of the Hanoverians, ten British squadrons and foreign troops, or about
fourteen thousand five hundred men, under the Hanoverian Marshal
Freytag, was to form the covering army; the other, of nearly twenty-two
thousand men, including the rest of the British troops, under the Duke
in person, was appointed to besiege Dunkirk. ◆Aug. 19.◆ On the 19th,
Freytag marched from Menin by Ypres upon Poperinghe, which he occupied
with his main body on the ◆Aug. 20.◆ 20th, at the same time pushing his
advanced guard further north-west to Rousbrugge on the Yser. ◆Aug. 21.◆
On the following day a detachment of Hessians, with great skill and at
small cost to themselves, drove the French from Oost Capel and Rexpoede
into the fortress of Bergues, with the loss of eleven guns and some four
hundred men; and Freytag then took up his line of posts to cover the
besieging army. His left was stationed at Poperinghe, covered by the
fortress of Ypres; and from thence the chain ran north-west to Proven on
the Yser, and westward up that stream by Bambecque to Wylder, where it
turned north, and passing midway between Bergues and Rexpoede rested its
right on a point called the White House, hard by the canal that runs
from Bergues ◆Aug. 23, 24.◆ to Furnes. On the 23rd and 24th Freytag
drove the French from Wormhoudt and Esquelbecque with the loss of
nineteen guns, and surrounded Bergues by detachments at Warhem to east,
Coudekerque to north, Sainte Quaedypre to south, and Steene to
west. From this last an outer chain of posts was extended southward to
Esquelbecque, and thence east by Wormhoudt and Herzeele to the Upper
Yser at Houtkerque. The whole circuit thus embraced measured about
twenty-one miles; from which it will be concluded that Freytag was a
believer in the cordon-system.
◆Aug. 20.◆
Meanwhile the Duke of York marched on the 20th to Furnes; ◆Aug. 22.◆ and
on the 22nd, moving thence parallel with the strand, he drove in the
enemy’s advanced posts upon the entrenched camp of Ghyvelde, which the
French abandoned in the night. ◆Aug. 24.◆ On the 24th, after several
hours of sharp fighting, which cost the Allies nearly four hundred
men,[148] the French were forced back from the suburb of Rosendahl into
the town; whereupon the Duke entrenched himself in his chosen position,
with his right resting on the sea and his left at Tetteghem, facing full
upon the eastern side of the town and about two miles distant from the
walls.
The field of operations for the Duke’s army may be described roughly as
a quadrilateral, of which the sea forms the northern side, the canal
from Dunkirk to Bergues the west, the canal from Bergues to Furnes the
south, and a line drawn from Furnes to the sea the east. From east to
west the ground thus enclosed was divided roughly into two parallel
strips; the northern half consisting of the sandhills known as the
Dunes, together with a narrow plain of level sandy ground within them;
and the southern half of a huge morass called the Great Moor, which
consisted partly of standing water, partly of swamp, but was all open to
inundation by admitting the tidal water from the sluices of Dunkirk.
Tetteghem, which formed the left of the Duke’s position, rested upon
this swamp, and commanded the only road that led across it to the White
House, and so to Freytag’s army. The position itself was in many
respects disadvantageous. It was much broken up by innumerable little
ditches, hedges, and patches of brushwood, all of which the troops had
to clear away with their side-arms for want of better tools; it was
wholly destitute of drinking water, that in the canals being brackish,
and that found in the wells unpalatable; and, finally, it lay open to
the minutest inspection from the tower of Dunkirk Cathedral. But this
was not the worst. The Duke had looked for a fleet to cover his right
flank, which had suffered from the enemy’s gunboats during the march
upon Ghyvelde, and for transports bringing heavy artillery and other
materials for the siege; and so far there was not a sign of them. “The
principal object is to have what is wanted and to have it in time,”
Murray had written to Dundas in July; and Dundas had replied that he was
preparing artillery for Dunkirk, but was in great want of gunners.[149]
◆Aug. 27.◆ At last, on the 27th, the transports came with gunners, but
without guns; ◆Aug. 29.◆ on the 29th a frigate, the _Brilliant_, and a
few armed cutters appeared off the coast; ◆Aug. 30.◆ and on the 30th
Admiral Macbride arrived to concert operations, but without his fleet.
By an arrangement, which was repeated at least once more during the
war, Macbride’s squadron, being intended to act with the Army, had been
removed from the control of the Admiralty and placed under the orders
of Dundas, so that he alone was responsible for this miscarriage.[150]
“Why did you not earlier suggest to me naval co-operation at Dunkirk?”
he wrote angrily to Murray on the 29th. “I had always a conceit in
my own mind as to its usefulness, but I had no authority to quote
for it.” This is an instructive example of Dundas’s methods as a War
Minister. The project of besieging Dunkirk emanated from himself and
his colleagues in the Cabinet, and from them alone. No military man
approved it, though the Duke of York, out of loyalty to his masters,
dutifully upheld it; and Dundas never quoted any authority but his
own for undertaking it, nor for his constant interference with the
conduct of the operations that preceded it. He had indeed a good
many conceits in his own mind, the most fatal of which was that he
understood how to conduct a campaign; and he had privately made vague
inquiries of Murray, as to the need for naval co-operation, so far back
as in April.[151] But the point was not one to be decided off-hand by
a General, for the question was not whether a fleet would be useful,
but whether it would be able to act in all weathers; and this purely
naval matter appears never to have been considered at all. On the
15th of August, when the army was not yet committed to the siege,
General Ainslie, the commandant at Ostend, warned Dundas that he had
not realised the difficulties which might be raised by adverse weather
at Dunkirk; and, as a matter of fact, the _Brilliant_ and her little
flotilla had not been on the coast three days before they were blown
away from their station. It was doubtless owing to the uncertainty of
naval assistance that Murray gave the apparently astounding opinion,
that he regarded a squadron as useful though not very material to the
siege. But, apart from this, Dundas had so often pressed the Duke
of York to spare his eight thousand Hessians, which formed almost
one-third of the force under his command, for another service, that it
was impossible for the Duke to divine whether Ministers really intended
to pursue their design against Dunkirk or not. If they did, he had a
right to look to them for a siege-train and for the necessary naval
assistance, neither of which were forthcoming, partly because Dundas
did not know his own mind, partly because he had committed himself
to a multiplicity of operations beyond the power, after ten years of
steady neglect,[152] of either Army or Navy to execute. However, as
a substitute for the much-needed ships and guns, he sent to Murray a
plan for the siege of Dunkirk, drawn up by no less skilled a hand than
that of Lord Chancellor Loughborough, possibly with some hope that the
deficiencies of Downing Street might be made good by the wisdom of
the woolsack. There are times when the conceit of British politicians
becomes touchingly ridiculous.
Very different was the change that had come over military administration
in France during the same month of August. ◆Aug. 10.◆ Upon the
re-election of the Committee of Public Safety, which took place on the
10th, Barrère, who was a member, approached Prieur of the Côte d’Or with
the words, “We none of us understand military matters. You are an
officer of Engineers; will you join us?” “There is only one man in the
Convention for the place,” answered Prieur, “and that is Carnot; and I
will be his second.” ◆Aug. 14.◆ Accordingly, on the 14th of August two
new members were added to the Committee, namely, Carnot, who assumed
control of the formation, training, and movements of the armies, and
Prieur, who took charge of arms, ammunition, and hospitals. These,
together with Robert Lindet, formed the most remarkable group in one of
the most remarkable administrative bodies which has ever existed. Three
of the members, Barrère, Billaud Varennes, and Collot d’Herbois, were
known as the Revolutionaries, their business being to guide and inspire
political emotions; three more, Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint Just,
were concerned with legislative proposals, police, and the revolutionary
tribunal, and bore the ominous name of the High Hands; but the last
three, Carnot, Prieur, and Lindet, were known simply as the Workers, a
title which no men have ever more worthily earned.
Carnot’s advent showed itself in prompt and energetic action. ◆Aug. 16.◆
On the 16th of August a decree was passed for a levy _en masse_, which,
it was estimated, would add four hundred and fifty thousand men to the
army; and, since all exemptions and substitutes were disallowed, the
cream of the nation began for the first time to flow into the ranks.
◆Aug. 29.◆ Moreover, on the 29th of August, the old white coats of the
Monarchy were abolished and the blue coat of the National Guard made
uniform for the entire host, a significant hint that henceforth there
were to be no further distinctions between regular troops and
volunteers, but a single National Army. Prieur, on his side, set up
manufactories of arms and gunpowder in Paris, and stimulated the search
for saltpetre in all directions. The result of these measures lay hid in
the future; but immediate and important movements were made on the
northern frontier. Carnot, with true insight, had divined that England
was in reality the most dangerous member of the Coalition, and that to
foil her before Dunkirk would, from its political results, be the most
telling of all military operations.[153] ◆Aug. 24.◆ Withdrawing
therefore several thousand troops from Coburg’s front and from the army
of the Moselle, he massed them to westward, until, on the 24th of
August, there were, apart from the eight thousand men in Dunkirk itself,
some twenty-three thousand in the entrenched camp at Cassel, four
thousand about Lille, and twelve to fifteen thousand more from the
Moselle within a few days’ march. Kilmain had been recalled after the
retreat from Cæsar’s camp, and replaced by General Houchard in supreme
command. Among Houchard’s subordinate generals was Jourdan. Dunkirk
itself had for commandant General Souham, an energetic officer whose
fame was soon to spread wide; and one of Souham’s battalions was
commanded by Lazare Hoche.
Thus new men and a new principle of war, which were to crush the
cordon-system out of existence, hung like an angry cloud to the south of
Dunkirk; but the Generals of the Allies took no heed. Murray, indeed,
had heard with anxiety of the increase of the French force in his front,
and had begged Coburg for reinforcements, which, however, could not be
spared.[154] On the east Coburg was busy besieging Quesnoy, with corps
of observation thrown out to east and west. He had called up eight
thousand men under General Beaulieu from Namur to strengthen his weak
cordon about Bouvines and Orchies; but to west of Beaulieu the space
from Lannoy to Menin was guarded by some thirteen thousand
Dutch—spiritless, disaffected troops, whose leader, the Prince of
Orange, was half inclined to give up the contest because he could obtain
no assurance as to his indemnity. West of the Dutch was the gossamer
line of Freytag, and behind it lay the Duke of York, conscious, first,
that Souham had opened the sluices, and that the steady rise of the
inundation would shortly sever his communication with Freytag; secondly,
that his right flank was under perpetual menace from the French
gunboats; and thirdly, that his rear was insecure, since there was
nothing to hinder the French from moving troops by sea. In this
situation he was trying to take a fortress, which he was not strong
enough to invest and which the enemy could consequently reinforce at any
moment, by attacking it upon one side only without heavy artillery. He
endeavoured to protect his flanks by throwing up entrenchments in the
Dunes, but found that they filled with water at the depth of two feet;
and he was fain to disarm a frigate at Nieuport and bring up her heavy
guns to the front, in order to arm batteries, not only against the town,
but towards the sea, to drive away the French gunboats. Thus at the
beginning of September he was able to open fire; ◆Aug. 27.◆ but
meanwhile Houchard had not been idle, for on the 27th he fell in force
upon the posts of Beaulieu and the Prince of Orange at Cysoing and
Tourcoing. He was beaten back by Beaulieu with the loss of four guns;
but the Dutch abandoned Tourcoing with suspicious alacrity, and would
have retired to Tournai and Courtrai had not Murray sent a detachment to
support them. “There is ill-will and disinclination to favour our
present operations,” wrote Murray; and indeed the fact is hardly
surprising.[155] The marvel is that he and the Duke of York should have
remained in so dangerous a position, when a successful attack by the
enemy upon the Dutch and a bold push forward would have carried the
French to Furnes, and cut off the whole of the army about Dunkirk beyond
rescue. Indeed, though they knew it not, this operation had actually
been projected at the French headquarters.[156]
[Illustration:
DUNKIRK AND ENVIRONS
showing
THE POSITION OF THE ALLIES
from 24 Aug. to 6 Sept. 1793.
_Stanford’s Geogl. Estabt., London._
]
With the arrival of his last reinforcements from the Moselle, Houchard
resolved to attack the scattered posts of Freytag, the nearest of which
lay little more than five miles from Cassel. ◆Sept. 6.◆ Assembling
thirty thousand men, he led them forward early in the morning of the 6th
of September in five columns, under Generals Vandamme, Hédouville,
Colland, Jourdan, and himself, the three first against Poperinghe,
Proven, and Rousbrugge, the two last against Wormhoudt, Herzeele, and
Houtkerke. Though outnumbered by ten to one, the Hanoverians and
Hessians fought most obstinately, and the troops opposed to Houchard and
Jourdan would have held their own behind the Yser at Bambecque, had not
the French already penetrated to Rexpoede in their rear. The fighting
lasted all day, the garrison of Dunkirk at the same time keeping the
besieging army employed by a sortie; and at night Freytag retired upon
Hondschoote, ordering General Walmoden, who commanded the posts about
Bergues, to withdraw all his troops to the same place. Taking the road
by Rexpoede, in ignorance that it was actually occupied by the French,
Freytag blundered into the midst of a French picquet, and was, with the
young Prince Adolphus (afterwards Duke of Cambridge), wounded and taken.
The Prince was rescued, but the Field-Marshal was secured, and would
have remained a prisoner, had not General Walmoden, guessing that his
chief might have fallen into a trap, marched at once upon Rexpoede,
stormed it then and there, and delivered him. Walmoden then assumed
command, and, resuming the retreat, took up a convex position before
Hondschoote, with his right leaning on the Bergues canal, his centre
just in advance of Hondschoote itself, and his left resting on the
village of Leysele. The whole of his front was covered by a maze of
small ditches and hedges, through which the only access was a single
dyke leading into Hondschoote; but this broken ground, however valuable
for defence, deprived the Allies of the use of their cavalry, which was
the arm in which above all they overmatched the French. From thence
Walmoden sent urgent messages to the Duke of York for reinforcements;
and it is significant that, owing to the inundation, no troops could
reach him except by way of Bergues. There was therefore no reason why
Freytag’s corps should not have been concentrated about Hondschoote,
where it would have covered the besiegers quite as efficiently and with
infinitely less risk. The British Commander-in-Chief cannot be acquitted
of neglect herein, though Freytag must bear part of the blame for
extreme dispersion of his force.
◆Sept. 7.◆
Houchard tried to follow up his success on the following day by a
renewed attack, but his soldiers would not follow him; and Walmoden,
though he took the precaution to send his heavy baggage to Furnes,
repulsed him without difficulty. ◆Sept. 8.◆ On the 8th, however,
Houchard advanced with fresh troops to the assault, himself leading
twenty battalions, covered by several guns, to the principal attack by
the dyke; while a second column on his left, under General Leclerc,
tried to force its way along the canal, and a third, under Colland
and Hédouville, moved up from Rousbrugge against Leysele. The plan of
attack was faulty, for by holding Walmoden in front and pushing the
main force round his left flank, which stood in the air at Leysele,
Houchard must have compelled him to retire or to be driven into the
swamp of the Great Moor. The new French tactics, however, made good
the General’s shortcomings. Taking cover cunningly behind every hedge,
ditch, or bush, the French sharp-shooters poured a deadly fire into
the Hanoverians and Hessians, who stood exposed in their array of
three ranks deep, discharging their volleys by platoons with perfect
discipline, and pressing forward with the bayonet when the French
ventured too near to them. But the volleys did little injury to
dispersed and hidden skirmishers, and the charge with the bayonet was
hardly more effective over such intricate ground; for the French did
not await it, but ran back to the nearest hedge and resumed their fire
from behind it. For four hours Walmoden’s brave men held their own with
the greatest gallantry in spite of heavy losses, until at noon their
last reserves of ammunition were exhausted, when, their left flank
being seriously threatened by Hédouville, the General gave the order
to retire in two columns upon Furnes. A battalion of Hessians covered
the retreat with splendid tenacity; and the wreck of the force took
up a position between the two canals just to the south of Furnes. The
infantry had lost at least a third of its numbers, perhaps even more;
and the Hanoverians, by the confession of their own officers, were
no longer to be depended upon.[157] It was no reproach to them that
this should have been so, for no troops in the world can endure heavy
punishment during consecutive days of unsuccessful fighting, and remain
unshaken. Their losses had been very great, and their behaviour, by the
admission both of friend and foe, most admirable.
On this same day the garrison of Dunkirk made a sally against the
besiegers in the village of Rosendahl, but was repulsed, though not
without loss to the Allies; and in the afternoon came the news of
Walmoden’s defeat. At four o’clock orders were given for the heavy
baggage to be sent back to Fumes, and at eight a Council of War was
held. The Duke of York hoped to carry off his siege-guns, but the
French, having control of the sluices, had shut off the water from the
canal, so that it was no longer of use for transport; and it was
represented that delay might mean the overpowering of Walmoden’s army
and the cutting off of the Duke’s retreat by Furnes. At midnight
therefore the besieging army retired in two columns, with a confusion
which shows the inefficiency of the Duke’s staff. Transport being
scarce, the waggons were so much overloaded that the animals could
hardly drag them, and the troops were constantly checked by fallen
horses and overturned vehicles. Further, no orders for the retreat were
sent to the two battalions in Tetteghem, and the whole of one column was
delayed until they could join it. Sept. 9.◆ It was thus ten o’clock on
the morning of the 9th before the entire force reached the camp at
Furnes, fortunately without the least molestation from the enemy.[158]
There the Duke effected his junction with Walmoden, but took the
precaution to send his heavy baggage to Ostend. He had been fortunate in
escaping from a most dangerous position with no greater loss than that
of his thirty-two heavy guns; but incessant fighting, a swampy
encampment, bad drinking-water and fever had grievously thinned the
ranks of his army. It was reported at the time that the siege of Dunkirk
had cost the Allies from one cause and another nearly ten thousand
men;[159] and I am disposed to think that this estimate is not
exaggerated. “Our whole enterprise is defeated and our situation
embarrassing in the extreme,” wrote Murray. “It is uncertain whether we
can maintain ourselves behind Furnes; at all events I think we shall
hold good behind the canal at Nieuport.” ◆Sept. 11.◆ This letter reached
Downing Street on the 11th; and on that same day Macbride’s fleet
appeared before Nieuport, three weeks too late.
VOL. IV. BOOK XII. CHAPTER VI
◆1793.◆
During August and the first week of September the results of the
Government’s incoherent enterprises began to crowd one upon another with
rapidity enough to bewilder a clearer head than that of Dundas. The
forces that he had set in motion in the Colonies seemed at first to
promise great results at small cost. ◆April 12.◆ On the 12th of April
General Cuyler, obedient to his instructions, embarked a force of about
five hundred men[160] at Barbados, and sailed under convoy of
Vice-admiral Sir John Laforey’s squadron to Tobago. The enemy was
prepared for his coming, for, as was usual with Dundas’s secret
expeditions, the whole island of Barbados was apprised of the project as
early as the General;[161] ◆April 14.◆ but none the less Cuyler landed
on the 14th at Courland Bay, stormed on the same night the French fort
that crowns the hill above Scarborough, and captured the island with
trifling loss. The news of this success reached London on the 1st of
June, and was followed a month later by that of the bloodless capture of
St. Pierre and Miquelon by a small force sent from Halifax; ◆May 14.◆
but the next intelligence from the west was less satisfactory. Though by
no means over-trustful of the representations of the refugees from
Martinique, whom Dundas had recommended to him, and who assured him that
eight hundred men would suffice to take the island, June 10.◆ General
Bruce embarked about eleven hundred troops at Barbados on the 10th of
June,[162] and sailed for the island with Admiral Gardner’s squadron.
◆June 16.◆ After concerting operations with the French Royalists, he
landed his troops on the 16th at Case Navire, for an attack on St.
Pierre; but a panic, which set in among the Royalist levies on the
morning fixed for the action, convinced him that it would be hopeless to
trust them, and he accordingly re-embarked on the 21st for Barbados,
carrying his pusillanimous allies away with him. ◆June 21.◆ Here,
therefore, was an initial failure on the part of the monarchical party,
which had promised such easy possession of the French West Indies; and
Bruce did not hesitate to add that, since the Republicans had admitted
all black men to rights of government in Martinique, any further attack
would be hopeless unless undertaken by a considerable force.
◆Aug. 13.◆
The news of this abortive expedition reached London on the 13th of
August; and shortly afterwards came a letter from a gentleman in Tobago,
warning the Government that French emissaries were busy all over the
West Indies, and that there was great danger of a general rising of the
negroes for the expulsion of the white proprietors from all the
islands.[163] Here was information important enough to make Pitt think
twice before he pursued his policy of cutting off the financial
resources of the Revolution by ruining French West Indian trade, to say
nothing of the fact that the said trade was already practically ruined
by civil war in the French islands. There were other weak points in the
French armour besides the West Indies, so many indeed that Ministers
might be excused for finding it difficult to determine which of them
they should assail. ◆Aug. 29.◆ The only method of overcoming that
difficulty was that they should clearly define to themselves their
object in making war.