Notwithstanding this public testimony to the worth of the large army which surrounded and captured the handful of French invaders of 1798, the information which we now glean from The Cornwallis Correspondence serves but little to establish the Duke of York’s character as a successful military administrator, if a commander-in-chief is to be judged of by the effective state of the officers and troops under his direction.
Tired of the parade-ground and the desk, or, possibly, feeling that he did not shine at them, H. R. H. again tried his hand at active campaigning in 1799, and again failed. On the 9th of September of that year he once more sailed for Holland, and was actually permitted to assume the direction of the most considerable expedition that ever left the British shores. In conjunction with Russia, its object was to expel the French from Holland. After several bloody battles, fought with doubtful success, the duke found himself, in less than five weeks, so situated as to render it advisable for him to treat with the enemy. He proposed that the French should allow the allied army under his command to re-embark, threatening to destroy the dykes and ruin the surrounding country if his proposal was not entertained. After some discussion the French agreed to the re-embarkation of the allies, provided they departed before the 1st of November, left behind them all the artillery they had taken, and restored 8,000 French and Batavian prisoners who had been captured on former occasions. On these terms “a British king’s son, commanding 41,000 men, capitulated to a French general who had only 30,000,”[11] and the duke, fortunately for England, sheathed his sword, to draw it no more on the field of battle.
Lord Cornwallis writes on the 24th October: “By private letters which I have seen from Holland, our troops in general seem to have been in the greatest confusion, and on many occasions to have behaved exceedingly ill. There may be some exception in the corps belonging to Abercromby’s division. Considering the hasty manner in which they were thrown together, and the officers by whom they were commanded, I am not surprised at this. Would to God they were all on board! I dread the retreat and embarkation. David Dundas will never be like Cæsar, the favourite of fortune; hitherto, at least, that fickle goddess has set her face very steadily against him.” “I see no prospect of any essential improvement in our military system, for I am afraid that a buttoned coat, a heavy hat and feather, and a cursed sash tied round our waist will not lead the way to victory.”
The abortive expeditions against Ostend and Ferrol, which had terminated in the capture and disgrace of the troops employed in them, appear to have induced Lord Cornwallis to draw up a memorandum on the subject, and to submit it to the duke. The following is an extract from it:—
“I admit that while we are at war, and have the means of acting, we should not remain entirely on the defensive, but at the same time I would not go lightly in quest of adventures, with regiments raised with extreme difficulty, without means of recruiting, and commanded principally by officers without experience or knowledge of their profession. The expense, likewise, of expeditions is enormous, and the disgrace attending upon ill success is not likely to promote that most desirable object—a good peace.”
After the re-embarkation of the Ferrol expedition, he writes: “The prospect of public affairs is most gloomy. What a disgraceful and what an expensive campaign have we made! Twenty-two thousand men, a large proportion not soldiers, floating round the greater part of Europe the scorn and laughing-stock of friends and foes.”
In the spring of 1801, Lord Cornwallis, replaced in Ireland by Lord Hardwicke and Sir W. Medows, assumed the command of the eastern district in England—invasion appearing imminent. His letters to his friend Ross at this period are most desponding. Our best troops were abroad upon expeditions. One barren success in Egypt, with which ministers attempted to gild half-a-dozen failures, had cost us the gallant Abercromby. The defence of the country was intrusted to the militia. The Duke of York had actually proposed to introduce a Russian force to coerce and civilize Ireland, and would have done so had not the better sense and feeling of Cornwallis prevailed. “My disgrace must be certain,” writes he to Ross, “should the enemy land. What could I hope, with eight weak regiments of militia, making about 2,800 firelocks, and two regiments of dragoons?”... “In our wooden walls alone must we place our trust; we should make a sad business of it on shore.”... “If it is really intended that —— should defend Kent and Sussex, it is of very little consequence what army you place under his command.”... “God send that we may have no occasion to decide the matter on shore, where I have too much reason to apprehend that the contest must terminate in the disgrace of the general and the destruction of the country.”... “I confess that I see no prospect of peace, or of anything good. We shall prepare for the land defence of England by much wild and capricious expenditure of money, and if the enemy should ever elude the vigilance of our wooden walls, we shall after all make a bad figure.”[12]
Bad as matters had been at the time of Humbert’s invasion, it is clear that Lord Cornwallis believed our military affairs to be in a much worse condition in 1801.
In Ireland, in 1798, he had under him a few officers on whom he could depend, and although his army, thanks to Lord Amherst and the Duke of York, was in a deplorable state of discipline, he, a good and practised general, was at its head, to make the best of it.
The Duke of Wellington has since taught us, on more than one occasion, that there are some extraordinary workmen who can do good work with any tools, and who can even make their own tools as they require them.—But in England, in 1801, the military workmen in court employ were all so execrably bad, that it mattered little what was the quality of the tools supplied to them. The Duke of York, David Dundas, and Lord Chatham had everything their own way: the most important posts, the most costly expeditions, were intrusted, not to the officers most formidable to the enemy, but to the friends and protégés of the military courtiers who stood best at Windsor and St. James’s. It is no small proof of Cornwallis’s tact in judging of men, that whilst we find him deprecating the employment in independent commands of such generals as the Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland, Dundas, Burrard (of Cintra), Coote (of Ostend), Pulteney (of Ferrol), Whitelock (of Buenos Ayres), and Lord Chatham (of Walcheren), he had always a word of approval for Lake and Abercromby, and in an introductory letter to Sir John Shore, speaks of the lieutenant-colonel of his own regiment, the Hon. Arthur Wesley, as a “sensible man and a good officer.”