where Lyons still defied the forces of the Convention, and where it was
hoped that Sardinia, in return for the two hundred thousand pounds given
her by the recent treaty, would intervene effectively, with Austria at
her side. Next,[164] from this same quarter there came the very
important but unexpected news that commissioners from Toulon, after some
parley with Lord Hood, had agreed to declare for the Monarchy and the
Constitution of 1791, and to give up to him the shipping, forts and
arsenal, to be held in trust for King Lewis the Seventeenth until the
end of the war. In return for this, however, they made the natural but
very significant request that troops should be landed for their
protection. Here, therefore, was the Government committed, though by no
act of its own, to serious operations by land on the side of the
Mediterranean. The responsibility assumed by Hood was very grave; and
for a time he hesitated to incur it. “At present,” he wrote, two days
after issuing his public reply to the offers of the commissioners, “I
have not troops sufficient to defend the works. Had I five or six
thousand good troops I should soon end the war.”[165] He therefore
anchored at Hyères and, mindful of the British alliances with the
Mediterranean powers, wrote to the British Ambassador at Naples for such
forces as could be spared, at the same time asking help of the Spanish
Admiral, Don Juan de Langara, who was lying with his squadron off the
coast of Roussillon. ◆Aug. 28.◆ Before, however, these reinforcements
could arrive, he was so far satisfied by the assurances of the French
that he sailed into Toulon harbour and, landing fifteen hundred marines
and soldiers who were acting as such, occupied the principal forts that
defended the outer harbour. While thus engaged he was joined by Langara
with the greater part of his squadron, who announced that he had one
thousand troops ready to disembark at once, and had left four ships
behind to bring three thousand more from the army in Roussillon. Full of
gratitude, Hood gave Langara effusive thanks, and appointed Admiral
Gravina, the Spanish officer next senior to Langara, to be commandant of
Toulon.
All this was known to the Government by the 15th of September, by which
time, as shall presently be told, more reassuring news had arrived
from Flanders, to the effect that the French had been checked, and
that Coburg’s army had been liberated for action by the surrender
of Quesnoy. It therefore behoved Ministers seriously to reconsider
their military policy, and to make up their minds definitely whether
their object in the war was to be, as they professed, resistance to
unprovoked aggression and the overthrow of the Convention, or simple
annexation of French possessions. In Flanders their great enterprise,
undertaken with no military knowledge and for no military purpose,
had failed; they were as much as ever in the dark as to the ultimate
designs of Austria, and they could not but be sensible that remarkably
little had been accomplished by the Allies on the Rhine. As a matter
of fact Frederick William, having discovered a glaring instance of
Thugut’s duplicity in the matter of the Bavarian exchange, had at the
end of August practically decided to withdraw from the Coalition. This
was as yet unknown to the British Ministers, for their ambassador at
Vienna, Sir Morton Eden, was completely duped by Thugut; but they were
conscious of an increasing coolness on the part of Prussia towards
the war against the Revolution. In such circumstances, although
the northern frontier of France was, from its proximity, the most
convenient sphere of operations for a British army, they might well
consider the advisability of removing all their forces from that
quarter in order to concentrate them at Toulon, which Lord Hood’s
negotiations had already engaged them to protect. French successes
in the north could be only temporary and unprofitable if the Allies,
by assisting the counter-revolution in the south, should deprive
the Convention of the richest provinces of France. A French force at
Antwerp itself would signify little, if the Allies could rally the
party of order from Bordeaux to Marseilles to put down the tyranny at
Paris.
On the other hand, it was no light task to hold Toulon against all the
host that the Convention might turn upon it. Sir Charles Grey, when
consulted by Pitt as to the force that would be required, declared
that fifty thousand good soldiers would be no more than adequate; upon
which Pitt dismissed him with the remark that he hoped that a smaller
body would suffice.[166] Probably he rested his opinion on Lord Hood’s
phrase about ending the war with six thousand men, which was of course
nonsense, and nonsense of a kind which naval officers at that period
were far too ready to talk and Ministers to hear. Mallet du Pan, the
clearest head in Europe, was urgent for making the counter-revolution
in the south the centre of attack upon the Convention; but American
experience had shown that the support of a disloyal faction is the
most unstable of all foundations upon which to build the conduct of
a war. Men of the same nation will fight each other like devils,
but, when foreigners are called into the contest, all parties tend
to combine against them. Moreover, the southern provinces were by no
means unfavourable to the Revolution at large. On the contrary, they
had enthusiastically acclaimed and supported it, until threatened with
the massacre and pillage which had disgraced Paris in September 1792.
It was therefore essential that the Allies should enter France in such
strength as to be independent of all help from French forces in the
field. It was certain that the worthless brothers of King Lewis the
Sixteenth and their parasites would claim to place themselves at the
head of any counter-revolution; and their presence alone might suffice
first to paralyse and then to subvert it.
Again, it was doubtful whether any efficient force of the Allies, other
than British, could be collected in the south. Sardinia was perfectly
ready to advance at once to the rescue of Lyons if Austria would join
her; and the Austrian General De Vins, being of the school of Loudoun,
was anxious to show his superiority to his rivals Coburg and Clerfaye
of the school of Lacy. But here again the mischievous rapacity of
Thugut neutralised all action, for he would allow no Austrian troops
to move from Italy unless Sardinia consented to concede the Novarese
to Austria, indemnifying herself at the expense of France. The British
Ministers were aware of this dispute about the Novarese, for Mulgrave
had reported it,[167] and they had sufficient experience of the
Imperial Court to divine that it would not quickly be settled. Apart
from Austria and Sardinia, troops could be obtained from Naples and
from Spain; but the assistance of two courts so effete and so corrupt
was not likely to be efficient. In any case, it was certain that, if
any real advantage was to be gained from the possession of Toulon,
every British soldier must be withdrawn from other operations, and that
the whole of England’s military force must be assembled at that point.
If this were impossible, it were best to instruct Hood to make sure of
the French fleet, destroy the arsenal, and carry away the inhabitants
who had yielded the place into his hands.
Then, besides Flanders and Toulon, there was La Vendée, where the
contemptible ruffians whom the Jacobins had appointed to be generals
were suffering defeat upon defeat. If by the help of the insurgents
Nantes could be seized as a base, it was no very long march from Angers
or Tours or Orléans to Paris; but here again it was not a small force
that was required, but every British battalion that could be spared.
Lastly, if the Ministers wanted to secure indemnities only, the West
Indies lay open to them. No doubt it would be of advantage to possess
the famous harbour of St. Lucia, to deliver Dominica from the menace of
Martinique, her neighbour to windward, and to master Guadeloupe, with
the nest of privateers which preyed upon all British commerce in those
seas. Above all, the capture of Haiti would ensure at once the security
of Jamaica, the possession of a country whose wealth, though more than
half destroyed, was still appreciable, and the transfer to a British
garrison of St. Nicholas Mole, which, being the gate of the Windward
Passage and the Gibraltar of the West Indies, would give safe transit
for the trade of the archipelago to England. Such an enterprise,
however, would equally demand the entire land-force of the British
Isles. It would be necessary not only to take the islands but to hold
them, and to hold them not only, as heretofore, against the climate and
against the fleet and armies of France, but against the entire negro
population, which the Revolution had summoned to its aid. There was,
as there still is, abundance of records of former attacks upon all
those islands, showing that at the best of times each British battalion
in the West Indies required to be renewed in its entirety every two
years, and at the worst of times might be completely extinguished
by a single hot season. Of all plans, therefore, this would be the
most difficult, the most perilous, the most costly in execution and
maintenance, and the least damaging to France; not to mention the fact
that the overthrow of the Convention, which had authorised the equality
of the black man with the white, was really essential to its permanent
success. Thus it should at least have been obvious to the Government
that out of the four spheres of operations it could hope to act with
effect in one alone; and then only by throwing into the chosen sphere
every trained soldier that it could muster.
Blind to all such considerations, Ministers decided not to select one,
or at most two, of these spheres, but to fritter away their handful of
forces between all four. ◆Sept. 11.◆ Indeed, Dundas’s orders between the
11th and 18th of September form a notable specimen of his ideas of
carrying on war. The news of the failure at Dunkirk had at first
completely unnerved him; but, on realising how critical was the position
of affairs in that quarter, he directed eight battalions[168] to embark
for Ostend, as a temporary measure. Then he warned the Duke of York that
five thousand of his Hessians must be held ready to sail to Toulon as
soon as this reinforcement reached him, and that the eight battalions
themselves would be required elsewhere at the beginning of October. On
the same day he wrote to Lord Hood that everything must give way to the
importance of holding Toulon; that he had appealed to Austria for
troops; and that he would send Hood the five thousand Hessians
aforesaid, as well as two battalions out of the five stationed at
Gibraltar. Four days later he warned General Bruce to be ready to
receive at Barbados fifteen battalions, which were under orders for
active service in the West Indies. Lastly, at the same time or very
little later, he framed a design for a descent upon St. Malo and for the
occupation of the Isle D’Yeu, off the coast of La Vendée.[169] It is now
time to return to Flanders, and to follow in detail the reaction of
Dundas’s genius upon the operations in that quarter.
In the first peril of the retreat from Dunkirk the British commanders
seem to have entertained serious thoughts of re-embarkation;[170] but
were reassured when Houchard did not follow up his stroke upon the force
of Walmoden. For this the French general has been much blamed; and
indeed his failure to destroy the Duke of York’s army was made the
excuse for bringing him shortly afterwards to the guillotine. But in
truth Houchard had lost his true opportunity through the unskilfulness
of his attack upon Walmoden, wherein his troops, already half starved
and less than half disciplined, had been seriously shaken by their
losses. He therefore reinforced the garrisons of Bergues and Dunkirk,
and, in the hope of relieving Quesnoy, fell with thirty thousand men
upon the flank of the Dutch cordon from Poperinghe and upon its front
from Lille. ◆Sept. 12, 13.◆ His success was at first encouraging, for he
defeated his opponents completely with the loss of forty guns and three
thousand men, and captured Menin. General Beaulieu, who had been
despatched with over four thousand Austrians to the assistance of the
Dutch, for some reason refused to act with them, but checked the advance
of the French beyond Menin, and occupied Courtrai. The Dutch fled in
disorder to Bruges and Ghent; and for the moment it seemed as though
communication between the Duke of York and Coburg was hopelessly
severed. ◆Sept. 12.◆ The Duke, after leaving a detachment under
Abercromby at Furnes, had withdrawn to the rear of the canal between
Nieuport and Dixmuyde, in order to secure his retreat to Ostend; ◆Sept.
14.◆ but he now ordered Abercromby back to Nieuport, and marched with
the bulk of his force eastward to Thorout, where he was joined by two
battalions[171] from England. ◆Sept. 15.◆ From thence on the 15th he
moved southward to Roulers; and on that day the situation underwent a
total change.
Beaulieu, being attacked by Houchard before Courtrai, waited only for a
reinforcement which the Duke had hurried forward to him, when, taking
the offensive, he utterly routed the French, who fled in the wildest
confusion, and, pursuing them to Menin, recaptured the town. ◆Sept. 16.◆
The Duke entered Menin on the following day, where he received letters
from Coburg who was already at Cysoing, not more than eighteen miles to
the south, reporting that since the fall of Quesnoy he had gained a
brilliant victory over one of Houchard’s divisions at Avesnes-le-Sec.
◆Sept. 12.◆ This action, which, though almost unknown to Englishmen,
still remains one of the greatest achievements in the history of
cavalry, was not only most glorious to the Austrians in itself, but was
important as showing that the new tactics of the undisciplined French
army were inapplicable to any but a strongly enclosed country. Nine
Austrian squadrons, counting some two thousand men, without a single
gun, had utterly dispersed seven thousand French, chiefly infantry, cut
down two thousand of them, captured two thousand more, and taken twenty
guns, all with a loss to themselves of sixty-nine men. These successes
effectually checked the advance of the French. Houchard, after the
defeat at Menin, had already given the order to retreat; and the French
retired to their former positions before Cassel, Lille, and Maubeuge.
Then arose the question what should be done next. The season was
advancing, but events had marched rapidly in Paris since the revolt of
Toulon. Following hard upon the news of Houchard’s reverse came tidings
that the Duke of Brunswick had defeated the French with a loss of four
thousand men at Pirmasens, on the northern frontier of Alsace; and this
succession of disasters stirred the Jacobins to the ferocity of panic.
◆Sept. 17.◆ On the 17th two savage laws were passed, which practically
placed all lives and all property at the arbitrary disposal of the
reigning faction; and then the demagogues turned with fury upon the
generals. Loudest among them was Robespierre, who, profoundly jealous
of any man who could do what he could not, was suspicious above all of
soldiers. ◆Sept. 21.◆ Thanks to his denunciations, Houchard and his
staff were recalled under accusation of treason; and thereby another
blow was added to the many already struck at the army. The troops
were greatly demoralised by the continual change of commanders,[172]
whom the Commissioners of the Convention promoted or deposed at their
arbitrary pleasure; and the commanders themselves were not less
demoralised by the certain prospect of death if they failed to achieve
the impossible with troops that were neither fed, nor clothed, nor
paid, nor disciplined. The Allies, therefore, could still reasonably
look for success from a concentration of their whole army and a
vigorous offensive.
Dundas, since the failure at Dunkirk, had become suddenly an advocate
for keeping the whole of the forces together, and for making an attack
upon the enemy before undertaking any further enterprise;[173] but
with what precise object a general action was to be fought he did
not say, for the very sufficient reason that he did not know. The
British Ministers, so far as they favoured any operations at all in
Flanders, would have preferred a second attempt upon Dunkirk; but they
gave, or professed to give, a free hand to the commanders, flattering
themselves that, if the attempt were abandoned, the British troops
would be the sooner released for service at Toulon and, above all, in
the West Indies. Coburg, on the other hand, had already put forward
what was at any rate a definite plan, though upon the old lines. He
wished to besiege Maubeuge, which was certainly an important point,
since it formed the chief link in the communications between the
French armies of the north about Lille, and of the Ardennes about
Givet and Philippeville, while its entrenched camp made it a point for
a formidable concentration of the French forces at large. Moreover,
it obstructed the passage of the Austrian troops from east to west,
compelling all reinforcements from Luxemburg to fetch a compass by
Namur and Charleroi before they could join the army of Flanders. The
Dutch agreed to come forward again to further the operations; and
before the British Government, upon Murray’s representation, could
finally make up its mind to co-operate with the Austrians, Coburg had
crossed the Sambre with forty thousand men and invested Maubeuge.[174]
Thereupon there followed the usual distribution of troops into a
cordon. The besieging force numbered fourteen thousand, the covering
army, including twelve thousand Dutch, twenty-six thousand men; and to
the Duke of York was entrusted the task of protecting Flanders along
a front of some forty-five miles, from Cysoing to Nieuport. For this
purpose Coburg gave him about sixteen thousand Austrian troops in
addition to those in the pay of Britain; but, owing to the vagaries
of the British Minister for War, the corps was exposed to the most
dangerous risk. Hardly had the eight reinforcing battalions from
England joined the army in Flanders, before Dundas ordered four of them
to return at once, and the remainder as soon as possible. Further,
not content even with this, he gave Murray to understand that the
embarkation of the Hessian corps from Flanders was only deferred, and
hinted that a part of his artillerymen might also be spared for Toulon.
Now Dundas knew perfectly well that the troops had passed through a
very severe campaign, had fought several actions and had suffered
heavy losses; he knew perfectly well that no adequate steps had been
taken for filling up the gaps in the ranks; he could hardly have been
ignorant that winter was approaching; and Murray had twice warned him
that the French were rapidly increasing their forces between Lille and
the sea. Yet the Minister, though he had given the generals nominally
a free hand, calmly withdrew battalion after battalion, until at last
Murray told him plainly of the danger of the situation. The state of
the army was most distressing: the force in British pay was reduced
to twelve thousand fighting men, or less than half of its original
numbers; the sick and wounded of the whole army under the Duke’s
command numbered at least nine thousand, or more than one-fourth; the
troops were dangerously dispersed along a very wide front; and, though
Murray did not mention this, the Austrian Government had deprecated
all field-fortification, on account of the damage that might ensue to
meadows and the banks of canals.[175] Finally, he gave warning that, if
the enemy made an attack, the Duke would be obliged to abandon Ostend.
Dundas’s reply to this was very characteristic. Without a word to
Murray he ordered the Commandant at Ostend to retain the second batch
of four battalions which, by his own order, had been sent there for
re-embarkation to England; and he wrote an angry letter to Abercromby,
a subordinate officer, first expressing horror at the idea of
abandoning Ostend, and then regretting that attempts had been made to
keep those same four battalions in Flanders. “It would be impossible,”
he wrote, “to restrain the just indignation of the country, if, for the
sake of feeding an army under a Prince of the blood, so substantial an
interest to this country as that of the French West Indies had been
sacrificed.”[176]
Apart from the fact that such language, especially when addressed to a
subordinate concerning his chief, was utterly unbecoming a Minister and
a gentleman, it was not obvious why an army should be starved, whether
in the matter of empty ranks or of empty stomachs, simply because it
happened to be commanded by a Prince of the blood. If its presence in
Flanders were an embarrassment to the Government, the simple remedy
was to withdraw it altogether, rather than leave it so weak as to be
in peril of destruction; for there was no lack of employment for the
troops elsewhere. This amazing outburst is no solitary instance of
Dundas’s bad taste, much less an unique example of his incapacity.
Meanwhile Murray’s apprehensions increased; and events soon came to
justify them. Jourdan, on Carnot’s recommendation, had succeeded
Houchard in command of the army of the north; and, with Carnot himself
at his back, ◆Oct. 7.◆ he now concentrated forty-five thousand men at
Guise for the relief of Maubeuge, leaving the remainder of his troops,
some sixty thousand men, extended in a long line to the sea. Coburg
sent pressing entreaties for reinforcements to the Duke of York, who at
once moved about nine thousand men to Cysoing, ◆Oct. 10.◆ and leaving
half of them there, proceeded with the rest—chiefly the wreck of the
British troops—to join hands with the Austrian advanced corps a little
to the south of Quesnoy at Englefontaine. ◆Oct. 15, 16.◆ It was,
however, to no purpose, for Jourdan, having increased his force to sixty
thousand men, attacked Coburg furiously on the 15th and 16th at
Wattignies, and, despite very heavy loss to himself both in men and in
guns, compelled him to raise the siege of Maubeuge. The Dutch, who had
not behaved well in the action, retired to Mons; but Coburg moved his
headquarters to no greater distance than Bavai. He was there meditating
further attacks upon the French, when the Committee of Public Safety,
intoxicated with the success at Wattignies, ◆Oct. 18.◆ ordered Jourdan
peremptorily to take the offensive and to drive the hordes of the tyrant
into the Sambre, which river, it may be observed, at that moment flowed
between the opposing armies. ◆Oct. 22.◆ A second and still more
ludicrous order bade him keep his force together, menace several remote
points simultaneously, operate in two divisions against Mons and
Tournai, and withal act with prudence. Jourdan, however, not daring to
attempt the passage of the Sambre, sent on the 20th one division to
assail Marchiennes, and another under Souham against all the Allied
posts from Cysoing to Werwicq, which last was held by six thousand men
under Count Erbach. Both attacks were successful, though Marchiennes was
retaken on the 24th; ◆Oct. 22.◆ and on the 22nd Erbach was forced to
fall back to Tournai and Courtrai, abandoning even Menin. On the 22nd
likewise a division from Cassel attacked Ypres, while another from
Dunkirk under Vandamme captured Furnes, and, pressing northward with
twelve thousand men, ◆Oct. 24.◆ opened on the 24th the bombardment of
Nieuport. The town had been but hastily fortified, and the garrison
consisted of only two weak Hessian battalions, a few dragoons, and the
British Fifty-third Regiment, in all fewer than thirteen hundred men.
For the moment it seemed certain that the British would be cut off from
their base.
Murray, foreseeing this, had ordered all stores, beyond what was
necessary for the moment, to be removed from Ostend. The Commandant
disembarked some of the four battalions which, pursuant to Dundas’s
order, were about to sail to England; and Dundas, on hearing of the
situation, at once sent Major-general Grey, the appointed Commander
of the West Indian expedition, with four more battalions[177] to take
charge of the troops at Ostend, giving him full liberty to defend it
or to bring away the whole of the eight battalions, as he might think
best, without reference to the Duke of York. Meanwhile he clamoured
for reports as to the intentions of Coburg, and for explanation of the
reasons for the possible abandonment of Ostend; for it had not yet
occurred to him that the French, by attacking in overwhelming force,
might compel the Commander of the Allies to conform to their plan of
operations instead of pursuing his own.[178]