The intimacy which had existed from boyhood between General Richard Grenville, military tutor to the Duke of York, and Lord Cornwallis, and the correspondence which took place between them, to which we have now access, afford ample means of judging of the real capacity of that royal soldier, to whose charge the military destinies of England, both at home and abroad, were intrusted by the king at such a critical moment.
At seventeen years of age the duke became, per saltum, as the usage is with royal personages, a colonel in the British army. After attending for two or three years the great Prussian reviews, by way of studying his profession, he was, on attaining his majority, raised to the rank of general, and appointed colonel of the Coldstream Guards. Various notices of H. R. H. are to be found in the numerous confidential letters which passed about that time between Cornwallis and Grenville. They were both warmly attached to him; both most anxious for his own sake, and for that of their profession, that he should turn out well.
They describe H. R. H. as brave, good-humoured, and weak; utterly destitute of military talent, incapable of attending to business, much given to drink, and more to dice, hopelessly insolvent, and steeped in debauchery and extravagance of all kinds. In 1790, Grenville writes to Cornwallis in India: “The conduct of a certain great personage, who has so cruelly disappointed both you and myself, still continues to give me great uneasiness; more especially as I see no hopes of amendment.” The duke was at that date twenty-seven years of age.
In 1791, the Duke of York married, and but two years afterwards Lord Cornwallis, on his return from India, actually found his friend Grenville’s unpromising pupil in Flanders, at the head of a considerable English force, acting in conjunction with the Austrians, Russians, and Dutch, against the French. His utter want of military talent, his inexperience, his idleness, and his vices had not prevented his being intrusted by his royal parent with the lives of a large body of brave men, and with the honour of England. Great difficulties soon arose in this allied army, its chiefs mutually accusing each other, possibly not without good reason, of incapacity. At last, a person, whose name is not even now divulged, but who possessed the entire confidence of both Pitt and Cornwallis, wrote as follows, from the British head-quarters at Arnheim, on the 11th Nov. 1794:—
“We are really come to such a critical situation, that unless some decided, determined, and immediate steps are taken, God knows what may happen. Despised by our enemies, without discipline, confidence, or exertion among ourselves, hated and more dreaded than the enemy, even by the well-disposed inhabitants of the country, every disgrace and misfortune is to be expected. You must thoroughly feel how painful it must be to acknowledge this even to your lordship, but no honest man who has any regard for his country can avoid seeing it. Whatever measures are adopted at home, either removing us from the continent or remaining, something must be done to restore discipline, and the confidence that always attends it. The sortie from Nimeguen, on the 4th, was made entirely by the British, and executed with their usual spirit; they ran into the French without firing a single shot, and, consequently, lost very few men,—their loss was when they afterwards were ordered to retire. Yet from what I have mentioned in the first part of my letter, I assure you I dread the thought of these troops being attacked or harassed in retreat.”[7]
Upon the receipt of this grave intelligence, Mr. Pitt at once communicated to the king the absolute necessity of the duke’s immediate recall. His Majesty had no choice but to consent, which he reluctantly did; and H. R. H. returned home, was immediately created a field-marshal, and placed in command of all the forces of the United Kingdom!
Lord Cornwallis’s bitter remark upon this astounding appointment is—“Whether we shall get any good by this, God only knows; but I think things cannot change for the worse at the Horse Guards. If the French land, and that they will land I am certain, I should not like to trust the new field-marshal with the defence of Culford.”[8]
Having thus practically ascertained, at an enormous cost of blood and treasure, that the best-tempered and bravest general cannot command with success a British army in the field, if he happens, as was the case with the Duke of York, to be a weak man of high social position, destitute of military talent and habits of business, and much addicted to pleasure, an examination of Lord Cornwallis’s correspondence during the next few years will show how it fared with the British army when it was directed by such an officer at home.
In expressing his conviction that the French were determined to invade us, Lord Cornwallis proved a true prophet. Late in 1796, a fleet, commanded by Admiral De Galle, sailed from Brest for Ireland, carrying General Hoche and 15,000 men. Furious December gales dispersed the French ships,—only a portion of the expedition reached Bantry Bay; the vessel in which De Galle and Hoche were, was missing. Admiral Boivet, the second in command, hesitated to disembark the troops without the orders of his superiors. The United Irishmen, who had promised instant co-operation, made no sign; the weather rendered even Bantry Bay insecure; and, finally, such of the ships as escaped wreck or capture, straggled back to France, where Hoche and De Galle, after cruising about for many days in fog and storm on the banks of Newfoundland, had had the good luck to arrive before them. On that occasion, our natural defences may indeed be said to have stood us in good stead. But it was not consolatory to those who feared invasion to reflect that such a large force should have succeeded in reaching our shores unperceived and unmolested by the British cruisers; and that, had the weather been tolerable, 15,000 French bayonets would have landed without opposition on Irish ground.
The next year passed over in constant alarms; our information respecting the local preparations of the French being unfortunately very vague. The military defence of England appears to have been at that time mainly intrusted to Sir David Dundas, an unlucky pedant of the German school of tactics, of whom the king and court had the highest opinion, so tightly had he dressed and so accurately had he drilled the Guards. Lord Cornwallis, writing early in 1798 to the Hon. Col. Wesley,[9] says:—“We are brought to the state to which I have long since looked forward, deserted by all our allies, and in daily expectation of invasion, for which the French are making the most serious preparations. I have no doubt of the courage and fidelity of our militia; but the system of David Dundas, and the total want of light infantry, sit heavy on my mind, and point out the advantages which the activity of the French will have in a country which is for the most part enclosed.”