now extinct, but then wide, and in rough weather dangerous sheet of water which covered the right flank of the Dutch and his own left. Colonel Gordon, an officer of the Scotch brigade maintained in the Dutch army, but a warm partisan of the Stadtholder, was here of the greatest service. Being well acquainted with the lake, he at once secured a number of boats on its south side for the Prussians, and reconnoitred with their staff up to the opposite shore, thus discovering that the Hollanders had no armed vessel anywhere on it. They had apparently so underrated the energy or the skill of the invaders as to believe that no attempt would be made to cross it; a fatal error, as it proved, to their last chance of successful resistance. It was found that they had confined their preparations on that side entirely to intrenching the narrow neck of land then existing at its northern extremity, by which the only direct road from Amsterdam to Haarlem in those days passed, through the village of Halwege. Brunswick at once ordered the boats to be formed into two flotillas prepared to carry separate bodies of troops across it; one to turn these intrenchments of Halwege, and the other to take in rear the defences of the western end of the line before him by landing behind Amstelveen, where the Dutch flank reached the lake, and was evidently supposed to be secured by it. He himself would conduct the front attack on this place with the main body of the Knobelsdorff division. More to the right, Lottum's, which had now come up fully into line, was to make demonstrations at various points and keep the Dutch from any attempts to reinforce Amstelveen. As the Amsterdam plenipotentiaries came back on the night of September 30th, on their passage through for more powers, not having been able to arrange matters peaceably with the Stadtholder and his wife at the Hague, Brunswick denounced the armistice on the spot. Nothing could have happened more opportunely, indeed, for him; for the preparations for turning Amstelveen by the secret passage of the lake had just been reported complete. Before daybreak both the detached columns, unknown to the Dutch, were well on their way over the water, and landed without being discovered at the points on which they were directed. Entirely unexpected on this side, each was completely successful. Major Burghagen, with the northernmost force, turned the works of Halwege so suddenly and completely as easily to drive the Dutch in them confusedly away towards Haarlem, and then occupied the neck, thus closing in Amsterdam from either aid or issue on that side. So effectually, indeed, was he soon lodged there that he was enabled to detach some companies to support the column of Major Hirschfeld, who had landed to the south of him with one of the fusilier battalions, prepared to take directly in rear the defenders of Amstelveen, who were commanded by a picked officer, a French artillerist, Colonel De Porte. Again, between Hirschfeld's landing-point and the duke's own left, two companies had been detached to climb along a narrow dam which would bring them just in upon the right of De Porte's line. This dam was known to be cut and intrenched, but the Prussian party carried ladders, and it was hoped that with the aid of Hirschfeld's turning movement they would force their passage along it across the obstacles.
This proved so in the event. The fight that ensued about Amstelveen early on October 1st, the chief action of this singular campaign, was sharp, but not prolonged. It was complicated, as against the Prussians, by a sortie made from Amsterdam on the news reaching the city of Hirschfeld's troops having got between it and its defenders. But the ground north of Amstelveen was much enclosed and built on, and the Prussians, dexterously occupying with some companies a knot of houses which covered them towards Amsterdam, were able to hold their own on the defensive there successfully, and with the rest to make De Porte's position quite untenable by pressing his rear. Before the day was far advanced that officer was compelled to abandon his part of the lines precipitately, leaving all his guns and three hundred prisoners in the hands of the Prussians, who lost about sixty-five men in the capture of the village. Of the others, which were really false attacks, it is hardly necessary to speak in detail. As Clausewitz has justly pointed out, the omission to guard the waters of the Haarlem Lake effectually ruined the whole plan of the defence of Amsterdam, on which the more belligerent members of the municipality had confidently relied.
The next day found the city authorities again begging and again granted a brief truce. As this was used by the now Orange States at the Hague to send the march-routes, so potent in Dutch eyes, to the regulars, and draw them off from the side of the patriots, there was little means
