orangist agents leading the British to believe that France's hold over the Batavian Republic was weak and that a determined strike by the British towards Amsterdam would lead to a massive uprising against the French. An added incentive was that a combined campaign against the Dutch had been a condition of the agreement with the Russians of December 28, 1798. In that agreement, Emperor Paul I had placed 45,000 Russian troops at the disposal of the Coalition in return for British subsidies. This convention was further detailed in an agreement of June 22, 1799, whereby Paul promised to furnish a force of seventeen battalions of infantry, two companies of artillery, one company of pioneers, and one squadron of hussar
Hussar
Hussar refers to a number of types of light cavalry which originated in Hungary in the 14th century, tracing its roots from Serbian medieval cavalry tradition, brought to Hungary in the course of the Serb migrations, which began in the late 14th century....
s for the expedition to Holland; 17,593 men in total. In return, Britain promised to pay a subsidy of ₤88,000, and another ₤44,000 a month when the troops were in the field. Great Britain would itself furnish 13,000 troops and supply most of the transport and naval-escort vessels.
Campaign
Simon Schama
Simon Michael Schama, CBE is a British historian and art historian. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain...
: "Once the Orange standard had been raised, he seems to have believed that the Batavian army would go over to the forces of the Coalition to the last man and that its Republic would collapse under the barest pressure." Ultimately, these expectations were disappointed.
Preparations
The British forces were assembled in the vicinity of CanterburyCanterbury
Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....
under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby
Ralph Abercromby
Sir Ralph Abercromby was a Scottish soldier and politician. He rose to the rank of lieutenant-general in the British Army, was noted for his services during the Napoleonic Wars, and served as Commander-in-Chief, Ireland.He twice served as MP for Clackmannanshire and Kinross-shire, and was...
. They were mostly made up of volunteers from the militia who had recently been permitted to join regular regiments. While a British transport fleet under admiral Popham
Home Riggs Popham
Admiral Sir Home Riggs Popham KCB was a British Royal Naval Commander who saw service during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars...
sailed to Reval
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...
to collect the Russian contingent, the mustering of the British troops progressed smoothly. It was therefore decided not to wait for the return of Popham but to send a division under Abercromby to establish a bridgehead on which it was hoped the Russian troops and a second division under the designated supreme commander of the expedition, the Duke of York, could easily be disembarked.
The question was where this amphibious landing
Amphibious warfare
Amphibious warfare is the use of naval firepower, logistics and strategy to project military power ashore. In previous eras it stood as the primary method of delivering troops to non-contiguous enemy-held terrain...
could best take place. Several locations on the Dutch coast were considered. Many strategists preferred either the mouth of the Meuse
Meuse
Meuse is a department in northeast France, named after the River Meuse.-History:Meuse is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...
river, or the vicinity of Scheveningen, both of which offered an opportunity to quickly deploy the attacking forces and threaten the supply lines of the French army of occupation in the Batavian Republic. However, these locations had as a severe drawback the dangerous shoals before the Dutch coast that made it difficult to navigate these waters. The extreme north of the North-Holland peninsula did not have this drawback and a landing here could thus be supported by British sea power in the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...
. It also recommended itself to the planners of the invasion, because the area was only lightly fortified; a large part of the Dutch fleet (an important objective of the expedition) was based nearby and might be at least dislocated, if the landing was successful; and the terrain seemed to promise the possibility of an easy advance on the important strategic objective of the city of Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. The area south of Den Helder
Den Helder
Den Helder is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. Den Helder occupies the northernmost point of the North Holland peninsula...
was therefore selected as the landing place.
The British did not make a secret of their preparations. The authorities in France and the Batavian Republic were therefore aware of them. However, the intended landing location was not known to them and they were therefore forced to spread their forces thinly to guard against all eventualities. The Batavian army at the time consisted of two divisions (each of about 10,000 men), one commanded by Lieutenant-General Daendels, the other by Lieutenant-General Jean-Baptiste Dumonceau
Jean-Baptiste Dumonceau
Count Jean-Baptiste Dumonceau de Bergendal Count Jean-Baptiste Dumonceau de Bergendal Count Jean-Baptiste Dumonceau de Bergendal (7 November 1760, Brussels – 29 December 1821, Forest was a general from the Southern Netherlands, in the service of France and the Netherlands.- Life :...
. The latter had taken up positions in Friesland
Friesland
Friesland is a province in the north of the Netherlands and part of the ancient region of Frisia.Until the end of 1996, the province bore Friesland as its official name. In 1997 this Dutch name lost its official status to the Frisian Fryslân...
and Groningen
Groningen (province)
Groningen [] is the northeasternmost province of the Netherlands. In the east it borders the German state of Niedersachsen , in the south Drenthe, in the west Friesland and in the north the Wadden Sea...
to guard against a landing from the Wadden Sea
Wadden Sea
The Wadden Sea is an intertidal zone in the southeastern part of the North Sea. It lies between the coast of northwestern continental Europe and the range of Frisian Islands, forming a shallow body of water with tidal flats and wetlands. It is rich in biological diversity...
or an incursion from the East. Daendels indeed was positioned in the northern part of North Holland, with headquarters at Schagen
Schagen
Schagen is a town and municipality in the northwestern Netherlands. It is located between Alkmaar and Den Helder, in and region of West Friesland and the province of North Holland. In 2007, Schagen had 19.078 residents. It received city rights in 1415....
. The French troops (only 15,000 of the full complement of 25,000 troops that the Treaty of The Hague (1795)
Treaty of The Hague (1795)
The Treaty of Den Haag was signed on May 16, 1795 between representatives of the French Republic and the Batavian Republic. Based on the terms of the treaty, the Batavian Republic ceded the territories of Maastricht, Venlo, and Flanders to France...
called for) were divided between Zeeland
Zeeland
Zeeland , also called Zealand in English, is the westernmost province of the Netherlands. The province, located in the south-west of the country, consists of a number of islands and a strip bordering Belgium. Its capital is Middelburg. With a population of about 380,000, its area is about...
(another logical landing spot, where in 1809 the Walcheren Expedition took place), and the middle of the country, strung out between the coast and Nijmegen. The entire Franco-Batavian army was placed under the command of the French general Brune.
Landing at Callantsoog and the surrender of the Batavian fleet
The invasion met with early success. The depleted Dutch fleet, under rear-admiral Samuel Story
Samuel Story
Samuel Story was a vice-admiral of the navy of the Batavian Republic. He commanded the squadron that surrendered without a fight to the Royal Navy at the Vlieter Incident in 1799.-Early life:...
, evaded battle, leaving the disembarkation of the British troops near Callantsoog
Callantsoog
Callantsoog is a town in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Zijpe, and lies about 13 km south of Den Helder...
on August 27, 1799, unopposed. General Daendels was defeated in the battle of Callantsoog when he tried to prevent the establishment of a bridgehead by the division under General Abercromby. This was due to the fact that he was forced to divide his forces, because of the nature of the field of battle, a narrow band of dunes, bordered by the North-Sea beach on one side, and a swamp on the other. Due to communication problems, his right wing was never fully engaged, and the forces of his left wing were fed piecemeal into the battle. The British made very good use of the support their gunboats could offer from close inshore. The naval gunfire inflicted heavy losses on the Dutch.
Daendels then concluded that the Helder fortresses were untenable and evacuated their garrisons, thereby offering the invaders a fortified base. This decision proved disastrous for Dutch morale: the sight of the flag of the hereditary stadtholder
William I of the Netherlands
William I Frederick, born Willem Frederik Prins van Oranje-Nassau , was a Prince of Orange and the first King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg....
, who soon joined the expedition, further undermined the already questionable loyalty of the Dutch fleet in the Zuyder Zee. When Adm. Story belatedly decided to engage the British fleet, he had a full-fledged mutiny on his hands, where the Orangist sailors were led by their own officers, captains Van Braam
Aegidius van Braam
Aegidius van Braam was a Dutch naval officer who attained the rank of vice-admiral. After the Dutch Republic was overrun by French Revolutionary troops in 1795, he remained loyal to the House of Orange-Nassau and fled to England...
and Van Capellen
Theodorus Frederik van Capellen
Vice-admiral Jonkheer Theodorus Frederik van Capellen, GCMWO, KCB was a Dutch naval officer. He was married to Petronella de Lange . Alexandrine Tinné, female explorer and pioneering photographer, was his granddaughter.-Career:Van Capellen entered service in 1781 in the navy of the Dutch Republic...
. This led to the Vlieter Incident
Vlieter Incident
The Vlieter incident was the surrender without a fight of a squadron of the navy of the Batavian Republic, commanded by Rear-Admiral Samuel Story, during the Anglo-Russian Invasion of Holland to the British navy on a sandbank near the Channel known as De Vlieter, near Wieringen, on August 30,...
, the surrender on August 30 of the fleet with 632 guns and 3700 men to Admiral Mitchell
Andrew Mitchell (Royal Navy officer)
Sir Andrew Mitchell KB was an Admiral of the Blue in the Royal Navy. Married to Mary Uniacke in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 3 May 1805.-Career:...
, without a shot being fired. Later, the Prince went aboard Story's flagship, Washington to receive the accolades of the mutineers.
Arnhem and Krabbendam
The Dutch land forces were, however, less amenable to the Prince's powers of persuasion, and neither was the civilian population in North Holland. If anything, the effect of the invasion was to unify the divided Republic against the invader. The Prince's arrogant proclamation, peremptorily ordering the Dutch people to rally to Orange, was also not calculated to convince the Dutch of the wisdom of a restoration of the Stadholderate. It was therefore not surprising that the call for an uprising by the old Stadtholder himself from LingenLingen
Lingen is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany. In 2008 the population was 52,353, and in addition there are about 5,000 people who have registered the city as their secondary residence...
met with indifference by the people. A motley band of Orangist émigrés at the Westervoortsche Bridge near Arnhem, was easily put to flight on September 4 by a small detachment of the Batavian National Guard, proving that the invaders had to do the work themselves. Other Orangist incursions in the eastern Netherlands and Friesland met with even less success. Nevertheless, the Uitvoerend Bewind
Uitvoerend Bewind
The Uitvoerend Bewind was the name of the government of the Batavian Republic between 1798 and 1801. The president of the Uitvoerend Bewind was head of state of the Batavian Republic.-Unitarian Democrats:...
of the Batavian Republic declared martial law
Martial law
Martial law is the imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions on an emergency basis— only temporary—when the civilian government or civilian authorities fail to function effectively , when there are extensive riots and protests, or when the disobedience of the law...
and under these emergency measures an aristocratic partisan of the stadtholder, the freule (baroness) Judith Van Dorth tot Holthuizen was convicted of sedition
Sedition
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent to lawful authority. Sedition may include any...
and executed.
Meanwhile, the Franco-Batavian forces on the North-Holland front were being reinforced. General Brune brought up a French division under general Dominique Vandamme
Dominique Vandamme
General Dominique-Joseph René Vandamme, Count of Unseburg was a French military officer, who fought in the Napoleonic Wars....
and ordered general Dumonceau to bring up the main part of his 2nd Batavian division in forced marches from Friesland. The latter arrived on 9 September at Alkmaar
Alkmaar
Alkmaar is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of Noord Holland. Alkmaar is well known for its traditional cheese market. For tourists, it is a popular cultural destination.-History:...
. The Franco-Batavian army now had about 25,000 men available against about 20,000 for the British. In view of this numerical superiority, and the fact that reinforcements for the British were expected any day, Brune decided to attack Abercromby's position.
The British prevailed at the Battle of Krabbendam
Battle of Krabbendam (1799)
The Battle of Krabbendam of 10 September 1799 was fought during the Anglo-Russian Invasion of Holland between forces of the French Republic and her ally, the Batavian Republic, under the command of French general Guillaume Marie Anne Brune on one side, and a British division under general Sir...
near Alkmaar on September 10, where the Batavians and French were routed. This defeat was partly due to sloppy staffwork that allocated one narrow road to the columns of both Batavian divisions that were supposed to converge on the hamlet of Krabbendam. This hamlet sat astride one of the few entry roads to the Zijpe polder
Polder
A polder is a low-lying tract of land enclosed by embankments known as dikes, that forms an artificial hydrological entity, meaning it has no connection with outside water other than through manually-operated devices...
in which Abercromby had set up an armed camp. The polder formed a natural redoubt
Redoubt
A redoubt is a fort or fort system usually consisting of an enclosed defensive emplacement outside a larger fort, usually relying on earthworks, though others are constructed of stone or brick. It is meant to protect soldiers outside the main defensive line and can be a permanent structure or a...
with its dike acting as a rampart
Defensive wall
A defensive wall is a fortification used to protect a city or settlement from potential aggressors. In ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements...
and its circular drainage canal as a moat
Moat
A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that surrounds a castle, other building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places moats evolved into more extensive water defences, including natural or artificial lakes, dams and sluices...
. The straight and narrow road through Krabbendam formed one of the few easy entries, but it was easily defensible also. The original plan had this entry point attacked by both Batavian divisions, but because Daendels' division was forced to take a more easterly route, only the division of Dumonceau was brought to bear. This division could not be fully deployed due to the nature of the terrain and the Batavian forces were therefore again fed piecemeal into the battle. They were unable to prevail over the valiant defense of the British 20th Foot. Elsewhere, the French division of general Vandamme was likewise unable to overcome the obstacles of the canal and the dike behind it, that protected the British troops. Vandamme therefore failed to turn Abercromby's right flank as planned.
With Britain having naval superiority, both on the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...
and the Zuider Zee
Zuider Zee
The Zuiderzee was a shallow bay of the North Sea in the northwest of the Netherlands, extending about 100 km inland and at most 50 km wide, with an overall depth of about 4 to 5 metres and a coastline of about 300 km . It covered...
, British reinforcements under the Duke of York (who assumed supreme command) and Russian troops under general Ivan Ivanovitch Hermann von Fersen
Johann Hermann von Fersen
Ivan Ivanovitch Hermann von Fersen was a Saxon-born infantry general who served from 1770 in the Imperial Russian Army.-Life:He was involved in the battles at and in the military operations against Yemelyan Pugachev. He won the battle in Upper Kuban against Seraskier Batal-Bey and his 18,000...
could easily be landed at Den Helder. The combined forces soon achieved numerical superiority with 40,000 men against 23,000 of the depleted Franco-Batavian army.
Bergen
The Duke of York decided to exploit this numerical superiority as soon as possible. He therefore prepared for an attack on a broad front. To understand the problems this attack encountered one needs to understand the peculiar nature of the terrain. The North-Holland peninsula is bordered on the North-Sea side by a beach and a broad band of dunes (except for a short stretch south of PettenPetten
Petten is a town in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Zijpe, and lies about 15 km northwest of Alkmaar, on the North Sea. The population is ca. 1900....
, where only a large dike defends the hinterland against flooding). Next to the dunes is a band of high land that can easily be traversed by a marching army. Further east, however, the terrain changes to former bogland and other low-lying areas consisting of former lakes that had been drained by the Dutch in the 17th century. These low-lying areas were criss-crossed by ditches and larger drainage canals, needed in the water-management
Watertable control
Watertable control is the practice of controlling the water table in agricultural land by subsurface drainage with proper criteria to improve the crop production.- Description and definitions :...
of the area, that formed serious impediments to manoeuvering forces, even when they were not inundated. Such inundations were however increasingly performed by the Dutch engineers the more the campaign progressed, to deny more and more freedom of movement to the Anglo-Russian forces. At the time of the Battle of Bergen
Battle of Bergen (1799)
The Battle of Bergen, also called the Battle of Bergen-Binnen, was fought on 19 September 1799, and resulted in a French-Dutch victory under General Brune and General Daendels against the Russians and British under the Duke of York who had landed in North Holland...
that commenced on September 19, most of those inundations were not yet completed, so that at that time the main obstacles were still the watercourses.
The Duke of York drew up a daring plan of attack that amounted to an attempt at double envelopment
Pincer movement
The pincer movement or double envelopment is a military maneuver. The flanks of the opponent are attacked simultaneously in a pinching motion after the opponent has advanced towards the center of an army which is responding by moving its outside forces to the enemy's flanks, in order to surround it...
of the Franco-Batavian army. He divided his forces over four columns. The rightmost column, under the Russian lt.-gen. Hermann, with 9,000 Russians and 2,500 British troops, starting from Petten and Krabbendam, had as objective the village of Bergen
Bergen, North Holland
Bergen is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. Its North Sea beaches make it a popular destination for tourists, especially Germans. In 2001, the municipality was expanded to include the former municipalities of Egmond and Schoorl.Since about 1900, Bergen...
. Next to it marched an Anglo-Russian force of 6,500 troops under lt.-gen. Dundas with as objective Schoorldam
Schoorldam
Schoorldam is a town in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is partially in the municipality of Bergen, partially in Harenkarspel....
. The next column, 5,000 men under lt.-gen. Pulteney had as objective the area of Langedijk
Langedijk
Langedijk is a municipality in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland and the region of West-Frisia. Langedijk received city rights in 1415.-Population centres :...
with the hamlets of Oudkarspel
Oudkarspel
Oudkarspel is a village in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is located in the municipality of Langedijk, north of the town of Noord-Scharwoude.Oudkarspel was a separate municipality until 1941, when the new municipality of Langedijk was created....
and Heerhugowaard
Heerhugowaard
Heerhugowaard is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland and the region of West-Frisia.-History:...
. Finally, the fourth column, 9,000 infantry and 160 cavalry under lt.-gen. Abercromby, was intended to turn the Franco-Batavian right flank, by first attaining Hoorn
Hoorn
-Cities :* Purmerend * Enkhuizen * Alkmaar * Amsterdam * Lelystad * Den Helder * Leeuwarden -Towns :* Edam...
and then thrusting southward to Purmerend
Purmerend
Purmerend is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland.The city is surrounded by polders, such as the Purmer, Beemster and the Wormer. The city became the trade center of the region but the population grew relatively slow. Only after 1960 did the population...
.
Egmond aan Zee
Egmond aan Zee is a village on the North Sea coast in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Bergen, and lies about 9 km west of Alkmaar....
. These threatened to turn the Russian right wing by marching along the beach. The Russians, driven out of Bergen, retreated in some disorder to their starting positions because of this threat of being out-flanked. In the confusion general Hermann was made a prisoner of war. The attack of the right-wing pincer therefore was a dismal failure.
The column of general Dundas (accompanied by the commander-in-chief, the Duke of York) made only slow progress after it started its advance at dawn, because of the watercourses it encountered that were difficult to cross, as the defenders had removed the bridges. While they were slowly advancing on Schoorldam, the defender of that position, general Dumonceau with the 2nd Batavian division, had time to launch a diversionary attack on the Russians attacking Bergen, which contributed greatly to the confusion in the Russian ranks. When Dundas finally arrived at Schoorldam, Dumonceau was wounded by grapeshot. What exactly happened on the Dutch side after that is unclear as his replacement, gen. Bonhomme, failed to make an after-battle report. However, the upshot was that the division fell back in some disorder on Koedijk
Koedijk
Koedijk is a village in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is now a part of Langedijk, but before 1972 it was a separate municipality. Koedijk is most famous for its annual . This gondelvaart is held every year on the 3rd Saturday in August....
. However, the British failed to exploit this retreat, due to a counterattack from the Dutch, but mainly because the rout of the Russian troops on the right wing also forced a withdrawal in the form of an orderly rear-guard action of the troops of York and Dundas. They also eventually returned to their starting positions.
The third column, with generals Pulteney, Don
George Don (British Army officer)
General Sir George Don GCB, GCH was a senior British Army military officer and colonial governor during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries...
and Coote, likewise found the terrain difficult. This column was forced to use the road on a dike, called the Langedijk (long dike) that divides several polders. This dike was flanked on the right hand by a deep drainage canal, and on the other side the many ditches in the land also hindered easy deployment. The road led to the village of Oudkarspel
Oudkarspel
Oudkarspel is a village in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is located in the municipality of Langedijk, north of the town of Noord-Scharwoude.Oudkarspel was a separate municipality until 1941, when the new municipality of Langedijk was created....
where the 1st Batavian division of general Daendels had built some fieldworks (the Dutch complained, however, that Brune had prohibited the full development of fortifications, which made the defense more difficult). The first attack on this strongpoint by Pulteney ended in disaster with the British fleeing in panic until they could be rallied behind another dike that gave some cover against the Dutch artillery fire. Several other British frontal attacks were also repulsed with great loss, and an encircling movement proved impracticable due to the canal. However, then general Daendels made the mistake of ordering an under-strength sally
Sally
-Military:*Sally , an attack by the defenders of a town or fortress under siege against a besieging force*Sally, the Allied reporting name during World War II for the Imperial Japanese Armys Mitsubishi Ki-21 bomber-Names:...
from his redoubt by 100 grenadiers. Not only was this easily repulsed, but the rout of the grenadiers enabled the pursuing British, following hot on their heels, to penetrate the Dutch entrenchments and rout the entire group of defenders. This rout could only be stopped at the end of the Langedijk. The retreating troops suffered very heavy losses due to British artillery fire. Daendels finally personally led a counterattack with only one battalion of grenadiers, but by then the debacle on the British right wing had been communicated to Pulteney, who therefore was already withdrawing to his starting position. The British therefore made no net territorial gains, but they had dealt the Batavians heavy losses in casualties and prisoners.
Finally, the long march of the fourth column under general Abercromby went completely unopposed. He reached Hoorn without mishap and managed to surprise the weak garrison at this city. Hoorn was occupied and briefly the locals displayed the colors of the stadtholder. However, the planned march south from Hoorn, which was the point of the entire manoeuvre, as it would have enabled Abercromby to turn the right flank of the Franco-Batavian army, proved impossible because of the obstacles the defenders had prepared (This explains why Abercromby had not encountered opposition on his march to Hoorn). After the retreat of the other columns Abercromby received orders to evacuate Hoorn and likewise go back to his starting position. The citizens of Hoorn quickly took down their orange flags again. Abercromby's work had therefore been completely in vain, and would have been so even if the attack on the right wing had been successful. His route was simply too circuitous to be successful. A more direct route might have offered a better chance of success.
In sum, neither side made any territorial gains in this battle. The losses in personnel were substantial on both sides, however, but they appear to have been about equal.
Alkmaar
After the surrender of the Batavian squadron on August 30, the British fleet had become master not just of the North Sea, but also of the Zuider Zee. Remarkably, the British had not made use of this advantage (and of the psychological consequences of the surrender for Batavian morale) to force the issue, for instance by making an amphibious landing near Amsterdam. General KrayenhoffCornelis Rudolphus Theodorus Krayenhoff
Cornelis Rudolphus Theodorus, Baron Krayenhoff was a physicist, artist, general, hydraulic engineer, cartographer and - against his will and for only a short time - Dutch Minister of War.-Biography:...
, who at the time was in charge of improvising the defenses of that city, points out that for a few days Amsterdam lay quite defenseless against such an attack. In his opinion the campaign might have ended then and there. However, the British fleet had remained strangely passive. This changed in the days after the Battle of Bergen when the British belatedly occupied the undefended ports of Medemblik
Medemblik
Medemblik is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland and the region of West-Frisia.- History :...
, Enkhuizen
Enkhuizen
Enkhuizen is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland and the region of West-Frisia.Enkhuizen was one of the harbour-towns of the VOC, just like Hoorn and Amsterdam, from where overseas trade with the East Indies was conducted. It received city rights in 1355...
, and Hoorn, at the same time mastering the West Friesland
West Friesland (region)
West Friesland is a contemporary region in the northwestern Netherlands, in the province of North Holland.The region covers an area of about , delineated by the Westfriese Omringdijk...
region between these ports. A number of islands in the Zuider Zee were also occupied, but by then the window of opportunity to capture Amsterdam had closed.
On land, the initiative still lay with the expeditionary force, that received new Russian reinforcements after September 19 that made up for at least the Russian losses. The Duke of York did not press the attack for about two weeks, however, because of bad weather, and this afforded an opportunity to the defenders to complete their inundations and other defenses. The Langedijk now became a narrow "island" in a shallow lake with the now-improved fortifications of Oudkarspel acting as an impenetrable "Thermopylae
Battle of Thermopylae
The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during the second Persian invasion of Greece. It took place simultaneously with the naval battle at Artemisium, in August...
." The 1st Batavian division of Daendels still defended this part of the front, but Brune was able to shift large parts of that division (especially its cavalry units) to his other wing. The eastern seaboard of the peninsula was made even more impenetrable by inundations, and a secondary line of entrenchments was prepared between Monnickendam and Purmerend
Purmerend
Purmerend is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland.The city is surrounded by polders, such as the Purmer, Beemster and the Wormer. The city became the trade center of the region but the population grew relatively slow. Only after 1960 did the population...
. The main effect of these defensive preparations was, that the low-lying eastern part of the peninsula became impassable to the expeditionary force and that henceforth operations would be limited to the relatively narrow band, consisting of the beach, dunes and the plain directly adjacent to them, roughly the area between Alkmaar and the sea.
The weather improved in early October and the Duke of York then made his plan for what was to become known as the Battle of Alkmaar
Battle of Alkmaar (1799)
The Battle of Alkmaar was fought on 2 October 1799 between forces of the French Republic and her ally, the Batavian Republic under the command of general Guillaume Marie Anne Brune, and an expeditionary force from Great Britain and her ally Russia, commanded by Prince Frederick, Duke of York...
of 2 October 1799 (though "Second Bergen" would seem more appropriate, as the former city never was involved, and the latter village again became the center of the battle). The Duke of York's former left wing, under gen. Abercromby, was moved over completely to the extreme right wing, with the other columns moving to the left to make room. This had the effect of placing exclusively-British formations on both wings (Pulteney and Abercromby) and having mixed Anglo-Russian formations in the column next to Abercromby's under the new Russian commander, general Ivan Essen
Ivan Essen
Ivan Nikolaevich Essen was a Russian lieutenant general and military governor of Riga at the start of the Patriotic War of 1812.-Pre-1812:...
. The fourth column (between Pulteney and Essen) was made up of British troops under general Dundas. York intended to have all three columns on the right wing converge on the Franco-Batavian left wing, which consisted of the French division of Vandamme near the coast (the 2nd Batavian division of Dumonceau -now commanded by Bonhomme- was placed in the Franco-Batavian center). The division of Pulteney was used as a screening force of the left wing, to deter Daendels.
The plan of attack could now be characterized as one of "single envelopment," with Abercromby's column intended to turn the French left wing by marching along the beach. To this end the start of the advance had to be delayed until 6.30 AM, when low tide allowed Abercromby to use the beach. The Anglo-Russian center advanced slowly but steadily, much hindered by the difficult terrain of the dunes on the right and the water-course-ridden plain between the dunes and the Alkmaar canal on the left. The Franco-Batavians fought a steady rear-guard action, falling back on Bergen (the French) and Koedijk (the Batavians), where they made a stand. In the afternoon the British brigade in Essen's column (gen. Coote) seemed to make a sudden dash in the dunes, but got too far ahead of the remainder Essen's column, which followed far more slowly, and the French launched a spirited counter-attack from Bergen in two columns under generals Gouvion and Boudet
Jean Boudet
Jean Boudet was a French général de division of the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The campaigns in which he was involved include the Saint-Domingue expedition...
to exploit the gap. They were driven back with some difficulty, but managed to retain the village of Bergen for the remainder of the day, despite continued Anglo-Russian attacks.
Meanwhile, the column of gen. Abercromby made very slow progress along the beach, mostly because the tide was coming in again, which narrowed the beach to a very small band, consisting of loose sand. The troops and horses were suffering severely from fatigue and thirst. In the course of the afternoon they were observed by the French who brought up sharpshooters at first, who made many victims, especially under officers. The French sent more and more substantial reinforcements through the dunes and eventually general Vandamme brought up a substantial cavalry force which he led personally in a charge against the British horse-artillery batteries that temporarily fell into French hands. This cavalry attack was eventually repulsed by a counter-attack led by Lord Paget
Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey
Field Marshal Henry William Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey, KG, GCB, GCH, PC , styled Lord Paget between 1784 and 1812 and known as The Earl of Uxbridge between 1812 and 1815, was a British military leader and politician, now chiefly remembered for leading the charge of the heavy cavalry against...
, who drove the French all the way back to Egmond aan Zee
Egmond aan Zee
Egmond aan Zee is a village on the North Sea coast in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Bergen, and lies about 9 km west of Alkmaar....
.
By then night had fallen and major operations stopped. Abercromby had by then passed the latitude of Bergen, so theoretically the French were outflanked there. Though he did not have the strength to exploit this position at the time, general Brune felt sufficiently threatened by this that he decided to order a general strategic retreat from Bergen, and from his other positions of October 2, on the next morning. Both the French and the Batavians now fell back on their secondary line. Daendels retreated to the prepared positions at Monnickendam and Purmerend, after which Krayenhoff completed the inundations in front of this line. Bonhomme and Vandamme occupied a new line between Uitgeest
Uitgeest
Uitgeest is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland.-Population centres :The municipality of Uitgeest consists of the following cities, towns, villages and/or districts: Assum, Busch en Dam, Groot Dorregeest, Uitgeest....
, Castricum
Castricum
Castricum is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland.Castricum is a tourist attraction in the province North Holland...
and Wijk aan Zee
Wijk aan Zee
Wijk aan Zee is a small town on the coast of the North Sea in the municipality of Beverwijk in the province of North Holland of the Netherlands. The prestigious Tata Steel chess tournament formerly Corus chess tournament and before that called Hoogovens tournament takes place there every year.Due...
. This guarded the narrowest part of the North-Holland peninsula, as in those days the IJ (bay)
IJ (bay)
The IJ is a river, formerly a bay, in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is known for being Amsterdam's waterfront. The name derives from the generic Germanic term for "water" and is similar to other Aa/Ee names for bodies of water. In Dutch, the name consists of the digraph ij, which is...
still bisected the province. Here they awaited the next move of the enemy.
Castricum
With the retreat of the Franco-Batavian army the greater part of the North-Holland peninsula was now in Anglo-Russian hands, at least theoretically. However, large parts of the country, the former lakes of the BeemsterBeemster
Beemster is a municipality in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. Also, the Beemster is the first so-called polder in the Netherlands that was reclaimed from a lake, the water being extracted out of the lake by windmills. The Beemster Polder was dried during the period 1609 through...
, Schermer
Schermer
Schermer is a municipality in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. The name came from "skir mere", which means "bright lake" Schermer (West Frisian: Skirmare) is a municipality in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. The name came from "skir mere", which means "bright...
, and Wormer
Wormer
Wormer is a town in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Wormerland, and lies about 13 km northwest of Amsterdam.In 2006, the town of Wormer had 12566 inhabitants...
, had been flooded, depriving the British from their rich farmland and the supplies that might have been obtained there. In consequence, most supplies had to be landed at Den Helder and then brought forward with much difficulty across roads that were almost impassable because of the incessant rains. Beside the troops, the hungry mouths of about 3,000 deserters and mutineers that the Hereditary Prince hoped to form into a Dutch Brigade, but that were not employed by the British, had to be fed. Provisions were running short.
The Duke of York (now headquartered in Alkmaar, which city had opened its gates to him on October 3) wasted as little time as possible in pressing the offensive. He knew that Brune had been reinforced with six French battalions, brought up from Belgium. His own forces were in steady decline, especially because of sickness. By the start of the next phase of the campaign: the Battle of Castricum
Battle of Castricum
The Battle of Castricum saw a Franco-Dutch force defeat an Anglo-Russian force near Castricum, Netherlands. The battle was fought during the War of the Second Coalition against Revolutionary France between French and Dutch forces under the command of General Guillaume Brune and Herman Willem...
of October 6, his effectives were no more than 27,000.
Brune had divided his left wing into three divisions: Gouvion near Wijk aan Zee in the dunes; to his right Boudet around Castricum; and the 2nd Batavian division, still commanded by Bonhomme, around Uitgeest. In front of this entrenched line there were French outposts, in Bakkum and Limmen
Limmen
Limmen is a town in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Castricum, and is situated about 9 km southwest of Alkmaar. Before 2002 it was a separate municipality....
, commanded by brigadier-general Pacthod. On the morning of October 6 these were attacked by the now-familiar three columns: Abercromby along the beach, Essen in the middle and Dundas on the left, while Pulteney still rather uselessly masked Daendels. The Anglo-Russians of Essen's column easily drove out the French outposts. The Duke of York appears to have had nothing more in mind than an armed reconnaissance, but their early success tempted the Russians to attack Castricum in force and this village was tenaciously defended by Pacthod. The village changed hands several times that day as Brune had Boudet bring up reinforcements. The fighting attracted reinforcements from the columns of Dundas and Abercromby, the latter personally bringing up his reserve-brigade to attack Castricum late in the afternoon
Brune then ordered a bayonet attack which drove back the British and Russians in disorder. They were pursued in the direction of Bakkum by French cavalry under general Barbou and a rout might have ensued had not the light dragoon
Dragoon
The word dragoon originally meant mounted infantry, who were trained in horse riding as well as infantry fighting skills. However, usage altered over time and during the 18th century, dragoons evolved into conventional light cavalry units and personnel...
s of Lord Paget intervened in a surprise charge from a hidden dune valley. The French cavalry was now routed in its turn. They drew along the exhausted Franco-Batavian troops that had only shortly before retaken Castricum and a disorderly retreat was about to start
The advance of the British was, however, broken by a counterattack of the Batavian hussars under col. Quaita. This turned the tide in the battle. The Anglo-Russian troops in their turn now broke and retreated in disorder to Bakkum and Limmen, pursued by the Franco-Batavian cavalry. Only the quickly falling darkness ended the slaughter.
All this time the French of general Gouvion and the British column of Abercromby had been fighting a separate battle near the beach and in the dunes. Apart from an artillery duel, in which the Batavian artillery of Gouvion inflicted heavy losses on the British, this remained rather static, especially after Abercromby left with the British reserve to join Essen. The fight intensified against the evening when Abercromby returned and tried to attack. Gouvion held his line, however.
On the Batavian right wing of general Daendels, absolutely nothing happened that day, as the inundations made his lines impenetratable. There was a strange incident, however, when the British general Don
George Don (British Army officer)
General Sir George Don GCB, GCH was a senior British Army military officer and colonial governor during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries...
, under cover of a flag of truce, tried to get permission to cross the Batavian lines on a mission to the Batavian government. As on the Batavian left wing the battle had clearly started, Daendels considered this an abuse of the flag of truce. Besides, Don turned out to have papers on his person that could be considered to be of a seditious nature. Daendels therefore arrested Don as a spy and sent him to Brune's headquarters. Don was incarcerated in the fortress of Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
and only years later exchanged for the Irish rebel James Napper Tandy
James Napper Tandy
James Napper Tandy , was an Irish rebel leader.-Political activism:A Dublin Protestant and the son of an ironmonger, Tandy went to the famous Quaker boarding school in Ballitore, south Kildare, also attended by Edmund Burke who was eight years older.He started life as a small tradesman...
.
Anglo-Russian retreat and capitulation
Though on the night of October 6 the two armies were back in their starting positions (though the outposts in Bakkum and Limmen remained in British hands), and the Anglo-Russian losses had not been devastating (though they were about double the Franco-Batavian losses), the Duke of York now convened a council of war with his lieutenants-general. The outcome of this conference was that the Anglo-Russian army withdrew completely to the original bridgehead of the Zijpe polder, relinquishing all terrain that had been gained since September 19. The cities of Hoorn, Enkhuizen and Medemblik were also evacuated and the following Batavian troops could only just prevent the burning of the warehouses with naval stores in those cities by the British. The retreat was executed in such haste that two field hospitals full of British wounded were left in Alkmaar, together with 400 women and children of soldiers.The strategic withdrawal was completed on October 8, though Prince William of Gloucester
Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh
Prince William, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh was a member of the British Royal Family, a grandson of George II and a younger brother of George III.-Early life:...
, retreating from Hoorn, fought a rearguard action against Daendels in the following days. By mid-October, the situation of before September 19 had been restored, the Anglo-Russians ensconced in their natural redoubt and the Franco-Batavians besiegeing them. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, and early winter gales made provisioning by sea difficult. The Duke of York was now faced with the prospect of a winter siege in a situation in which his troops might well face starvation (on October 13 provisions for only eleven days were still available.). He therefore decided to approach Brune with a proposal for an honorable capitulation transmitted by general Knox on October 14.
The following negotiations were short. Brune at the behest of the Batavian government at first demanded the return of the captured Batavian squadron. However, the Duke of York countered with a threat to breach the dike near Petten, thereby inundating the countryside around the Zijpe polder. Though General Krayenhoff was not impressed by this threat (after all, he had spent the previous weeks flooding most of the peninsula himself, and knew that the process could be reversed without too much difficulty) and so advised Brune, the latter was more easily impressed (or feigned this; Krayenhoff also darkly mentions a gift of a number of "magnificent horses" by the Duke to Brune as a possible deal-clincher) and soon agreed to a convention that was very favorable to the Anglo-Russians. In this Convention of Alkmaar
Convention of Alkmaar
The Convention of Alkmaar was a 1799 agreement concluded between the commanders of the expeditionary forces of Great Britain and Russia on the one hand, and of those of the First French Republic and the Batavian Republic on the other, in Alkmaar, by which the British and Russians agreed to withdraw...
that was signed on October 18 no more mention was made of the return of the ships. The Anglo-Russian troops and the Orangist mutineers were granted an undisturbed evacuation, which had to be completed before December 1. There would be an exchange of 8,000 prisoners of war, including Batavian seamen, that had been captured at the Battle of Camperdown
Battle of Camperdown
The Battle of Camperdown was a major naval action fought on 11 October 1797 between a Royal Navy fleet under Admiral Adam Duncan and a Dutch Navy fleet under Vice-Admiral Jan de Winter...
(Admiral De Winter
Jan Willem de Winter
Jan Willem de Winter was a Dutch admiral of the Napoleonic Wars.De Winter entered naval service as a young boy. He distinguished himself by his zeal and courage, and at the revolution of 1787 he had reached the rank of lieutenant. The overthrow of the patriot party forced him to fly for his safety...
, who had been paroled earlier, was specifically included). The British promised to return the fortresses at Den Helder with their guns in good order. Except for the return of their prisoners of war, the Batavians thought they had got the worst of this exchange, but they were powerless to get a better deal.
An armistice went into force immediately and the evacuation was completed on November 19, when General Pulteney left with the last British troops.
Aftermath
The capitulation was favorable to the British and their Russian allies. They extracted their troops unharmed so that these could fight again in other theatres of war. The initial British reports about the conduct of the Russian troops had been highly unfavorable, reason for Czar Paul to dishonor them. The Duke of York thought this too harsh, and he sent a letter to Paul specifically exculpating a number of the Russian regiments.The British public and Parliament at first were well pleased with the conduct of the British troops. Both Admiral Mitchell and General Abercromby were voted the thanks of Parliament and both received honorary swords, valued at 100 guinea
Guinea (British coin)
The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...
s, from the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
. Mitchell was appointed Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath (KB). However, when the failure of the expedition had sunk in and its cost had become clear, popular sentiment changed. In Parliament, the leader of the Opposition, Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Irish-born playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford , Westminster and Ilchester...
severely castigated the government in a speech, delivered on 9 February 1800, in the House of Commons
For the Batavian Republic the material losses sustained during the expedition were severe. The Batavian navy lost 16 ships-of-the-line, five frigates, three corvettes, and one brig, out of a total of 55 ships. This surrender technically was accepted in the name of the Stadtholder by the British, a conceit they adopted for diplomatic reasons, but a number of the ships were later "purchased" from the Stadtholder by the British navy.
In France the expedition may have contributed (together with the initial French military reversals in Switzerland) to the fall of the Directoire
French Directory
The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...
. They were driven from power in the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire
18 Brumaire
The coup of 18 Brumaire was the coup d'état by which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate...
by Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
.
Sources
Colenbrander, H.T. (1908) De Bataafsche Republiek- The campaign in Holland, 1799, by a subaltern (1861) W. Mitchell http://books.google.com/books?id=72wBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA11&dq=battle++Keeten&client=firefox-a#PPA1,M1 (1996) The Younger Pitt: The consuming struggle. Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804727546
- Harvey, Robert. War of Wars: The Epic Struggle Between Britain and France 1789-1815. London, 2007
- Hague, William. Pitt the Younger.Random House, 2005 ISBN 1400040523, 9781400040520, British minor expeditions: 1746 to 1814. HMSO, 1884 http://books.google.com/books?id=tAYHAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=minor+british+expeditions#PPA40,M1 (1822) Histoire Critique Et Militaire Des Guerres de la Revolution: Nouvelle Edition, Redigee Sur de Nouveaux Documens, Et Augmentee D'un Grand Nombre de Cartes Et de Plans (tome xv, ch. xciii)http://books.google.com/books?id=Bb8AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA469&dq=exp%C3%A9dition+Anglo+Russe+1799&lr=&client=firefox-a#PPA177,M1 (1832) Geschiedkundige Beschouwing van den Oorlog op het grondgebied der Bataafsche Republiek in 1799. J.C. Vieweg http://books.google.com/books?id=vFtKAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=Guericke+Keeten&source=bl&ots=Ng0K4OxDRd&sig=SwRgFQxbDVeVqlWDPn6dJIENn8s&hl=en&ei=sDLmSbGnEaPoswPOsJj1AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#PPA68,M1
- Schama, S.Simon SchamaSimon Michael Schama, CBE is a British historian and art historian. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain...
(1977), Patriots and Liberators. Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813, New York, Vintage books, ISBN 0679729496 - Urban, Mark. Generals: Ten British Commanders Who Shaped the World. Faber and Faber, 2005.