No personal insufficiency of individual rulers will explain it; and, besides, the French monarchy repeatedly disposed of the services of admirable rulers. History has recorded few more able kings than Louis le Gros, Philip Augustus, Philip le Bel, Louis XI, and Henry IV; few abler ministers than Sully, Richelieu, Colbert, and Turgot. Yet the efforts of all these distinguished men resulted in leading the nation straight into the most astounding catastrophe in human annals. Whatever view we take of the Revolution, whether we regard it as a blessing or as a curse, we must needs admit it was a reaction of the most violent kind—a reaction contrary to the preceding action.
The old monarchy can only claim to have produced the Revolution in the sense of having provoked it; as intemperance has been known to produce sobriety, and extravagance parsimony. If the ancien régime led in the result to an abrupt transition to the modern era, it was only because it had rendered the old era so utterly execrable to mankind that escape in any direction seemed a relief, were it over a precipice.
%NEW YORK TAKEN BY THE ENGLISH%
A.D. 1664
JOHN R. BRODHEAD
For half a century the Dutch colony in New York, then called New Netherlands, had developed under various administrations, when British conquest brought it under another dominion. This transfer of the government affected the whole future of the colony and of the great State into which it grew, although the original Dutch influence has never disappeared from its character and history.
Under Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor (1647-1664), the colony made great progress. He conciliated the Indians, agreed upon a boundary line with the English colonists at Hartford, Connecticut, and took possession of the colony of New Sweden, in Delaware.
Meanwhile the English colonists in different parts of North America were carrying on illicit trade with the Dutch at New Amsterdam (New York city). The English government, already jealous of the growing commerce of Holland, was irritated by the loss of revenue, and resolved in 1663 upon the conquest of New Netherlands. Brodhead, the historian of New York, recounts the steps of this conquest in a manner which brings the rival powers and their agents distinctly before us.
England now determined boldly to rob Holland of her American province. King Charles II accordingly sealed a patent granting to the Duke of York and Albany a large territory in America, comprehending Long Island and the islands in its neighborhood—his title to which Lord Stirling had released—and all the lands and rivers from the west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of Delaware Bay. This sweeping grant included the whole of New Netherlands and a part of the territory of Connecticut, which, two years before, Charles had confirmed to Winthrop and his associates.
The Duke of York lost no time in giving effect to his patent. As lord high admiral he directed the fleet. Four ships, the Guinea, of thirty-six guns; the Elias, of thirty; the Martin, of sixteen; and the William and Nicholas, of ten, were detached for service against New Netherlands, and about four hundred fifty regular soldiers, with their officers, were embarked. The command of the expedition was intrusted to Colonel Richard Nicolls, a faithful Royalist, who had served under Turenne with James, and had been made one of the gentlemen of his bedchamber. Nicolls was also appointed to be the Duke's deputy-governor, after the Dutch possessions should have been reduced.