Dropmore, Sept. 15th, 1793. At Night.
MY DEAR BROTHER,
You will receive with this letter, which will be sent you from
London, the good and the bad accounts together. For the Flanders
war, I fear the latter overbalance the former; there is, however,
in my opinion, very little reason to be discouraged at these
checks, which must be expected whenever the French took the
resolution to leave the sieges on the side of Hainault to their
fate, in order to break in upon the line of communication. This
must have happened equally if the combined armies had remained
together, and undertaken a joint operation; and the proposed plan
had the advantage of being the only one whose success would have
remedied this inconvenience, resulting from the nature of an attack
from an open country against such a barrier.
It must be left to military decision what is precisely the best
point of attack, combined or separate, which now remains; but the
loss of Menin as a post of communication does not tend to lessen
the difficulties of any plan, and I am decidedly averse to anything
that shall hazard the delaying the West India expedition, for
which, when you consider how much is to be done there, you will not
think a whole season too much.
After all, a few towns more or less in Flanders are certainly not
unimportant; but I am much mistaken in my speculation, if the
business at Toulon is not decisive of the war. Only let your own
mind follow up all the consequences of that event, and you will, I
believe, agree with me that the expression I have used is not too
sanguine. We have news that the people of Lyons have defeated
Dubois Cranee, with a loss to the latter, as it is said, of four
thousand men. Allow this to be exaggerated, as I suppose it is, but
take the fact to be true that he has been defeated, and it is
everything to us. The next month or six weeks will be an anxious
period, and big with events.
You asked me some time ago about Parliament, and that with a view
to your own motions. Nothing can, of course, be absolutely fixed on
that subject; but I think it highly improbable that Parliament
should meet before January. I heartily wish that we may arrange it
so as to meet, though in the present moment I should be afraid even
of such a distance as Stowe. At all events, when your camp breaks
up, I trust you will take Dropmore in your way, as indeed I believe
it will lay directly in your road, if you come by town, and not far
out of it, if you go straight to Stowe.
My dear wife desires best love to you and Lady B. Lady Camelford
is, I think, better than we could have hoped.
Ever most affectionately yours,
G.
16th.
This ought to have gone to-day, and I am sorry to find it this
evening in one of my boxes here. We have nothing new to-day, except
the account of the murder of the King of Poland, which is believed.