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The consequence of this was that the stout-hearted English sailors were merrily starving of want, and dying in the streets; while the Dutch, under their admirals DE WITT and DE RUYTER, came into the River Thames, and up the River Medway as far as Upnor, burned the guard-ships, silenced the weak batteries, and did what they would to the English coast for six whole weeks.
The foremost monk approaching him, asked whether the castle held for the Duke of Alva or the Prince of Orange. The castellian replied that he recognized no prince save Philip, King of Spain. Thereupon the monk, who was no other than Herman de Ruyter, a drover by trade, and a warm partisan of Orange, plucked a pistol from beneath his robe, and shot the commandant through the head.
Blake was soon at sea again with a numerous fleet; Tromp followed with a hundred ships; but a violent tempest separated these furious enemies, and retarded for a while the rencounter they mutually longed for. On the 16th of August a battle took place between Sir George Ayscue and the renowned De Ruyter, near Plymouth, each with about forty ships; but with no decisive consequences.
On the 25th the English sighted de Ruyter, with a fleet slightly larger in numbers, in the broad part of the Thames estuary. Monk, forming his fleet in the long line ahead, sailed to the attack. The action that followed is called the "Battle of St. James's Day" or the "Gunfleet."
"Yes; I think we may as well stop rowing now, and get the guns to work. There are only those two cannon in her stern ports which can touch us here. She will scarcely come up in the wind to give us a broadside. She is moving so slowly through the water that it would take her a long time to come round, and De Ruyter would feel ashamed to bring his great flag-ship round to crush such a tiny foe."
The English fleet was under the personal command of the Duke of York, later James II; the Dutch were led by de Ruyter. The two forces numbered from 80 to 100 ships each, and strung out as they were, must have extended over nearly ten miles of sea.
In consequence large numbers of English prisoners in Holland actually preferred taking service in the Dutch navy rather than accepting exchange, on the ground that the Dutch government paid its men while their own did not. Early in June, 1667, de Ruyter took advantage of the condition of the English fleet by inflicting perhaps the greatest humiliation on England that she has ever suffered.
The results of the battle, considered simply as an engagement, were indecisive; both sides lost heavily, but the honors and the substantial advantages all belonged to the Dutch, or rather to De Ruyter. He had outgeneralled the allies by his apparent retreat, and then returning had surprised them wholly unprepared.
The finest exponent of this, the culminating epoch of naval warfare in the seventeenth century, is the Dutchman Ruyter, who, taken altogether, was the greatest naval seaman of that era, which may be roughly identified with the reign of Charles II. After that, naval warfare was virtually suspended for fifteen years, and when resumed in the last decade of the century, the traces of incipient degeneracy can already be noted amid much brilliant performance.
In that case, however, Ruyter could, and probably would, have done just what he did at the Texel a year later, check the van, the French, with a small containing force, and fall with the mass of his fleet upon the centre and rear.
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