The Admiral: Lots of Naval Battles

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17th Century Netherlands, Charles Dance, Charles II, Derek De Lint, Early Modern Europe, Freeedom, Johan de Witt, Michiel de Ruyter, Military Stuff, The Admiral, The Four Days Battle

In my previous post, I summarized a lot of 17^th century Dutch history so I could make a post about The Admiral (aka Michiel de Ruyter, 2015, dir. Roel Reiné, Dutch with English subtitles). The film in question follows the career of Michiel de Ruyter (Frank Lammers) both as a naval commander and as a figure in 17^th century Dutch politics. Because de Ruyter’s career is to some extent tied to the political career of Grand Pensioner Johan de Witt (Barry Atsma), the film also looks at him a good deal.

The film, which opens in 1653 with the Battle of Scheveningen during the First Anglo-Dutch War, gets the basic Dutch political tensions correct. De Witt and therefore de Ruyter are correctly shown as representing the Republican position and therefore being in conflict with the Orangists. It’s clear that the Orangists want Prince William (Egbert-Jan Weber) to have more power in government, but the film never really gets at what is at stake for these two factions beyond which group will run the country. The film makes only the briefest allusion to the conflict between the strict Calvinist and tolerant Calvinists when de Witt says during a speech that his country is free because every many is free to decide how they will worship God. This is, in fact, a loosely correct expression of de Witt’s actual position, and it’s nice to see a historical film that actually explains what it means by ‘freedom’ (cough Braveheart 300 cough).

It likewise gets the basic facts about the Dutch conflicts with England correct. It makes it clear that commercial rivalry played a significant role in these wars, although it doesn’t connect de Witt’s party to the wealthy merchants who stood to benefit the most from long-range trade. Perhaps because de Witt is allied to de Ruyter, the focus of the film, de Witt’s motives are presented as being entirely good and without self-interest while the English and the Orangists other than Prince William himself as shown to be more self-serving and malicious. Charles II (a well-cast Charles Dance) at one point tried to bribe William by offering to make him king of the Netherlands, an offer William indignantly rejects.

Ever wonder what Ron Jeremy would look like if he were a 17th century Dutch admiral? Wonder no more

The film is particularly proud of the Netherlands’ Republican history. It opens with the false claim that the Netherlands is the “only republic in the world”. This ignores the fact that Venice was also a republic throughout the 17^th century (and had been for centuries), and that in 1653, England was a republic as well. Given that Charles II is a key villain in the story, the film-makers probably decided to ignore the story of England’s unsuccessful experiment with republicanism simply because explaining why England is a republic at the start of the film but a monarchy a few years later would be a distraction from the main story.

Not only does William refuse to subvert the Republic, de Witt orders the execution of an Orangist who was plotting with Charles. This is a reference to Johan Kievit, but in the film it’s not Kievit who does the plotting, because Kievit (Derek de Lint) is, along with Charles, the master villain of the piece. Throughout the film, Kievit malevolently scowls at de Witt, plots to remove him in favor of Prince William, supports Tromp against de Ruyter, and orchestrates the murder of the de Witt brothers. His motives are never explained beyond general villainousness.

Kievit (de Lint) and Prince William (Weber)

The film also plays fast and loose with chronology. Although Prince William was only 3 years old in 1653, he’s an adult in the film. The film covers 23 years of actual history, but no one ages. De Ruyter’s children are still children at the end of the film. The film repeatedly compresses events, giving the sense that the First Anglo-Dutch War, the Second Anglo-Dutch War and the Third Anglo-Dutch War all took place over the course of perhaps a year, instead of the 20 years they actually took. Charles II signs of the Peace of Breda (1667) and then immediately schemes with Louis XIV to invade the Netherlands, even though that happened in 1672. This makes no sense at all, since he signs the Peace of Breda because he’s lost his whole fleet and therefore cannot continue fighting.

One of the better elements of the film is that it works hard to make naval combat intelligible. It shows a half-dozen battles, and frequently cuts to a bird’s eye view so the viewer can get a sense of how the ships are maneuvering. It spends a great deal of time on the Four Days’ Battle, showing crewmen doing a wide range of jobs and demonstrating just how terrible a problem wooden shrapnel was in naval combat. If you’re looking for a movie about wooden ships and what it takes to run them, you’ll like this movie.

Unfortunately, it also takes substantial liberties with the facts of the battles. For example, the film collapses the Four Day’s Battle and the St. James’ Day Battle into one event, moving Tromp’s decision to break the line and pursue the English from the latter battle to the former and making that decision the reason that de Ruyter lost the Four Days’ Battle, when in fact the Dutch more or less won that. In the film’s version of the Battle of Texel, de Ruyter orders Tromp to break the line, thus tricking the English into sailing too close to the Dutch coast, which causes the ships to haul over to one side, leaving them vulnerable to Dutch cannon fire and giving the Dutch a decisive victory that forced the English out of the war. That bears little resemblance to the actual Battle of Texel, which was more like a stand-off. The Raid on the Medway involved several days of cannon fire and a large group of marines, not a midnight sneak up the river with a handful of men.

So from a historical standpoint, the film is something of a mixed bag. It gets the big picture broadly correct, but fudges a lot of the details in the name of a simpler narrative. It also smacks a bit of Braveheart-style nationalistic chest-thumping, but without the histrionic speeches. However the topic is refreshing. How many movies about 17^th century naval warfare have you seen?

Want to Know More?

The Admiral is available on Amazon.

I couldn’t find anything on Michiel de Ruyter, but if you want to know more about Johan de Witt (who was an important philosopher and mathematician as well as politician), take a look at Johan de Witt: Philosopher of ‘True Freedom’

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The Admiral: More about Dutch History Than You Ever Wanted to Know

Tags

17th Century Netherlands, Charles II, Early Modern Europe, Johan de Witt, Michiel de Ruyter, The Admiral, William III

If there’s one genre that’s absolutely been done to death, it’s the 17^th Century Dutch Naval War genre. But I hope you can handle another entry into that storied category, in the form of The Admiral (aka Michiel de Ruyter, 2015, dir. Roel Reiné, Dutch with English subtitles).

The film looks at Dutch politics and conflicts with England in the mid-17^th century by focusing on the life of Michiel de Ruyter, one of the Netherlands’ greatest naval leaders. In the 17^th century the Dutch were one of the great naval and commercial powers of Europe, because their wide maritime commerce network made them far wealthier and more powerful than their small size would suggest. This tended to bring them into conflict another of the major naval and commercial powers of the era, Great Britain.

17^th century Dutch politics revolved around the nature of their state. In 1588, after the Dutch rebelled against Spanish rule and started the Eighty Years’ War, they declared themselves a republic. Their rebellion was couched in terms of defending their medieval rights, so they needed to adapt medieval political concepts to their new situation. Each of the seven rebellious provinces was given the right to elect a Stadhouder, or Steward, to administer it, and over the course of the next half-century, there was a tendency for one man to receive the stadhouder-ship of several provinces. In the 1640s, William II of Orange was stadhouder for five of the seven provinces. In 1648, the Dutch secured a final peace with Spain that acknowledged Dutch independence, but afterward William alienated many Catholics in the country by trying to impose the strict Dutch Calvinist Church on them and by refusing to disband the large army he had maintained.

The Netherlands in the 17th Century

 

When William died suddenly in 1650, leaving only a posthumous son, Prince William, five provinces declined to elect the infant William as the new stadhouder and let the office fall vacant. Instead, the Grand Assembly (essentially, a Dutch Parliament) turned for leadership to the Grand Pensionary of Holland, who was technically only an administrator for the province of Holland, but in the absence of a new stadhouder, he came to function as a sort of Prime Minister for the Republic. In 1653 the office was given to Johan de Witt.

De Witt emerged as the leader of the wealthy mercantile faction in Dutch politics, who favored aggressive protection of Dutch commercial interests overseas, as well as moderate Calvinism and toleration. The opposing faction were the Orangists, mostly less wealthy businessmen who worried about the political dominance of the wealthy merchants and who therefore favored the rights of the House of Orange as a counterbalance. This faction wanted to see William III appointed as stadhouder and wanted a most strict adherence to Calvinism.

When De Witt signed a peace treaty with England in 1654 to end the First Anglo-Dutch War, there was a secret rider forbidding William III to ever be appointed as stadhouder, because England’s leader, Oliver Cromwell, worried that, since William was the grandson of the recently-executed English king Charles I, the Orangists might support a return to English monarchy. And since both countries were republics at the time, it seemed reasonable to expect that they would remain at peace and perhaps even develop an alliance.

Johan de Witt

Unfortunately for that, in 1660, the English ended their experiment with republicanism and restored their monarchy, bringing Charles II, the uncle of Prince William, to the throne. In 1665, tensions over trade resulted in the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The English fought a massive battle with the Dutch at Lowestoft; more than 100 ships were involved on each side. After the Dutch flagship exploded, killing Admiral Van Obdam, the Dutch position collapsed and the English routed them in the worst naval defeat in Dutch history.

De Witt salvaged a desperately bad situation by appointed the commoner Michiel de Ruyter as admiral, much to the irritation of the Orangists, who wanted Cornelis Tromp, the son of a previous admiral. De Ruyter proved a brilliant naval leader. De Witt also dedicated an enormous amount of money to rebuild the Dutch navy. In 1666, the Dutch navy fought the English in the Four Days’ Battle, one of the longest naval engagements in history. De Ruyter inflicted so much damage on the English fleet that they eventually had to retreat, but de Ruyter lacked the gunpowder to pursue them.

A few months later, the St James’ Day Battle went against the Dutch. De Ruyter made a tactical error and found his portion of the fleet becalmed and unable to prevent the English from destroying a large section of the fleet. Tromp, commanding the Dutch rear, avoided de Ruyter’s mistake, broke line, and destroyed the English rear, pursuing it through the night, in the process losing all sight of the Dutch fleet and nearly being captured the next morning. Only the Great Fire of London prevented Charles II from following up on the victory.

Michiel de Ruyter

After the battle, de Ruyter blamed Tromp for the defeat, faulting him for breaking from the line to pursue the English ships. The Netherlands split over the issue. Tromp allowed his brother-in-law, Johan Kievit, to publish his version of events. It was soon discovered that Kievit was plotting with Charles II to put Prince William into power; he fled the country and was sentenced to death in absentia. A Tromp supporter attempted to assassinate de Ruyter but failed.

De Ruyter brought the Second Anglo-Dutch War to an end in 1667 by launching an audacious raid on the English shipyard at Chatham on the Medway river, where the English fleet was laid up for repairs. De Ruyter and Cornelis de Witt, Johan’s brother, fought their way past several English fortifications, broke a chain across the river, destroyed 13 ships and stole the English flagship, the Royal Charles. Lacking any heavy ships, Charles had no choice but to sign the Treaty of Breda.

De Witt used this triumph to abolish the stadhouder-ship for Holland and get William declared ineligible for the office in three other provinces by instead giving him a key military office. This provoked growing Orangist outrage. In 1672, when the English and French attacked the Netherlands in what the Dutch called the Disaster Year, de Witt narrowly escaped assassination, and found it prudent to resign as Grand Pensionary, William was made stadhouder of the Netherlands soon thereafter as William III.

But this did not satisfy the Orangists. Cornelis de Witt was arrested on charges of treason, tortured, and sentenced to exile. When Johan went to the prison to bid his brother farewell, the civic militia in the Hague attacked the two men in what most scholars think was an orchestrated riot. They were shot, stripped naked, and hung up in a public square; the Orangist mob literally roasted their livers and ate them. Responsibility for the killings has never been pinned on anyone, but William III had acted to order the withdrawal of a Dutch cavalry regiment from the area just hours before, leading many to suspect that he may have known about the plot. Tromp and Kievit were certainly involved, and William later on promoted both men, including arranging for his uncle to give Tromp a baronetcy.

The corpses of the De Witt brothers hanging in a town square

In 1673, the English attempted to launch of the Netherlands, but de Ruyter and Tromp fought the English to a stalemate, inflicting enough casualties that the English were ultimately forced to sue for peace after the Spanish agreed to join the war. In 1676 de Ruyter took a Dutch fleet into the Mediterranean where he fought an encounter with the French at Stromboli. It was an inconclusive battle, but de Ruyter lost a leg to a cannon ball and died, leaving the admiralty to Tromp.

In 1688, three years after the death of Charles II, William III led a revolt against Charles’ brother James II. Crossing over to England with a small force after the English Parliament appealed to him for assistance against the openly Catholic James, William forced James to flee the country, even though he was married to James’ daughter Mary. Parliament declared that William and Mary were the new monarchs. William didn’t even have to change his numbering, since he was the third William on the English throne.

Now that I’ve summarized what actually happened, in my next post, I’ll talk about The Admiral.

Want to Know More?

The Admiral is available on Amazon.

I couldn’t find anything on Michiel de Ruyter, but if you want to know more about Johan de Witt (who was an important philosopher and mathematician as well as politician), take a look at Johan de Witt: Philosopher of ‘True Freedom’