Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/274

264 will appear from even a brief consideration of the task originally set before the Duke of Brunswick, whose high reputation at that period, and the favour he had constantly enjoyed in Frederick's old age with that king, whose favourite nephew he was acknowledged to have been, secured him the command of the Prussian army in the field beforehand in any serious operation it undertook.

Four separate possible lines of defences (increased in Clausewitz's review to five) oppose the invader moving westward on the heart of Holland, the half seagirt district of country round Amsterdam. Of these the outermost, and by far the most important geographically, is the Yssel, the branch which leaves the main Rhine stream near Arnheim, and taking its course first to the east, soon turns to make its way due north by Duisburg and Deventer into the south-eastern corner of the Zuyder-Zee. The province of Overyssel, which has been mentioned as one of those which from the first strongly supported that of Holland in its rupture with the Stadtholder, lies on the eastern or German side of this stream, and might be supposed therefore ready to aid in resisting the Prussian passage. But on the other hand, that of Gelderland lay to the west of it; and the Prince of Orange, by his faithful contingent from that province, held secure passages over the river more than sufficient for his coming allies. This fact, no doubt, fully justifies the statement of Baron Troschke that in the campaign we are writing of, this famous line had no importance whatever. But it does far more than this in our view. It shows that an examination, however careful, of the military problem of 1787 cannot solve the present question, one very carefully studied in both countries, of the possibility of the defence of Holland against Germany. And when the war-office of the former sketches a project, as has recently been done, for protecting the line of the Yssel with certain intrenched points, which would act as it were as large guard-houses from which to regulate the extensive inundations which it may be desirable to make in case of war; one may be sure that there is naturally no thought of dealing with any state of things like that of 1787, when the keys of this line were already placed beforehand at the disposal of the Prussian army, by the prince whom it came to restore to his rights.

For a similar reason there was no more importance at the time we are speaking of to be attached to the second line, which runs rather to the westward of and parallel to the Yssel, along the small streams, the Grebbe and Ehm, flowing respectively into the Rhine and Zuyder-Zee from the same marsh, and is continued again across the Rhine above its separation into the Old Rhine and the Leck, to its southern branch, the Waal, at Ochten. For behind, or to the westward of this, lay the town of Amersfoort belonging to Utrecht, to which place the Orange party in that province, being in the legal majority, had transferred its seat of government, and which might therefore be looked on beforehand as safe for the Stadtholder and his friends. Occupied early in June, as it was certain still to remain, it rendered the intrenchments that had long marked the line of the Grebbe useless, and indeed there was no serious attempt made to hold them.

Such resistance as could really be expected in 1787 would rest naturally on the third line, the renowned bulwark of Holland itself in former wars; formed for the first forty miles, from the Old Rhine at Utrecht, its most important part, by the Vecht flowing to the Zuyder-Zee. Through Utrecht again it is continued south-westward along the Vaardt, another cross channel running from the Old Rhine to the Leck, and then by similar canalized streams to Gorkum on the Waal, a place so strong that the French held it nearly three months in 1814, after they were driven from the rest of Holland. The lower part of the Vecht pierces the Goiland, the most intersected and marshy district of all the Netherlands; and the skill of Cohorn, exercised to prepare the country within against the genius of Vauban, urged on to proof in the invasion of the Netherlands by Louis XIV., had strewn this difficult country with small but formidable works that seemed to cover every possible point of passage against a foe coming from the east. Opened to the French however, by the unhappy surrender of herself to them by Utrecht, the advantage they unexpectedly gained in thus turning it in the end proved vain; for the undaunted Hollanders had already inundated a new line just within it (treated by Clausewitz as a distinct one, and made the fourth of his series), which started like that of the Vecht from Naarden, on the Zuyder-Zee, and ran also to Gorkum, so as in fact to make a loop with it; and on this unlooked-for obstacle the French invasion of 1672 was shattered. The inner line thus formed was in fact a vast lake of prolonged shape, cutting the country 