The Capture of the Dutch fleet at Den Helder on the night of 23 January 1795 presents a rare occurrence of an interaction between warships and cavalry, in which a French Revolutionary Hussar regiment came close to a Dutch fleet frozen at anchor in the Nieuwediep, just east of the town of Den Helder.

[1][2] After some of the Hussars had approached across the frozen Nieuwediep,[Note 1] the French cavalry negotiated that all 14 Dutch warships would remain at anchor.

Den Helder is located at the tip of the North Holland peninsula, south of the island of Texel, by an inlet to what was then the shallow Zuiderzee bay (Southern Sea).

The new Batavian interim Government issued orders to all its fleets at Vlissingen, Hellevoetsluis and at Den Helder, not to fight against the French if they appeared, and to keep the ships at anchor to make sure they could be ready to defend the new Republic against the British.

[8] Pichegru ordered General of Brigade Jan Willem de Winter to lead a squadron of the 8th Hussar Regiment to Den Helder.

After a careful approach (the hussars had covered the horses' hooves with fabric[9]), Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Joseph Lahure went across the ice of the Nieuwediep (river) with a few of his men.

In February 1795 a massive mutiny broke out amongst Dutch sailors, who hadn't been paid for nearly a year and who thought that, now the old Republic had ceased to exist, they were no longer required to adhere to naval discipline.

The traditional narrative of French cavalry storming and capturing the ships at Den Helder is primarily based on French sources, which all copy the story from each other, the main source for the story being the work of Antoine-Henri Jomini's work Histoire critique et militaire des campagnes de la Revolution.

De Jonge states that the misconception stems from an 1819 publication by Swiss general Antoine-Henri Jomini, whose account was subsequently cited by French historians.