men up Channel. Three days of
desperate fighting ended in the defeat of the Dutch, who lost
ten ships of war and twenty-four merchant vessels. Several of
the English ships were disabled, one sunk; and the carnage on
both sides was nearly equal. Tromp acquired prodigious honor
by this battle; having succeeded, though defeated, in saving,
as has been seen, almost the whole of his immense convoy. On
the 12th of June and the day following two other actions were
fought: in the first of which the English admiral Dean was killed;
in the second, Monk, Pen, and Lawson amply revenged his death
by forcing the Dutch to regain their harbors with great loss.
The 21st of July was the last of these bloody and obstinate conflicts
for superiority. Tromp issued out once more, determined to conquer
or die. He met the enemy off Scheveling, commanded by Monk. Both
fleets rushed to the combat. The heroic Dutchman, animating his
sailors with his sword drawn, was shot through the heart with a
musket-ball. This event, and this alone, won the battle, which
was the most decisive of the whole war. The enemy captured or sunk
nearly thirty ships. The body of Tromp was carried with great
solemnity to the church of Delft, where a magnificent mausoleum was
erected over the remains of this eminently brave and distinguished
man.
This memorable defeat, and the death of this great naval hero,
added to the injury done to their trade, induced the states-general
to seek terms from their too powerful enemy. The want of peace
was felt throughout the whole country. Cromwell was not averse to
grant it; but he insisted on conditions every way disadvantageous
and humiliating. He had revived his chimerical scheme of a total
conjunction of government, privileges, and interests between
the two republics. This was firmly rejected by John de Witt,
now grand pensionary of Holland, and by the States under his
influence. But the Dutch consented to a defensive league; to
punish the survivors of those concerned in the massacre of Amboyna;
to pay nine thousand pounds of indemnity for vessels seized in
the Sound, five thousand pounds for the affair of Amboyna, and
eighty-five thousand pounds to the English East India Company,
to cede to them the island of Polerone in the East; to yield
the honor of the national flag to the English; and, finally,
that neither the young Prince of Orange nor any of his family
should ever be invested with the dignity of stadtholder. These
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