It was "a very orderly battle" (according to one of the English flag-officers), in which the old soldier strove with extraordinary skill to win back the weather-gauge from the greatest seaman of the day. The two fleets were standing out to sea, line ahead on parallel courses and a southerly wind, when the action began by Monk suddenly tacking on Tromp with the intention of breaking his line. Tromp tacked also to parry the attack, but though he was clever enough to keep the wind with nearly the whole of his fleet, a few of his ships were cut off and put to flight. Then followed three determined encounters, in which each fleet tacked on the other, passing each time closer and closer in the desperate struggle for the weather-gauge. Every time Monk disabled some of the Dutch, and every time he pierced their line and scattered the part he weathered. Still Tromp kept the advantage with the bulk of his force; but it was at a fearful sacrifice. In the last encounter the ships had fought almost at pike's length. Again and again two of the Dutch admirals had tried to board the Resolution, and again and again they had recoiled before the storm of metal that roared from beneath the exultant soldier's feet. Old hands were awestruck at the fury of the fight. "The very heavens," says one, "were obscured with smoke; the air rent with the thundering noise; the sea all in a breach with the shot that fell; the ships even trembling, and we hearing everywhere the messengers of death flying about."
Since sunrise the fight had raged. It was now past two o'clock in the afternoon. Yet again the undaunted soldier of fortune charged; but the Dutch had had their fill. Their splendid fleet had suffered terribly. Tromp's flag had been shot away, and he himself was gasping out his heroic life pierced with a musket ball. Of nine flagships only two were to be seen with the main body. Vice-Admiral Eversen was sinking, and scattered over the waters were burning hulks and the wrecks of captures blown up. As Monk tacked the Dutch spread their crippled wings and ran for Holland. Monk limped after them till evening, burning, sinking, and destroying. Over a hundred sail they had stood out proudly, as the sun rose, in pursuit of the English fleet, "but they were very thin when the sun went down."
As Gravesand steeple rose in sight and the Dutch saw their shoals within reach, Monk gave up the chase. The victory, complete as it was, had not been lightly won, and all that night and the following day his triumphant consorts staggered back to Southwold Bay. The carnage had been fearful. Eight of Monk's captains lay dead, and eight more were wounded, though he, with his usual luck, had never a scratch. Killed and wounded amounted to over a thousand. The Dutch had lost at least three times as many. Hardly a single English ship was missing. About thirty Dutch were sunk or taken, and barely half the fleet were together at the last.[8]
The war was practically at an end. Though the intrepid Dutch were soon as busy refitting as Monk himself, every one knew a decisive action had been fought. A public thanksgiving was ordered, and honours were showered on Monk and poor Blake and their officers. Next to Cromwell the soldier of fortune was now the greatest man in the land. Yet, in spite of his greatness, and in spite of the ardour with which he threw himself into the work of refitting the fleet, he found time and conscience to do a little act of humble duty before he put to sea again.
In the midst of the shouts of triumph was a voice that he loved, perhaps, as well as all his golden chains and medals, whispering that a child was to be born to him, and born in sin. Ratsford was dead. So quietly in the midst of his pressing work he snatched an hour to repair as far as could be the wrong he had done. Like an honest man, he took the perfumer's widow to St. George's Church in Southwark, and there he made her his wife.
During the remainder of this year and the beginning of the next Monk was busily engaged in maintaining the blockade of the Dutch coast, and attending to the routine business of his place at Whitehall and Chatham. Indeed he had little time for anything else. In June, while he was in search of Tromp's fleet, he had been called by the Protector to the Little Parliament, but his legislative duties sat lightly upon him. No doubt he was reconciled to the new form of government by the express declaration of the Council, which almost seems to have been put in for his especial benefit, that the sword ought to have no share in the civil power. Still he appears to have attended the sittings but seldom. Once only are we sure he was there, and that was to receive the thanks of Parliament. His visionary colleagues were for him contemptible. The war and his magnificent new flagship, the Swiftsure, were much more to his mind, and he can only have rejoiced when he saw the power of Parliament suddenly surrendered into Cromwell's hands.
The new rule had his entire approval. A single person, as we have seen, was his ideal of government, and especially when that single person was one well able to apply the "principal and able remedy against civil wars." The crisis had resolved itself into a situation after his own heart. In the despotic Protector he saw a warlike prince; in the Dutch war a physic for him to minister to his country's disease. But he was doomed to disappointment. The Protector's statecraft was less crude than his lieutenant's, and in spite of Monk's energetic and even angry protests peace on comparatively easy terms was signed with Holland on April 5th, 1654.