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Napoleon, who clearly foretold the catastrophe awaiting the British troops in the malarious swamps of Walcheren, afterwards admitted that Antwerp could have been captured by a sudden assault. Chatham obeyed his general orders, but, instead of taking them in the order of importance, gave precedence to the objects which could most easily be accomplished.
In the first answer given by her commissioners to the states' envoys, it was declared, "that her Majesty considered it too expensive to assume the protection of both provinces." She was willing to protect them in name, but she should confer the advantage exclusively on Walcheren in reality. The defence of Holland must be maintained at the expense of the Prince and the estates.
The next day, however, Antony of Bourgoyne, governor under Alva for the Island of Walcheren, made his appearance in Flushing. Having a high opinion of his own oratorical powers, he came with the intention of winning back with his rhetoric a city which the Spaniards had thus far been unable to recover with their cannon.
Every man must go to law before the Schepens. If any one being summoned and present in Walcheren does not appear, or refuses submission to sentence, he shall be banished with confiscation of property. An appeal lies from the Schepens to the Count. No one can testify but a householder. All alienation of real estate must take place before the Schepens.
There was also a continuation comprising exploits at Walcheren, the Dardanelles, Talavera, Cintra, and elsewhere, published in London in 1811. An elaborate French translation, with embellishments in the French manner, appeared at Paris in 1862.
After visiting the towns on the frontier, as well as the islands of Tholen, Schomven, North and South Beveland, and Walcheren, Napoleon, constantly accompanied by Marie Louise, ascended the Scheldt once more, merely passed through Antwerp, made a brief stop at Brussels, spent three days at the castle of Lacken, and hastily ran through Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, Dunkirk, Lille, Calais, Dieppe, Havre, and Rouen.
To the right, as the "Guide-book" says, is Walcheren; and on the left Cadsand, memorable for the English expedition of 1809, when Lord Chatham, Sir Walter Manny, and Henry Earl of Derby, at the head of the English, gained a great victory over the Flemish mercenaries in the pay of Philippe of Valois. The cloth-yard shafts of the English archers did great execution.
Bonaparte visited Etaples, Ambleteuse, Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk, Furnes, Niewport, Ostend, and the Isle of Walcheren. He collected at the different ports all the necessary information with that intelligence and tact for which he was so eminently distinguished. He questioned the sailors, smugglers, and fishermen, and listened attentively to the answers he received.
Nothing could be simpler. Nevertheless the King felt a pang of doubt lest affairs, after all, might not be going on so swimmingly; so he dipped his pen in the inkstand again, and observed with much pathos, "But if this hope must be given up, you must take the Isle of Walcheren: something must be done to console me." And on the 15th September he was still no wiser.
The fate of the women, abandoned now to the outrage of a brutal soldiery, was worse than death. The capture of Rotterdam is infamous for the same crimes which blacken the record of every Spanish triumph in the Netherlands. The important town of Flushing, on the Isle of Walcheren, was first to vibrate with the patriotic impulse given by the success at Brill.
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