First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [46]
Debate in the provincial states over the need and the cost of more ships was strenuous, plunging the provinces into more than their normal antagonism to each other, with Holland and Friesland, as the most dependent on foreign commerce and ship-building, ranged against Utrecht, Overyssel and Gelderland, which wanted reinforcement of land forces. Focus of the debate was the fiercely disputed issue of “unlimited convoy,” meaning escort for all merchantmen that sailed from the Netherlands with any or all goods not specifically listed as contraband. As this raised the issue of naval stores and would have protected delivery of timber to the French, the British could not allow it, while the French insisted on it. For Britian the issue was wider than just ship-building material for France. Convoy implied resistance to search, disputing England’s claim to sovereignty of the seas between her coast and the continent of Europe, as laid down, to the unbounded satisfaction of the nation, by the erudite historian of law John Selden in Mare Clausum, his answer to Grotius. In asserting Britain’s exclusive rights over the seas surrounding her islands, Selden affirmed the supremacy that Yorke believed Britain had “the right to assume.” Unlimited convoy would become another test of ego as a casus belli. Believing that England would fight rather than give up her right of search, there were many in Holland who advised against making the test.
Crossing provincial lines, the debate drew parties and groups into a turmoil of conflicts. The Stadtholder, counting on England as his supporter against the revolutionary ideas of the Patriotes, knew his mind well enough in the matter to be sturdily opposed. Artisans of the middle class and proletarians, seeing unlimited convoy as a means of increasing trade and reviving manufacture, were as strongly advocates. Had the Dutch been united, they could have taken a firm stand one way or the other, but there was no person or body having the force or authority to impose a decision.
The French Ambassador, the Duc de la Vauguyon, a suave and soft-spoken diplomat schooled in the tactful manners of the French court, where his father had been tutor to Louis XVI, was soothingly recommending to the Dutch to follow a policy of ease and quiet without expense, saying that they had nothing to fear from France but that, for their own sake, their national dignity required a strong navy. Yorke, growing more harsh and overbearing the more he despaired of stopping the Dutch contraband trade, resorted to dire warnings, raising the prospect of England abrogating the Treaty of Westminster, leaving all Dutch trade open to seizure.
The States General failed to see in this a sign that Britain was approaching active reprisal, perhaps because Sir Joseph, the Thunderer, was too prolific in threats, and more because they could not believe that Britain, now engaged against both France and Spain as well as in America, would be so reckless as to take on another war. Events proved otherwise. In June, 1779, Spain had just entered the war on the side of the Colonies against Britain. As the most rockbound of monarchies, she had no interest in the success of the American rebellion, rather the contrary, and made no treaty of alliance with the Americans but only with France, in furtherance of their existing alliance known as the Bourbon Family Compact. Renewal of the compact was intended to bring the partners to that long-awaited day of which so many of her enemies have dreamed, the invasion of Britain. In joining the war, Spain planned the occasion for 1779, one hundred and ninety-one years since the drowned hopes of Philip’s Armada. Her more modest war aim was the recovery of Gibraltar and