This first mishap, then, must be carefully noted as one prime lack of synchrony in the origins of the combined movement, and a first clear cause of the misfortune that was to attend the whole affair. The delay of the fifth column was the chief cause of the disaster.
Meanwhile, another failure to synchronise, and that a most grave one, was taking place miles away in the north with Clerfayt’s command beyond the Lys.
It is self-evident that where one isolated and distant body is being asked to co-operate with comrades who are in touch with the commander-in-chief, and with each other, the exact observation of orders on the part of that isolated body is of supreme importance to the success of the combination. They, all lying in much the same region and able to receive and transmit orders with rapidity, may correct an error before it has developed evil consequences. But the isolated commander co-operating from a distance, and receiving orders from headquarters only after a long delay, is under no such advantage. Thus the tardiness of the fifth column was, as we have seen, communicated to the fourth, and the third, second, and first, all in one line, could or should have easily appreciated the general situation along the Scheldt. But the sixth body, under Clerfayt, which formed the keystone of the whole plan, and without whose exact co-operation that plan must necessarily fail, enjoyed no such advantage, and, if it indulged in the luxuries of delay or misdirection, could not have its errors corrected in useful time. A despatch, to reach Clerfayt from headquarters and from the five columns that were advancing northward from the valley of the Scheldt, must make a circuit round eastward to the back of Courtrai, and it was a matter of nearly half a day to convey information from the Emperor or his neighbouring subordinates in the region of Tournai to this sixth corps which lay north of the Lys.
Now it so happened that Clerfayt, though a most able man, and one who had proved himself a prompt and active general, woefully miscalculated the time-table of his march and the difficulties before him.
He got his orders, as I have said, at ten o’clock on the Friday morning. Whether to give his men a meal, or for whatever other reason, he did not break up until between one and two. He then began ploughing forward with his sixteen thousand men and more, in two huge columns, through the sandy country that forms the plain north of the River Lys. He ought to have known the difficulty of rapid advance over such a terrain, but he does not seem to have provided for it with any care, and when night fell, so far from finding himself in possession of Wervicq and master of the crossing of the river there, the heads of his columns had only reached the great highway between Menin and Ypres, nearly three miles short of his goal. Three miles may sound a short distance to the civilian reader, but if he will consider the efforts of a great body of men and vehicles, pushing forward through the late hours of an afternoon by wretched lanes full of loose sand, and finding the darkness upon them with that distance still to do, he would perceive the importance of the gap. If he further considers that it was only the heads of the columns that had reached the high road by dark, and that two great bodies of men were stretched out two miles and more behind, and if he will add to all this the fact that fighting would have to be done before Wervicq, three miles away, could be occupied, let alone the river crossed, he will discover that Clerfayt had missed his appointment not by three miles only in space, but by the equivalent of half a day in time.
Even so he should have pushed on and have found himself at least in contact with the French posts before his advance was halted. He did not do so. He passed the night in bivouac with the heads of his columns no further south than the great high road.
So much for Clerfayt. The Republic would have cut off his head.
While Clerfayt was thus mishandling his distant and all-important department of the combined scheme, the corresponding advance from the valley of the Scheldt northward was proceeding in a manner which is best appreciated by taking the five columns seriatim and in three groups: the first group consisting of the first column (Bussche), the second group of the second and third columns (Otto and York), the third group of the fourth and fifth (Kinsky and the Arch-Duke).
I
THE FIRST COLUMN UNDER BUSSCHE