The action may be looked upon as a fortunate escape for the Allies, since it was impossible, humanly speaking, that it could have issued favourably for them. Prince Charles, in seeking to cover both Liége and Maestricht, had attempted too much. His army thus occupied too wide a front, the villages in the centre were too weakly held, there was hardly anywhere a second line of infantry, and the left flank could not be sustained against so superior an enemy. The total loss of the Allies was about five thousand men, which was sufficiently severe considering that but a third of the army was engaged. The casualties of the British were three hundred and fifty killed and wounded, of whom no fewer than two hundred belonged to the Forty-third. The French lost as many men as the Allies, or more, and gained little by the action except eight guns captured from the British, Hanoverians, and Hessians. Had not the Allied troops been far better in quality and discipline than the French, they must have been lost during their retreat with superior numbers both in flank and rear. Both armies presently retired into winter-quarters, and the campaign ended far less disastrously than might have been feared for the Allies.[228]
Sept. 20 Oct. 1.
Oct. 1 12 .
Unfortunately, however, it was not in Flanders only that discredit fell upon the British arms. At the end of September a force of six battalions[229] was sent, under command of General St. Clair, to the coast of Brittany to attack Port L'Orient and destroy the stores of the French East India Company there. The enterprise was conducted with amazing feebleness. The troops landed at Quimperle Bay practically unopposed, but, being fired at on their march on the following day, were turned loose to the plunder of a small town as a punishment to the inhabitants for their resistance. On the following day they reached L'Orient, which the Deputy Governor of the East India Company offered to surrender on good terms. His overtures, however, were rejected and a siege was begun in form; but after a few days of firing and the loss of about a hundred men killed and wounded, St. Clair thought it prudent to retreat; and on the 12th of October the troops re-embarked and returned to England. Anything more pointless than the design or more contemptible than the execution of this project can hardly be conceived, for it simply employed regiments, which were badly needed in Flanders and America, in useless operations which did not amount to a diversion.
1747.
If the cause of Queen Maria Theresa was to be saved, it was evident that great efforts were imperative in the coming campaign of 1747. To meet the vast numbers brought into the field by the French the Austrians promised to have sixty thousand men at Maseyck on the Meuse by April; the British contributed four regiments of cavalry and fourteen battalions of infantry; and it was hoped that the Allies would take the field with a total strength of one hundred and ten battalions, one hundred and sixty squadrons, and two hundred and twenty guns, besides irregular troops, the whole to be under command of the Duke of Cumberland.[230] Unfortunately the weather was adverse to an early opening of the campaign; and the French, by the seizure of Cadsand and Sluys, which were shamefully surrendered by the Dutch, closed the southern mouth of the Scheldt below Antwerp. This was a sad blow to the arrangements for the transport of the Allies, since it brought about the necessity of hauling all the forage for the British overland from Breda. Had Cumberland been in a position to open the campaign before the French, he meant to have laid siege to Antwerp; as things were, he was compelled, thanks chiefly to the apathy of the Dutch, to attempt to bring Saxe to a general action. His last letter before beginning operations has, however, an interest of another kind. It contains a recommendation that Major James Wolfe may be permitted to purchase a vacant lieutenant-colonelcy in the Eighth Foot, that officer having served constantly and well during the past two years as a major of brigade and proved himself capable and desirous to do his duty.[231]
May 15 26 .
June 15 26 .
June 18 29 .
June 19 30 .
June 20 July 1.
The French being encamped between Malines and Louvain, Cumberland collected his troops at Tilburg and advanced straight upon them, encamping on the 26th of May on the Great Nethe, a little to the east of Antwerp, between Lierre and Herenthout. Saxe, entrenched as usual to the teeth, remained immovable for three weeks, and Cumberland despaired of bringing him to action. At length the news that a detached corps of thirty thousand French, under the Prince of Clermont, was on the old ground about Tongres, moved Cumberland to march to the Demer, in the hope of overwhelming Clermont before Saxe could join him. Saxe, however, was on his guard, and on the 29th of June prepared to concentrate the whole of his army at Tongres. Cumberland thereupon decided to take up Saxe's camp of the previous year, from Bilsen, on the head-waters of the Demer, to Tongres. So sending forward Count Daun, afterwards well known as an antagonist of Frederick the Great, with a corps of Austrians to occupy Bilsen, he ordered the rest of the army to follow as quickly as possible on the next day. Riding forward at daybreak of the morrow, Cumberland was dismayed to see the French advancing in two columns from Tongres, as if to fall upon the head of his own army. This was a surprise. Cumberland knew that Saxe was in motion but had not expected him so soon; and indeed Saxe had made a notable march, for his army had not left Louvain until the 29th of June and had traversed little less than fifty miles in two days. The Duke lost no time in setting such troops as were on the spot in order of battle, and hurried away to see if those on the march could be brought up in time to force back the French, and to secure the position of his choice. But the French cavalry was too quick for him, and, before Ligonier could bring up the English horse, had occupied the centre of the ground which Cumberland had intended for himself. Ligonier drew up his squadrons before them to bar their further advance, and the Allied infantry, as it came up, was formed in order of battle, fronting, however, not to eastward, as had been originally designed, but almost due south. In fact, owing to Saxe's unexpected arrival and to deficient arrangements by the staff of the Allies, there seems to have been considerable delay in putting the Allied army into any formation at all, or the French might certainly have been forced back to Tongres. Saxe's rear had not yet come up and the men were fatigued by a long and harassing march; but Cumberland was not the man to fight an action of the type of Oudenarde, and the opportunity was lost. [232]
The position now occupied by the Allies extended from some rising ground known as the Commanderie, a little to the south-east of Bilsen, along a chain of villages and low heights to the Jaar, a little to the south of Maestricht. The Commanderie being the right of the line was held by the Austrians, with a strong corps thrown back en potence to Bilsen to protect the right flank; for it was as important on this field as on that of Roucoux that the retreat into Holland should not be cut off. The ground possessed natural features of strength which were turned to good account, so good account indeed that the Allied right, like the French left at Ramillies, could neither attack nor be attacked. Eastward from the Commanderie the Austrians occupied the heights of Spaeven, together with the villages of Gross and Klein Spaeven; next to them the Dutch formed the centre of the line, while the Hanoverians and British held the villages of Val, or Vlytingen, and Lauffeld, and prolonged the line to its extreme left at the village of Kesselt.
June 21 July 2.
There the Allies lay on their arms until nightfall, while Saxe's weary battalions tramped on till far into the night up to their bivouacs. At daybreak the French were seen to be in motion, marching and countermarching in a way that Cumberland did not quite understand; the fact being that Saxe, as at Roucoux, was doubling the left wing of his army in rear of the right, for the formation of those dense columns of attack which he could handle with such consummate skill. After observing them until nine o'clock Cumberland came to the conclusion that the Marshal meditated no immediate movement and retired to the Commanderie for breakfast; but he had hardly sat down when an urgent message arrived from Ligonier that the enemy was on the point of attacking. Cumberland at once returned and moved the left of his line somewhat forward, setting fire to the village of Vlytingen and occupying Lauffeld with three British and two Hessian battalions. Lauffeld was a straggling village a quarter of a mile long, covered by a multitude of small enclosures with mud walls about six feet high, topped by growing hedges. It was thus easily turned into a strong post for infantry, and cannon were posted both in its front and flanks. The remainder of the British were drawn up for the most part in rear of Lauffeld in order to feed and relieve its garrison, the brigade of Guards being posted in the hedges before Vlytingen. The British cavalry stood on the right of the infantry and joined their line to that of the Dutch.