Chapter VIII: Part 8

By an arrangement, which was repeated at least once more during the war, Macbride’s squadron, being intended to act with the Army, had been removed from the control of the Admiralty and placed under the orders of Dundas, so that he alone was responsible for this miscarriage.[150] “Why did you not earlier suggest to me naval co-operation at Dunkirk?” he wrote angrily to Murray on the 29th. “I had always a conceit in my own mind as to its usefulness, but I had no authority to quote for it.” This is an instructive example of Dundas’s methods as a War Minister. The project of besieging Dunkirk emanated from himself and his colleagues in the Cabinet, and from them alone. No military man approved it, though the Duke of York, out of loyalty to his masters, dutifully upheld it; and Dundas never quoted any authority but his own for undertaking it, nor for his constant interference with the conduct of the operations that preceded it. He had indeed a good many conceits in his own mind, the most fatal of which was that he understood how to conduct a campaign; and he had privately made vague inquiries of Murray, as to the need for naval co-operation, so far back as in April.[151] But the point was not one to be decided off-hand by a General, for the question was not whether a fleet would be useful, but whether it would be able to act in all weathers; and this purely naval matter appears never to have been considered at all. On the 15th of August, when the army was not yet committed to the siege, General Ainslie, the commandant at Ostend, warned Dundas that he had not realised the difficulties which might be raised by adverse weather at Dunkirk; and, as a matter of fact, the _Brilliant_ and her little flotilla had not been on the coast three days before they were blown away from their station. It was doubtless owing to the uncertainty of naval assistance that Murray gave the apparently astounding opinion, that he regarded a squadron as useful though not very material to the siege. But, apart from this, Dundas had so often pressed the Duke of York to spare his eight thousand Hessians, which formed almost one-third of the force under his command, for another service, that it was impossible for the Duke to divine whether Ministers really intended to pursue their design against Dunkirk or not. If they did, he had a right to look to them for a siege-train and for the necessary naval assistance, neither of which were forthcoming, partly because Dundas did not know his own mind, partly because he had committed himself to a multiplicity of operations beyond the power, after ten years of steady neglect,[152] of either Army or Navy to execute. However, as a substitute for the much-needed ships and guns, he sent to Murray a plan for the siege of Dunkirk, drawn up by no less skilled a hand than that of Lord Chancellor Loughborough, possibly with some hope that the deficiencies of Downing Street might be made good by the wisdom of the woolsack. There are times when the conceit of British politicians becomes touchingly ridiculous.

Very different was the change that had come over military administration in France during the same month of August. ◆Aug. 10.◆ Upon the re-election of the Committee of Public Safety, which took place on the 10th, Barrère, who was a member, approached Prieur of the Côte d’Or with the words, “We none of us understand military matters. You are an officer of Engineers; will you join us?” “There is only one man in the Convention for the place,” answered Prieur, “and that is Carnot; and I will be his second.” ◆Aug. 14.◆ Accordingly, on the 14th of August two new members were added to the Committee, namely, Carnot, who assumed control of the formation, training, and movements of the armies, and Prieur, who took charge of arms, ammunition, and hospitals. These, together with Robert Lindet, formed the most remarkable group in one of the most remarkable administrative bodies which has ever existed. Three of the members, Barrère, Billaud Varennes, and Collot d’Herbois, were known as the Revolutionaries, their business being to guide and inspire political emotions; three more, Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint Just, were concerned with legislative proposals, police, and the revolutionary tribunal, and bore the ominous name of the High Hands; but the last three, Carnot, Prieur, and Lindet, were known simply as the Workers, a title which no men have ever more worthily earned.

Carnot’s advent showed itself in prompt and energetic action. ◆Aug. 16.◆ On the 16th of August a decree was passed for a levy _en masse_, which, it was estimated, would add four hundred and fifty thousand men to the army; and, since all exemptions and substitutes were disallowed, the cream of the nation began for the first time to flow into the ranks. ◆Aug. 29.◆ Moreover, on the 29th of August, the old white coats of the Monarchy were abolished and the blue coat of the National Guard made uniform for the entire host, a significant hint that henceforth there were to be no further distinctions between regular troops and volunteers, but a single National Army. Prieur, on his side, set up manufactories of arms and gunpowder in Paris, and stimulated the search for saltpetre in all directions. The result of these measures lay hid in the future; but immediate and important movements were made on the northern frontier. Carnot, with true insight, had divined that England was in reality the most dangerous member of the Coalition, and that to foil her before Dunkirk would, from its political results, be the most telling of all military operations.[153] ◆Aug. 24.◆ Withdrawing therefore several thousand troops from Coburg’s front and from the army of the Moselle, he massed them to westward, until, on the 24th of August, there were, apart from the eight thousand men in Dunkirk itself, some twenty-three thousand in the entrenched camp at Cassel, four thousand about Lille, and twelve to fifteen thousand more from the Moselle within a few days’ march. Kilmain had been recalled after the retreat from Cæsar’s camp, and replaced by General Houchard in supreme command. Among Houchard’s subordinate generals was Jourdan. Dunkirk itself had for commandant General Souham, an energetic officer whose fame was soon to spread wide; and one of Souham’s battalions was commanded by Lazare Hoche.

Thus new men and a new principle of war, which were to crush the cordon-system out of existence, hung like an angry cloud to the south of Dunkirk; but the Generals of the Allies took no heed. Murray, indeed, had heard with anxiety of the increase of the French force in his front, and had begged Coburg for reinforcements, which, however, could not be spared.[154] On the east Coburg was busy besieging Quesnoy, with corps of observation thrown out to east and west. He had called up eight thousand men under General Beaulieu from Namur to strengthen his weak cordon about Bouvines and Orchies; but to west of Beaulieu the space from Lannoy to Menin was guarded by some thirteen thousand Dutch—spiritless, disaffected troops, whose leader, the Prince of Orange, was half inclined to give up the contest because he could obtain no assurance as to his indemnity. West of the Dutch was the gossamer line of Freytag, and behind it lay the Duke of York, conscious, first, that Souham had opened the sluices, and that the steady rise of the inundation would shortly sever his communication with Freytag; secondly, that his right flank was under perpetual menace from the French gunboats; and thirdly, that his rear was insecure, since there was nothing to hinder the French from moving troops by sea. In this situation he was trying to take a fortress, which he was not strong enough to invest and which the enemy could consequently reinforce at any moment, by attacking it upon one side only without heavy artillery. He endeavoured to protect his flanks by throwing up entrenchments in the Dunes, but found that they filled with water at the depth of two feet; and he was fain to disarm a frigate at Nieuport and bring up her heavy guns to the front, in order to arm batteries, not only against the town, but towards the sea, to drive away the French gunboats. Thus at the beginning of September he was able to open fire; ◆Aug. 27.◆ but meanwhile Houchard had not been idle, for on the 27th he fell in force upon the posts of Beaulieu and the Prince of Orange at Cysoing and Tourcoing. He was beaten back by Beaulieu with the loss of four guns; but the Dutch abandoned Tourcoing with suspicious alacrity, and would have retired to Tournai and Courtrai had not Murray sent a detachment to support them. “There is ill-will and disinclination to favour our present operations,” wrote Murray; and indeed the fact is hardly surprising.[155] The marvel is that he and the Duke of York should have remained in so dangerous a position, when a successful attack by the enemy upon the Dutch and a bold push forward would have carried the French to Furnes, and cut off the whole of the army about Dunkirk beyond rescue. Indeed, though they knew it not, this operation had actually been projected at the French headquarters.[156]

DUNKIRK AND ENVIRONS
showing
THE POSITION OF THE ALLIES
from 24 Aug. to 6 Sept. 1793.

_Stanford’s Geogl. Estabt., London._
]

With the arrival of his last reinforcements from the Moselle, Houchard resolved to attack the scattered posts of Freytag, the nearest of which lay little more than five miles from Cassel. ◆Sept. 6.◆ Assembling thirty thousand men, he led them forward early in the morning of the 6th of September in five columns, under Generals Vandamme, Hédouville, Colland, Jourdan, and himself, the three first against Poperinghe, Proven, and Rousbrugge, the two last against Wormhoudt, Herzeele, and Houtkerke. Though outnumbered by ten to one, the Hanoverians and Hessians fought most obstinately, and the troops opposed to Houchard and Jourdan would have held their own behind the Yser at Bambecque, had not the French already penetrated to Rexpoede in their rear. The fighting lasted all day, the garrison of Dunkirk at the same time keeping the besieging army employed by a sortie; and at night Freytag retired upon Hondschoote, ordering General Walmoden, who commanded the posts about Bergues, to withdraw all his troops to the same place. Taking the road by Rexpoede, in ignorance that it was actually occupied by the French, Freytag blundered into the midst of a French picquet, and was, with the young Prince Adolphus (afterwards Duke of Cambridge), wounded and taken. The Prince was rescued, but the Field-Marshal was secured, and would have remained a prisoner, had not General Walmoden, guessing that his chief might have fallen into a trap, marched at once upon Rexpoede, stormed it then and there, and delivered him. Walmoden then assumed command, and, resuming the retreat, took up a convex position before Hondschoote, with his right leaning on the Bergues canal, his centre just in advance of Hondschoote itself, and his left resting on the village of Leysele. The whole of his front was covered by a maze of small ditches and hedges, through which the only access was a single dyke leading into Hondschoote; but this broken ground, however valuable for defence, deprived the Allies of the use of their cavalry, which was the arm in which above all they overmatched the French. From thence Walmoden sent urgent messages to the Duke of York for reinforcements; and it is significant that, owing to the inundation, no troops could reach him except by way of Bergues. There was therefore no reason why Freytag’s corps should not have been concentrated about Hondschoote, where it would have covered the besiegers quite as efficiently and with infinitely less risk. The British Commander-in-Chief cannot be acquitted of neglect herein, though Freytag must bear part of the blame for extreme dispersion of his force.

◆Sept. 7.◆

Houchard tried to follow up his success on the following day by a renewed attack, but his soldiers would not follow him; and Walmoden, though he took the precaution to send his heavy baggage to Furnes, repulsed him without difficulty. ◆Sept. 8.◆ On the 8th, however, Houchard advanced with fresh troops to the assault, himself leading twenty battalions, covered by several guns, to the principal attack by the dyke; while a second column on his left, under General Leclerc, tried to force its way along the canal, and a third, under Colland and Hédouville, moved up from Rousbrugge against Leysele. The plan of attack was faulty, for by holding Walmoden in front and pushing the main force round his left flank, which stood in the air at Leysele, Houchard must have compelled him to retire or to be driven into the swamp of the Great Moor. The new French tactics, however, made good the General’s shortcomings. Taking cover cunningly behind every hedge, ditch, or bush, the French sharp-shooters poured a deadly fire into the Hanoverians and Hessians, who stood exposed in their array of three ranks deep, discharging their volleys by platoons with perfect discipline, and pressing forward with the bayonet when the French ventured too near to them. But the volleys did little injury to dispersed and hidden skirmishers, and the charge with the bayonet was hardly more effective over such intricate ground; for the French did not await it, but ran back to the nearest hedge and resumed their fire from behind it. For four hours Walmoden’s brave men held their own with the greatest gallantry in spite of heavy losses, until at noon their last reserves of ammunition were exhausted, when, their left flank being seriously threatened by Hédouville, the General gave the order to retire in two columns upon Furnes. A battalion of Hessians covered the retreat with splendid tenacity; and the wreck of the force took up a position between the two canals just to the south of Furnes. The infantry had lost at least a third of its numbers, perhaps even more; and the Hanoverians, by the confession of their own officers, were no longer to be depended upon.[157] It was no reproach to them that this should have been so, for no troops in the world can endure heavy punishment during consecutive days of unsuccessful fighting, and remain unshaken. Their losses had been very great, and their behaviour, by the admission both of friend and foe, most admirable.

On this same day the garrison of Dunkirk made a sally against the besiegers in the village of Rosendahl, but was repulsed, though not without loss to the Allies; and in the afternoon came the news of Walmoden’s defeat. At four o’clock orders were given for the heavy baggage to be sent back to Fumes, and at eight a Council of War was held. The Duke of York hoped to carry off his siege-guns, but the French, having control of the sluices, had shut off the water from the canal, so that it was no longer of use for transport; and it was represented that delay might mean the overpowering of Walmoden’s army and the cutting off of the Duke’s retreat by Furnes. At midnight therefore the besieging army retired in two columns, with a confusion which shows the inefficiency of the Duke’s staff. Transport being scarce, the waggons were so much overloaded that the animals could hardly drag them, and the troops were constantly checked by fallen horses and overturned vehicles. Further, no orders for the retreat were sent to the two battalions in Tetteghem, and the whole of one column was delayed until they could join it. Sept. 9.◆ It was thus ten o’clock on the morning of the 9th before the entire force reached the camp at Furnes, fortunately without the least molestation from the enemy.[158] There the Duke effected his junction with Walmoden, but took the precaution to send his heavy baggage to Ostend. He had been fortunate in escaping from a most dangerous position with no greater loss than that of his thirty-two heavy guns; but incessant fighting, a swampy encampment, bad drinking-water and fever had grievously thinned the ranks of his army. It was reported at the time that the siege of Dunkirk had cost the Allies from one cause and another nearly ten thousand men;[159] and I am disposed to think that this estimate is not exaggerated. “Our whole enterprise is defeated and our situation embarrassing in the extreme,” wrote Murray. “It is uncertain whether we can maintain ourselves behind Furnes; at all events I think we shall hold good behind the canal at Nieuport.” ◆Sept. 11.◆ This letter reached Downing Street on the 11th; and on that same day Macbride’s fleet appeared before Nieuport, three weeks too late.

VOL. IV. BOOK XII. CHAPTER VI

◆1793.◆

During August and the first week of September the results of the Government’s incoherent enterprises began to crowd one upon another with rapidity enough to bewilder a clearer head than that of Dundas. The forces that he had set in motion in the Colonies seemed at first to promise great results at small cost. ◆April 12.◆ On the 12th of April General Cuyler, obedient to his instructions, embarked a force of about five hundred men[160] at Barbados, and sailed under convoy of Vice-admiral Sir John Laforey’s squadron to Tobago. The enemy was prepared for his coming, for, as was usual with Dundas’s secret expeditions, the whole island of Barbados was apprised of the project as early as the General;[161] ◆April 14.◆ but none the less Cuyler landed on the 14th at Courland Bay, stormed on the same night the French fort that crowns the hill above Scarborough, and captured the island with trifling loss. The news of this success reached London on the 1st of June, and was followed a month later by that of the bloodless capture of St. Pierre and Miquelon by a small force sent from Halifax; ◆May 14.◆ but the next intelligence from the west was less satisfactory. Though by no means over-trustful of the representations of the refugees from Martinique, whom Dundas had recommended to him, and who assured him that eight hundred men would suffice to take the island, June 10.◆ General Bruce embarked about eleven hundred troops at Barbados on the 10th of June,[162] and sailed for the island with Admiral Gardner’s squadron. ◆June 16.◆ After concerting operations with the French Royalists, he landed his troops on the 16th at Case Navire, for an attack on St. Pierre; but a panic, which set in among the Royalist levies on the morning fixed for the action, convinced him that it would be hopeless to trust them, and he accordingly re-embarked on the 21st for Barbados, carrying his pusillanimous allies away with him. ◆June 21.◆ Here, therefore, was an initial failure on the part of the monarchical party, which had promised such easy possession of the French West Indies; and Bruce did not hesitate to add that, since the Republicans had admitted all black men to rights of government in Martinique, any further attack would be hopeless unless undertaken by a considerable force.

◆Aug. 13.◆

The news of this abortive expedition reached London on the 13th of August; and shortly afterwards came a letter from a gentleman in Tobago, warning the Government that French emissaries were busy all over the West Indies, and that there was great danger of a general rising of the negroes for the expulsion of the white proprietors from all the islands.[163] Here was information important enough to make Pitt think twice before he pursued his policy of cutting off the financial resources of the Revolution by ruining French West Indian trade, to say nothing of the fact that the said trade was already practically ruined by civil war in the French islands. There were other weak points in the French armour besides the West Indies, so many indeed that Ministers might be excused for finding it difficult to determine which of them they should assail. ◆Aug. 29.◆ The only method of overcoming that difficulty was that they should clearly define to themselves their object in making war.

First then, there was the counter-revolution in the south of France; where Lyons still defied the forces of the Convention, and where it was hoped that Sardinia, in return for the two hundred thousand pounds given her by the recent treaty, would intervene effectively, with Austria at her side. Next,[164] from this same quarter there came the very important but unexpected news that commissioners from Toulon, after some parley with Lord Hood, had agreed to declare for the Monarchy and the Constitution of 1791, and to give up to him the shipping, forts and arsenal, to be held in trust for King Lewis the Seventeenth until the end of the war. In return for this, however, they made the natural but very significant request that troops should be landed for their protection. Here, therefore, was the Government committed, though by no act of its own, to serious operations by land on the side of the Mediterranean. The responsibility assumed by Hood was very grave; and for a time he hesitated to incur it. “At present,” he wrote, two days after issuing his public reply to the offers of the commissioners, “I have not troops sufficient to defend the works. Had I five or six thousand good troops I should soon end the war.”[165] He therefore anchored at Hyères and, mindful of the British alliances with the Mediterranean powers, wrote to the British Ambassador at Naples for such forces as could be spared, at the same time asking help of the Spanish Admiral, Don Juan de Langara, who was lying with his squadron off the coast of Roussillon. ◆Aug. 28.◆ Before, however, these reinforcements could arrive, he was so far satisfied by the assurances of the French that he sailed into Toulon harbour and, landing fifteen hundred marines and soldiers who were acting as such, occupied the principal forts that defended the outer harbour. While thus engaged he was joined by Langara with the greater part of his squadron, who announced that he had one thousand troops ready to disembark at once, and had left four ships behind to bring three thousand more from the army in Roussillon. Full of gratitude, Hood gave Langara effusive thanks, and appointed Admiral Gravina, the Spanish officer next senior to Langara, to be commandant of Toulon.

All this was known to the Government by the 15th of September, by which time, as shall presently be told, more reassuring news had arrived from Flanders, to the effect that the French had been checked, and that Coburg’s army had been liberated for action by the surrender of Quesnoy. It therefore behoved Ministers seriously to reconsider their military policy, and to make up their minds definitely whether their object in the war was to be, as they professed, resistance to unprovoked aggression and the overthrow of the Convention, or simple annexation of French possessions. In Flanders their great enterprise, undertaken with no military knowledge and for no military purpose, had failed; they were as much as ever in the dark as to the ultimate designs of Austria, and they could not but be sensible that remarkably little had been accomplished by the Allies on the Rhine. As a matter of fact Frederick William, having discovered a glaring instance of Thugut’s duplicity in the matter of the Bavarian exchange, had at the end of August practically decided to withdraw from the Coalition. This was as yet unknown to the British Ministers, for their ambassador at Vienna, Sir Morton Eden, was completely duped by Thugut; but they were conscious of an increasing coolness on the part of Prussia towards the war against the Revolution. In such circumstances, although the northern frontier of France was, from its proximity, the most convenient sphere of operations for a British army, they might well consider the advisability of removing all their forces from that quarter in order to concentrate them at Toulon, which Lord Hood’s negotiations had already engaged them to protect. French successes in the north could be only temporary and unprofitable if the Allies, by assisting the counter-revolution in the south, should deprive the Convention of the richest provinces of France. A French force at Antwerp itself would signify little, if the Allies could rally the party of order from Bordeaux to Marseilles to put down the tyranny at Paris.

On the other hand, it was no light task to hold Toulon against all the host that the Convention might turn upon it. Sir Charles Grey, when consulted by Pitt as to the force that would be required, declared that fifty thousand good soldiers would be no more than adequate; upon which Pitt dismissed him with the remark that he hoped that a smaller body would suffice.[166] Probably he rested his opinion on Lord Hood’s phrase about ending the war with six thousand men, which was of course nonsense, and nonsense of a kind which naval officers at that period were far too ready to talk and Ministers to hear. Mallet du Pan, the clearest head in Europe, was urgent for making the counter-revolution in the south the centre of attack upon the Convention; but American experience had shown that the support of a disloyal faction is the most unstable of all foundations upon which to build the conduct of a war. Men of the same nation will fight each other like devils, but, when foreigners are called into the contest, all parties tend to combine against them. Moreover, the southern provinces were by no means unfavourable to the Revolution at large. On the contrary, they had enthusiastically acclaimed and supported it, until threatened with the massacre and pillage which had disgraced Paris in September 1792. It was therefore essential that the Allies should enter France in such strength as to be independent of all help from French forces in the field. It was certain that the worthless brothers of King Lewis the Sixteenth and their parasites would claim to place themselves at the head of any counter-revolution; and their presence alone might suffice first to paralyse and then to subvert it.

Again, it was doubtful whether any efficient force of the Allies, other than British, could be collected in the south. Sardinia was perfectly ready to advance at once to the rescue of Lyons if Austria would join her; and the Austrian General De Vins, being of the school of Loudoun, was anxious to show his superiority to his rivals Coburg and Clerfaye of the school of Lacy. But here again the mischievous rapacity of Thugut neutralised all action, for he would allow no Austrian troops to move from Italy unless Sardinia consented to concede the Novarese to Austria, indemnifying herself at the expense of France. The British Ministers were aware of this dispute about the Novarese, for Mulgrave had reported it,[167] and they had sufficient experience of the Imperial Court to divine that it would not quickly be settled. Apart from Austria and Sardinia, troops could be obtained from Naples and from Spain; but the assistance of two courts so effete and so corrupt was not likely to be efficient. In any case, it was certain that, if any real advantage was to be gained from the possession of Toulon, every British soldier must be withdrawn from other operations, and that the whole of England’s military force must be assembled at that point. If this were impossible, it were best to instruct Hood to make sure of the French fleet, destroy the arsenal, and carry away the inhabitants who had yielded the place into his hands.

Then, besides Flanders and Toulon, there was La Vendée, where the contemptible ruffians whom the Jacobins had appointed to be generals were suffering defeat upon defeat. If by the help of the insurgents Nantes could be seized as a base, it was no very long march from Angers or Tours or Orléans to Paris; but here again it was not a small force that was required, but every British battalion that could be spared.

Lastly, if the Ministers wanted to secure indemnities only, the West Indies lay open to them. No doubt it would be of advantage to possess the famous harbour of St. Lucia, to deliver Dominica from the menace of Martinique, her neighbour to windward, and to master Guadeloupe, with the nest of privateers which preyed upon all British commerce in those seas. Above all, the capture of Haiti would ensure at once the security of Jamaica, the possession of a country whose wealth, though more than half destroyed, was still appreciable, and the transfer to a British garrison of St. Nicholas Mole, which, being the gate of the Windward Passage and the Gibraltar of the West Indies, would give safe transit for the trade of the archipelago to England. Such an enterprise, however, would equally demand the entire land-force of the British Isles. It would be necessary not only to take the islands but to hold them, and to hold them not only, as heretofore, against the climate and against the fleet and armies of France, but against the entire negro population, which the Revolution had summoned to its aid. There was, as there still is, abundance of records of former attacks upon all those islands, showing that at the best of times each British battalion in the West Indies required to be renewed in its entirety every two years, and at the worst of times might be completely extinguished by a single hot season. Of all plans, therefore, this would be the most difficult, the most perilous, the most costly in execution and maintenance, and the least damaging to France; not to mention the fact that the overthrow of the Convention, which had authorised the equality of the black man with the white, was really essential to its permanent success. Thus it should at least have been obvious to the Government that out of the four spheres of operations it could hope to act with effect in one alone; and then only by throwing into the chosen sphere every trained soldier that it could muster.

Blind to all such considerations, Ministers decided not to select one, or at most two, of these spheres, but to fritter away their handful of forces between all four. ◆Sept. 11.◆ Indeed, Dundas’s orders between the 11th and 18th of September form a notable specimen of his ideas of carrying on war. The news of the failure at Dunkirk had at first completely unnerved him; but, on realising how critical was the position of affairs in that quarter, he directed eight battalions[168] to embark for Ostend, as a temporary measure. Then he warned the Duke of York that five thousand of his Hessians must be held ready to sail to Toulon as soon as this reinforcement reached him, and that the eight battalions themselves would be required elsewhere at the beginning of October. On the same day he wrote to Lord Hood that everything must give way to the importance of holding Toulon; that he had appealed to Austria for troops; and that he would send Hood the five thousand Hessians aforesaid, as well as two battalions out of the five stationed at Gibraltar. Four days later he warned General Bruce to be ready to receive at Barbados fifteen battalions, which were under orders for active service in the West Indies. Lastly, at the same time or very little later, he framed a design for a descent upon St. Malo and for the occupation of the Isle D’Yeu, off the coast of La Vendée.[169] It is now time to return to Flanders, and to follow in detail the reaction of Dundas’s genius upon the operations in that quarter.

In the first peril of the retreat from Dunkirk the British commanders seem to have entertained serious thoughts of re-embarkation;[170] but were reassured when Houchard did not follow up his stroke upon the force of Walmoden. For this the French general has been much blamed; and indeed his failure to destroy the Duke of York’s army was made the excuse for bringing him shortly afterwards to the guillotine. But in truth Houchard had lost his true opportunity through the unskilfulness of his attack upon Walmoden, wherein his troops, already half starved and less than half disciplined, had been seriously shaken by their losses. He therefore reinforced the garrisons of Bergues and Dunkirk, and, in the hope of relieving Quesnoy, fell with thirty thousand men upon the flank of the Dutch cordon from Poperinghe and upon its front from Lille. ◆Sept. 12, 13.◆ His success was at first encouraging, for he defeated his opponents completely with the loss of forty guns and three thousand men, and captured Menin. General Beaulieu, who had been despatched with over four thousand Austrians to the assistance of the Dutch, for some reason refused to act with them, but checked the advance of the French beyond Menin, and occupied Courtrai. The Dutch fled in disorder to Bruges and Ghent; and for the moment it seemed as though communication between the Duke of York and Coburg was hopelessly severed. ◆Sept. 12.◆ The Duke, after leaving a detachment under Abercromby at Furnes, had withdrawn to the rear of the canal between Nieuport and Dixmuyde, in order to secure his retreat to Ostend; ◆Sept. 14.◆ but he now ordered Abercromby back to Nieuport, and marched with the bulk of his force eastward to Thorout, where he was joined by two battalions[171] from England. ◆Sept. 15.◆ From thence on the 15th he moved southward to Roulers; and on that day the situation underwent a total change.

Beaulieu, being attacked by Houchard before Courtrai, waited only for a reinforcement which the Duke had hurried forward to him, when, taking the offensive, he utterly routed the French, who fled in the wildest confusion, and, pursuing them to Menin, recaptured the town. ◆Sept. 16.◆ The Duke entered Menin on the following day, where he received letters from Coburg who was already at Cysoing, not more than eighteen miles to the south, reporting that since the fall of Quesnoy he had gained a brilliant victory over one of Houchard’s divisions at Avesnes-le-Sec. ◆Sept. 12.◆ This action, which, though almost unknown to Englishmen, still remains one of the greatest achievements in the history of cavalry, was not only most glorious to the Austrians in itself, but was important as showing that the new tactics of the undisciplined French army were inapplicable to any but a strongly enclosed country. Nine Austrian squadrons, counting some two thousand men, without a single gun, had utterly dispersed seven thousand French, chiefly infantry, cut down two thousand of them, captured two thousand more, and taken twenty guns, all with a loss to themselves of sixty-nine men. These successes effectually checked the advance of the French. Houchard, after the defeat at Menin, had already given the order to retreat; and the French retired to their former positions before Cassel, Lille, and Maubeuge.

Then arose the question what should be done next. The season was advancing, but events had marched rapidly in Paris since the revolt of Toulon. Following hard upon the news of Houchard’s reverse came tidings that the Duke of Brunswick had defeated the French with a loss of four thousand men at Pirmasens, on the northern frontier of Alsace; and this succession of disasters stirred the Jacobins to the ferocity of panic. ◆Sept. 17.◆ On the 17th two savage laws were passed, which practically placed all lives and all property at the arbitrary disposal of the reigning faction; and then the demagogues turned with fury upon the generals. Loudest among them was Robespierre, who, profoundly jealous of any man who could do what he could not, was suspicious above all of soldiers. ◆Sept. 21.◆ Thanks to his denunciations, Houchard and his staff were recalled under accusation of treason; and thereby another blow was added to the many already struck at the army. The troops were greatly demoralised by the continual change of commanders,[172] whom the Commissioners of the Convention promoted or deposed at their arbitrary pleasure; and the commanders themselves were not less demoralised by the certain prospect of death if they failed to achieve the impossible with troops that were neither fed, nor clothed, nor paid, nor disciplined. The Allies, therefore, could still reasonably look for success from a concentration of their whole army and a vigorous offensive.

Dundas, since the failure at Dunkirk, had become suddenly an advocate for keeping the whole of the forces together, and for making an attack upon the enemy before undertaking any further enterprise;[173] but with what precise object a general action was to be fought he did not say, for the very sufficient reason that he did not know. The British Ministers, so far as they favoured any operations at all in Flanders, would have preferred a second attempt upon Dunkirk; but they gave, or professed to give, a free hand to the commanders, flattering themselves that, if the attempt were abandoned, the British troops would be the sooner released for service at Toulon and, above all, in the West Indies. Coburg, on the other hand, had already put forward what was at any rate a definite plan, though upon the old lines. He wished to besiege Maubeuge, which was certainly an important point, since it formed the chief link in the communications between the French armies of the north about Lille, and of the Ardennes about Givet and Philippeville, while its entrenched camp made it a point for a formidable concentration of the French forces at large. Moreover, it obstructed the passage of the Austrian troops from east to west, compelling all reinforcements from Luxemburg to fetch a compass by Namur and Charleroi before they could join the army of Flanders. The Dutch agreed to come forward again to further the operations; and before the British Government, upon Murray’s representation, could finally make up its mind to co-operate with the Austrians, Coburg had crossed the Sambre with forty thousand men and invested Maubeuge.[174]

Thereupon there followed the usual distribution of troops into a cordon. The besieging force numbered fourteen thousand, the covering army, including twelve thousand Dutch, twenty-six thousand men; and to the Duke of York was entrusted the task of protecting Flanders along a front of some forty-five miles, from Cysoing to Nieuport. For this purpose Coburg gave him about sixteen thousand Austrian troops in addition to those in the pay of Britain; but, owing to the vagaries of the British Minister for War, the corps was exposed to the most dangerous risk. Hardly had the eight reinforcing battalions from England joined the army in Flanders, before Dundas ordered four of them to return at once, and the remainder as soon as possible. Further, not content even with this, he gave Murray to understand that the embarkation of the Hessian corps from Flanders was only deferred, and hinted that a part of his artillerymen might also be spared for Toulon. Now Dundas knew perfectly well that the troops had passed through a very severe campaign, had fought several actions and had suffered heavy losses; he knew perfectly well that no adequate steps had been taken for filling up the gaps in the ranks; he could hardly have been ignorant that winter was approaching; and Murray had twice warned him that the French were rapidly increasing their forces between Lille and the sea. Yet the Minister, though he had given the generals nominally a free hand, calmly withdrew battalion after battalion, until at last Murray told him plainly of the danger of the situation. The state of the army was most distressing: the force in British pay was reduced to twelve thousand fighting men, or less than half of its original numbers; the sick and wounded of the whole army under the Duke’s command numbered at least nine thousand, or more than one-fourth; the troops were dangerously dispersed along a very wide front; and, though Murray did not mention this, the Austrian Government had deprecated all field-fortification, on account of the damage that might ensue to meadows and the banks of canals.[175] Finally, he gave warning that, if the enemy made an attack, the Duke would be obliged to abandon Ostend. Dundas’s reply to this was very characteristic. Without a word to Murray he ordered the Commandant at Ostend to retain the second batch of four battalions which, by his own order, had been sent there for re-embarkation to England; and he wrote an angry letter to Abercromby, a subordinate officer, first expressing horror at the idea of abandoning Ostend, and then regretting that attempts had been made to keep those same four battalions in Flanders. “It would be impossible,” he wrote, “to restrain the just indignation of the country, if, for the sake of feeding an army under a Prince of the blood, so substantial an interest to this country as that of the French West Indies had been sacrificed.”[176]

Apart from the fact that such language, especially when addressed to a subordinate concerning his chief, was utterly unbecoming a Minister and a gentleman, it was not obvious why an army should be starved, whether in the matter of empty ranks or of empty stomachs, simply because it happened to be commanded by a Prince of the blood. If its presence in Flanders were an embarrassment to the Government, the simple remedy was to withdraw it altogether, rather than leave it so weak as to be in peril of destruction; for there was no lack of employment for the troops elsewhere. This amazing outburst is no solitary instance of Dundas’s bad taste, much less an unique example of his incapacity.

Meanwhile Murray’s apprehensions increased; and events soon came to justify them. Jourdan, on Carnot’s recommendation, had succeeded Houchard in command of the army of the north; and, with Carnot himself at his back, ◆Oct. 7.◆ he now concentrated forty-five thousand men at Guise for the relief of Maubeuge, leaving the remainder of his troops, some sixty thousand men, extended in a long line to the sea. Coburg sent pressing entreaties for reinforcements to the Duke of York, who at once moved about nine thousand men to Cysoing, ◆Oct. 10.◆ and leaving half of them there, proceeded with the rest—chiefly the wreck of the British troops—to join hands with the Austrian advanced corps a little to the south of Quesnoy at Englefontaine. ◆Oct. 15, 16.◆ It was, however, to no purpose, for Jourdan, having increased his force to sixty thousand men, attacked Coburg furiously on the 15th and 16th at Wattignies, and, despite very heavy loss to himself both in men and in guns, compelled him to raise the siege of Maubeuge. The Dutch, who had not behaved well in the action, retired to Mons; but Coburg moved his headquarters to no greater distance than Bavai. He was there meditating further attacks upon the French, when the Committee of Public Safety, intoxicated with the success at Wattignies, ◆Oct. 18.◆ ordered Jourdan peremptorily to take the offensive and to drive the hordes of the tyrant into the Sambre, which river, it may be observed, at that moment flowed between the opposing armies. ◆Oct. 22.◆ A second and still more ludicrous order bade him keep his force together, menace several remote points simultaneously, operate in two divisions against Mons and Tournai, and withal act with prudence. Jourdan, however, not daring to attempt the passage of the Sambre, sent on the 20th one division to assail Marchiennes, and another under Souham against all the Allied posts from Cysoing to Werwicq, which last was held by six thousand men under Count Erbach. Both attacks were successful, though Marchiennes was retaken on the 24th; ◆Oct. 22.◆ and on the 22nd Erbach was forced to fall back to Tournai and Courtrai, abandoning even Menin. On the 22nd likewise a division from Cassel attacked Ypres, while another from Dunkirk under Vandamme captured Furnes, and, pressing northward with twelve thousand men, ◆Oct. 24.◆ opened on the 24th the bombardment of Nieuport. The town had been but hastily fortified, and the garrison consisted of only two weak Hessian battalions, a few dragoons, and the British Fifty-third Regiment, in all fewer than thirteen hundred men. For the moment it seemed certain that the British would be cut off from their base.

Murray, foreseeing this, had ordered all stores, beyond what was necessary for the moment, to be removed from Ostend. The Commandant disembarked some of the four battalions which, pursuant to Dundas’s order, were about to sail to England; and Dundas, on hearing of the situation, at once sent Major-general Grey, the appointed Commander of the West Indian expedition, with four more battalions[177] to take charge of the troops at Ostend, giving him full liberty to defend it or to bring away the whole of the eight battalions, as he might think best, without reference to the Duke of York. Meanwhile he clamoured for reports as to the intentions of Coburg, and for explanation of the reasons for the possible abandonment of Ostend; for it had not yet occurred to him that the French, by attacking in overwhelming force, might compel the Commander of the Allies to conform to their plan of operations instead of pursuing his own.[178]

However, matters soon righted themselves. ◆Oct. 24.◆ The French were driven back with heavy loss from Cysoing and Orchies. The garrison of Nieuport held its own gallantly, being reinforced on the 27th by another battalion of Hessians and by a few gunners from Ostend; and meanwhile the Duke of York was hastening back from Englefontaine and Tournai, while Coburg followed him westward with half of his army as far as Solesmes, midway between Cambrai and Landrecies. ◆Oct. 28.◆ On the evening of the 28th Grey arrived at Ostend, and at once sent the Forty-second and four companies of Light Infantry to the help of Nieuport. On the same evening the Duke of York having reached Camphin, a few miles east of Cysoing, detached Abercromby with four battalions and two squadrons[179] northward against the French post at Lannoy. The place was captured with little loss, and the British Light Dragoons did terrible execution in the pursuit of the flying enemy. ◆Oct. 29.◆ On the following night another division, under the Austrian General Kray, made a brilliant attack upon the post of Marchiennes, driving out the French with a loss of nearly two thousand men and twelve guns, at a cost to itself of fewer than one hundred casualties. ◆Oct. 30.◆ Meanwhile the French, on hearing of the Duke of York’s advance upon their flank, had retired from Menin and Ypres; and early on the next morning Vandamme, fearing to be cut off, retreated from before Nieuport, leaving four guns and a quantity of ammunition behind him. So easy was it to change the whole face of affairs by concentrating a compact force against one point and rolling up a cordon from end to end. It is almost comical to observe how at first both sides used the cordon-system; how the French, after abandoning it with success, relapsed into it once more; and finally how the Allies, also abandoning it under British direction, in their turn gained the upper hand.

Throughout this anxious period the interference of Dundas with the operations had been incessant, and his tone by no means the most courteous. The incoherence and folly of his orders may best be judged from a summary of the reply which Murray at length found time to write on the 20th of October. “Let me point out to you,” he wrote, in effect, “that the same messenger brought to me from you, first, advice to besiege St. Quentin; secondly, orders to keep a body of troops at Ostend; and, thirdly, strong exhortations against division or detachment of our force. As to Ostend, if Nieuport holds out, it is safe for the winter; and I see no reason why Nieuport should not hold out. As to St. Quentin, this means taking a train of artillery there in the month of November. It means also that twenty thousand out of Coburg’s twenty-five thousand men must be detached, while the remaining five thousand remain quietly between three fortified towns and a forest, from which fifty thousand men may attack them from all sides at any time. Further, the detached force must draw its subsistence from a distance of forty miles across the whole French army without any other protection than that of those five thousand men.” “I beg pardon,” he continued, “for taking up your time with this kind of argument, which it was not your intention to enter into, but I think it is right to show that, perhaps, people in England are not more infallible in their judgments than those upon the Continent.” Irony so keen sped home even through the dense armour of Dundas’s conceit. “You have not sufficiently weighed the feeling of this country,” he answered, taking refuge in bluster, “if you think that any successes could have counterbalanced the loss of Ostend.” Murray hastened to soothe him by pointing out that the Duke of York, though against his own military judgment, had strictly obeyed the Cabinet’s instructions as to the protection of Ostend, and that it was not Grey who had saved it but the Duke himself, who, before he knew of Grey’s arrival, had forced Vandamme to retire by threatening his communications.[180]

This sharp passage of arms silenced Dundas for the time, though, as will be seen, it taught him little wisdom for the future. Meanwhile, after a few small affairs of outposts, the campaign came to an end. The Emperor of Austria sent orders to Coburg to fight a general action, for no particular object; and the Committee of Public Safety gave the like instructions to Jourdan, in the hope that he might be able to advance to Namur and so to threaten the Austrian line of communication. But neither was in a position to obey. The campaign had been most arduous, as a war of posts must always be, not only from the innumerable minor actions, but from the strain imposed on the troops by constant vigilance and by endless marching to and fro to reinforce the threatened points of the cordon. The losses on the side of the Allies had been great: those of the French had been enormous, not only in men but in material, for the Allies had taken from them over two hundred guns. In brief, both armies were thoroughly exhausted; and yet the Allies had accomplished comparatively little, owing partly to the false plan imposed by England, partly to the false tactics of the Austrian commanders, still more to the misunderstandings and jealousy that make coherent action so difficult in an army composed of many nations. On the Rhine likewise little had been effected. Soon after the victory of Pirmasens the King of Prussia left his army for Posen; ◆Oct. 13.◆ and, though the Austrian General Wurmser drove the French in utter confusion from the lines of Weissenburg, yet, in consequence of faulty dispositions and of the half-hearted co-operation of the Prussian troops, an advantage which might have been decisive was turned to little account. Prussia, in truth, was not anxious to aid Austria in gaining Alsace; while the Polish question, as always, kept the two powers in an attitude of mutual suspicion and mistrust. There was nothing, therefore, left to the Allies but to take up cantonments for the winter, which they accordingly did, while Grey and the whole of the eight battalions with him returned to England. The Allies had missed their chance in Flanders; and the chance was gone for ever.

VOL. IV. BOOK XII. CHAPTER IX

◆1793.◆