conquerable, their noblest leaders drew from the horrors of persecution and defeat a deep and solemn piety. The weaker our fleet is,' said De Ruyter before the combined powers of France and England, 'the more confidently I expect a victory, not from our own strength, but from the arm of the Almighty.'

The power of the Dutch broken, there was no longer any occasion for the English to fear their rivalry or even their prosperity. Two ambitions, nevertheless, had been bequeathed to her by the war of Cromwell which had still to be satisfied. The desire to assert, for the better security of England, a control of some sort over Holland and its ports was intensified by the union of Hanover and England. With the growth of English naval power, the clamour for the Cape and the best harbours of the Eastern seas grew louder. England's chance to gratify the desires of 150 years arrived when a new war for universal dominion broke up public right and international law.

No wonder that Holland, after its supreme effort and vast disasters, sank into a deep fatigue and apathy, an opulent commercial State, 'dull as their lakes that slumber in the storm'-liberty itself bartered in the degenerate land: 'the needy sell it and the rich man buys.' In 1787 the ancient contest broke out between the old Republican party and the party of the Stadtholder, but now the House of Orange was maintained in power (a policy opposite to that of Cromwell seeming by this time best suited to English interests) by the forces of England and Prussia; till the Republicans welcomed the French as liberators, and set up in 1795 the Batavian Republic acknowledged by France, and by Prussia and Spain, in the Treaty of Basle. The Stadtholder fled to England and became for twenty years an English pensioner. He had brought with him as many ships as he could carry off, which the English, in consideration presumably of their hospitality, added to their own navy, and Holland saw them no more. They took from the dethroned prince an additional recompense a written authority to the British Government to hold the Dutch colonies, the Cape, Ceylon, Java, &c. in his name. England acted very rapidly on this permission: as the Dutch agents at the Cape declined to carry out orders the Stadtholder had no power to give and awaited instructions from the de facto government at home, the English seized the Dutch South African colony by force in the name of the Prince of Orange, and occupied Capetown in September 1795. By the Treaty of Amiens (1802), however, they were obliged to restore all the Dutch possessions; and a solemn thanksgiving was held in Capetown at the departure of the English in 1803. No sooner was the war renewed than they seized various coveted colonies, Ceylon, Demerara, Essequibo, Berbice, with a vain attempt on Java: their ships were seen hovering about the Cape: two secret expeditions appeared in 1805, and in 1806 the Dutch and French forces were defeated and the Cape occupied again by the

English under the old authority of the Prince of Orange. Nominally holding for the Dutch, and with Dutch inhabitants at least twenty times as numerous as the English, they proclaimed English the official language (1809).

One of Cromwell's aims was secured by the seizure of the colonies. There remained the other, the control of the Dutch coast. Lord Liverpool was much preoccupied with the creation of a barrier against France or a mid-European Power, to shield Hanover and eventually England. At the first settlement of Europe therefore, in 1814, England took steps to secure an extended continental coastline under her protection. Holding Hanover already, she by restoring the Prince of Orange held Holland too: by uniting to Holland the ten provinces of Belgium (which had been incorporated into France for twenty-one years) she secured Antwerp, Napoleon's blunderbuss pointed at London.' Under English pressure, therefore, the Prince of Orange was set over the seven Protestant States of Holland and the ten Catholic provinces of Belgium as King of the Netherlands: Amsterdam and Brussels were made the capitals and Dutch the official language, which led to some incongruities. The new kingdom thus formed was practically a British province. Their most intimate relations with the British people, the Prince of Orange announced, would soon be strengthened by the marriage of his eldest son. English and Hanoverian troops occupied Ostend, Antwerp, and other strong places to enable the King of the Netherlands to hold down Belgium and to resist France and French influence. 'It would be quite impossible,' Lord Liverpool said, 'to embark this country in a war at present except upon some clear, distinct British interest. The defence of Holland and the Low Countries is the only thing that would be regarded in this light.' The Barrier Fortresses of Belgium having been destroyed by Joseph the Second, the Duke of Wellington was sent over to report on a plan of fortification, which he did in a long memorandum, and advised that a committee of Dutch and English officers should make out the estimates. They fixed the cost at two millions. The King had neither money nor troops; and by arrangement England gave five millions, distinctly set apart to restore the fortresses and maintain the English garrisons, and to free the Treasury from an inconvenient debt to Russia: the money thus given being formally set off against the oversea possessions of Holland which England had seized as trustee of the Prince of Orange. This sum has been spoken of as compensation given for the colonies, and as a matter of form it may be so described, though the compensation was in fact little more than a paper transaction. The real price for which the Prince of Orange had abandoned the colonies was Belgium and the royal title; while England must in any case have given to Holland every penny of the five millionsmuch as money might now be given in Egypt-to maintain her continental policy and protect 'British interests.'

The colony of Java, which the English had also since held professedly for Holland, was restored to the Dutch by the Congress of Vienna (1815). The potential riches of Java were unknown. Even the Dutch settlements had largely disappeared; and the island, which during the French occupation had been reorganised under the personal direction of Napoleon by the iron Marshal Daendels, had been used mainly as a place of arms. But the restoration was not without ill-feeling. The English, holding in trust for the Dutch, had made a series of treaties with the native princes which were inconsistent with Dutch sovereignty, and were naturally abrogated by the Dutch in 1819. To the violent protests of Sir Stamford Raffles they answered that the island reverted to them by postliminium cleared of all ad interim obligations, which was undoubtedly the sound view in the eye of international law, else the trustee could whittle away the rights of the beneficiary.

The Cape, Ceylon, and the Dutch West Indies had now passed definitely to England, and the policy initiated by Cromwell was so far triumphant. Her hold on the European coast by the unnatural union of Holland and Belgium was maintained for fifteen years, ending in the revolution of 1830. The arrangements made by the statesmen of Europe at Vienna were mostly unsuccessful. Most notable of all failures was the attempt to join two races so unlike in race, language, religion, and historical bent as Holland and Belgium.

So long, however, as England remained steadfast to her selfimposed obligations to Holland, and as long as the Holy Alliance remained powerful and active, Belgians had to bear the Dutch yoke in silence and submission. A change came, however, when Canning detached England from the Holy Alliance, and the spread of Liberal ideas brought that recognition of nationality which has been the main political factor of the nineteenth century. Roused by the movement for reform at home, she became less and less the advocate of the settlement of 1815. In 1830 France cast out the line of Bourbon which had been forced upon her, to choose from another branch the Citizen King, and England in her democratic mood applauded the change. A close entente cordiale united the two great Western peoples of Europe. Democracy sent a thrill throughout Europe, and Paris once more became what she had been sixty years earlier, the focus of European political activity. Antwerp and Brussels, kindled to sudden life, rose against their Dutch masters. Unchecked by the threats of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, the French swarmed to the Belgian frontier-that frontier which British gold had fortified against them, where now the Belgians hailed them with joy. They offered the crown to Louis Philippe's son, but the offer was declined. Holland meantime with her old stubborn spirit gathered 80,000 men for battle. Before such a force backed by the great European Powers, France, even with the mighty army which Soult had organised,

dared not measure swords. She would have rushed to assured naval and military ruin. But, to the horror of the Dutch and to the astonishment of Europe, England threw in her lot with France and the insurgent Belgians, and sent a fleet and army to place Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha over the new kingdom of Belgium. England was under special pledges to Holland, and a change in mood entitles a state no more than a man to cast aside deliberate undertakings and solemn pledges. In any case the Dutch have never forgotten or forgiven this amazing interposition. It rankles in their hearts as a perfidious betrayal. Without accepting Alison's lurid condemnation of Briton's conduct at the time, every impartial observer must feel how difficult it is to make the British policies of 1795, 1815, and 1830 consistent on any principle save that of British interests alone. For these interests the Dutch people were thrown aside at one time and the Dutch sovereign at another.

If the revolution of 1830 showed that the Dutch, like the English and Prussian members of their family, had never learned the gracious arts by which the forced obedience of subject races is raised into content and love, it had shown too that the old proud spirit of independence had not failed in Holland. The country had already -urvived three great catastrophes. The Dutch had emerged from the war with Spain irrevocably severed from the Belgian people, from the civilisation of Antwerp and Bruges and Brussels, the true home of the arts in the North. When the war with Lewis the Fourteenth of France was over their naval power was shattered for ever. The Napoleonic war had broken up their great colonial empire. Holland had not failed from within. Never was its naval efficiency greater, or its free spirit more heroic, than in 1672; and its fall came, not from the corruption of an enervated people, but from the immense violence of its effort, the accumulated forces arrayed against it, and the constant peril of its situation. There still remains to the Dutch the freedom of their country, to be defended against the next scheme of universal dominion, which they probably will contest in the spirit of William the Third when he said, 'I may fail, but I shall fight every ditch and die in the last one.'

A. S. GREEN.

TERMS USED IN MODERN GUNNERY

THERE are many terms and phrases used in the description of the war in South Africa which convey little or no information to many of those at home who are deeply interested in making out what is happening to their loved ones engaged in the field. It has been suggested to me that I should endeavour to remove this difficulty in the way of understanding passing events. I have no thought of writing a scientific paper upon the distinctions between the value of the various weapons used by the Boers and ourselves, partly because there are many other men I could name who would do this much better than I could, but chiefly because it would not meet the purpose that I have in hand. An immense number of people are now deeply interested in the events of the war who want simple common-sense explanations about the terms they read, such as 'Creusot,' 'Krupp,' 'Shrapnel,' ' Common Shell,' '94-pounders,' ' 4.7-inch guns,' 'Mausers,' 'Lee-Enfield,' and so on. In attempting to meet their difficulty my mind runs back to the time when I entered as a cadet at Woolwich. In those days I do not think that I exaggerate when I say that all those who were entrusted with the instruction of the youths put under their care were, with one brilliant exception, in the condition of mind of the inhabitant of Little Pedlington who looks upon everybody as a 'fool' who does not know every detail about that ancient borough, the names of its streets, the signs of its publichouses, its local traditions, &c. I had passed into the academy by one of the earlier competitive examinations after I had been reading for Cambridge. Consequently when I was given a plate to copy about ramps and stairs,' I had not the faintest notion what a 'ramp' or a 'stair' had to do with any fortification. It was given me solely as an isolated thing by itself. No one thought of explaining it to The lines I had to copy represented nothing whatever to me I should have been thought a 'fool' if I had asked.

me.

I say this much by way of preface in order to select my audience. I want no one to read this article who thinks any one else a' fool' for not knowing what the term 'Creusot' or 'Shrapnel' means. We all of us in order to get the audience we want have in some sort after the Scottish fashion to 'fence our tables.' Horace's Odi profanum