A Brill Calendar: August 21

Few personalities in the history of The Netherlands equal the stature of Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter (Flushing, March 24 1607 – Syracuse, April 29 1676).

Usually, native tradition tends to frown on conspicuous behaviour of any kind; even if praise-worthy. What the country’s greatest admiral achieved on August 21 1673 off Kijkduin, near Den Helder, bordered on the miraculous however.

During a sea-battle witnessed from the wind-swept shoreline by thousands and thousands of praying and hymn-singing compatriots, de Ruyter’s fleet – outnumbered by its Anglo-French opponents three-to-two – kept the Armada of Prince Rupert and Admiral Jean d’Estrées at bay, thus preventing an imminent invasion.

Since then, all connoisseurs of maritime endeavour anywhere in the world consider the man as a supreme naval commander second to no one; including Horatio Nelson (1758 – 1805).

De Ruyter is a hero in a civilization not given to hero-worship. In Thomas Carlyle’s wonderful book on heroism the great proto-historian distinguishes six types of the Hero; a seventh type – that of the heroic civil-servant – is not taken into consideration. After Kijkduin and a track-record starting long ago, with the first Anglo-Dutch War (1652 – ’54), the elderly seaman was praised sky-high, understandably.

But it is seldom, that appreciation for such an accomplishment was expressed as cynically a little later; when his political superiors sent the Redeemer of the Republic with an insufficiently equipped small fleet to the Mediterranean in order to assist the Spanish in their struggle against the French Sun King, Louis XIV. Perfectly aware of the danger inherent in the commission, the old gentleman accepted: ‘Your Highnesses have just to command.’ Centuries later, an English poet wrote: ‘they knew what suffering is about, the old masters’.