The next requisite was that the Austrian, Prussian, and British contingents should each of them possess a siege-train, since, according to Mack, it was essential for the Allies to master every fortress on the French frontier from the Meuse to the sea. Pitt promised this also, on behalf of the British; and then arose the question of commanders. Though well aware that the King’s assent would be wrung from him only by extreme pressure, the Ministers were for recalling the Duke of York and appointing Lord Cornwallis, who had just returned from India, in his place. Herein they were undoubtedly right, for, after all allowance made for the extreme difficulty of his position, the Duke did not shine in the field. The Ministers, however, blamed him especially for the failure before Dunkirk, wherein they themselves were chiefly in fault; and Mack, prompted apparently by the King, found little difficulty in making excuses for the Duke, who from the first had condemned the idea of attacking Dunkirk at all. It was finally arranged that he should retain command of the British contingent, but that he should be kept always in the neighbourhood of the principal army, with a few thousand Austrians attached to his own corps, so as to subordinate him the more completely to the Austrian Commander-in-Chief. This compromise bears so clearly the mark of the British politician that its origin cannot be doubtful. It is of a kind that may serve for the construction of a Cabinet, but it is not suitable for war, and was particularly ill-fitted to the projected campaign. For the rest, Pitt declared himself satisfied that the command should remain with Coburg, who was deservedly most popular among the Austrian troops; and Mack rejoiced the heart of the British Cabinet by announcing that the Emperor would direct the operations as Generalissimo in person. Altogether the results of the conference were considered to be so satisfactory that the King presented Mack with a jewelled sword as a reward for his good service.[211]
The British Government’s satisfaction was soon proved to be premature. The discussion of future operations with the Court of Berlin was, in fact, only a trick of Thugut to keep as many Prussian troops as possible on the French frontier; and the whole intent of the Emperor’s taking personal command was that Coburg and other honest men in his army, who profoundly distrusted his chief adviser, should be kept under proper restraint. Thugut now declared, in answer to Pitt’s proposals, that Austria would not advance a penny towards the subsidies for the Prussian army, being well able to dispense with every part of it beyond the twenty thousand men which formed its contribution towards the forces of the Empire. In fact, he was so madly jealous and fearful of Prussia at this time that he secretly proposed to Russia a scheme March 11. for a joint attack upon her. On learning the Emperor’s decision, King Frederick William ordered Marshal Möllendorf to begin the withdrawal of his troops from the Rhine. Coburg was in consternation, for he knew that, without Prussian help, the execution of the approved plan of campaign would be impossible. He therefore asked the Duke of York to join him in requesting Möllendorf to delay his retirement, and despatched letter after letter to Vienna, adjuring the Emperor in terms of touching devotion and patriotism to send every man that he could raise to Flanders, and to work loyally with Prussia to crush the terrible power of the Revolution while there was yet time. Möllendorf courteously acceded to his desire; but the Prince’s protests fell on deaf ears in the Imperial capital. There were over sixty thousand men ready for service at Vienna, but from his insane dread of Prussian aggression, Thugut would not part with one of them; and Coburg’s only reward for his faithful and disinterested counsel was rude and ungracious rebuke. Just at the critical moment, however, Lord Malmesbury checked the further withdrawal of the Prussian troops, by threatening to break off all negotiation for a subsidy unless they remained on the Rhine until he could receive further instructions from London. This brought the impecunious King to reason, for without English money he was lost. Shortly afterwards the parley was, with Pitt’s sanction, resumed; and there was much haggling over the sphere wherein the Prussian troops should be employed, Frederick William declaring that for operations on the Rhine he would furnish eighty thousand men, but for Belgium not more than fifty thousand. Finally, Malmesbury succeeded in compromising matters; and a treaty was signed at the Hague on the 19th of April, whereby Prussia, in consideration of a lump sum of £300,000 and a subsidy of £50,000 April 19.
April 30. a month, engaged herself to provide sixty-two thousand men, to be employed wherever Great Britain and Holland, their paymasters, should think fit. Ten days later Fox in the House of Commons predicted that this would be a useless waste of money; and it will be seen that he was a true prophet.[212]
Meanwhile Coburg was doing his utmost to prepare his army for the heavy work that lay before it; but the Austrian forces had not improved since the previous year. Heavy losses had brought many young soldiers into the ranks; and, owing to the extreme extension of his line of cantonments, the troops had gained little rest during the winter. The French delivered as many as forty-five petty attacks between the 6th of January and the 26th of March, each one of which meant the setting of many detachments in motion for long and harassing matches. Moreover, owing to the decay of the Emperor’s popularity in Belgium, the people would do little or nothing for the troops; and, Coburg being unwilling to take from the inhabitants what they refused to give, the men suffered greatly from want of food, fuel, and shelter. Money would, of course, have overcome all difficulties, but, though the Prince begged piteously for it, he could obtain none from Vienna; and the consequences were most cruel. “Some regiments,” he wrote in February, “have been without bread for several days, and two contractors have been driven to suicide.” On the other hand, taking a true measure of his enemy, Coburg had issued instructions that the French must be attacked at all times and in all circumstances, and that, even in the defence of a position, at least a third of the men should be kept ready for a counter-attack. But there was one clause in his orders which seems to give the key to many an Austrian defeat. “Men defending entrenchments will sit in the banquette, arms in hand, until the enemy comes within three hundred paces, or even somewhat nearer, and then open a heavy fire.” British troops were accustomed to hold their fire until the enemy was within thirty paces; and hence it was that the French Army of Italy, when they met them in Egypt, found the red coats tougher adversaries than the white.[213]
Among the rest of the Allies matters were little better than with the Austrians. The Hessians in Flanders were far below their proper strength, sickness and constant skirmishes having swallowed up the additional recruits furnished during the winter; while the brigade which had been attached to Moira’s force left one hundred dead and two hundred and fifty invalided in the Isle of Wight, over and above five hundred sick men whom they carried with them to Ostend.[214] As to the British, everything was, as usual, behindhand, though the Duke of York had now a more energetic Chief of Staff than Murray in Colonel James Craig, whom we saw last at Wilmington in 1781. Recognising from his American experience how serious was the Duke’s deficiency in light troops, Craig tried to hire some from Prussia, but without success. There was a difficulty about the British siege-train, for it was discovered, some weeks after the Duke had made requisition for it, that the application had been mislaid at the Office of Ordnance. Though Dundas made profuse promises of British drafts and reinforcements, to the number of five thousand men, not one thousand of these had arrived by the middle of March, and Abercromby’s brigade was quite unfit to take the field. The remount-horses were discovered to be very bad. Artillery-drivers, moreover, the dearth of which had been represented by the Duke for quite six months, were found to be so scarce in England that the Master-General was fain to seek them, though without success, in Hanover. A fresh disappointment arose in the matter of foreign troops, for it proved impossible to obtain three thousand Brunswickers, whom Dundas had counted upon taking over from the Dutch into the British service. Rapidly the forty thousand soldiers promised by Pitt dwindled away; and Craig resigned himself to the inevitable fact that the deficiency would amount to at least ten thousand men. But this was not, to his thinking, the most formidable danger. With a boldness which must have shocked Pitt and Dundas, he wrote to the War Office a very strong and damaging criticism of the cordon-system, and predicted that nothing but misfortune could attend Generals who upon principle preferred dispersion to concentration.[215]
So the month of March passed away, the unhappy Coburg waiting in anxious suspense to know first, when the troops that composed his heterogeneous army would be ready; secondly, what their numbers might be when they were ready; and thirdly, what the Emperor would expect him to do with them when it should please him to honour headquarters with his presence. Meanwhile Coburg had even in February given orders for the contraction of his cantonments; and at the beginning of April, after much shifting, his force occupied the following positions.
The Right or western Wing of the Allied Army, covering maritime Flanders, was entrusted to Clerfaye with a force of Austrians, Hessians, and Hanoverians, who thus occupied the ground formerly entrusted to the British and Dutch. His headquarters were at Tournai, where an entrenched camp had been thrown up. In his front also Orchies and Marchiennes had been strengthened by field-works; and on his right efforts had been made to restore the defences of Menin, Ypres, and Nieuport, though, except in the case of Ypres, with little result. The effective strength of Clerfaye’s army in the field, after deduction of garrisons for the strong places, was about twenty-four thousand men.
On Clerfaye’s left, and connected with it by a detachment of five thousand men under General Wurmb at Denain on the Scheldt, stood the Centre or principal army, consisting of about twenty-two thousand men under the Duke of York, about forty-three thousand men under Coburg himself, and of about nineteen thousand Dutch under the Prince of Orange. The Duke occupied the right with headquarters at St. Amand, Coburg the centre with headquarters at Valenciennes, and the Prince of Orange the left with headquarters at Bavai. It was reckoned that, after providing for garrisons, Coburg could spare sixty-five thousand men for active operations.
The Left Wing consisted of twenty-seven thousand Dutch and Austrians under Count Kaunitz, which were stretched over the space from Bettignies, a little to the north of Maubeuge, to Dinant on the Meuse.
To these must be added fifteen thousand more Austrians under General Beaulieu, cantoned between Namur and Tréves, bringing the grand total of the Allied force to something over one hundred and sixty thousand men, of which at the very most one hundred and twenty thousand were free for work in the field.[216]
It will be noticed that the corps of Clerfaye and of the Duke of York had exchanged the places which they had occupied during the previous year, pursuant to the design of the British Ministers that the Duke of York should be kept under the immediate eye of Coburg. The first result of this interference was to spoil Clerfaye’s temper for the whole campaign; for he judged his force too weak for its task of defending the maritime provinces; and indeed it was only by the positive orders of Coburg that he consented to hold the command.[217] The whole arrangement, in fact, was calculated to cause confusion. It was bad enough that the lines of retreat for the British and Austrians should be in exactly opposite directions; and the obvious course, upon the change of the Duke of York’s station, would have been to have shifted his base to Antwerp. But far from this, not only was his base continued at Ostend, but, to make matters worse, a brigade of British was placed under Clerfaye’s command, and a respectable number of Austrians under the Duke of York’s; so that in case of mishap, not only must the lines of retreat for the right and right centre intersect each other, but neither corps could retire upon its base without leading several of its regiments in the wrong direction.