De Ruyter & Martinique

Een nogal bijzonder gebeuren: de Ruyter gaat met troepen naar Martinique om de oorlog daar aan de Fransen te brengen, maar het plan mislukt en hij keert terug. Goede artikelen zijn op M&H hier en hier te vinden, en in het Marineblad van Augustus 2007 en November 2007, allen van de hand van Lt-Kol. Drs C.B. Nicolas. Ook op de website Deruyter.org aandacht hiervoor.

Ideaal scenario voor wargamers.



(In 1674) De Ruyter sails to the Caribbean to attack the French interests in
that area, but the attack on Martinique is a disaster with a great loss of life. It is rumoured that de Ruyter had given the overall command in the hands of his deputy on that mission, his son Engel, who botched the job. We have no proof of this, but it is a fact that Engel did not have his father’s military genius, nor his modest and God-fearing nature.

From www.deruyter.org

In the dutch part of this post some links to dutch articles, four of them by Lt-Col C.B. Nicolas, on the raid on Martinique by de Ruyter. It is still not clear what exactlty went wrong: security around the raid was terrible so it could be treason, or on the other hand just incompetence.