But far more brilliant was the success of the Allies on the west, where Chappuis led one column along the high-road from Cambrai to Le Cateau, while a second column of four thousand men advanced upon the same point by a parallel course through the villages of Ligny and Bertry, a little farther to the south. Favoured by a dense fog the two columns succeeded in driving the advanced posts of the Allies from the villages of Inchy and Beaumont on the high-road, and of Troisvilles, Bertry, and Maurois immediately to south of them; which done, they proceeded to form behind the ridge on which these villages stand, for the main attack. Before the formation was complete the fog cleared; and the Duke, observing that Chappuis’s left flank was in the air, made a great demonstration with his artillery against the French front, sent a few light troops to engage their right, and calling all his cavalry to his own right, formed them unseen in a fold in the ground between Inchy and Bethencourt, a village a little to westward of it.[224] The squadrons were drawn up in three lines, the six squadrons of the Austrian Cuirassiers of Zeschwitz forming the first line under Colonel Prince Schwarzenberg, Mansel’s brigade the second line, and the First and Fifth Dragoon Guards and Sixteenth Light Dragoons the third, the whole of the nineteen squadrons being under command of General Otto.[225]
In this order they moved off, Otto advancing with great caution, and skilfully taking advantage of every dip and hollow to conceal his movements. A body of French cavalry was first encountered and immediately overthrown, General Chappuis, who was with them, being taken prisoner. Then the last ridge was passed and the squadrons saw their prey before them—over twenty thousand French infantry drawn up with their guns in order of battle, serenely facing eastward without thought of the storm that was bursting on them from the north. There was no hesitation, for Schwarzenberg was an impetuous leader, and the Cuirassiers had been disappointed of distinction at Villers-en-Cauchies; the Blues, Royals, and Third Dragoon Guards had a stain to wipe away; the King’s and Fifth Dragoon Guards were eager for opportunity to show their mettle; and the Sixteenth Light Dragoons, being the only Light Dragoons present, were anxious to prove that they could do as well as the Fifteenth. The trumpets rang out, and with wild cheering white coats, red coats, and blue coats whirled down upon the left flank and rear of the French. The French guns, hastily wheeled round, opened a furious fire of grape, while the infantry began as furious a fire of musketry; but the charging squadrons took no heed. Mansel, stung by the imputation of cowardice, which had been thrown out to account for his mishap on the 24th, had vowed that he would not come back alive, and dashing far ahead of his men into the thick of the enemy went down at once; but Colonel Vyse, of the King’s Dragoon Guards, taking command of both brigades, led them as straight as Mansel. In a very few minutes the whole mass of the French was broken up and flying southward in wild disorder, with the sabres hewing mercilessly among them.
The misfortunes of the enemy did not end here, for one of their detachments, which had been pushed forward to Troisvilles, was driven back by a couple of British guns under Colonel Congreve, and joined the rest in flight. Meanwhile Chappuis’s second column had advanced a little beyond Maurois with its guns, when the appearance of the fugitives warned them to retire; but in this quarter, too, there was a vigilant Austrian officer, Major Stepheicz, with two squadrons of the Archduke Ferdinand’s Hussars and four of the Seventh and Eleventh British Light Dragoons. Following up the French column he drove its rearguard in upon the main body a little to westward of Maretz, and a few miles further on fell upon the main body also, dispersed it utterly, and captured ten guns. Twelve hundred Frenchmen were killed in this part of the field alone, so terrible was the Austrian hussar in pursuit; two thousand more had fallen under the sabres of Otto’s division, which likewise captured twenty-two guns and three hundred and fifty prisoners. The shattered fragments of the French infantry fled by a wide detour to Cambrai; and Pichegru’s attack on this side was not merely beaten off, but his troops were literally hunted from the field.
So ended the greatest day in the annals of the British horse, perhaps the greater since the glory of it was shared with the most renowned cavalry in Europe. The loss of the Austrians was nine officers, two hundred and twenty-eight men, and two hundred and eight horses; that of the British, six officers, one hundred and fifty-six men, and two hundred and eighty-nine horses, killed, wounded, and missing. The British regiments that suffered most heavily were the Blues and the Third Dragoon Guards, each of which had sixteen men and twenty-five horses killed outright; and the determination of the Third to prove that the harsh criticism of their comrades on the 24th was unjust, is shown by the fact that five out of the six officers injured in the charge belonged to them. Mansel, the Brigadier, who was also their Colonel, died as has been told. Of the Captains one, his own son, was overpowered and taken in a desperate effort to extricate his father, and another was wounded. Of the Lieutenants one was killed and another, if not two more, wounded. The Major in command, however, had the good fortune not only to escape unhurt but to receive the sword of General Chappuis. The total loss of the covering army was just under fifteen hundred men; that of the French was reckoned, probably with less exaggeration than usual, at seven thousand, while the guns taken from them numbered forty-one.
April 27.
On the following day the Emperor ordered his army to devote itself to singing a Te Deum and to solemn thanksgiving, which was very right and proper, but might well have been deferred for forty-eight hours until the full fruits of the victory had been gathered. For although there were four fortresses, Avesnes, Guise, Cambrai, and Maubeuge, within easy distance as a refuge for fugitives, another day’s pursuit would assuredly have swept up many hundred stragglers, while the mere sight of the Allied troops would probably have sufficed to set the French levies running once more. There was, however, better excuse than usual for inaction, for among General Chappuis’s papers had been found evidence that a most formidable stroke was about to fall, if it had not already fallen, upon Flanders. It is now necessary to narrate the course of events in that quarter, namely, on the right or western wing of the Allies.
April 23.
On the 23rd of April a force from Cambrai, acting in concert with that which was beaten on the 24th at Villers-en-Cauchies, had moved northward against Wurmb’s corps of communication at Denain, and, but for the arrival of Clerfaye with some eight thousand men from Tournai, would have driven it across the Scheldt. On the 24th, 26th, and 27th the harassing of the advanced posts of the Allies about Denain continued, and meanwhile the true attack was developed, pursuant to Carnot’s plans, on the extreme left of the April 24. French line. On the 24th Michaud’s division of twelve thousand men marched from Dunkirk, part of it towards Nieuport on the north, the rest upon Ypres to south-east, sweeping back the feeble posts between the two places. Simultaneously Moreau’s division of twenty-one thousand men moved eastward from Cassel upon Ypres, and drove all the outlying detachments on that side to take shelter under the ramparts. Then, leaving some of Michaud’s division at Messines to watch April 25–27. the fortress from the south, Moreau pursued his way eastward against Menin, and surrounded that fortress upon all sides. At the same time Souham’s division of thirty thousand men, under the personal direction of Pichegru, advanced from Lille north-eastward upon Mouscron, drove back upon Dottignies the weak detachment that defended it, and captured Courtrai, which April 26.
April 28. was practically without a garrison. General Oynhausen, however, restored matters somewhat by collecting troops from Tournai at Dottignies and retaking the position of Mouscron, where reinforcements arrived in the nick of time to strengthen him.
The papers found upon Chappuis gave Coburg the key to all these movements; and on the evening of the 26th he sent twelve battalions and ten squadrons under General Erskine from his own army to St. Amand, bidding Clerfaye to recall at once to their proper stations the reinforcements which he had imprudently hurried to Denain. Clerfaye accordingly hastened by forced marches through Tournai to Mouscron, which he reached on the 28th, raising the garrison of that place to ten thousand men, exclusive of about two thousand more in the detached posts of Coyghem and Dottignies. The relief of Menin was his first and most urgent object, and he had fully resolved to attempt it on the 30th; but Pichegru April 29. was too quick for him. On the 29th the two columns under Generals Souham and Bertin fell, the one upon Clerfaye’s front, the other upon his left flank and rear, with a superiority of three to one, and after a hard struggle forced him from his position. The Austrian General seems to have begun his retreat in good order, but the movement speedily degenerated into a flight; and when he rallied his beaten troops at Dottignies he was the weaker by two thousand men killed and wounded and twenty-three guns. Happily six of the battalions sent from the army before Landrecies had by that time reached Dottignies, and, with these to hearten his demoralised force, he retired eastward to Espierres, on the western bank of the Scheldt.
This defeat decided the fate of Menin. The garrison consisted of rather more than two thousand men, chiefly Hanoverians, but in part French Emigrants, which latter if captured could expect nothing but the guillotine. The commandant, Count Hammerstein, therefore decided to cut his way out through the besiegers, and with the fortune that favours the brave, April 30. succeeded during the night of the 30th in forcing his passage northward to Thourout and thence to Bruges. Thus Menin and Courtrai, the two gates of the Lys, were lost, and a gap was broken in the long cordon of the Allies. Along the whole of the right wing there was something like a panic, and the roads were choked with long trains of supplies and stores flying northward to Brussels and Ghent. At Ostend there had lately arrived the Eighth Light Dragoons and the Thirty-eighth and Fifty-fifth Foot, sadly belated, since the infantry, with Dundas’s usual wisdom, had been embarked at Bristol; but General Stewart, the commandant at Ostend, did not think it prudent after Clerfaye’s defeat to send them down country.[226] Happily Pichegru did not pursue his advantage as May 3. he ought. He did indeed push a detachment northward from Menin upon Roulers, which was attacked and defeated with a loss of two hundred men and three guns by three squadrons of the Allied cavalry;[227] but there his activity ceased; and he solemnly sat himself down about Moorseele on the left bank of the Lys, with one flank resting on Menin and the other on Courtrai, as if to allow time for Coburg’s army to come up in his front.[228]