It cannot be said that either of them was sorry to take leave of the other. Even in 1793 their relations had not been too cordial, for the Austrians, in their jealousy, would never allow foreign troops to pass through their fortified towns, even during a forced march; and thus the British were frequently condemned to make long and fatiguing detours.[259] But the betrayal of the Duke of York’s column on the 18th of May, and the subsequent operations, deliberately contrived to hasten the evacuation of the Netherlands, converted the dislike of the British for the Austrians into the bitterest hatred and contempt. At headquarters, again, the presence of a soldier such as Craig, with ideas far more enlightened than those of the Austrians, and with some means of insisting upon them through the medium of the Duke of York, can hardly have contributed to harmony. It may be added that the Austrian troops were as severe in their criticism of their chiefs, and particularly of Waldeck, as were any of the British, proclaiming loudly that the abandonment of Belgium was due to French gold.[260] In fact the Austrian army, between heavy losses and deep distrust of its leaders, was utterly demoralised; nor is it surprising that this should have been so. It is indeed more than probable that, if Coburg had wished to make a stand after the action of Fleurus, his men would not have supported him. Of course Coburg had to bear the responsibility for all this, and to digest as best he might some very bitter reproaches from the Duke of York; yet it seems that in truth he was the person the least to blame. Though as a commander in the field he was slow, unenterprising, enamoured of vicious methods, and possessed of no military quality except that of looking carefully to the wants of his troops, yet he did not lack insight, sound sense, imperturbable calm, and the instinct of honesty and straightforwardness. His name is forgotten in England, though his portrait is still occasionally to be found in English print-shops, showing that at one time he had gained a certain fame, which was destined speedily to perish. It can only be said of him that he was beloved by his men, that he bore the sins of others without complaining, and that he was a loyal servant to an unfaithful master.
VOL. IV. BOOK XII. CHAPTER XII
1794.
While the Allies in the Netherlands were thus giving way on all sides during the months of June and July, the British Government naturally bethought itself of the sixty thousand men which it had agreed to hire from Prussia for operations in that quarter. The Ministers had reckoned that these troops would be ready by the end of May; and accordingly, as has been told, Lord Cornwallis was sent from England to arrange with Marshal Möllendorf as to the part to be taken by the Prussians in the campaign. Visiting the Duke of York on the way, Cornwallis agreed with him that the protection of West Flanders, and, if possible, the siege of Lille, were the matters of most urgent importance; and he formulated his request to Möllendorf June 20. accordingly. He soon discovered that he had been sent upon a fool’s errand. Möllendorf, instead of sixty thousand, had but forty thousand men, deficient in stores and supplies and absolutely wanting in transport, which he declared himself unable to furnish without ready money from England. The real difficulty was that the Allies were all at variance as to the use that should be made of the Prussian troops. England wanted them to aid in recovering West Flanders. Holland would at first have preferred them to remain upon the Rhine, but presently yielded to the demands of England. The Emperor of Austria not only raised strong objections to the march of Prussian troops to Belgium, but claimed thirty thousand of the sixty thousand men for the protection of the Empire, declaring that their removal from the Rhine would expose all Germany to the ravages of the French. Between these conflicting claims Möllendorf found little difficulty in sitting still and doing nothing, which was precisely what the advisers of King Frederick William most desired. By the 18th of June Cornwallis had made up his mind that scanty help was to be expected from Prussia, at any rate during the present campaign; and neither he nor Lord Malmesbury was slow to express very decided opinions as to the ill-faith of the Prussian Court.[261]
This was the situation when the failure of the Austrian attack at Fleurus determined the Emperor to evacuate the Low Countries. That potentate thereupon reversed his language as to the Prussian contingent, and urged that Möllendorf should advance into Belgium; nor did he hesitate, on the 15th of July, to order Coburg still to defend the Austrian Netherlands, though he said nothing about sending reinforcements to enable him to do so. This despicable lying and trickery had, of course, but one object, that of drawing more money from England under false pretences. The English Government, however, though it had learned that no reliance was to be placed on Thugut’s statements or promises, decided in the July 19. middle of July to send Lord Spencer and Thomas Grenville to Vienna, to urge once more the renewal of the offensive in Belgium. So far, therefore, the Emperor seemed likely to gain his point; and since the King of Prussia had shown remarkable weakness in dealing with the insurrection in Poland, Francis had every reason to hope that decisive action in that country would be delayed, until his own and the Russian armies could appear there in sufficient force to dictate the final settlement according to their own desires. The Prussian Ministers, on the other hand, when they learned of the despatch of Spencer and Grenville to Vienna, became nervous lest England should transfer the promised subsidy from her to Austria; and they began to turn their thoughts to the negotiations of a separate peace with France.[262]
Meanwhile, through the energy of Carnot, reinforcements had been found for the French army of July 2–13. the Rhine, which, after a fortnight’s hard fighting on the heights about Kaiserslautern, forced Möllendorf to retire under the cannon of Mainz with a loss of two thousand men and sixteen guns. The Austrian troops on the Rhine thereupon withdrew from the left bank of the river; and the miscarriage of a plan, concerted a fortnight later for recovery of the lost ground, set the Generals of the two nations quarrelling July 28. more bitterly than ever. The end of July brought yet another stroke of good luck to France in the overthrow of Robespierre and the execution of himself, St. Just, and other of his principal colleagues. Robespierre’s latest achievement as a military administrator had been to decree that no quarter should be shown to British or Hanoverians in the field, an order which was disobeyed by the French troops and laughed at by the British. The supreme imbecility, apart from all other faults, of his rule had brought France to the last stage of exhaustion; and, indeed, if the Allies had succeeded in keeping the French armies out of Belgium, the latter must have perished of starvation.[263] July. Robespierre’s death marked the close of the Terror and the beginning of a return to common sense in the matter of administration. The man, however, had lived long enough to waste the energies of the armies of the North in the recovery of the four captured fortresses in the frontier, when they should have been scattering the Allies to the four winds; and thus it came about that the Duke of York enjoyed a few weeks’ respite for the formation of new plans.
It was fortunate for him that it was so, for he now found himself in serious trouble with his army. This was the result of the insane system, allowed by Dundas, of raising men for rank. The regiments despatched to Holland contained only a very few old soldiers mixed with great numbers of recruits, who were utterly without training and discipline. “Many of them do not know one end of a fire-lock from the other,” wrote Craig, “and will never know it.” Six of the battalions had been deprived of their flank-companies, that is to say, of their best men, to make up General Grey’s force in the West Indies; and no sooner did the new levies find themselves released from the crimping-house and the gaol for active service, than they fell to plundering in all directions. The Duke was obliged to issue a very severe order on the 27th of July[264] to call the army to its senses; but, with such officers as had been obtained under Dundas’s scheme, it was impossible to expect the slightest obedience. In the first place the army was lamentably deficient in Brigadiers and Generals of division. Moira had only accepted the command of his force on the condition that he should not serve in Flanders; and though, in view of the perilous condition of the Allies when he landed, he had waived his objections for the time, yet there was another obstacle not so easily to be overcome. Albeit enjoying an independent command of eight thousand men, Moira was almost the junior Major-general of the army. Major-general Crosbie, who was with him, also held a more important command than his seniors, such as Ralph Abercromby and David Dundas, the latter of whom joined the Duke of York at the end of July. Both Moira and Crosbie, therefore, went home, from delicacy towards the feelings of their superiors; and the loss of Moira was bitterly regretted as that of a very able officer who was idolised by his men.
The British troops now consisted of four brigades of cavalry and seven of infantry,[265] making altogether some twenty-five thousand men; but for all these there were, after the departure of Moira and Crosbie, only four Generals—David Dundas, Stewart, Abercromby, and Fox, the last of whom was fully employed as Quartermaster-general. This was the more serious because the commanders of the new battalions, who had been juggled into seniority by the Government and the army-brokers, were not fit to command a company, much less a brigade. Some of them were boys of twenty-one who knew nothing of their simplest duties. Though they went cheerfully into action, they looked upon the whole campaign as an elaborate picnic, for which they did not fail to provide themselves with abundance of comforts; and thus the baggage-columns were filled with private waggons under the charge of insubordinate drivers. The junior officers, who were so scarce that few regiments had as many subalterns as companies, appear in many cases to have been worse than the senior, as is always to be expected when commissions are to be obtained for the asking; nor with bad examples before them were they likely to improve. Thrust into the Army to satisfy the claims of dependents, constituents, importunate creditors, and discarded concubines, many of these young men were at once a disgrace and an encumbrance to the force. Hard drinking, which was the fashion then in all classes from highest to lowest, was, of course, sedulously cultivated by these aspirants to the rank of gentleman; and it was no uncommon thing for regiments to start on the march under charge of the Adjutant and Sergeant-major only, while the officers stayed behind, to come galloping up several hours later, full of wine, careless where they rode, careless of the confusion into which they threw the columns, careless of everything but the place appointed for the end of the march, if by chance they were sober enough to have remembered it. These evils, too, were extremely difficult to check, for in 1794, as in 1744, political interest rather than meritorious service was the road to promotion. While the shameful traffic of the army-brokers and the raising of endless new regiments continued, every officer who could command money or interest was sure of obtaining advancement at home without the knowledge of his chief in the field, and had, therefore, not only no encouragement to do his duty, but an actual reason for avoiding it. Thus the men were very imperfectly disciplined; there were no efficient company-officers to look after them; no efficient Colonels to look after the company-officers; no Generals to look after the Colonels. Craig sought a remedy in begging for more Generals. “We cannot get on,” he wrote, on the 5th of August, “without a good supply and a supply of good. The evil to the discipline of the army increases every day, and is likely to become very serious.”[267]
But the Duke’s difficulties did not end with the defects of his officers and men. It had lately become the practice in time of peace to issue to each regiment the materials for its clothing, to be made up by the regiment itself, a system which had probably been designed to obtain for the Colonels the largest possible profit. Nor must the Colonels be blamed herein, for they were expected to make that profit, which in those days was practically the only emolument open to general officers. It was, of course, impossible for troops in the field to spend three or four months in making up their clothes; and the result was that; the Duke’s army was left almost naked. Moreover, in the hurry of raising innumerable new corps, the responsibility for such details as clothing, accounts, musters, and so forth had been overlooked; the new officers knew nothing of the extremely complex methods of military finance;[268] and the sudden vast increase of business thrown upon agents and officials was greater than they could immediately bear. Finally, quite apart from these failings in respect of the raiment of entire battalions, no effort whatever was made to clothe the recruits who were sent out to fill up the gaps in the various corps. These unfortunate men, on being drafted into the depots in England, received what was called slop-clothing, which signified a linen jacket and trousers; and it is an actual fact that many of them were sent on active service in this dress, without waistcoat, drawers, or stockings. The result was that the Duke of York’s corps was in a worse state in respect of clothing than had been hitherto recorded of any British army.[269]
Another great difficulty, of which Craig had complained again and again, was the want of drivers for the artillery. Lord Moira had brought with him guns but no drivers; and there were but two captains (not enough, as Craig said, to do a fortieth part of the work) at disposal for the superintendence of a huge mass of horses. Thus a new train of artillery, which had been sent out to replace the cannon lost at Tourcoing, became a positive embarrassment. The Commissariat also, as used so often to happen with British armies, was in a very bad state. The men of the new corps of Royal Waggoners had been recruited in London, and were the worst refuse of the population. They were known, in fact, as the “Newgate Blues.” “A greater set of scoundrels never disgraced an army,” wrote Craig, in his usual pithy style. “I believe it to be true that half of them, if not taken from the hulks, have at times visited them.... They have committed every species of villainy, and treat their horses badly.” But the very worst department of all was that of the hospitals, wherein the abuses were so terrible that men hardly liked to speak of them. In December 1793 the inhabitants of one of the English ports had been stupefied by the arrival of one hundred invalid soldiers from Ostend in indescribable distress. They had been on board ship for a week in the bitter wintry weather, without so much as straw to lie upon. Some of them were dead; others died on being carried ashore. No provision had been made for their comfort on landing, and, but for the compassion of the gentry who subscribed money for their relief, the poor fellows might well have perished.[270] Nothing was done to amend this state of things. Dundas’s idea of putting an army in the field was to land raw men on a foreign shore, and to expect discipline, arms, ammunition, clothing, victuals, medical stores, and medical treatment to descend on them from Heaven. Some kind of a medical staff was improvised out of drunken apothecaries, broken-down practitioners, and rogues of every description, who were provided under some cheap contract; the charges of respectable members of the medical profession being deemed exorbitant. “The dreadful mismanagement of the hospital is beyond description,” wrote Craig, “and the remedy beyond my power. Every branch and every fibre of every branch draws a contrary way. I really doubt if there will be any way to get any good from this department but by tying them all together and sending them to you to be changed for a new set.”[271]