Such was the composition of the force with which the Duke of York now undertook, in concert with the Dutch, to protect Holland, or, in other words, to conduct that most delicate and trying of operations—manœuvring with inferior numbers over a wide front to hold a superior force in check. The first difficulty arose with the Dutch, for the Prince of Orange, apparently enamoured of the Austrian methods, was eager to scatter the troops over a multitude of different points; but this the Duke, with Craig at his back, steadily refused to do. The Prince then urged that the Dutch fortresses should be garrisoned by British troops; but the said fortresses were all in bad condition, and were repairing only with that incredible slowness which was peculiar to the Dutch Government. The Duke, therefore, refused this also; feeling tolerably sure that, if he consented, his battalions would be sacrificed piecemeal for the defence of Holland, while the Dutch looked on without raising a man to help them. The two gates of Holland on the south were Bergen-op-Zoom and Breda, and on the east Grave and Nimeguen, with the fortress of Bois-le-Duc midway between Breda and Nimeguen. The two eastern gates were safe so long as the Austrians retained Maastricht and their position on the Meuse; but the Austrians were not to be trusted. Accordingly, the Duke resolved to garrison Breda, Bergen-op-Zoom, and, if possible, Bois-le-Duc with Dutch troops; himself taking up a position on the north bank of the river Aa, with his right resting on Bois-le-Duc and his left on the great morass called the Peel. From this central point he judged that he could move to the help of any of the Dutch fortresses to southward, cover the province of Gelderland, and keep Grave and Nimeguen within reach in case of mishap on that side.
He was about to march thither from Rozendahl when the news came that Moreau, who was advancing northward along the coast after the capture of Nieuport, had driven back the Dutch posts and had besieged Sluys. The Prince of Orange thereupon besought the Duke to stand fast, producing a letter from Coburg which contained not only an assurance of his ability to hold the passage of the Meuse, but even a hint of possible offensive movements. After some hesitation the Duke consented to a compromise by moving to Osterhout, a little to the north-east of Breda, so as to give some countenance both to Breda and Bergen-op-Zoom. He July 31. marched, accordingly, on the 31st of July, unmolested by the enemy, who were in force around Antwerp; and the Prince of Orange then came to the wise but rather belated decision to evacuate all the Dutch fortresses to the south of the Scheldt. The Duke, therefore, Aug. 8. lent him a strong detachment of his men to hold the communications between Breda and Bergen-op-Zoom, so as to release Dutch troops to cover the retreat of these garrisons and to relieve Sluys.[272]
Just at this moment Henry Dundas, hearing of Moreau’s advance, and having by chance a few troops unemployed, decided to send a naval armament to Flushing, together with five battalions under Lord Mulgrave, for the defence of the Dutch territories in that quarter. As was his rule in such cases, Dundas kept Mulgrave under his own immediate command, but withal instructed him not to go against any order of the Duke of York,—an arrangement admirably calculated to paralyse the force and to raise discord between the commanders. Mulgrave, who had started Aug. 17. apart from his troops, reached Flushing on the 17th, and finding that none of them had arrived, occupied himself in examining the situation. He was soon satisfied that the French had no further designs for the campaign than to take Sluys and Flushing, as ports from which to ship the harvest of the Austrian Netherlands to France. Meanwhile, the Dutch no sooner heard of his coming than they suspended their operations for the relief of Sluys, in the hope that Mulgrave would do the work for them; and the French, having also full intelligence of everything, increased their force at Sluys to twenty-five thousand men, which made the relief practically impossible. Dundas, meanwhile, wrote with the greatest confidence of the success of that operation, which his own interference had condemned to failure; announcing also that Mulgrave’s force, which had not yet even arrived at Flushing, would be required elsewhere in a month. At length the five battalions sailed into Flushing on the Aug. 26. 26th, nominally thirty-two hundred strong, and actually with the following qualifications for immediate service in the field. The Thirty-first[273] was composed chiefly of recruits, of whom two hundred and forty were unarmed. The Seventy-ninth had but one officer to each company, and but eight rounds of ball-ammunition a man. The Eighty-fourth had twenty rounds a man, but, the regiment having never ceased marching from quarter to quarter ever since it had been raised, the men were wholly untrained. The Eighty-fifth had thirty rounds a man, but half of the soldiers had never had arms in their hands. The Thirty-fourth alone appears to have been fit and ready for work. Fortunately there was no work for them to do, for Sluys surrendered on the very day of their arrival; and Mulgrave, after landing them at Flushing to learn the elements of their business, suggested that at least two of the battalions had better remain there and be made into soldiers, instead of sailing to certain annihilation in the West Indies. To this Dundas agreed, for he purposed to take from the Duke of York ten of Moira’s battalions, and was well content to leave him inferior troops in their place. Meanwhile, as a specimen of utter imbecility, this despatch of Mulgrave’s detachment has few equals even in English military annals. The mere promise of help was sufficient to relax the exertions of the Dutch. The troops were embarked so late as to miss the object of the expedition, and, even if they had been embarked in time, they were of quality too poor to have accomplished it. In brief, the whole enterprise bears the unmistakable mark of Henry Dundas.[274]
Meanwhile Spencer and Grenville had throughout August pursued their negotiations at Vienna with very indifferent success. One point Thugut was ready to concede, namely, the recall of Coburg, who indeed resigned on the 9th of August, being worn down in body and mind, and thoroughly disgusted with his command. But Thugut absolutely refused to order troops from the Rhine to Belgium, and demanded the guarantee of a loan of three millions for the present campaign besides a new subsidy for the next. It was necessary to refer these pretensions to the Cabinet in London; and long before the reference had even been made, the Aug. 12, 14. Austrian Council of War ordered Clerfaye, who was to succeed Coburg, to devote all his efforts to the defence not of Belgium but of Luxemburg, Mainz, and Mannheim. But though the Allies were idle, the French were not; and, thanks in part to a threat of the Committee of Public Safety to massacre the garrisons unless the fortresses were delivered, they had recovered both Quesnoy and Landrecies by the 15th of August. The fall of Sluys, and the recall of the troops detached to Walcheren also enabled Pichegru to begin a forward Aug. 27. movement, and on the 27th he advanced from Antwerp north-eastward to Hoogstraeten, driving in all the Dutch posts, and seeming to threaten the turning of the Duke of York’s left. The Duke, thereupon, on Aug. 30. the advice of a Council of War, retired on the 30th to his chosen position between Bois-le-Duc and the Peel, while Pichegru sent a strong detachment eastward to occupy Einhoven in force.[275]
Meanwhile a message had reached the Duke of York from Clerfaye, suggesting a general forward movement to save the beleaguered cities of Valenciennes and Condé; and on the 1st of September a conference was Sept. 1. held between the Allied commanders at Bois-le-Duc to consider the proposal. It was not yet known to them, apparently, that Valenciennes had already surrendered to the French on the 29th of August, and that Condé was at the last gasp; and there was some talk among them of an advance of the British to recapture Antwerp, while the Austrians on the Meuse protected their rear. The news that both fortresses had fallen, and that the French forces thus liberated for the field were hastening to the front, naturally deranged this plan; and though the Duke was anxious still to make the attempt, Craig perceived little hope of success, chiefly because he could not trust the Austrians to give hearty co-operation. In truth, the Allies had let slip the favourable moment through their own dissensions, and the opportunity was not Sept. 4. to recur again. On the 4th of September Pichegru marched northward from Hoogstraeten to Meerle, as if to threaten Breda, but on the 10th turned eastward, after leaving a detachment before that place, and on the 12th reached Oosterwyk. On the following day Sept. 13. he attacked the Duke’s advanced posts at Bokstel, and on the 14th captured them, making two battalions of Darmstadt-Hessians prisoners. This was an unpleasant mishap, for these troops had hitherto always behaved admirably; but, though they complained of the Duke for not supporting them, the Duke in his secret report declared them to have been panic-stricken. Alive, however, to the importance of regaining this post and the line of the Dommel, the Duke ordered Sept. 15. Abercromby forward next day with ten battalions and as many squadrons of British, to recover the lost ground. The movement was very nearly disastrous, for Abercromby only just missed falling into the midst of Pichegru’s main army, which was on march to the eastward; but quickly apprehending the situation, he withdrew his troops in excellent order with the loss of about ninety men, two-thirds of them prisoners. This skirmish is notable both because it brought Colonel Arthur Wellesley of the Thirty-third under fire for the first time, and because it led to the trial of four officers, three of them belonging to a most distinguished regiment, for cowardice. This was a healthy sign, for it showed that the older officers were bent on ridding the Army at the earliest possible moment of the worthless comrades imposed on them by Dundas.[276]
On the same day the Duke received information that this demonstration against Bokstel was but a feint, the main force of the enemy, reported to be eighty thousand strong, being in motion to turn his left. His intelligence seems to have been extremely vague and imperfect at this time; but being dissatisfied with his position, to which, owing to dry weather, neither the Peel nor the Aa afforded adequate protection, he decided that the retention of it was not worth the risk of being cut off from his retreat to the Maas. He therefore retired Sept. 16. on the next day to that river, crossed it at Grave and took up a position on the north bank, with his headquarters at Wychen, a few miles to the north of Grave. It then remained for him to make his dispositions to defend the line of the river, the unprotected portion of which extended for some seventy-five miles from Fort Loevestein, at the western end of the Bommeler Waert[277] on to the west, to Venloo on the east. Any effective defence with the forces at his disposal was impossible, and the Duke therefore arranged that all troops in British pay should be sent to him from West Flanders, and that the Dutch, who were sitting inactive behind their fortresses, should send men to repair and to defend Crevecoeur and Bommel.
The Duke’s next effort was to concert offensive operations with Clerfaye, who lay on his left; and he had the greater hopes of a favourable issue, since the new Secretary at War, William Windham, was already on his way to that officer on a mission from London. But the Austrian Commander also had been unfortunate. Sept. 17–18. On the 17th and 18th General Latour’s corps of seven thousand men, which guarded his left on the Ourthe, was driven back by a greatly superior force of Jourdan’s right wing under General Schérer; whereupon Clerfaye, who had watched the whole process without moving one soldier of his forty thousand to save Latour, immediately retired behind the Roer, leaving eight thousand men as a garrison for Maastricht. The Austrian General therefore rejected all idea of the offensive as impossible, but consented to maintain communication with the Duke if he would extend his left to Venloo, which, like all the Dutch fortresses, was in miserable repair and without a sufficient garrison. The Duke agreed, and so the matter was arranged; Clerfaye, however, giving the Duke clearly to understand that if his right were turned he should cross the Rhine.[278]
The Duke thereupon made his plans for protecting a line of from seventy-five to ninety-five miles of river with a force of thirty thousand soldiers of all ranks, the sick list having by this time claimed close upon seven thousand men of his army. His right from the Bommeler Waert to Grave was held by about five thousand Hessians, their main body being stationed at Alfen, a little to the east of the island; Grave was held by two Dutch battalions; east of Grave four brigades of infantry and two of cavalry lay about Mook; Abercromby, with two more brigades of infantry and one of cavalry, stood higher up the river at Gennep; and six thousand Hanoverians under Walmoden prolonged the line from Gennep to Venloo, with their main body at Well. Craig, however, did not deceive himself as to the inevitable issue, being firmly convinced that there was an understanding between the Austrians and French; wherein he appears to have been correct.[279] “We shall have to fall back behind the Waal,” he wrote; “depend on it, this will happen in a few days ... and in a fortnight the Austrians will be behind the Rhine.” Jourdan followed up the Austrians, leaving Kléber to invest Maastricht; whereupon Clerfaye, who had sixty thousand men behind the Roer, forthwith called loudly on the Duke of York to relieve that fortress. Grenville at the Foreign Office, anticipating something of the kind, had already despatched urgent representations to Vienna requiring the concurrence of the Austrians in this operation, but of course to no purpose. The Duke, by advice of Abercromby and Walmoden, sent Craig to stir up Clerfaye, and, that the Austrians might have no pretext for complaint, moved sixteen thousand men at great Oct. 2. risk towards Venloo. But all was perfectly useless, for Clerfaye declined to budge. An attack of the French on his position on the 2nd of October gave him the excuse that he wanted; and he immediately retreated across the Rhine.[280]
Sept. 22.
Pichegru meanwhile, on the 22nd of September, had completely invested Bois-le-Duc, and sent two divisions forward to line the Maas over against the Duke of York’s position. The French were now in the greatest distress from want of provisions, which had to be brought from Antwerp in waggons, and that by long detours in order to circumvent the Dutch fortresses. It was therefore imperative for Pichegru to possess Bois-le-Duc as an advanced base; and the place was the more difficult for him to master since he had no siege-artillery. Unfortunately the cowardice of the Dutch delivered to him all that he wanted. On the Sept. 24.
Sept. 28. 24th he opened a feeble bombardment with his fieldpieces upon Fort Crevecoeur, which guarded the passage into the Isle of Bommel from the south; and on the 28th, the place, though amply provisioned and in a good state of defence, was yielded up by the Dutch Commandant. Thereby Pichegru gained not only forty-two heavy guns, but the command of the sluices whereby the inundation of Bois-le-Duc could be let flow or drawn off. The loss of Crevecoeur did not improve the good feeling of the British towards the Dutch, who, from the first entry of the Duke of York into their country, had showed the bitterest animosity against his men. Intelligence now reached the Duke Sept. 30.
Oct. 3. that a general insurrection of the French party in the United Provinces was imminent; and three days later the retreat of Clerfaye compelled him to retire northward across the Waal, over which he had already thrown a bridge of boats. The movement was conducted with some confusion owing to the mismanagement of the Duke’s Staff; but Pichegru suffered the Allies to shuffle themselves without the slightest molestation into their appointed positions. The Hessians held the Bommeler Waert on the south bank of the Waal, and the line of the Linge over against it on the north bank. At the village of Geldermalsen on the Linge the right of the British joined the left of the Hessians, extending from thence eastward along the Waal to the road from Nimeguen to Arnheim; where the Hanoverians carried the line to its end at the parting of the Waal and the Leek, maintaining communication with Clerfaye’s Austrians at Emmerick. Nimeguen, though ill fortified and provided for, was also held on the southern bank of the Waal.