Adam Gerard Mappa

Adam Gerard Mappa (Tournai, 25 November 1754 – Barneveld, New York, 15 April 1828) was a Dutch Patriot and active colonel in a local militia (in Dutch exercitiegenootschap). In 1794 he became the agent for the Holland Land Company in New York (state) and three years later supervisor in the recently set up village of Barneveld.

Around 1786 Adam Gerard Mappa became the commander of a flying army unit, consisting of 300 men and 200 horses, that played a role in democratizing the vroedschap of Utrecht. One of the people he cooperated with was Quint Ondaatje. From the end of August 1787 under his leadership, the flying army was involved in removing all the Orangists from the vroedschaps in Delft, Gorkum, Montfoort and Vlaardingen. (The removals found places under the threat of a Prussian ultimatum and before the raid). The purge in Delft not only brought Wybo Fijnje, the editor of a patriot newspaper and the auto-didact Gerrit Paape to power in the city, but delivered to the Patriots one of the biggest arsenals and magazines in the Republic. His army went to defend to Woerden in the east of the province of Holland, but had no chance to win against 20,000 well trained Prussian soldiers. Mappa made a brave show of defending Naarden but once again with the peculiarly Dutch show for legality, receiving orders from the now counter-revolutionised States of Holland, capitulated on the 27th. On 9 October 1787, the patriots were forced to hand in its unit's weapons in Amsterdam and Mappa fled like so many others to northern France.

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