DUNKIRK and ENVIRONS
showing
THE POSITION OF THE ALLIES
from 24 Aug. to 6 Sept. 1793.
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. On the Sept. 8. 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. It was thus ten o’clock on the morning of Sept. 9. 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.” This Sept. 11. 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. On the April 12. 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 April 14. General;[161] 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 May 14. of St. Pierre and Miquelon by a small force sent from Halifax; 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, General Bruce embarked about June 10. eleven hundred troops at Barbados on the 10th of June, [162] and sailed for the island with Admiral Gardner’s squadron. After concerting operations with the French June 16. 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 June 21. on the 21st for Barbados, carrying his pusillanimous allies away with him. 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 Aug. 29. difficult to determine which of them they should assail. 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. Before, however, these reinforcements could arrive, he was so far satisfied by Aug. 28. 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.