Leading one of the companies into
the battle was one Captain Frederick Henry van Oranje, heir to several thrones.
Frederick Henry was born October 17, 1889, and even as a boy he was known as
the adventurer prince. Of all the Princes of Orange, Frederick was the one who
always managed to go to places in the palace at Delft and Recife that he was
not supposed to visit. One time, at the age of six, he walked right into a
meeting between the King and several Admirals, much to his father’s annoyance.
His intellect went hand-in-hand with his curiosity. Frederick graduated from
Delft University at the age of 18, and instead of putting his education to a
practical use; the prince rewarded himself with a safari.
Between
1907 and 1909, Prince Frederick ventured across the Boer Republics on numerous
hunts. Several specimens of elephants, lions and rhinoceros were shipped back
to museums in the United Provinces as well as Brazil. One such rhino is still
on display in the Natural History Museum in Salvador. His longest hunt occurred
in 1908, when he and seventy other hunters started out in Luanda and ended four
months later in Sofala. Unlike many European aristocrats who go on safari,
Frederick was never afraid of getting his hands dirty or staring down danger.
One episode involved a misfire in his rifle while facing down a charging Cape
buffalo. While his fellow hunters took cover, he calmly cleared the cartridge,
reloaded, took aim and brought down the buffalo. He later remarked that he was
disheartened by the lack of confidence his comrade displayed, “they didn’t
think I would get the buffalo be it got me.”
Africa
was not the only continent Frederick traversed. For decades, Brazilians
struggled to locate the true source of the Amazon. In 1911, Frederick led the
1911 Amazon Expedition up the Amazon and into northwestern Brazil. The true
source of the Amazon was later discovered to be much further south, but that
did not detour the prince. Though he failed to locate the true headwaters, he
did establish contact with two previously unknown tribes and took time out of
the year to climb Mt. Chimborazo, at the time considered to tallest mountain
outside of Tibet.
Frederick
planned to trek across Mughalstan and challenge Mt. Chomolungma in the summer
of 1915, but tensions in Europe delayed his attempt to conquer the Tibetan
peak. As soon as the Dutch Commonwealth entered the war, Frederick returned to
the United Provinces and volunteered for service in the army. His birth and
college education entitled him to officers’ rank and command of men. For the
prince, the Great War was to be just another adventure, but the war had
different plans.
