This heavy blow to the French right wing offered a fair occasion for the Allies to renew the offensive in Western Flanders; and the Duke of York urged this step upon his colleagues with all his might. The British Government too, reckoning that the troops, promised by Prussia in return for a British subsidy, must be nearly ready, decided to send out Lord Cornwallis to concert operations with Möllendorf, and directed him also to consult the Emperor and the Duke of York on his way to the Prussian Headquarters. But, as has already been told, King Frederick William was occupied rather with Poland than France at the moment; and he had also been much irritated by certain dispositions which had been proposed for his army by Mack in the middle of May. “I am astonished at the fashion in which Mack thinks to make use of my troops,” wrote the King. “Does Mack imagine that we can live on air?” echoed Möllendorf;[246] both of them being secretly delighted with so good an excuse for remaining inactive. Then suddenly, on the May 29. 29th of May, the Allied Camp at Tournai was thrown into consternation by the announcement that the Emperor was about to return to Vienna. Aided by the defeat of the 18th, Thugut had succeeded in persuading his imperial master to abandon the Austrian Netherlands; and even Mack, the unpopular Quartermaster-general, had supported him by recommending not only the evacuation of the country but the conclusion of peace with France.
The truth was that jealousy of Prussia had prevailed over all other considerations, and that the Emperor had decided to offer help to the Empress Catherine in quelling the Polish insurrection. He hoped, however, at the same time to delude Prussia into keeping thirty thousand men upon the Rhine, and England into furnishing a subsidy for the ostensible prosecution of the war with France; and it was therefore imperative upon him to conceal his intentions. He accordingly gave out that the object of his departure was to hasten the recruiting of his forces; and in his final letter to Coburg, who very unwillingly retained the command, he gave him only vague instructions to adapt his action to the exigencies of the campaign and to save his troops as much as possible. But this duplicity deceived no one, and the less because Waldeck, before he had succeeded Mack as Chief of the Staff, had openly declared that the war in Belgium must be ended. The Austrian troops were profoundly discouraged, and two-thirds of the officers asked permission to retire. They can hardly be blamed, for the succession of murderous actions fought by the Allies against the French on the northern frontier of France, between the 17th of April and the 22nd of May 1794, has few parallels in the history of war. For a month Austrians, British, and Germans had contended almost unceasingly against superior numbers, slaying or taking, not without heavy loss to themselves, French soldiers by the ten thousand, and capturing French cannon by the score. Yet all had been to no purpose, partly because the leaders had deliberately chosen a foolish plan of operations, partly because they had steadily refused to follow up their successes, partly because on the 18th of May they had held two-thirds of the army inactive within sound of the guns which were overwhelming their comrades. The bravest men will not fight upon such terms. They will not be butchered to serve the intrigues of politicians whose dishonesty would disgrace a sergeant, and of potentates whose incapacity would disqualify a corporal. In days to come Austria May 29. was to pay dearly in Italy for the 29th of May 1794.[247]
Immediately before the Emperor’s departure came news from Kaunitz that the French had again crossed the Sambre in force; which compelled Coburg to send him large reinforcements, and thus to weaken the right and centre of the Allies in order to strengthen their left. At the same time, for the sake of keeping the Dutch in good humour, Coburg was obliged to give the supreme command in that quarter to the Crown Prince of Orange, to the natural disgust of Kaunitz, who had shown much ability and achieved great successes. The great safeguard, however, to eastward was that St. Just insisted upon controlling the French operations; and it need not be said that against such an adversary even the Prince of Orange was victorious. But far more serious were the movements of the French on the western flank. Apprised of Coburg’s detachment of troops to the Sambre, hoping still to further Carnot’s projects for invasion of England, and above all conscious of the advantage offered to French tactics by the enclosed country of Western Flanders, Pichegru determined to prosecute his operations on that side. Accordingly, leaving between thirty and forty thousand men in positions about Mouscron and Menin to hold Coburg in check, he marched with about the same June 1. number on Ypres. On the 1st of June about fifteen thousand men surrounded the fortress on the west and south, and opened their first parallel; while some twenty thousand more under Souham took post about Passchendaele, about six miles to the north-east, to cover the siege from Clerfaye, who was lying at Thielt. On that same day, by a curious irony, Lord Howe defeated the Brest fleet, taking eight French ships and sinking two more. This action, in which the regiments on the fleet, and particularly the Sixty-Ninth,[248] played no inconspicuous part, closed for the present all Carnot’s projects of an invasion.
June 4.
The event, however, in no way disturbed the plans of Pichegru. On the 4th of June Clerfaye contrived to pass two battalions into Ypres to strengthen the garrison; but he declared himself unable, with the fifteen thousand men that remained to him, to relieve the place unless he were reinforced. By express command of the Emperor, who had lingered at Brussels on his homeward journey, Coburg sent him some ten thousand men in two detachments, reckoning that, after the recent victory on the Sambre, he could safely draw a few troops from that quarter. Clerfaye, however, continued to display the sluggishness which had characterised his conduct from the beginning June 6. of the campaign. On the 6th, before his reinforcements had reached him, he made a feeble advance against Souham in four columns, and was of course June 10. unsuccessful; and on the 10th, when his force had been raised to over twenty thousand men, he was assailed and defeated with loss by Souham before he could make up his mind to act. On that same day Coburg had designed to make a diversion in Clerfaye’s favour, by an attack on Mouscron, upon a plan calculated so exactly to expose the Duke of York’s column to destruction, as on the 18th of May, that the Duke refused to accept it until it was altered. This, however, was of small importance, for the French, having perfect information of the intended movements, appeared in every direction in such force that the enterprise was abandoned. The state of things at the Austrian headquarters was indeed almost beyond belief. Insensible to all ideas of duty and discipline, the young staff-officers, described by Craig as “in general the most contemptible of puppies,” had talked openly of the projected movement in the coffee-houses at noon, though the Duke of York received no information of it until ten hours later, nor any orders until four o’clock on the next morning. “Mack used to keep these gentry in order,” wrote Craig, “and, had he been here, the prison would have been full of them next day; but indeed it would never have happened.” Meanwhile Clerfaye remained so incurably supine that the Duke of York more than once entreated Coburg to entrust the relief of Ypres June 12.
June 13. to himself, but in vain. Roused by repeated orders to attack, Clerfaye at last moved against Souham in five columns, gained some advantage at first, captured ten guns, and then as usual sat still until Souham had gathered troops sufficient for a counter attack, when he immediately retired to his old position at Thielt.
This sealed the fate of Ypres, the key of maritime Flanders, the chief support of the right flank of the Allies, the bulwark which protected the British communications with Ostend. The Duke of York pleaded hard for a last effort to save it, by a march of the whole army to join Clerfaye; but without success. “The truth is,” wrote Craig, “that the Austrian army is incapable of further action. The men are disheartened and the officers disgusted and disunited.” It was finally decided that, to cover Ostend and the Dutch frontier, Clerfaye should take up a position between the Lys and the Scheldt about Deynse, some ten miles to the south-west of Ghent; keeping half of his force between Bruges and Ostend, and sending the Eighth Light Dragoons, Thirty-eighth and Fifty-fifth, which had formed part of his force, to Ostend. “We are too weak by ten thousand men to hold this defensive position,” wrote Craig; “if the French see their chance and push Clerfaye, they will force us to abandon this position about Tournai and will pass the Scheldt in spite of us; and then ten to one we shall find ourselves separated from him and beaten in detail.... Sooner than hold the defensive position I would concentrate the whole army, eighty thousand men, march to the Sambre, attack them at any risk and march back again.... You may expect to hear from us soon in Holland.” Clearly there was one among the despised British officers who could have taught the Austrians a lesson.[249]
The situation was indeed a desperate one. The Austrians, having taken no pains to restore the fortifications of Tournai, had thrown up an entrenched camp for its protection on the western side. These lines extended from the city southward along the Scheldt to Maulde, and required so many men for their defence that few could be spared for active operations. Some seven thousand Frenchmen at Mons-en-Pévèle kept the left of the Allies in continual alarm for the safety of Orchies, which was the key of Maulde and of the passage of the Scheldt at Mortagne; for if that passage were forced, the communication between Coburg and the army of the Sambre would be endangered. A little to the north of Mons-en-Pévèle was the entire garrison of Lille, and still further to the north, between Lille and Menin, stood from twenty to thirty thousand more French troops. Behind this screen to westward, from fifty thousand to sixty thousand of the enemy were engaged as the besieging and covering armies at Ypres; and far beyond them to the north lay the right wing of the Allies under Clerfaye, stretched in a weak attenuated line from Ostend to the Lys, and only maintaining communication with Tournai by the circuitous route of the Scheldt. On the eastern flank the French had now some seventy-five thousand men on the Sambre, with a capable leader in Jourdan, albeit one still hampered by the interference of St. Just; and this was the only quarter in which recent events had gone favourably for the Allies. Such a situation could not last long, and the strain upon June 16. Coburg must have been cruelly severe. On the 16th, however, there came a gleam of hope. The French on that day again passed the Sambre, but for the fifth time were driven back with heavy loss; and Coburg, having summoned four battalions from that June 18. quarter, determined on the 18th to march and join with Clerfaye in a final attempt to relieve Ypres. The troops were already in motion, when in the evening the news came that the French had crossed the Sambre for the sixth time, and successfully invested Charleroi. Thereupon the enterprise was abandoned. June 19. On the following day Ypres surrendered, and thus Carnot’s original plan of turning both flanks of the Allies began, after two months of murderous fighting, to accomplish itself.
Enabled by the fall of Ypres to turn the whole of his attention to eastward, Coburg at once proposed that he should march with all the Austrian troops to Charleroi, and leave the Duke of York to guard the line of the Scheldt from Tournai to Condé. The Duke answered that his instructions were to keep the whole of the troops in British pay together, but that, if ordered, he would gladly lead the whole of them with Coburg to the Sambre. Since, however, his force was absolutely inadequate to guard the line of the Scheldt, he insisted that, if it were left behind, an Austrian garrison should remain at Tournai, and that he himself should take up a position on the eastern bank of the Scheldt between that city and Oudenarde, so as to ensure his retreat in case of mishap.
The offer to march to the Sambre was fair, and it is difficult to understand why Coburg did not embrace it; for, if the battle on the Sambre were lost, it would obviously be impossible for the Duke’s troops to remain isolated in Flanders. Coburg did, however, reject it, though he consented to station about five thousand Austrians under General Kray between Denain and Orchies, promising that, if he succeeded in forcing back the enemy on the Sambre, he would return without delay, but that, in the event of his failure, he should not expect the Duke of York to maintain his position on the Scheldt. He also took the significant step of transferring the Austrian hospitals and stores at Valenciennes, as well as the magazines about Tournai, to Brussels and Antwerp; the removal of the stores at Brussels having begun some time June 21. before.[250] Finally, on the 21st, he marched away; and the Duke, since the corps in British pay had now shrunk to seven thousand men, contracted his quarters, and took up a new position closer to Tournai.
But meanwhile the news that Ostend was in danger had, as usual, stirred Dundas to unwonted exertion in England. He still made a fetish of the place, and his original intention seems to have been to defend it, without any particular reference to the Duke of York’s operations. On the 17th of June, therefore, he ordered Lord Moira’s force in the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands to sail for Ostend at once, together with drafts of recruits and three fresh regiments from Ireland, making in all a reinforcement of about ten thousand men. On the 20th Moira’s troops embarked, and on the 21st the Eighth, the Forty-fourth, and the recruits arrived at Ostend. The drafts, it must be remarked, arrived without arms or military appointments of any kind; and it was only a fog at sea that prevented a whole regiment, the Ninetieth, from being also landed there without either arms or clothing, Dundas having ordered it to embark without enquiry as to these details.[251] But Pichegru meanwhile did not remain idle, and leaving Ypres on the 20th marched upon Clerfaye’s position at Deynse. The Austrian General, after a short June 23. defence of his entrenchments, retired, with the loss of not a few men and three guns, first to Ghent, and then beyond it, finally taking up a position on the north side of the canal that runs from Ghent to Sluys, June 24.
June 25. where he was presently joined by his detachments from Bruges. On the 25th of June there arrived at Ostend, after a voyage of nineteen days from Cork, one squadron of the Fourteenth Light Dragoons and the Thirty-third regiment, the latter under the command of an officer whose name it still bears, but who was then an impecunious younger son of five-and-twenty, possessed indeed of some skill in playing the violin, but still distinguished by no higher title than June 26. that of Colonel Arthur Wellesley. On the morrow Moira with the last of the reinforcements[252] also reached Ostend, where he found an advanced guard of the French within four miles of the town, a large force of several thousand men close behind it, and the Commandant very wisely embarking his garrison with a view to retreat. The whole district was in a state of panic; but Moira promptly landed the whole of his men, and having observed the difficulties of defending Ostend, and the military worthlessness of the place, quietly selected his fighting ground outside it. “I am not at all satisfied with my position,” he wrote calmly to Dundas, “but since you appear to attach importance to the town I will do my best to maintain it.” “The defences are so detestable,” he added cheerfully to Nepean, “that I shall go into the open field if we must come to blows. If you are to lose everything it does not signify if you are beaten into the bargain.”[253] It is dangerous for a General, be he even so able as Moira, to address an English Minister of War in this strain; for, in the event of mishap, the words may be brought up as evidence against him in Parliament to prove that he was reckless, careless, neglectful, or despondent.