In the spring of the ensuing year, 1794, the emperor Francis II. visited the Netherlands in person, with the intent of pushing straight upon Paris. This project, practicable enough during the preceding campaign, was, however, now utterly out of the question, the more so on account of the retreat of the Prussians. The French observed on this occasion with well-merited scorn: "The allies are ever an idea, a year and an army behindhand." The Austrians, nevertheless, attacked the whole French line in March and were at first victorious on every side, at Catillon, where Kray and Wernek distinguished themselves, and at Landrecis, where the Archduke Charles made a brilliant charge at the head of the cavalry. Landrecis was taken. But this was all. Clairfait, whose example might have animated the inactive duke of York, being left unsupported by the British, was attacked singly at Courtray by Pichegru and forced to yield to superior numbers. Coburg fought an extremely bloody but indecisive battle at Doornik (Tournay), where Pichegru ever opposed fresh masses to the Austrian artillery. Twenty thousand dead strewed the field. The youthful emperor, discouraged by the coldness displayed by the Dutch, whom he had expected to rise en masse in his cause, returned to Vienna. His departure and the inactivity of the British commander completely dispirited the Austrian troops, and on the 26th of June, 1794,[6] the duke of Coburg was defeated at Fleurus by Jourdan, the general of the republic. This success was immediately followed by that of Pichegru, not far from Breda, over the inefficient English general,[7] who consequently evacuated the Netherlands, which were instantly overrun by the pillaging French. And thus had the German powers, notwithstanding their well-disciplined armies and their great plans, not only forfeited their military honor, but also drawn the enemy, and, in his train, anarchy with its concomitant horrors, into the empire. The Austrians had rendered themselves universally unpopular by their arbitrary measures, and each province remained stupidly indifferent to the threatened pillage of its neighbor by the victorious French. Jourdan but slowly tracked the retreating forces of Coburg, whom he again beat at Sprimont, where he drove him from the Maese, and at Aldenhoven, where he drove him from the Roer. Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, capitulated at Maestricht, with ten thousand men, to Kleber; and the Austrians, with the exception of a small corps under the Count von Erbach, stationed at Düsseldorf, completely abandoned the Lower Rhine.
The disasters suffered by the Austrians seem at that time to have flattered the ambition of the Prussians, for Mollendorf suddenly recrossed the Rhine and gained an advantage at Kaiserslautern, but was, in July, 1794, again repulsed at Trippstadt, notwithstanding which he once more crossed the Rhine in September, and a battle was won by the Prince von Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen at Fischbach, but, on the junction of Jourdan with Hoche, who had until then singly opposed him, Mollendorf again, and for the last time, retreated across the Rhine. The whole of the left bank of the Rhine, Luxemburg and Mayence alone excepted, were now in the hands of the French. Resius, the Hessian general, abandoned the Rheinfels with the whole garrison, without striking a blow in its defence. He was, in reward, condemned to perpetual imprisonment.[8] Jourdan converted the fortress into a ruined heap. The whole of the fortifications on the Rhine were yielded for the sake of saving Mannheim from bombardment.
In the Austrian Netherlands, the old government had already been abolished, and the whole country been transformed into a Belgian republic by Dumouriez. The reform of all the ancient evils, so vainly attempted but a few years before by the noble-spirited emperor, Joseph II., was successfully executed by this insolent Frenchman, who also abolished with them all that was good in the ancient system. The city deputies, it is true, made an energetic but futile resistance.[9] After the flight of Dumouriez, fresh depredations were, with every fresh success, committed by the French. Liege was reduced to the most deplorable state of desolation, the cathedral and thirty splendid churches were levelled with the ground by the ancient enemies of the bishop. Treves was also mercilessly sacked and converted into a French fortress.
[Footnote 1: Prussia chiefly coveted the possession of Dantzig, which the Poles refused to give or the English to grant to him, and which he could only seize by the aid of Russia.]
[Footnote 2: After having been long retained in prison, ill fed and ill clothed, after supporting, with unbending dignity, the unmanly insults of the republican mob before whose tribunal she was dragged. The young dauphin expired under the ill-treatment he received from his guardian, a shoemaker. His sister, the present Duchess d'Angouleme, was spared.]
[Footnote 3: Where the peasantry, infuriated at the depredations of the French, cast the wounded and the dead indiscriminately into a trench.—Benzenberg's Letters. ]
[Footnote 4: The Hanoverian general, Hammerstein, and his adjutant
Scharnhorst, who afterward became so noted, made a gallant defence.
When the city became no longer tenable, they boldly sallied forth at
the head of the garrison and escaped.]
[Footnote 5: Rewbel, one of the five directors of the great French republic, and several of the most celebrated French generals, Germany's unwearied foes, were natives of Alsace, as, for instance, the gallant Westermann, one of the first leaders of the republican armies; the intrepid Kellermann, the soldiers' father; the immortal Kleber, generalissimo of the French forces in Egypt, who fell by the dagger of a fanatical Mussulman; and the undaunted Rapp, the hero of Dantzig. The lion-hearted Ney, justly designated by the French as the bravest of the brave, was a native of Lorraine. These were, one and all, men of tried metal, but whose German names induce the demand, "Why did they fight for France?" Wurmser belonged to the same old Strasburg family which had given birth to Wurmser, the celebrated court-painter of the emperor, Charles IV. ]
[Footnote 6: The Austrian generals Beaulieu, Quosdanowich, and the Archduke Charles, who, at that period, laid the foundation to his future fame, had pushed victoriously forward and taken Fleurus, when the ill-tuned orders, as they are deemed, of the generalissimo Coburg compelled them to retreat. Quosdanowich dashed his sabre furiously on the ground and exclaimed, "The army is betrayed, the victory is ours, and yet we must resign it. Adieu, thou glorious land, thou garden of Europe, the house of Austria bids thee eternally adieu!" The French had, before and during the action, made use of a balloon for the purpose of watching the movements of the enemy.]
[Footnote 7: The worst spirit prevailed among the British troops; the officers were wealthy young men, who had purchased their posts and were, in the highest degree, licentious. Vide Dietfurth's Hessian Campaigns.]