James Baquet War is never funny. However, being the product of fallible humans and their foibles, it does sometimes involve incidents so ludicrous that one can’t help but smile. Take, for example, the capture of the Dutch fleet at Den Helder during the War of the First Coalition, which we discussed recently. The Dutch city of Den Helder is located on the northern tip of a peninsula just 80 kilometers or so north of Amsterdam. Only 2 or 3 kilometers of water — called the Marsdiep — separate it from the islands of Texel and Noorderhaaks, making it an ideal place to anchor ships. A shipyard has been located there since Napoleon’s time, and Den Helder continues to be the main base of the Dutch navy. In those days, though, the Netherlands — called the “United Provinces” — was a naval powerhouse. Holland was in a coalition with England, and it was a fairly short run — just 200 kilometers or so — to the English coast. The French Revolutionary Army, as you can imagine, was not too sanguine about this, and sent Hussars to do what they could to capture Den Helder and prevent Dutch ships from escaping to England. January of 1795 was brutally cold, and when the French arrived, they discovered that the fleet was stuck in ice! The aptly named General Jan Willem de Winter — a native Dutch man who had gone over to the French — led a cavalry charge against the fleet and obtained its surrender, capturing 14 Dutch ships and 850 guns. It was a very quiet charge. The horses’ hooves were wrapped in cloth to silence them, and the Hussars proceeded stealthily toward the ships during the night, each with an infantryman riding on the back of his horse. They boarded the ships and took the Dutch admiral and the crews; there were no French casualties. It is rare for men on horseback to capture an entire fleet. In fact, some modern scholars dispute that it happened this way at all; instead, they say, it was a previously-negotiated surrender. At any rate, the action brought an end to the French campaign in the Netherlands, which was reorganized a few months later as the Batavian Republic, a client state of France. Vocabulary: 1. perfect, exactly right 2. in a sneaky way 3. cheerfully optimistic 4. able to make mistakes 5. stay in one place 6. nation subordinate to a more powerful one 7. silly, ridiculous 8. terribly, in a harmful way 9. head of a navy 10. faults, weaknesses | 