by Smith, Skye
The Dutch respected English neutrality during weeks of shuttle diplomacy between the flagships of the five fleets. A trip to the cliffs at Deal to view the five huge fleets became the number one tourist pastime in England. The truce could not last, however, because troops and supplies were being smuggled through the blockade on Dunkirker and English ships, and because winter storms were imminent. The Dutch ships finally attacked and scattered the armada, and then picked off the ships one by one. They were careful not to exchange fire with any English ships or forts.
It was a pivotal event for the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Dunkirkers and English, but more, it was a pivotal event for the trade routes of the world. The Spanish and Portuguese lost most of their ships and about 8,000 seamen and troops, compared to light losses for the Dutch. This gave the Dutch fleet immediate control of the trade routes, so they quickly moved to take over the East Indies spice trade from the Portuguese, and their ports became the richest and busiest in the world.
For the Stuart regime it was a diplomatic disaster. The Spanish and Portuguese blamed Charles for not doing enough to protect the armada. The Dutch blamed him for doing too much, and for ferrying to Dunkirk all the Imperial troops who had been beached on English shores during the battle. The English blamed him for seeking favours from the Spanish in return for protection, such as the money and guns he needed to start another war with the Scots. The English navy blamed him for making them look foolish. The British Civil War would have been limited in scope and size if the Battle of the Downs had not weakened Charles' alliances.
19. Why were the Dutch so involved with the British Civil War?
From the widest view, the seeds of the civil war were planted by Martin Luther, by King Henry VIII, and by the first William of Orange of the Netherlands.
- Martin, because he was the touchstone of the reformation and the original media-mogul for his use of the printing press for spreading propaganda in the form of leaflets, posters, and pamphlets.
- Henry, because he divorced the Church of England from the King-Bishop of Rome (the Pope).
- William, because he was a champion of the Dutch Protestant Republican movement, which begat the English Protestant Republican movement, which begat the American Protestant Republican movement.
The history of the Netherlands is the history of a seafaring people thriving in the lowland river deltas of the North Sea. Their history has always been intertwined with that of the North Sea coast of England, and especially with the low marshlands of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire. By the time of the First Bishop's War, the Dutch were already in their 70th year of war with the Catholic Empire.
For eighty bloody years (1568-1648), the Hapsburg Empire of Spain, Rome and Burgundy made war on the fledgling republics of the Netherlands. In 1584 William of Orange became the first politician to be assassinated by a pistol ... a wheellock pistol loaded with three balls and fired point blank into his gut. His death left Henry VIII's daughter Elizabeth as the default champion of all Protestants, reformers, and anti-Papists. Default because they all shared the same enemies ... the Hapsburgs ... the Holy Roman Emperor and the Emperor of Spain.
The Dutch War of Independence split along religious lines between Protestants and Catholics, and eventually spread out across Europe as the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). The devastation was most acute in the German states, Bohemia, the Low Countries, and Italy. In all, some 8 million people died and some states lost a third of their population, including half of their men.
That the rebelling Dutch could not be crushed by the Empire was due to the confederation of the Protestant republics that stretched along the North Sea coast from Friesland (just south of Denmark) to Flanders (just north of France). The Empire referred to this region as the Burgundian Seventeen Provinces, and it was the northern seven of them that became the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.
Once self-rule had replaced the old fashioned Papist aristocracy, the republicans began to create the first modern nation state. They replaced the Imperial aristocracy with a sort of democracy, and reorganized their economy based upon limited liability corporations, stock markets, and merchant-trading banks. They welcomed non-Papist religious sects, even the Jews, and therefore skilled craftsmen and technical knowledge flooded into their cities and ports from everywhere in Europe and beyond.
The modern Dutch fleet fed and protected this modern state. At the time, in the Spanish, Portuguese and English fleets, all large ships were designed to serve as both trade ships and war ships, and thus did not excel at either. The Dutch, however, used their windmill-powered fabrication mills to mass produce dedicated warships, and dedicated trade ships. With their large capacity, dedicated cargo ships were cheap to build, cheap to crew, and were out-competing every other trading fleet. The resulting profits were paying for the endless war against the Empire, and were allowing the Dutch to create an overseas trading empire.
While the Dutch were busy creating the modern era, over in England Elizabeth had died with no heir and so had been replaced by the Stuarts of Scotland. While the Netherlands republics were leaping forward, Britain slipped backwards in time towards the bad old days of the entitled aristocracy. The English church slipped backwards in time towards the bad old days of aristocratic bishops with close ties to Rome. The folk had no official voice because the Stuart regime ruled without parliament, that is, unless they needed to enact a new tax.
King James was bad enough, but King Charles was worse for he had a Catholic wife with strong Papist ties. He was a king who believed that kings were ordained by God to rule absolutely. His early battles with the Spanish had cost him so much that he sought neutrality, which meant lessening the support of Netherlands and making peace treaties with all the Catholic kingdoms, especially Spain. Trade remained brisk between Dutch and British folk, however, because these folk were traditional allies.
The Protestant republicans of the Netherlands would encourage the overthrow of the Stuart regime and the formation of a British republic, because a republican Britain would once again support the Dutch in their own War of Independence, and would cancel their treaties with the Catholic kingdoms. If Britain could be modernized modeled on the Dutch, then their alliance would dominate trade.
THE END of HellBurner
The adventures continue in the next book: The Pistoleer - Slavers
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THE PISTOLEER - HellBurner by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
