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, he now concentrated forty-five Oct. 7. 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 Oct. 10. to Cysoing, 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. It was, however, to no purpose, for Jourdan, having increased his force to sixty thousand men, attacked Coburg Oct. 15, 16. 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 Oct. 18. success at Wattignies, 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 Oct. 22. on the 24th; 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 Oct. 24. with twelve thousand men, 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]

Oct. 24.

However, matters soon righted themselves. 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. Meanwhile the French, on hearing of the Duke of York’s advance upon their flank, had retired from Menin and Oct. 30. 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.