First Stadtholderless Period - Diplomatic Supremacy

Diplomatic Supremacy

Though the Republic was only a small country, with a small population (about two million inhabitants when England had five million, and France already 20 million), these strategic drawbacks were more than compensated for by the economic and financial might of the Republic. Uniquely in Europe in this age, the Dutch state was able to tap the already sophisticated Dutch capital market, without having to go through banking intermediaries, to finance emergency military spending by borrowing. At the same time the taxing capacity was sufficient to service the still-manageable public debt this engendered. In case of need, the Republic could therefore rapidly expand its standing army by hiring mercenaries in "congenial" markets, like Scotland, the Protestant Swiss Cantons, and sundry Protestant German principalities, foremost Prussia. This was most spectacularly demonstrated in the months leading up to the Dutch invasion of England in 1688, when the standing army was simply doubled in size by hiring Prussian troops. But it also applied during most of the period under consideration (though it failed miserably in 1672, as we will see).

However, in this period military threats did not come primarily from the land side, so there was little need for a large standing army, as there had been during the war with Spain. The Spanish Army of Flanders, with 70,000 men one of the largest standing armies in Europe at the time, was fully engaged in defending the Southern Netherlands against France up to the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659. Spain would never again be a threat to the Republic from this quarter, actually hoping to conclude a defensive alliance against France. Though the Republic in these first years after the war with Spain was loth "to shore up a neighboring ruin" as De Witt remarked to the Spanish ambassador, the latter's reply that he would be wise to do so, "if he didn't want that ruin to fall on his head," later proved all too true. From 1667 on, the Republic was continually engaged in chasing the French out of the Spanish lands, and probably could have taken the Spanish Netherlands for itself, any time it wanted, but it preferred the Spanish Netherlands as a buffer state.

After the conflict with William II over the size of the army, which ended at his premature death, the now victorious regents lost little time in further reducing the size of the army. Unfortunately, they displayed the same parsimony to the navy, allowing the independent admiralties to sell off a large part of the fleet that had defeated the second Spanish Armada so resoundingly in neutral English waters in the Battle of the Downs of 1639. The foolishness of this policy was amply demonstrated in the First Anglo-Dutch War, when at least initially the Dutch navy did not stand a chance against the English fleet, at least in home waters, due to its qualitative and quantitative inferiority. While the war was still raging, the De-Witt regime therefore embarked on an ambitious program of naval construction and naval reform. The "new navy" was born that would become the pre-eminent instrument to project Dutch power abroad. The main innovation was that now sixty captains would be permanently employed by the navy, greatly increasing its professionalism. Due to the shallowness of Dutch home waters the size of the largest Dutch ships could still not be equal to that of the English first-rates, but the gap in weight of guns was narrowed.

This new navy would only be truly tested in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, as England was the Republic's only naval rival in these years, and neither country was keen to test the other so soon after the first war, that had been so costly to both sides. Besides, the Commonwealth was soon embroiled in a war with Spain, joining the Franco-Spanish War (1635) on the French side, in which the Republic remained neutral, content to reap the commercial benefits from the new-won Spanish friendship. However, the new navy proved useful in the smaller conflicts in which the Republic became soon engaged in Scandinavia and Portugal.

Due to the importance of the Dutch Baltic trade for Amsterdam and the northern Holland port cities, the Dutch were always keenly interested in what happened around the Sound. Already in the 1640s the Republic had intervened in the Torstenson War of king Christian IV of Denmark with Sweden, putting its thumb in the scales, both by military intervention in favor of the Swedes, and by favoring that country in the subsequent peace mediation that resulted in the Treaty of Brömsebro. Denmark had made itself unpopular in Dutch eyes by siding with Spain in the war and by unilaterally increasing the toll on Dutch shipping. At first there was little the Dutch could do, but when Christian provoked the Swedes to invade Jutland in 1643, the Dutch applauded, but did little more than offer diplomatic support, because the Zeeland and Rotterdam interests were loth to spent good money to defend the Amsterdam interests (the Orangists still being in the ascendant in this period). When the Swedes in consequence showed little enthusiasm to help lower tolls for the Dutch in the peace negotiations of 1644, the States General were finally forced to put their money where their mouth was. A Dutch fleet of 48 warships was assembled that in July, 1645, escorted three hundred Dutch merchant vessels through the Sound, making a show of not paying any toll at all. The Danish monarch watched the imposing spectacle in person from the ramparts of the castle of Helsingør, being politely saluted by the Dutch. The king made no response. A few months later a treaty was signed with the Dutch that formed the basis for their commercial ascendancy throughout the 17th century in the Baltic trade. Tolls for the Dutch were lowered; Dutch shipping would be exempt from visitation by Danish officials; Dutch shipping would be totally exempt from the toll at Glückstadt.

But soon the Dutch would have occasion to come to the aid of the Danes in a conflict with Sweden. In 1654 Charles X Gustav of Sweden ascended the Swedish throne and he embarked on an aggressive policy, in the process harming Dutch interests in several ways. He blockaded the port of Danzig during the Polish part of the Northern Wars, hindering Dutch commerce. In July, 1656 Cornelis de Graeff sent a fleet under Jacob van Wassenaer Obdam of the new Dutch navy. The fleet was dispatched to Danzig which helped persuade the Swedes to lift this blockade. Obdam was the commander-in-chief of the Dutch navy in these years, a political appointment by De Witt, who preferred an officer of the right political color to be in charge, in preference to more competent, but politically undesirable Orangists, when Witte Corneliszoon de With and Michiel de Ruyter (both States-Party men) were unavailable for different reasons. As Obdam was basically a landlubber, this was not an ideal solution, but in this context he proved up to the job.

Unfortunately, the Danish king Frederick III of Denmark (who had been a staunch ally of the Dutch in the war with the Commonwealth, despite his father's humiliation in 1645), now declared war on Charles. Charles proved himself to be an astute military tactician by soon overrunning the Danish isles, threatening to dominate both sides of the Sound. This the Dutch could not allow, and (though Zeeland and the South Holland regents again at first obstructed action, because they myopically did not see the Dutch interest in intervention) Obdam was again dispatched with a fleet to the scene of the crime. This time he defeated the Swedes in the Battle of the Sound and relieved besieged Copenhagen.

The English now decided that the Dutch had gone too far, and intervened in their turn by sending a fleet to oppose the Dutch, and shore up Swedish determination. Reluctantly (because they did not relish another hot war with the Commonwealth) the States General called this bluff, by sending a second fleet, under the command of De Ruyter, in the Summer of 1659. The combined Dutch fleets, 78 ships and 17,000 men, anchored provocatively in the Sound close to the combined Anglo-Swedish fleet. After some brooding staring from both sides, the English decided to go home again. The Dutch then proceeded by ejecting the Swedes from Nyborg, making the Swedish position untenable. Charles now sued for peace. He agreed to give up his conquests in Denmark, and to retract a number of protectionist measures against Dutch shipping.

The Dutch had thus in fact imposed a pax neerlandica on the Baltic region. They leaned then to the Danes, then to the Swedes, but never forgot Dutch interests in the process. This was, of course, highly resented by all parties involved, not least the English, and also France, which now began to revive from its weak diplomatic position during the minority of Louis XIV of France and the subsequent ministry of Cardinal Mazarin. During the early 1660s English diplomats were highly successful in fomenting all kinds of trouble for the Dutch in Copenhagen and Stockholm. Denmark, in particular, seemed amenable to a reversal of alliances in the events leading up to the Second Anglo-Dutch War. However, when that war broke out, the Danes decided that they simply could not afford to go against Dutch wishes, and they again sided with the Republic by closing the Sound to English commerce.

The point here is that the Dutch did not have to press the Danes by obvious military means; diplomacy sufficed.The English envoy to Denmark, Sir Gilbert Talbot, regretfully remarked (quoting the reply of the Danish government to his protest):

Dutch economic might was sufficient to sway not just the Danes, but other European powers also. The Dutch economic primacy might be resented, but most Europeans preferred it to the English' and French'. If someone had to have hegemony, it better be the relatively "safe" Dutch who lacked the manpower and political ambition to translate their economic might into political domination. In this case of the 1665 war with England, Sweden, that usually did the opposite of Denmark, also calculated that they were better off with a Dutch win. This applied all over Europe (except in Portugal, that was still hurting from the recent war with the Republic). Hamburg (a keen competitor of the Dutch) helped the Dutch stop the supply of naval stores to England and provided the "neutral" ships to carry Dutch trade through the English blockade. In Italy, public opinion showed itself quite pro-Dutch after the Four Days Battle of June, 1666, which ended arguably in a draw, but was claimed by the propagandists of both sides as a victory. In Leghorn the dock-workers rioted against the English, and the English flag was run up on the steeple of the main basilica upside down under the Dutch flag. Spain allowed Dutch privateers to auction English prizes at Corunna.

The Dutch States-Party regents were no pacifists. When Portugal refused to make amends for its reconquest of the colonies in Africa (Angola) and America (Dutch Brazil) from the WIC in 1648, the shareholders of that company who were heavily represented in Zeeland and in the land provinces (Overijssel and Guelders), convinced the States General to declare war on Portugal in 1657 (though the company had expressly been given sovereign powers to take care of its own affairs). Though this stretched Dutch naval resources rather thin, just at the time the business with Sweden in the Sound had to be dealt with, the Dutch blockaded Lisbon for a while, and Dutch privateers hampered Portuguese shipping. The Dutch did most of their damage in Ceylon and India, however, as we have seen above. These Dutch successes stimulated England (that had been sabotaging the Luso-Dutch peace negotiations, because the war helped reserve Portuguese trade to themselves) to drop their objections to the Treaty of The Hague (1661). In this treaty, De Witt's conviction that trade was more important than colonial possessions, and that the war had been a mistake, got the upper hand. The Republic dropped its demands for restitution of the lost colonies in exchange for a handsome indemnity. But the damage to Luso-Dutch relations had already been done, and the Republic was never again able to replace England in Portuguese trade.

The example of the relations with Portugal illustrated that De Witt's diplomatic gifts were necessary as much within the Republic, as without. He always had to make internal deals to accompany the external deals he made with foreign powers. In the case of the Hague treaty, Zeeland at first refused to ratify (and the requirement of unanimity in cases of peace and war in the Union of Utrecht made its position strong). De Witt persuaded the Zeeland States to acquiesce by giving the Zeeland salt-refiners the best part of the business of refining the salt that Portugal paid as its indemnity.

But bribery played a big part in foreign relations also. A good example is the Dutch Gift the States General gave to Charles II of England in 1660 to get back in the good graces of that Worthy after the coolness of the mutual relations that reigned during Charles' years of exile in France. The bribe consisted of a number of precious paintings worth the not inconsiderable sum of 80,000 guilders, and the yacht HMY Mary, like the yacht on which he was comfortably transported home to England during the Restoration. The gift was mostly paid for by the Amsterdam vroedschap, who came to regret their unaccustomed generosity when Charles unfolded his anti-Dutch policy. Fortunately, most of the paintings were repatriated to the Netherlands by William III of England after he had become king, so the financial outlay had not been a complete waste.

Usually generous gifts had their intended effects, however. Bribery has long been an acknowledged means of diplomacy. During the stadtholderate Dutch officials in their turn had been the happy recipients of diplomatic largesse themselves. However, the De-Witt regime was unusually impervious to corruption itself, as the French ambassador complained in 1653, because the power was so diffused that one did no longer know whom to bribe, with the consequence that "...cette dépense serait infinie et infructueuse.