men; and on the 16th Dumouriez marched with forty-eight thousand to meet
him. ◆March 18.◆ On the 18th the decisive action was fought at
Neerwinden, when the French were totally defeated, with a loss of five
thousand men and three guns. The volunteers and the National Guards were
the troops that failed in the battle; and after it the men broke up and
fled by whole battalions. Ten thousand deserted in the ten days
following the action, and Dumouriez was fain to form a rearguard out of
his artillery and his few battalions of the Line, and to fall back on
Louvain. Coburg, who had lost about three thousand men, made little
attempt at pursuit, keeping his main body halted at Tirlemont until the
22nd, but exhorting the Duke of Brunswick-Oels to hasten from
Bois-le-Duc to Malines to cut off Dumouriez’s retreat to Antwerp. The
Duke, who had already permitted Flers to withdraw with impunity the bulk
of his forces to Antwerp, was evidently not disposed to second Austrian
operations with Prussian troops, for he refused to move. ◆Mar. 23–24.◆
However, the advance of the Austrians compelled Dumouriez to evacuate
first Louvain and then Brussels; ◆March 25.◆ and on the 25th, finding
himself obliged to abandon Namur also, he opened negotiations with
Coburg. He had quarrelled with the Convention beyond hope of
reconciliation over the iniquity of its rule in Belgium; and he now
proposed that the French should retreat from the whole country, and that
he should march to Paris to re-establish the monarchy, the Allies
meanwhile halting on the frontier and receiving the fortress of Condé as
a guarantee. ◆March 27.◆ An agreement to this effect was duly made with
the Chief of the Austrian Staff on the 27th, and a circular was issued
from the Austrian headquarters, suggesting a conference of the
representatives of the powers to decide as to the measures to be next
taken.
There is no need to tell at length the story of Dumouriez’s adventures
during the following days. ◆April 5.◆ It must suffice that he was driven
from the midst of his army, and on the 5th of April was fain to take
refuge with the Austrians. Fragments of several corps and one complete
regiment of Hussars followed him, unwilling to part with their beloved
General; but several thousand French troops in Belgium and Holland,
which might have been cut off to a man, were allowed to retire in peace
to the frontier. None the less the fact remained that even a dilatory
commander at the head of a force of discordant Allies had sufficed to
drive the armies of the Revolution in shameful disorder from the
Austrian Netherlands.
VOL. IV. BOOK XII. CHAPTER IV
◆1793.◆
◆March 5.◆
On the 5th of March it was resolved to send the Fourteenth,
Thirty-seventh, and Fifty-third Foot, completed by drafts from the new
independent companies, to join the Duke as a brigade under Major-general
Ralph Abercromby. These regiments, however, were subject to the same
instructions as the Guards, namely, to remain within immediate reach of
their transports in case their services should be required elsewhere.
Their quality was such that the Adjutant-general felt constrained to
apologise for them both to Abercromby and to the Duke of York. “I am
afraid,” he wrote to the Duke, “that you will not reap the advantage
that you might have expected from the brigade of the Line just sent over
to you, as so considerable a part of it is composed of nothing but
undisciplined and raw recruits; and how they are to be disposed of until
they can be taught their business I am at a loss to imagine.... I was
not consulted upon the subject until it was too late to remedy the evil,
but I hope that my remonstrances will be of some use in the modelling of
troops for the Continent in future.” ◆April 1.◆ It need hardly be added
that, on their arrival in Holland, two out of the three battalions were
found utterly unfit for service, the new recruits being old men and
weakly boys, worse than the worst that had been accepted even at the
period of greatest exhaustion during the American War. To send them on
active service was, therefore, simply waste of money.[106]
But this was only one of the evils which ensued because an extremely
ignorant civilian was too vain to consult his military advisers before
giving military orders. Any soldier at the War Office could have
told him that the method of raising independent companies to recruit
existing regiments had been found wasteful and unsatisfactory in the
past; and, indeed, at this very time the Chief Secretary Cooke wrote
to him from Ireland a strong protest against the whole system. It
was expensive, because it meant the provision of half-pay for their
officers as soon as the men had been drafted out; it was unfair to old
subalterns, because they were passed over by boys who by good fortune
had raised recruits cheaply. It produced a bad class of recruit,
because these young officers were poor judges of men; and finally it
encouraged desertion, for the crimps, so long as they poured a certain
number of recruits into the depots by a certain time, cared not the
least whether they deserted afterwards. Nor was Cooke content only to
criticise, for he produced an alternative plan for allowing each of the
fourteen battalions in Ireland to raise two additional companies of one
hundred men apiece, and for granting to the commanding officers the
privilege of recommending officers for them. The scheme was approved
and was found to be most successful; but it was not introduced into
England, where, on the contrary, the number of independent companies
was still further increased.[107]
Again, the Adjutant-general, if consulted, could have warned Dundas
to be chary of his battalions, since some of them would certainly
be required for the Fleet. The King’s Navy was labouring under the
grievances which in four years were to drive the seamen to mutiny; and
as a natural consequence men were hardly to be obtained by any means.
◆Feb. 7.◆ On the very day when the declaration of war was received,
the Fleet swallowed up two battalions; and by the end of March it had
absorbed so many men that only three regiments of the Line were to be
found south of the Tweed. In fact the Horse Guards did not know where
to turn for another battalion. This, however, did not prevent Dundas
from presently sending another emissary to Jamaica, to commit England
still more deeply to operations in the most leeward sphere of the West
Indies. Yet he had no reserve of any description to rely upon, except
fourteen thousand Hanoverians and eight thousand Hessians, which,
pursuant to the time-honoured practice, were taken into British pay;
and of these the latter only, being mercenaries pure and simple, could
be counted upon for service beyond sea.[108]
Since the kingdom was thus stripped of regular troops, it was necessary
to raise other forces for its security; but this also was done as
foolishly as possible. Early in February it was rightly and wisely
decided to call out nineteen thousand additional Militia; but in the
execution precisely the same mistake was made as in France. Personal
service was not insisted upon; there arose a great demand for
substitutes; and the Militia, instead of gaining a substantial increase,
simply cut off from the Army the sources of its supply of recruits. In
Scotland, which as yet had no Militia, recourse was made to the raising
of Fencible regiments, that is to say, of regular troops enlisted for
home-service and for the duration of the war only. This system had so
far been applied only on a small scale, the regiments of Fencibles
during the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence having
been but few;[109] but it now received great and sudden expansion. On
the 2nd of March authority was issued for the raising of seven regiments
of Fencible Infantry in Scotland at a stroke; besides one already
authorised for the Isle of Man ◆Feb. 20.◆, and another, added in April,
for the Orkney Islands.[110] With the leading magnates of Scotland at
their head, these new corps were speedily completed; but there was one
Scottish nobleman who went further than his peers, and raised a regiment
in the Highlands for general service. This was Thomas Humberstone
Mackenzie, afterwards the last Earl of Seaforth; and his regiment
remains with us, still known by his name, but yet more famous under its
number of the Seventy-eighth. The reader should take note of the
Fencible regiments, for in the years before us we shall see them
increased and multiplied in all three kingdoms. Meanwhile, he should
remark that within a month of the declaration of war there were already
three distinct forces, the Army, the Fencibles, and the Militia, all
bidding against each other for the recruits which only the Regular Army
could turn to efficient account.
It is not difficult to perceive the lurking possibilities of disaster in
Dundas’s military policy; but until April it showed at any rate a
certain consistency. The despatch of troops to the Continent was treated
as a temporary measure, designed for the protection of Holland only;
and, though the Prince of Coburg had called upon the Duke of York to
co-operate in his great sweeping movement from north-east to south-west,
the Duke had complied only so far as his instructions and, it may be
added, his lack of transport permitted.[111] But much, besides the
expulsion of the French from Holland and Belgium, had occurred in March,
all tending to embarrass England in the principal object of her
Continental policy, the securing of a strong barrier between France and
Holland. The fatal question of indemnity, first brought forward by the
King of Prussia, had aroused the cupidity of his brother potentate in
Austria, who valued the recovery of Belgium chiefly in order that he
might exchange it for Bavaria. Pitt had for a moment been willing to
consent to the Bavarian exchange (as it was called) for the sake of
peace; but upon the outbreak of war he reverted to absolute rejection of
it; and, in an evil hour, ◆March 2.◆ the British Ambassador at Vienna,
Sir Morton Eden, put forward a suggestion that Austria should be bribed
to retain Belgium by the promise of an extension of her frontiers on the
side of France. ◆April 3.◆ Realising that Austria refused to act
disinterestedly, Grenville reluctantly accepted the proposal; and at the
same time the British Government seems to have taken it for granted that
it must give the Emperor some assistance towards the conquest of the new
barrier.[112]
◆March 21–April 2.◆
Accordingly, since no more infantry was to be spared from England,
eleven regiments of cavalry were ordered to prepare for service on
the Continent, though their numbers were so weak that they could not
between them muster more than twenty-three squadrons, or about two
thousand five hundred of all ranks, fit for service. But, at the same
time, the British Ministers shrank from supplying British troops for
the advantage of other nations without gaining some equivalent to
satisfy the electors of England; wherefore they decided, apparently
at the instance of Grenville’s elder brother, Lord Buckingham, to
claim Dunkirk as Great Britain’s indemnity for the war. The choice,
viewed from the standpoint of the party-politician, was a good one.
Dunkirk, having been taken by Cromwell, sold by Charles the Second, and
dismantled under the conditions imposed by the sword of Marlborough,
possessed sentimental attractions to the public at large and to the
Whigs in particular; while, as a nest of privateers, its extirpation
could not but be welcome not only to every merchant in England, but
especially to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. No scheme of operations
had yet been concerted with Austria, for, indeed, Coburg had advanced
from the Roer before nearly all his forces had been collected; but Pitt
seems to have thought that, while the Austrian reinforcements were
on their way to the front, the mixed force of British, Hanoverians,
Hessians, and Dutch might very well master Dunkirk in the course of
April, afterwards leaving the Austrians in sufficient strength to
pursue their operations in Flanders alone, while the British struck
at some other part of France. Thus Pitt was not true even to his own
plan of ruining his enemy by the destruction of her colonial trade.
Moreover, it is difficult to define what he meant by some other part
of France. The old Marquis of Bouillé, knowing that the heart of the
Revolution could be pierced at Paris, had suggested a descent upon
Havre with thirty thousand men; and there was by this time another
vulnerable point—namely, La Vendée—in the west of France. But why it
should have been necessary to seek out a new point of attack, when
troops were already massed or massing on the French frontier within
twelve days’ march of the capital, and with only a demoralised enemy
before them, was a question which seems never to have occurred either
to Pitt or to Dundas. There can be no doubt that they fell into a
common pitfall of the British politician. They gave so much thought to
the treaty which they should lay before Parliament at the close of the
war, that they omitted to consider the means of bringing the war itself
to a close.[113]
It was in such inauspicious circumstances that the representatives of
the various powers met in conference at Antwerp. ◆April 5.◆ Coburg, who
loathed the war and had hoped to end it by an agreement with Dumouriez,
had issued a proclamation declaring himself to be the ally of all
friends of order, and abjuring all projects of conquest in the Emperor’s
name. Instantly Austrians, Prussians, and English with one voice
required him to withdraw it, and to publish a new declaration that he
would prosecute the war vigorously. He did so, but with great
reluctance; indeed, so bitter was his opposition to the new policy that
he tried to open further negotiations with the Convention, and even
furnished it with information which he ought to have kept to
himself.[114] Meanwhile Lord Auckland announced that England, as well as
the other powers, would expect an indemnity for her share in the war;
whereupon the Dutch representative announced that, as every one else was
taking compensation, he hoped that Holland’s claims would not be
forgotten.[115] The sharing of the lion’s skin having thus been
determined, the next thing was to decide upon a plan of operations for
slaying the lion. A vague project was drawn out for the attack of the
frontier-fortresses, in which Coburg reckoned upon the co-operation of
over twenty thousand men, that is to say, of thirteen thousand
Hanoverians and seven thousand five hundred British, in British pay,
besides fifteen thousand Dutch. Dundas was staggered; for he had not yet
the slightest idea what were the ultimate designs of either of the
German powers, who, as he justly complained, were very backward to give
an explicit account of their views either as to the conduct of the war
or the termination of it. “We cannot advise the King,” he wrote, “to
give a blind co-operation to measures not distinctly explained.” But he
hinted that if the Austrians would spare a detachment to help the
British to capture Dunkirk at once, England might make fewer
difficulties about lending her troops for subsequent operations. The
English, he explained, were prejudiced against Continental enterprises;
wherefore it was important to convince the nation early that its troops
in Holland were employed for an object intimately connected with the
interests of Great Britain and the security of her commerce. “The early
capture of Dunkirk by a Prince of the blood,” he added, “would give much
éclat to the commencement of the war.” In other words, Dundas was ready
to employ British troops in the Low Countries only for a political
campaign, and not for the military purposes of the war—to use them, in
fact, primarily to win votes rather than battles. The attitude is but
too characteristic of British Ministers for War.[116]
Meanwhile the Allies on the frontiers of France remained inactive; the
Austrians, indeed, blockading Condé, where the French kept them engaged
with incessant affairs of outposts, but the British contingent still
awaiting the orders which Dundas hesitated to give. In the third week
of April the chief of the British staff reported that a considerable
force of French was entrenched about Dunkirk, too strong to be attacked
by the Duke of York’s troops, and that there was no operation on which
the latter could be employed except in support of the Austrians.[117]
We shall presently recognise the unseen hand which had been working
at Dunkirk. ◆May 1.◆ Ten days more of uncertainty passed away, and at
last, on the 1st of May, Coburg produced a plan of operations. By the
middle of May he hoped to have about ninety-two thousand men,[118] to
which by the beginning of June would be added thirteen thousand more.
He proposed, therefore, to hasten the fall of Condé by a bombardment,
and then to advance with fifty-two thousand men to the siege of
Valenciennes, leaving a cordon of some forty thousand to cover every
imaginable point along a front of some fifty miles from Maubeuge on the
Sambre to Ostend on the sea. Valenciennes might be expected to fall
at the end of July, and then ten thousand men could be left to mask
Lille, while fifty thousand marched to the siege of Dunkirk. If this
plan were accepted, Coburg pledged himself to the Duke of York to lend
his best good-will to the attack on Dunkirk. On this assurance the
Duke recommended the plan to which at last Dundas gave his consent,
on the understanding that the other powers in general and Austria in
particular should give an immediate explanation of their ulterior
views. England, he repeated, could not allow so large a force in her
pay to be employed on operations whose object was undefined; and he
emphasised the statement by an inquiry as to the security of Ostend,
which so far had been the British port of disembarkation, evidently as
a hint that England reserved her right to withdraw her troops at any
moment.
This is a good instance of the manner in which British Ministers evade
their responsibility. The British General had, nearly three weeks
before, laid before Dundas the following issue. “There is no use for
British troops in the Netherlands except to act in support of the
Austrians. Their commander has submitted a plan based on the active
co-operation of all our troops, present and expected. We think the plan
a good one. Are we to act with him, or are we not?” Upon this it was
for the Ministry to say at once to Austria, “Our Generals favour your
plan of campaign, but until we know your ultimate intentions we cannot
take part in it. Unless you come to a definite understanding with us by
a certain day, we shall order our troops on the spot to re-embark, and
meanwhile we have suspended the march of our reinforcements.” Instead
of this they said in effect, “We approve the plan of campaign, and
thereby commit our troops to it; but we reserve to ourselves the right
to withdraw them, or, in other words, to wreck the operations, whenever
we think proper.” If, therefore, the enemy should in the meantime
take the offensive and press the Austrians hard, which, as shall be
seen, was what actually happened, the responsibility for granting or
withholding British assistance was thrown entirely upon the General.
It remains to say a word of the plan itself, and of the troops and
commanders who were appointed to carry it out. The enormous front
along which Coburg proposed to disperse his force is an example of the
system known as the cordon-system, which was in particular favour with
the Austrians at this time. It consisted in covering every possible
access to a theatre of war with some small body of troops, and had
been formulated by Marshal Lacy upon the experience of the war of
the Bavarian Succession in 1778, when he had held a front of fifty
miles in the labyrinthine country of the Upper Elbe, and reduced the
campaign to a mere scuffle of foraging parties. Well calculated to
exclude the plague or contraband goods from a country, it was, of
course, ridiculous against the invasion of an enemy; for it meant
weakness at all points and strength at none, and in fact simply
invited the destruction of the army in detail by a force of inferior
strength. Nevertheless it was in high favour with all armies of Europe,
excepting the British, at that time; and it was a matter of rule that,
wherever the enemy stationed a battalion or a company, a countervailing
battalion or company must be posted over against it. The Austrians had
suffered much from this system in their recent war with the Turks; but
their commanders, of whom Coburg had been one, had learned little from
the experience. Apart from his adherence to this new and utterly false
fashion, which precluded the concentration of troops for a vigorous
offensive, Coburg was a sound, slow, cautious commander of the old
Austrian type, more intent upon preserving his own army than destroying
the enemy’s, and, perhaps, happiest when firmly set down to conduct a
siege in form according to the most scientific principles. Withal he
was a sensible and honourable gentleman, and extremely popular with
his troops. The chief of his staff, and, by common report, the virtual
Commander-in-Chief, was the unfortunate Mack, then a colonel forty
years of age, who enjoyed the reputation of being the most scientific
officer in Europe. The theory of war, as then understood in many
quarters, assigned as the first object not the annihilation of the
enemy’s force in the field, but the possession of certain geographical
points, which were called Strategic Objects. At this game of maps
and coloured labels Mack excelled; and, when called upon to fight an
action, he so elaborated his plans for the overwhelming of his enemies
by the simultaneous onslaught of a number of converging columns that,
if everything went right and every column reached exactly the appointed
place at exactly the appointed time, he assured to himself not only
victory but conquest. But, since he made no allowance for the possible
failure of any one of his combinations through unforeseen contingencies
or accidents of any description, Mack’s actions were rarely successful
and always unduly hazardous. He seems to have been an honest man, of
real though misdirected ability; while his character gained for him a
confidence and respect which the British in the field accorded to no
other foreign officer. But though, as shall be seen, his methods by no
means commended themselves to all British commanders, they nevertheless
made a fatally favourable impression upon the British Ministry.
To judge with the wisdom that comes after the event, it may be
said that the Allied Army was tactically deficient in two principal
respects, namely, in the numerical weakness of its light infantry and
in the faulty organisation of its artillery. Light infantry and light
cavalry at this time were still treated mainly as accessories, useful
for the “little war” (to use the French expression) of outposts and
reconnaissance, but as something apart from the “great war,” which was
reserved for the more solid squadrons and battalions that enjoyed the
dignity of a place in the formal Order of Battle. In fact, the work
of outposts was supposed to fall wholly upon the light corps, while
the regular troops husbanded their strength in security behind them.
Hostilities with any nation which is driven back on primitive methods
of self-defence, and which neither knows nor respects the contemporary
usage of civilised warfare, invariably upset any such arrangement; and
the British, after the experience of America, should have been awake to
this truth. Indeed, in justice to the officers, many of them were alive
to it; but Pitt, since 1783, had been more solicitous for the reduction
than the training of the Army. In the matter of artillery the practice
of all the nations was the same. Each battalion possessed its two guns,
three-pounders or six-pounders, and the remainder of the ordnance was
massed into a park, with or without an inner distribution into brigades
or batteries. The handling of the artillery by the Count of Bückeburg
at Minden had not yet found sufficient appreciation to be made the
foundation of a system.[119]