On 2 June 1676, in the Franco-Dutch War, a French fleet under the Duke of Vivonne attacked the Spanish and Dutch fleets anchored off Palermo in Sicily and burned at least seven warships and two galleys with fireships. Both allied commanders were killed. In 1866 Fenians routed Canadian volunteers at Ridgeway.
Battle of Palermo
2 June 1676 · 350 years ago
A sideshow in Sicily
In the Franco-Dutch War, France supported the revolt of Messina against Spain and sent a fleet and troops to Sicily. The Dutch sent Michiel de Ruyter with a squadron to help the Spaniards; his first battle with Duquesne, in January 1676, is told in our article on the Battle of Stromboli. Off Augusta on 22 April Ruyter was mortally wounded, and he died at Syracuse a week later.1
Jan den Haen took command of the Dutch ships, and the allied fleet sailed to Palermo to replace masts and spars damaged in the battle. On 28 May Vivonne sailed from Messina to look for it with 28 ships, nine fireships and 25 galleys; Troude also dates the sailing to 28 May. Marshal the Duke of Vivonne commanded, Duquesne led the van, and Tourville sailed in Vivonne's flagship.2
A half-moon across the bay
Warned that the French were near, den Haen decided not to fight at sea. He anchored the allied ships in a half-moon across the mouth of the bay, covered by the batteries of the mole, the Castellammare fort and the city walls. The Spanish commanders disagreed. The Spanish naval historian Cesáreo Fernández Duro blames den Haen for the whole disaster and calls him “Este hombre funesto” (this baneful man; our translation).3
The line held 17 Dutch and 10 Spanish ships, with 19 galleys in the gaps. Tourville went to look at it in a small boat, and the French decided to attack the end of the line farthest from the mole and its batteries. The Marquis de Villette, captain of the Assuré, wrote that Tourville led Vivonne “insensiblement” (by degrees; our translation) into the enterprise.4
Fire in the harbor
On 2 June, with a north-east wind, the Marquis de Preuilly led the attack on the far end of the allied line. The smoke of the French broadsides blew into the defenders' faces, and the fireships came in under its cover. Ships at the end of the line cut their cables to escape them and fell back in confusion or ran aground. The Spanish vice admiral Juan Roco cut his cable early and let his ship drift.5
The Spanish flagship, Nuestra Señora del Pilar, sank the first fireships sent against her, but others caught her, and she burned and blew up. Her commander, Diego de Ibarra, badly wounded, drowned trying to escape the fire. Francisco Pereira Freire de la Cerda, a former commander of the Spanish fleet, was also killed.6
The Steenbergen of Rear Admiral Pieter van Middellandt was set on fire, and the Vrijheid and the Leyden were lost with her. Van Middellandt drowned. A cannonball killed den Haen. Ruyter's body lay in Callenburgh's Eendracht, which came through. Had the French had more fireships, de Jonge writes, the whole Dutch fleet would probably have been lost.7
"The example of dying fighting"
Villette watched the Spanish flagship go: “j'étois à la portée du mousquet de l'amiral d'Espagne, quand il sauta en l'air, et j'admirai la fermeté extraordinaire de deux cents officiers réformés” (I was within musket shot of the Spanish admiral when she blew up, and I admired the extraordinary steadiness of two hundred unattached officers; our translation). They gave the crew “l'exemple de périr en combattant” (the example of dying fighting; our translation), he wrote; La Roncière and Fernández Duro both quote the passage.8
A letter from Palermo, quoted in French translation by La Roncière and by Villette's editor, told of burning ships firing into the city and grenades falling like hail. In La Roncière's version the writer says: “Enfin, c'était une image de l'enfer” (in short, it was an image of hell; our translation).9
Counting the cost
On 3 June Vivonne wrote to the king that his fleet had had “la fortune de brûler l'Amiral et le Vice-Amiral d'Espagne, le Contre-Amiral de Hollande, le vaisseau que montoit feu M. Ruyter” (the fortune to burn the Admiral and the Vice-Admiral of Spain, the Rear-Admiral of Holland, the ship the late M. Ruyter sailed in; our translation). Yet Ruyter's Eendracht survived. The French and Spanish historians agree on seven warships burned, the Pilar, three other Spanish ships and three Dutch ships, besides two galleys. The rest of the allied fleet was hauled behind the mole or ran aground.10
Figures for the men lost vary widely. Contemporary estimates of the allied loss ran from about 1,200 dead to Villette's “more than four thousand men”, and the French lost about two hundred. The Dutch lost, besides den Haen and van Middellandt, seven officers and about 250 men.11
When it was proposed that evening to turn the fleet's auxiliary vessels into fireships and finish the work, Vivonne answered, Villette writes, that “il y auroit de la témérité à en entreprendre davantage” (it would be rash to attempt more; our translation). He sailed back to Messina. The French later gave up Sicily and evacuated Messina.12
Also on 2 June: Ridgeway, 1866
In 1866 Fenians under John O'Neill, who had crossed the Niagara River on 1 June, met Canadian volunteers under Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Booker near Ridgeway in Canada West on 2 June. “A panic here seized our men, and I could not bring them again to the front”, Booker reported. His men, routed, retreated on Port Colborne, and O'Neill fell back to Fort Erie and recrossed the river that night. Nine of Booker's men were killed.13
Also on this day
Battle of Boryspil
2 June 1920 · 106 years ago
In the Polish-Soviet War, two Polish Legions battalions crossed the Dnieper from Kyiv on river barges and struck the Soviet 58th Rifle Division at Boryspil. Though outnumbered, they took the enemy by surprise and disrupted Soviet plans to attack the Kyiv bridgehead.
