Death in The Battle of The Sound
He fell in November 1658 in the Battle of the Sound, during the Northern Wars, commanding the vanguard of the Dutch fleet relieving Copenhagen from the Swedish, when his ship Brederode was grounded and surrounded by the enemy. He was first shot through the left thigh by a musket ball and hours later through the breast. When Swedish soldiers boarded the ship he refused to surrender his sword, wrestling with two of them on his knees and exclaiming: "I have faithfully wielded this sword so many years for Holland, so I won't give it up now to some common soldiers!". He collapsed, was brought to his cabin to recover, insisted on walking by himself over the gangplank to the Swedish ship, there collapsed again and died. His body was balmed on orders of Charles X of Sweden and displayed as a war trophy in the town hall of Elsinore by the Swedes, who January 1659 delivered his body to the Danish court in Copenhagen; after the Danes had paid their homage, it was transported to the Netherlands and buried with great pomp in Rotterdam on 7 October, in the church of St Lawrence, where the marble grave memorial, restored after being damaged by the German bombardment of 14 May 1940, can still be seen.
Read more about this topic: Witte Corneliszoon De With
Famous quotes containing the words death in the, death, battle and/or sound:
“He should be as vigorous as a sugar maple, with sap enough to maintain his own verdure,... and not like a vine, which being cut in the spring bears no fruit, but bleeds to death in the endeavor to heal its wounds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Everywhere “good men” sound a retreat, and the word has gone forth to fall back on innocence. Fall forward rather on to whatever there is there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)