A Fleet Captured by Cavalry

During the Reign of Terror in France, while long lines of victims were going to the scaffold, the defenders of the New Republic were sending their armies to protect their threatened frontiers.

The troops were accompanied outside the gates of Paris by crowds of people, all shouting the Marseillaise. In 1794, Carnot, who organized the military forces, had half a million of men in the field, led to continued success by the republican generals Pichegru, Roche, Jourdan and others. No such armies had ever before trodden the soil of Europe; they carried with them the spirit of the Revolution. The generals had the alternative of victory or death; the convention would accept no excuse or explanation,--defeat was defeat. Even winter did not check the progress of the French arms. Many places surrendered without resistance on their approach. Pichegru led the van into Amsterdam, the inhabitants going forth and shouting, "The French Republic forever!" At that time the Dutch fleet was ice-bound in the Zuyder Zee, which is the harbor of Amsterdam. Pichegru surrounded it with his cavalry and compelled it to surrender. This unique history brings before us the strange spectacle of the French hussars galloping across the Zuyder Zee and assailing the tremendous but immovable ships of the Dutch, and thus of an entire fleet being captured by a charge of cavalry! The result was that the government of the country collapsed, and Holland was forcibly allied to France (1795). But in 1813 Holland threw off the yoke of France and recalled the Stadtholders. Prince William I. of Orange being proclaimed King of the Netherlands. Had the Dutch been as fertile in expedients as Napoleon they would have foiled the French cavalry at the Zuyder Zee. When that consummate tactician saw his adversaries strongly posted on a frozen lake, he brought his cannon to bear on the ice with a plunging fire. They were at once drowned or discomfited. A few well-directed discharges would have made the Dutch fleet unapproachable by cavalry.