Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/265

 9*8. VIII. SEPT. 28, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

257

LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1901.

CONTENTS. No. 196.

NOTES : Dutch Fleet captured by Cavalry, 257-Turvin Coiners, 258 Broartwood-Widger Registers, 259 Czolgosz

"Manioc" " Ga/ehound "St. Pancras, Canterbury

Rolts of Bedfordshire, 260 Russian Language Davenant, 261 " Morfui non mordent "Omission of the Cedilla Dryden's House Family Queries, 262 "Black Maria," 263.

QUERIES : -Fruit Stones stored by Animals Hesketh of Cheshire East India Company's Flag "Wake the power" 'The Queen of Hearts' Sir I. Pennington Robin Hood Literature, 263 Arms of Canada Author of Epitaph " Nick the pin" Larks Field: Barons Down Monks of Tintern " Be'amour " Bromby St. Mar- cella Man made in the Form of a Cross, 264 Designs of Early Printers Marine Queries Capt. Henry Waller " Riding the marches " " Parsement," 265.

REPLIES : Manor of Tyburn, 265 Barras De Nune Badge Sir I. White American Words : " Linkumfiddle," 267 Family Likeness "Le Roy le veult" Crosier and Pastoral Staff Ospringe Domus Dei Russells of Ayles- bury 268 Author and Typesetter Nathaniel Hawthorne N. & Q.' Motto Haydon, 269 Latin Motto " Shoddy " Cloth Bindings 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica' "La-di-da," 270 Marengo S. Richardson, 271 Jubilee of Inter- national Exhibition Chalice as a Race Cup Verses in Borrow 'The Tribal Hidage,' 272 " Pack " Sweeny Todd, 273 Stow's Portrait Authors Wanted, 274.

NOTES ON BOOKS :' Dictionary of National Biography,' Supplement, Vols. I. and II. 'Transactions of Leicester- shire Archaeological Society ' ' Interme'diaire ' ' Anti- quary.'

Notices to Correspondents.

301*2.

THE LEGEND OF A DUTCH FLEET

CAPTURED BY CAVALRY.

(See ante, p. 129.)

LEGENDS are hard to kill, and that of the capture of a frozen-up Dutch fleet by French hussars will probably live as long as the equally veracious French account of the sinking of the Vengeur. For the former legend flourishes not only in France, but also in England, where nearly every historian of the French revolutionary wars repeats the story with variations. The waters in which the fleet was ice-bound are sometimes those of the Zuiderzee,* sometimes those of the river Ijt at Amsterdam ; but wherever the fleet lay, the cavalry always gallop over the ice with drawn swords, and attack the ships, the crews of which, 10,000 strong, with guns and firearms, are so terror-stricken that they surrender to a squadron of hussars slipping about on the ice.

What are the facts'? Early in January, 1795, Pichegru, holding Belgium, invaded the United Provinces on the invitation of the Dutch "patriots"; he was able to

the French ceil, and meaning the Southern Sea. f Pronounced as unaspirated high.
 * Pronounced Soyder-say, giving oy the sound of

ross the frozen rivers and gain a firm position in the country. On the 18th the Stadhouder abandoned Holland to its fate ; Pichegru then cajoled the States-General into receiving the French as friends and liberators, and succeeded in obtaining an order for all fortresses to open their gates to his army. 21 January the admiral commanding the Dutch fleet received a similar order, which passed on ; so that when on the 23rd the French officer sent to take over the fleet arrived with an escort of cavalry at the Helder, he had only to present himself before bhe flag-ship, anchored not far from the shore, ror the fifteen warships, with a number of store - ships and tenders, to be formally handed over to him ; and he was then enter- tained at dinner on board.

Such being the facts, how did the legend arise ? It is very doubtful if the fleet was Past in ice. The short deep inlet from the North Sea to the Zuiderzee, about two miles long and as much wide, between the Helder in North Holland and the island "of^Texel, with seventeen to twenty fathoms of water on the Nieuwe Diep side, could scarcely have been frozen over ; such ice as might form or might drift out from the Zuiderzee could easily be broken up by the crews of the fleet. There is no mention of the fleet being beset by ice in the reports to the States-General of the surrender. The French official report said, not that the fleet was fast in the ice, but that it was stopped at the Helder by ice, which may mean that it was stopped from entering the shallow and easily frozen waters of the Zuiderzee. A month after the event Carnot congratulated the Committee of Public Safety on the surrender of the Dutch fleets, when they might have sailed off to England.

Where is the foundation of the legend, the grain of fact on which it has been built ? I believe it arose from the circumstance that on the entrance of the French army into Amster- dam a few hussars rode over the ice, probably with great care and with their horses' feet well wrapped up, to two gunboats which were fast in the ice of the river Ij. This ride was certainly with no hostile object ; it was pro- bably a friendly visit, for the visitors were entertained met een extra oorlam, with an extra issue of grog. This escapade is the probable source not only of the legend, but also of the confusion between the river Ij and the anchorage at the Helder in the accounts given by historians.

Mr. John G. Alger, whose ' Glimpses of the French Revolution ' have done so much to expose the myths of that period of splendid