Pensionary de Gijselaar (calling the stadtholder "a new Alva") demanded in the States of Holland that the stadtholder would be deprived of his command as Captain-General of the States army (which only the States General could do), and in any case take the troops on the Holland out of the States army. When this was done this deprived the stadtholder of more than half of his troops, effectively denying him the military means to decide the political conflict. Holland also made a pact with the Utrecht States and the cities (the States were hopelessly divided) to form a so-called "Cordon" to defend these provinces against military depredations of the rump-States army. The overall command of this Cordon was given to a military commission, headquartered in Woerden, while the Holland troops were put under the command of the Rhinegrave of Salm. Another important political development was that the Amsterdam (still not purged of the Orangist minority) formally adhered to the Act of Association that the Free Corps had promulgated in the Summer of 1785. In Utrecht city the Patriots feared an attack from the Amersfoort and Zeist troops, and started to fortify the city against a siege. The defenders received reinforcements from Holland and other Patriot strongholds, so that by the Spring of 1787 they numbered 6,000. When the Utrecht Defense Council learned that the States army had sent a task-force to occupy the hamlet of Vreeswijk near a strategically important sluice (useful to defensively inundate the surrounding countryside) they decided to force a confrontation. On 9 May 1787 the Patriot force under the command of the Utrecht member Jean Antoine d'Averhoult attacked the States-army force in the Battle of Jutphaas, and despite several people killed, routed the mercenaries. Though this was only a skirmish, the Patriot propaganda made hay of the victory and the officer killed received a state funeral. Foreign interference The Patriot Revolt did not take place in a diplomatic vacuum. The Dutch Republic had from its inception been a battlefield of Great Power diplomacy in which the Holland (lately in the guise of the States Party) had been sympathetic to France, and the Orangists usually favored England and later Great Britain. Since the days of the 1688 invasion of England followed by the 1689 naval treaty with England, the Dutch had been in nominal alliance with the British, and the diplomatic relations with France had been cool