Third Anglo-Dutch War - The Merlin Incident

The Merlin Incident

The Parliament was very unenthusiastic about a new war. The king therefore tried to incite the public opinion in England against the Dutch by creating a serious incident. Lord Arlington put it this way: "Our business is to break with them, yet to lay the breach at their door". He let the royal yacht Merlin, with Temple's wife Dorothy Osborne aboard, on 24 August 1671 sail through the Dutch fleet at anchor off Den Briel for maintenance. The Dutch ships duly struck their flag in salute first, as was mandatory under treaty, but refused to salute firing white smoke, because they were doubtful the Merlin counted as a real warship. Charles now ordered the intriguer George Downing, the new ambassador in The Hague, to demand that the admirals responsible would be severely punished, which the States-General of the Netherlands refused. Early 1672, Downing, who already had made himself profoundly hated by the Dutch population when he was an ambassador in the previous war, had to flee The Hague in fear of his life. Temple — somewhat wryly as he was rather sympathetic to the Dutch himself — remarked to Charles that now both he and his wife had had the honour to have become instruments of doom for the Dutch.

Though De Witt tended to believe the repeated diplomatic assurances by the French and English that they had no invasion in mind, many Dutch politicians and military men interpreted the French diplomatic activities in the German principalities, the preparing of the English Navy and the raising of large armies as sure signs of an imminent war. On 25 February 1672, William III, despite his youth, was appointed Captain-General of the confederate Dutch army. Factional strife and uncertainty about the French strategy prevented a strong field army from being created; most of the 83,000 troops (70,700 infantry and 12,710 cavalry in June 1672) were assigned to the fortresses. Whereas the Dutch Republic was thus ill-prepared for a land campaign, the situation at sea was much more favourable, even though the States-General decided to limit the naval budget to 4,776,248 guilders (down from an original projected budget of 7,893,992 guilders) in order not to provoke the English. In 1667, the Dutch navy, after having destroyed the core of the English navy at Chatham, had been the strongest in the world. Although in 1672 this had again changed, with the English having replaced the capital ships lost, while few Dutch ships had been built and one of the five autonomous Dutch admiralties, that of Friesland, was unable to contribute many ships because that province was attacked by Münster, the Dutch successfully prevented a blockade of their coast and any landing of enemy troops, despite being outnumbered by a third by the combined Anglo-French fleet. The reason for this success were the much improved training standards. In the major battles of 1666, the Dutch navy still had to get used to its brandnew, much heavier, warships and some costly tactical mistakes had been made; also personal conflict between Lieutenant-Admirals Michiel de Ruyter and Cornelis Tromp had damaged the unity of the fleet. De Ruyter used the summer of 1671 to execute many training manoeuvres employing the line-of-battle, perfecting the fire drill and installing a new sense of coherence and discipline. As a result, the Republic was in 1672 at the apex of its naval power; in the English navy however, Admiral Edward Spragge had grown jealous of supreme commander Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Also, Spragge broke formation in two battles to seek out his personal enemy Tromp, having vowed to kill him for having insulted his wife. Cooperation between the English and the French navies was poor, plagued by misunderstandings and suspicions.

Charles had intended to make William his creature by raising him from a position of unimportance to that of nominal ruler, ensuring his subservience to the English king. The threat of an invasion however, had as an unintended side-effect that the position of William grew stronger independently. In January 1672, William, by then having figured out the intentions of Charles by himself, tried to exploit this by offering Charles to make the Dutch Republic a faithful ally of England. In return, Charles would have to demand from the States-General that William be appointed stadtholder — and break with France. Charles did not take up this suggestion as, without the threat of a French invasion, he could hardly expect the Dutch to remain submissive.

As happened in the previous conflict, even before the formal outbreak of war, the English tried to intercept the Dutch Smyrna Fleet, a yearly convoy of Dutch merchants from the Levant sailing with a flotilla to protect them from the Barbary Corsairs. From 12 March 1672 (Old Style), Admiral Robert Holmes attacked the convoy in the English Channel, but was beaten back by Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest, capturing only a limited number of prizes.