Battle of Nieuwpoort

Background

By 1600 the Dutch Revolt was more than thirty years old. Through the 1590s Maurice of Nassau, stadholder and captain-general of the States army, had taken back town after town, while the Spanish Army of Flanders, long unpaid, had fallen into mutiny; the mutineers held Diest and other places as their own. In 1600 the States General, led by Johan van Oldenbarnevelt and pressed by Holland, decided to strike at the Flemish privateer ports. Corsairs from Dunkirk and Nieuwpoort preyed on Dutch merchant shipping and fishing, and the blockade of the coast cost Holland dearly.

Maurice and Francis Vere, his English lieutenant, both doubted the plan. The army would be deep in enemy country with Bruges and Ghent behind it, and if it were beaten its only refuge was Ostend, from which it would have to leave by sea. The States overruled them.

On 21–22 June some 12,000 foot and 1,600–1,800 horse crossed the Scheldt estuary in a great fleet and landed at Sas van Gent. They marched by Eeklo and Oudenburg to Ostend, clearing the Spanish forts and sconces round the town, and on 1 July reached Nieuwpoort, on the tidal estuary of the Yser. Two-thirds of the army forded the estuary at low water to invest the town from the west.

The States had reckoned that the Archduke Albert could not raise an army. They were wrong. The mutineers came back to the colours on condition that they kept their own officers, led the vanguard and were paid after the victory; garrisons were stripped; and on 29 June Albert reviewed perhaps 10,000 foot and nearly 2,000 horse near Ghent. On the afternoon of 1 July he retook Oudenburg and the other forts, killing most of their garrisons, and stood between Maurice and Ostend.

The armies

The two armies were about the same size, roughly 11,000–12,000 men each, and both were multinational. Maurice's army was the product of a decade of reform by him and his cousin William Louis: drilled to wheel and countermarch, well paid and well armed. Its infantry was mostly foreign: two English regiments under Francis and Horace Vere, French Huguenots, Swiss, Germans, Scots, Frisians and Dutch, and the 'New Beggars', a Walloon regiment of Spanish deserters who had changed sides with the forts of Crèvecoeur and Sint-Andries that spring. Vere's vanguard of the two English regiments, Hertinga's strong Frisian regiment and two companies of Maurice's foot guards had 41 companies, about 4,000 men, the best in the army. The cavalry, mostly cuirassiers in corslet and morion, was led by Louis Günther of Nassau and was the arm the Spaniards feared most. Six heavy guns, partly served by sailors, went into action on the beach, and Dutch warships lay offshore.

Albert's strength was his infantry: three old Spanish tercios and one Italian (Monroy, Villar, Ávila and Zapena), with the Walloon regiments of La Barlotte and Bucquoy and Bostock's Irish regiment behind them. In front marched the mutineers, two provisional regiments of about 2,000 foot and 600 horse under Francisco de Mendoza, Admiral of Aragon: eager to fight, hard to control. His cavalry, perhaps 1,200–1,500, was weaker and lighter than the Dutch. He had eight guns.

The battle

Leffinge (dawn to about 08:30). Warned during the night, Maurice sent his cousin Ernst Casimir with Edmonds's Scots and Van der Noot's Zeelanders, four cornets of horse and two guns, some 2,000–3,000 men, to hold the bridge at Leffinge over the Ieperlee while the rest of the army recrossed the Yser. The Spaniards already held it. Ernst drew up behind a ditch across their road; the Spaniards charged home, his cavalry fled, and both regiments broke. The Scots, running for the sea, were almost all killed, with seven of their captains; the Zeelanders fared a little better, some escaping to Fort Albert and Ostend. Over 800–1,000 men were lost. The only two fugitives to reach Maurice were sent aboard a ship so the news would not spread.

The crossing (from about 08:00). As the tide fell, the army forded the estuary, men wading chest-deep. Vere drew up the vanguard across the broad beach to cover the crossing, with Louis Günther's horse in front and the six guns on firm sand at the foot of the dunes, Frisians in the sandhills beside them. Maurice ordered the fleet out to sea: there would be no escape by water. Albert, meanwhile, rested his men and held a council. Some captains wanted to entrench across the Ostend road and make Maurice attack; the mutineers wanted to fight at once, and won.

The beach (about 12:00–14:30). The Spaniards came on along the strand. Around midday their mutineer horse chased the Dutch skirmishers on to the hidden battery and swerved off in disorder. The tide was rising and the beach shrinking, and from about 13:30 Dutch warships stood inshore and fired into the Spanish flank. At about 14:30 Albert turned his army up into the dunes, leaving five guns and some foot on the beach; his cavalry crossed to the green road inland near Middelkerke. Vere followed, placing his infantry across a dip in the dunes, with 250 picked men on an advanced sandhill, two guns on a higher hill commanding the road and 500 Frisian musketeers below them. Maurice's main battle and rearguard formed behind. Sun, wind, sand and smoke were in Spanish faces.

The dunes (late afternoon). Five hundred arquebusiers, then pike and shot together, failed against the forward sandhill. On the green road Louis Günther's first charge routed the Spanish front-line cavalry, helped by the guns on the hill; he rode too far and had to be rescued. Albert relieved the mutineers with his four tercios: Monroy and Villar against Vere on the Dutch left, Ávila and Zapena on the right, where Maurice fed in Domerville's French, the Swiss and the Walloons. Vere asked again and again for help that never came. Louis Günther's second charge was checked by infantry fire and fell back. Albert then threw in his third line. Vere's English and Frisians, fought out, were driven off the dunes to the battery on the beach. Vere, wounded again, was trapped under his dead horse and pulled clear by Sir Robert Drury and Thomas Heigham.

The last charge (evening). The Spaniards followed slowly and in disorder, pikemen and musketeers mixed, few men left round the colours. Maurice's last reserve, three cornets under Balen, Cecil and Pembroke, charged the pursuing mass on the beach as the battery fired its last rounds; Horace Vere and Sutton led the rallied English forward, and Maurice ordered all the cavalry and the rearguard infantry to advance. Albert's cavalry fled first and his infantry broke after it, streaming back towards Leffinge. Mendoza was captured. Albert, wounded, escaped over the Leffinge bridge, which no one from Ostend had thought to seize. The pursuit ended at nightfall.

Aftermath

Spanish losses were heavy: at least 2,500 and more usually put at over 4,000, with about 600 prisoners. The mutineers and the old tercios were nearly destroyed. Bostock was killed, Zapena mortally wounded, Villar and Mendoza taken, and Albert, Bucquoy and La Barlotte wounded. The Dutch took all the Spanish guns and over a hundred standards. Their own loss, counting Leffinge, was about 2,000; the two English regiments alone lost 600 men. Maurice knelt in the sand in thanks, then dined the captured admiral.

The victory changed little. Albert reinforced Nieuwpoort; Maurice besieged it again for about eleven days in bad weather, short of food, then took the army home. Dunkirk was never attacked, the Flemish did not rise and the corsairs went on sailing. The Dutch never again marched so deep into Flanders, and in 1601 Albert laid siege to Ostend, which held out for more than three years. Maurice's reputation grew, and so did his quarrel with Oldenbarnevelt, who had sent him to Flanders; it ended with Oldenbarnevelt's execution in 1619.

The battle is often held up as the showcase of Maurice's reforms, but the lesson is argued over. His reformed infantry was driven from a strong position by the tercios, and the day was decided by cavalry and Spanish exhaustion. Vere himself thought it an unusual battle, won by the endurance of the infantry, which let tired cavalry make the final charge.

Wargaming it

Nieuwpoort is a superb one-day pike-and-shot game: two armies of about 11,000, a narrow field, and a clock built into the terrain. It suits regiment-and-tercio scale, with a unit for each tercio, regiment or pair of cornets, and a long, narrow table that runs from the sea, across the beach and the dunes, to the green road and the ditched fields inland.

The three strips play differently. The beach is good going but shrinks all afternoon as the tide comes in, and it is under fire from Dutch ships. The dunes, 350–700 yards deep, are loose sand and scrub that slow foot, break formations and stop horse, with sandhills that make strongpoints for guns and musketeers. Cavalry can fight only on the beach early and on the green road later. A tide track and a rule for sun and wind in Spanish eyes will push the Spaniard where Albert went.

The Spanish player's decision comes first: attack tired men late in the day, as the mutineers demanded, or entrench across the Ostend road and wait for Velasco's 3,000, as Zapena urged. The Dutch player must decide when to feed reserves to Vere and when to unleash Louis Günther, and must keep something back for the end. Fatigue rules matter: the Spanish foot had marched since before dawn. What ifs: Ernst Casimir's men kept with the main army; Albert catching the Dutch in mid-ford; Ostend's horse holding the Leffinge bridge. Leffinge itself makes a short opening scenario.

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