With such a time-table properly observed, the plan should have succeeded, and between the noon and the evening of that Saturday, the great force which Souham commanded should have been at the mercy of the allies.
Such was the plan and such the time-table upon which it was schemed. Its success depended, of course, as I have said, upon an exact keeping of that time-table, and also upon the net being drawn round Souham before he had guessed what was happening. The second of these conditions, we shall see when we come to speak of “The Preliminaries of the Action,” was successfully accomplished. The first was not; and its failure is the story of the defeat suffered by the Duke of York in particular, and the consequent break-down of the whole strategical conception of the allies.
But before dealing with this it is necessary to establish a disputed point.
I have spoken throughout of the plan as the Duke of York’s. Because it failed, and because the Duke of York was an English prince, historians in this country have not only rejected this conclusion, but, as a rule, have not even mentioned it. The plan has been represented as Mack’s plan, as a typical example of Austrian pedantry and folly, the Duke of York as the victim of foolish foreigners who did not know their business, and it has even been hinted that the Austrians desired defeat! With the latter extravagant and even comic suggestion I will deal later in this study; for the moment I am only concerned with the responsibility of the Duke of York.
It must, in the first place, be clearly understood that the failure of the plan does not reflect upon the judgment of that commander. It failed because Clerfayt was not up to time, and because too much had been asked of the fifth column. The Duke came of a family not famous for genius; he was exceedingly young, and whatever part he may have had in the framing of this large conception ought surely to stand to his credit.
It is true that Mack, the Austrian General, drafted details of the plan immediately before it was carried into execution, and our principal military historian in this country tells us how “on the 16th, Mack prepared an elaborate plan which he designed.”[3]
Well, the 16th was the Friday.
Now we know that on the 11th of May, the Sunday, the Emperor and his staff had no intention of making a combined attack to cut off Souham from Lille, for orders were given to Clerfayt on that day to engage Souham along the valley of the Lys for the purpose of holding the attention of the French, and in the hope of recovering Menin—the exact opposite of what would have been ordered if a secret and unexpected attempt to cut off Souham by crossing further up the river had been intended. It was at the same moment that the Duke of York was sending word to Clerfayt on his own account, to the effect that he intended to submit a plan to the Emperor, and it is worth noting that in the very order which was sent to Clerfayt by the Emperor he was told to refer to the Duke of York as to his future movements.