collected his troops at Tilburg and advanced straight upon them,
encamping on the 26th of May on the Great Neth, a little to the east of
Antwerp, between Lierre and Herenthout. ◆May 15/26.◆ Saxe, entrenched as
usual to the teeth, remained immovable for three weeks, and Cumberland
despaired of bringing him to action. At length the news that a detached
corps of thirty thousand French, under the Prince of Clermont, was on
the old ground about Tongres, moved Cumberland to march to the Demer, in
the hope of overwhelming Clermont before Saxe could join him. ◆June
15/26.◆ Saxe, however, was on his guard, and on the 29th of June
prepared to concentrate the whole of his army at Tongres. ◆June 18/29.◆
Cumberland thereupon decided to take up Saxe’s camp of the previous
year, from Bilsen, on the head-waters of the Demer, to Tongres. ◆June
19/30.◆ So sending forward Count Daun, afterwards well known as an
antagonist of Frederick the Great, with a corps of Austrians to occupy
Bilsen, he ordered the rest of the army to follow as quickly as possible
on the next day. ◆June 20./July 1.◆ Riding forward at daybreak of the
morrow, Cumberland was dismayed to see the French advancing in two
columns from Tongres, as if to fall upon the head of his own army. This
was a surprise. Cumberland knew that Saxe was in motion but had not
expected him so soon; and indeed Saxe had made a notable march, for his
army had not left Louvain until the 29th of June and had traversed
little less than fifty miles in two days. The Duke lost no time in
setting such troops as were on the spot in order of battle, and hurried
away to see if those on the march could be brought up in time to force
back the French, and to secure the position of his choice. But the
French cavalry was too quick for him, and, before Ligonier could bring
up the English horse, had occupied the centre of the ground which
Cumberland had intended for himself. Ligonier drew up his squadrons
before them to bar their farther advance, and the Allied infantry, as it
came up, was formed in order of battle, fronting, however, not to
eastward, as had been originally designed, but almost due south. In
fact, owing to Saxe’s unexpected arrival and to deficient arrangements
by the staff of the Allies, there seems to have been considerable delay
in putting the Allied army into any formation at all, or the French
might certainly have been forced back to Tongres. Saxe’s rear had not
yet come up and the men were fatigued by a long and harassing march; but
Cumberland was not the man to fight an action of the type of Oudenarde,
and the opportunity was lost.[100]
The position now occupied by the Allies extended from some rising
ground known as the Commanderie, a little to the south-east of Bilsen,
along a chain of villages and low heights to the Jaar, a little to the
south of Maestricht. The Commanderie being the right of the line was
held by the Austrians, with a strong corps thrown back _en potence_
to Bilsen to protect the right flank; for it was as important on this
field as on that of Roucoux that the retreat into Holland should not
be cut off. The ground possessed natural features of strength which
were turned to good account, so good account indeed that the Allied
right, like the French left at Ramillies, could neither attack nor
be attacked. Eastward from the Commanderie the Austrians occupied
the heights of Spaeven, together with the villages of Gross and Klein
Spaeven; next to them the Dutch formed the centre of the line, while
the Hanoverians and British held the villages of Val, or Vlytingen, and
Lauffeld, and prolonged the line to its extreme left at the village of
Kesselt.
◆June 21./July 2.◆
There the Allies lay on their arms until nightfall, while Saxe’s weary
battalions tramped on till far into the night up to their bivouacs. At
daybreak the French were seen to be in motion, marching and
countermarching in a way that Cumberland did not quite understand; the
fact being that Saxe, as at Roucoux, was doubling the left wing of his
army in rear of the right, for the formation of those dense columns of
attack which he could handle with such consummate skill. After observing
them until nine o’clock, Cumberland came to the conclusion that the
Marshal meditated no immediate movement, and retired to the Commanderie
for breakfast. He had hardly sat down when an urgent message arrived
from Ligonier that the enemy was on the point of attacking. Cumberland
at once returned and moved the left of his line somewhat forward,
setting fire to the village of Vlytingen and occupying Lauffeld with
three British and two Hessian battalions. Lauffeld was a straggling
village a quarter of a mile long, covered by a multitude of small
enclosures with mud walls about six feet high, which were topped by
growing hedges. It was thus easily turned into a strong post for
infantry; and cannon were posted both in its front and flanks. The
remainder of the British were drawn up for the most part in rear of
Lauffeld in order to feed and relieve its garrison, the brigade of
Guards being posted in the hedges before Vlytingen. The British cavalry
stood on the right of the infantry and joined their line to that of the
Dutch.
[Illustration:
LAUFFELD
June 21st/July 2nd 1747
_Stanford’s Geogl. Estabt., London._
]
Meanwhile Saxe, sending forward a cloud of irregular troops to mask
his movements, had despatched Count d’Estrées and the Count of Ségur
with a strong force of infantry and cavalry to seize the villages of
Montenaken and Wilre on the left flank of the Allies. This service was
performed with little loss. At the same time he directed the Marquis
of Salières, with six brigades of foot and twenty guns, to attack
Vlytingen, and launched five brigades, with as many guns, backed by a
large force of cavalry, against Lauffeld. The assault of the French
infantry upon Lauffeld was met by a furious resistance. It was just
such another struggle as that of Neerwinden, from hedge to hedge
and from wall to wall; and the French, for all their superiority of
numbers, were driven back headlong from the village with terrible loss.
Salières met with little better success against the brigade of Guards
in the hedges of Vlytingen; but with great readiness he turned half
of his guns to his right against Lauffeld and the remainder against a
ravine on his left, with most destructive effect. Cumberland, observing
the fury with which Saxe had concentrated his attack against these two
villages, asked the Austrians to relieve him by a diversion upon his
right; but the Austrian troops could not face the fire of Salières’s
guns, and it became clear that Vlytingen and Lauffeld must be held by
the British and Hanoverians alone.
Saxe’s first attack had been brilliantly repulsed. He at once replaced
the beaten troops by two fresh brigades of infantry, with cavalry to
support them, and renewed the assault, but with no better success. The
British were driven back from the outer defences only to stand more
fiercely by those within, and Lauffeld remained unconquered. But Saxe
was not to be deterred from his purpose. Two more brigades, including
the six Irish battalions that had saved the day at Fontenoy, were
added to those already on the spot, and the whole of them launched
for a third attack against Lauffeld. They were met by the same
stubborn resistance and the same deadly fire; and the Irish brigade
lost no fewer than sixty officers in the struggle. Nevertheless Irish
impetuosity carried the rest of the troops forward; the British were
borne back to the rearmost edge of the village, and the French began
to swarm up the slope beyond it. Cumberland promptly ordered the whole
of his line of infantry to advance; and the French at once gave way
before them. The French cavalry was obliged to drive the foot forward
at the sword’s point, but Cumberland continued steadily to gain ground
despite their efforts. Then at an unlucky moment, some Dutch squadrons
in the centre were seized with panic and came galloping straight
into the British line, carried away the Hessians and one squadron of
the Greys and fell pell-mell upon the Twenty-first and Twenty-third
Fusiliers. The Twenty-first, anticipating the treatment of the Belgians
at Waterloo, gave the Dutchmen a volley and partly saved themselves,
but the Twenty-third suffered terribly, and the whole line was thrown
into confusion. Before order could be restored, Salières had thrown
three more brigades upon Lauffeld, which closed in round it, blocking
up a hollow road which formed the entrance into it from the rear, and
barring the way for all further reinforcements of the Allies. The few
troops that were left in the village were speedily overpowered, and
Lauffeld was lost.
Some of Daun’s Austrians now advanced to Cumberland’s help from the
right; but three French brigades of cavalry, which were waiting before
Vlytingen, at once moved forward to check them, and charging boldly
into them succeeded in turning them back, though themselves roughly
handled when retiring from the charge. Meanwhile Saxe had brought up
ten guns to right and left of Lauffeld, and reinforcing the cavalry
of D’Estrées and Ségur extended it in one long line from Lauffeld to
Wilre, for a final crushing attack on the Allied left. Order had been
restored among the British infantry, who were now retreating with great
steadiness; but they were wholly unsupported. Ligonier, determined
to save them at any cost, caught up the Greys, Inniskillings, and
Cumberland’s dragoons, and led them straight against the masses of the
French cavalry. The gallant brigade charged home, crashed headlong
through the horse, and fell upon the infantry beyond, but being galled
by their fire and attacked in all quarters by other French squadrons,
was broken past all rallying and very heavily punished. Ligonier
himself was overthrown and taken prisoner. Cumberland, who had plunged
into the broken ranks to try to rally the British troopers, was cut off
by the French dragoons, and only with difficulty contrived to join the
remainder of his cavalry on the left. With these he covered the retreat
of the army, which was successfully effected in good order and with
little further loss.
So ended the battle of Lauffeld, in which the British bore the brunt
with a firmness that extorted the praise even of Frenchmen, but of
which few Englishmen have ever heard. The troops, in Cumberland’s
words, behaved one and all so well that he could not commend any one
regiment without doing injustice to the rest. The total loss of the
five regiments of horse and fourteen battalions of foot was close upon
two thousand men.[101] The three devoted regiments which charged with
Ligonier were the worst sufferers, the Greys losing one hundred and
sixty men, the Inniskillings one hundred and twenty, and Cumberland’s
dragoons nearly one hundred. The loss of the whole of the Allies was
about six thousand men, that of the French decidedly greater, amounting
indeed, according to Saxe’s account, to not less than ten thousand
men. The British, moreover, had nine French colours and five French
standards as trophies for their consolation. Finally, the French failed
to accomplish the object of the action, which was to cut off the Allies
from Maestricht.
After the battle the Allies crossed the Meuse and encamped at Heer, a
little to the east of Maestricht, while Saxe returned to his quarters
at Tongres. The French then detached a corps for the capture of
Bergen-op-Zoom; but the most important transactions of the war still
went forward on the Meuse, where constant negotiations were carried
on between Saxe and Cumberland. The campaign closed with the fall of
Bergen-op-Zoom and with the capture of most of the strong places in
Dutch Brabant.
By this time King George and his people in England were thoroughly sick
of the war. The British had suffered severely in every action, but had
reaped no success except in the fortunate victory of Dettingen. The
Dutch had proved themselves useless and contemptible as Allies, their
Government feeble and corrupt in council, their troops unstable if not
dangerous in action. The Austrians, in spite of lavish subsidies, had
never furnished the troops that they had promised, and had invariably
obstructed operations through the obstinacy of their Generals and the
selfishness of their ends. ◆1748.◆ The opening of the campaign of 1748
was even more unpromising for the Allies. Saxe, strong in the possession
of a superior force, kept Cumberland in suspense between apprehensions
for Breda and for Maestricht, and, when finally he laid siege to
Maestricht, could match one hundred and fifteen thousand men against
Cumberland’s five-and-thirty thousand. War on such terms against such a
master as Saxe was ridiculous. Moreover, the Dutch, despite of a recent
revolution, were more supine than ever; the Prince of Orange, who was
the new ruler, actually keeping two thousand of his troops from the
field that they might adorn the baptism of one of his babies. In the
face of such facts Cumberland pressed earnestly for peace;[102] and on
the 30th of April preliminaries were signed, which six months later were
expanded into the definite treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. ◆Apr. 19/30.◆
◆October.◆
The peace left matters practically as they had stood before the war,
with the significant exception that Frederick the Great retained
Silesia. Not a word was said as to the regulation of trade between
England and Spain, which had been the original ground of quarrel;
and, as between England and France, it was agreed that there should
be mutual restitution of all captures. Yet this could not set the two
countries in the same position as before the war. The French were
utterly exhausted; but the British, though not a little harassed by
the cost of maintaining armies and producing subsidies, had received a
military training which was to stand them in good stead for the great
struggle that lay before them.
AUTHORITIES.—The official correspondence in the Record Office. _F.O.
Military Auxiliary Expeditions._ _Campagnes de Louis XV. Espagnac._
_Life of the Duke of Cumberland._ Some useful details as to Lauffeld are
to be found in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_.
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1793–1794
VOL. IV. BOOK XII. CHAPTER III
◆1793.◆
War was declared by the French Convention on the 1st of February 1793,
and Dumouriez was ordered to invade Holland forthwith. The Convention,
thirsting for the wealth of the Bank of Amsterdam, was anxious to make
sure of it before the Allies could put their strength into the field.
Two months earlier, when his troops were heartened by the victory of
Jemappe, no order could have been more welcome to Dumouriez than this;
and even now, though he had few men upon whom he could depend, he
resolved if possible to make good the defects of his army by swift and
sudden action. The French troops on the northern frontier were very
widely scattered, their cantonments extending north and south on the
lower Meuse from Roermond to Maastricht, and east and west from the
upper Rhine through Aachen to Liège and Namur. His original plan had
been to turn all the waterways and fortresses that bar the entrance
into Holland from the south, and to invade it by way of Nimeguen; but
time was so precious that he resolved to collect a small force of but
seventeen thousand men at Antwerp, and to march from thence with all
secrecy direct upon Amsterdam. At the same time he directed thirty
thousand men from the east under General Miranda to take the Dutch
fortresses of Maastricht and Venloo, and then to make for Nimeguen.
Speed, in his view, was everything, for the Austrians had already forty
thousand men cantoned to the east of the Rhine, and were shortly to be
reinforced.
Meanwhile the Allies were still making up their plans for the next
campaign. Brunswick and Prince Frederick Josias of Coburg-Saalfeld,
who had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Austrian army, met at
Frankfurt, and, after many conferences between the 6th and the 14th
of February, decided upon a scheme of operations, which by their own
showing required forty thousand more men than they had any expectation
of collecting. They saved themselves, however, by laying it down as a
cardinal principle that, until Mainz were recovered from the French,
the Allied forces must not attempt to pass from the east to the west
bank of the Meuse. Belgium (so argued the Austrians) had been eaten
up, and so long as the navigation of the Rhine was blocked at Mainz,
the subsistence of the Imperial troops on the west of the Meuse must
be difficult. Moreover, if the French should retire before an Austrian
advance, and mass all their forces on the Rhine, then they might beat
Brunswick, who, unless his retreat were assured by the possession of
Mainz, would be in danger of utter destruction. The reader should take
note of this decision, for not only is it the key to much that appears
puzzling in the coming campaign, but it is an excellent example of
the principle on which Coburg and Brunswick conducted war, namely, to
look at risks first and at objects afterwards. The immediate problem
of the defence of the Dutch provinces was left without so much as an
attempt at solution. Both Grenville in England and Auckland at the
Hague had long foreseen the certainty of a French attack upon them, and
had strained every nerve to stir the authorities to action. But the
Stadtholder was a man of almost inhuman dulness, apathy and stupidity;
and all popular energy was paralysed by the spirit of faction, which,
never inactive in Holland, had under the influence of French agents
become almost a spirit of revolution. The Dutch army was so defective
in training, equipment and discipline that it had ceased to exist as
an efficient force; and its few foreign corps, which alone deserved
the name of regiments, had been driven to mutiny by a reduction of
their pay below the rate fixed by their contract. Even in January and
February, Auckland wrote that the Stadtholder looked for British ships
and British troops to save him,[103] and that the French party was
derisively insinuating that England, nominally the faithful ally of
the Dutch Republic, was content to desert her in the hour of danger.
Finally, on the 15th of February he begged that the Duke of York might
be sent over with a few officers of experience, even if without troops,
to take command of the Dutch. “Men, commanders, ships and money,”
he wrote, “we could not ask for more if this country were a part of
Yorkshire, but I incline to think that it should be considered so for
the present; and if it is brought to a question whether we are to
conquer it and keep it, or whether Dumouriez is to do it, I have no
doubt as to the decision.”
Still the British Government hesitated, for, thanks to its neglect of
the Army, it possessed but a handful of troops, and was unwilling to
move them to the Continent. ◆Feb. 16.◆ Then suddenly, on the 16th of
February, Dumouriez dashed out from Antwerp with his tiny force in four
columns. One small body instantly pushed northward towards Moerdyk, to
collect boats for the passage of the arm of the sea called the
Hollandsdiep; another marched upon Klundert and Willemstadt, a third
north-eastward to attack Breda, and a fourth to the north-west to
blockade Bergen-op-Zoom and Steenbergen. Everywhere his coming was
welcomed by the Dutch. Breda, with large stores of munitions of war, was
disgracefully surrendered on the 26th of February; ◆Feb. 26.◆ Klundert
and Gertruydenberg fell in quick succession; Willemstadt was then
besieged with the captured cannon, and by the 9th of March Dumouriez was
prepared to essay the passage of the Hollandsdiep. ◆March 9.◆ But here
his course was stayed, for his activity had stirred his enemies on every
side.
◆Feb. 20.◆
On the 20th of February the seven battalions of British Guards were
suddenly paraded before the Horse Guards; and the Duke of York,
announcing that the first battalions of the three regiments were ordered
to proceed on active service, called for volunteers from the others to
bring them up to strength. The whole brigade thereupon stepped forward
as one man; and five days later three battalions, numbering under two
thousand men of all ranks and denominations, marched to Greenwich amid
the cheers, and something more than the cheers, of an enormous and
enthusiastic crowd.[104] By nightfall the whole were embarked upon
vessels too small to carry more than two-thirds of their number in
safety, without medicines or medical appliances, without the slightest
reserve of ammunition, and of course without transport of any
description. Their commander was Colonel Gerard Lake of the First
Guards, and he was ordered on no account to move his men above
twenty-four hours’ distance from Helvoetsluis, so as to be able to
return on the shortest notice. ◆March 1.◆ By the mercy of Heaven these
troops safely reached that port, narrowly escaping a gale which would
probably have condemned them either to drowning or asphyxiation; and
four days later they proceeded to Dort to oppose Dumouriez’s passage of
the Hollandsdiep. ◆March 5.◆ About the same time a flotilla of Dutch
gunboats arrived in the Meuse, many of them manned by British sailors
and flying British colours. Auckland, by threatening to take command in
Holland himself, had at last compelled the miserable Stadtholder to
issue orders for the defence of his country.[105]
But the obstacles which were multiplying in Dumouriez’s front were as
nothing to the storm that suddenly broke upon his flank. ◆Feb. 20.◆
Miranda had duly moved up to the siege of Maastricht with a force
inadequate to the task and, moreover, dangerously dispersed; but the
Austrians, declaring themselves too weak to move, still remained torpid
in their cantonments, perhaps the more stubbornly because the Prussian
Agent at the Austrian headquarters was perpetually urging them to
action. ◆Feb. 26.◆ At last, however, Coburg on the 26th began to
concentrate his forty thousand men and to pass them in five columns
across the river; ◆March 1.◆ and on the 1st of March, to the great
surprise of the French, he burst upon their cantonments on the Meuse,
and for four days drove them in utter rout before him. Coburg himself
and the left wing halted before Liège, but on the right the Archduke
Charles, with the impetuosity of twenty-one years and the instinct of a
born soldier, followed up the disorderly rabble from Maastricht
southward upon Tongres, boldly attacking wherever he met the enemy.
Such of the French as had been in action fled in all directions,
abandoning everything; ten thousand deserters hurried across the
frontier into France; and a small remnant took refuge behind the canal
at Louvain, where it was joined by such French divisions as had not been
engaged. Had Coburg pursued his advantage and advanced instantly with
all his forces, he could have ended the campaign at once, for the
people, furious at the exactions of the Jacobins, and, above all, at the
theft of the plate from their churches, had turned savagely upon the
retreating French. ◆March 5.◆ Instead of this he halted on the 5th, and
wasted ten whole days in cantonments between Maastricht and Tongres. The
Convention now ordered Dumouriez at once to proceed to Louvain and
◆March 9.◆ assume command, which he did with a very bad grace, leaving
General Flers to take his place in Holland. His presence did much to
restore confidence in the French army, and he was not a little helped by
Coburg’s inaction. Nevertheless the news that reached him was singularly
disquieting. Fresh regiments were embarking from England for
Helvoetsluis; two reinforcing columns of Austrians were advancing from
the Rhine upon Namur; ◆March 11.◆ and eight thousand Prussians, under
the Duke of Brunswick-Oels, had arrived at Bois-le-Duc on the 11th, and
were moving with five thousand British and Dutch upon Breda, to cut off
the troops on the Hollandsdiep from France and Dumouriez’s own soldiers
from Antwerp. In so desperate a situation there was no choice but to
take the offensive.
◆March 15.◆