It would be tedious to describe so feeble an operation. The scene of the engagement is a country much broken by ravines and hollow roads, so that the heavy artillery of some of the columns was with difficulty brought forward; but the French, being in a manner surprised, were manœuvred out of their positions with little trouble or loss. The Duke of York’s and Erskine’s columns alone encountered resistance worth mentioning, but they found little difficulty in turning the French entrenchments, while the Austrian Hussars and a squadron of the Sixteenth Light Dragoons succeeded in cutting down great numbers of the retreating enemy. Altogether the Allies lost fewer than seven hundred killed and wounded, while the action was reckoned to have cost the French over two thousand men, besides from twenty to thirty guns, of which eleven were captured by the British columns. Beyond this the French were little molested in their retreat to Guise, and the trifling success of the day was marred by disgraceful plundering and burning on the part of the Allied troops after the engagement. The British had already shown tendencies in this direction, but had been checked by the Duke of York, who had hanged two offenders, caught red-handed, on the spot, without even the form of a drumhead court-martial. Now, however, the Austrians led the way in misconduct, either led astray by some of their savage auxiliaries, or in aimless revenge for their starvation during the winter; and the British were only too ready to follow the example.[220]
April 18.
On the following day the army halted between Nouvion and Prémont, pushing its outposts further to southward, while detachments of Austrians were posted also at Prisches, a few miles north of Nouvion, and at La Capelle, Fontenelle, and Garmouset to eastward, so as to cover the left flank and rear of the army. Thereupon the Prince of Orange, whose troops had been advanced towards Cambrai on the 17th, countermarched to Le Cateau, and assembling his force at Forest, about three miles to the north April 20. of it, on the 20th fell upon the enemy’s posts over against Landrecies on the left bank of the Sambre. After a hard struggle, which cost him one thousand men and the French twice as many, he carried the French position, and at once opened the trenches April 21. before the town. On the following day Pichegru delivered feeble and incoherent assaults upon the positions of Prisches and Nouvion, and upon the heights to the south of Wassigny, all of which were beaten off with the loss to him of many men and four guns. Further desultory fighting at the advanced April 22. posts on the next day was equally unfavourable to Pichegru, as indeed he deserved for his folly in not concentrating the thirty thousand men, who lay ready to his hand at Maubeuge, for an overwhelming attack.
Stanford’s Geogl. Estabt., London.
CAMPAIGN OF APRIL, 1794.
Coburg then judged it safe to proceed with the siege in earnest, and, withdrawing the covering army to the north, formed it in a huge semicircle around the besieging force. His left wing curved round from the heights that lie to eastward of Landrecies, and between it and the village of Maroilles, southward to Prisches, thence south-east across the Rivierette to Le Sart, and thence by Fesmy to the Sambre, the whole line being strongly entrenched, with several bridges thrown over the Rivierette. The force allotted for the defence of this tract was thirty-two battalions, fifty squadrons, and twenty-six light companies, the left under General Alvintzy, the right under General Kinsky. On the western bank of the Sambre the right wing completed the semicircle, with a total of twenty-six battalions and seventy-six squadrons. The first section of the defences on this side ran westward of Catillon to the Selle, from which stream the Duke of York’s army carried the line north-westward to the road from Le Cateau to Cambrai. This, a broad paved way, runs straight as an arrow over the long waves of rolling ground that lie between the two towns, the undulations rising to their highest at the village of Inchy, upon which the Duke rested his right. The position thus occupied by the Allies was over twenty miles in extent, following a chain of hills of easy slope but seamed to east of Catillon by deep watercourses and hollows, and broken by small copses and enclosures in the neighbourhood of the villages. Westward from Catillon, however, towards Cambrai the hills subside into a broad plain, not unlike Salisbury Plain, except that the undulations are far longer and the acclivities therefore less severe. Covered with crops but unenclosed, its gentle slopes and unseen folds present an ideal field for the action and manœuvres of cavalry.
April 23.
On the 23rd intelligence reached the Allies that fifteen thousand of the enemy had moved out from Cambrai in three columns towards the north-east, were driving in the outposts along the lower Selle, and had even crossed that river, apparently with the object of intercepting the Emperor Francis, who was returning from a visit to Brussels, to rejoin the headquarters of the army. The Austrian General Otto, receiving information of these movements from Major-general Sentheresky at St. Hilaire, between four and five miles north-west of Inchy, at once joined him there; and reconnoitring further north he found the enemy, apparently about ten thousand strong, near the village of Villers-en-Cauchies. Having with him only two squadrons of the Fifteenth Light Dragoons and as many of the Austrian Leopold Hussars, making together little more than three hundred sabres, Otto fell back to St. Hilaire, and sent a message to the Duke of York for reinforcements. Late at night he was joined by the Eleventh Light Dragoons, two squadrons of the Austrian Zeschwitz Cuirassiers, and Mansel’s brigade of the Blues, Royals, and Third Dragoon Guards, the whole numbering ten squadrons.
April 24.