driven back with heavy loss from Cysoing and Orchies. The garrison of
Nieuport held its own gallantly, being reinforced on the 27th by another
battalion of Hessians and by a few gunners from Ostend; and meanwhile
the Duke of York was hastening back from Englefontaine and Tournai,
while Coburg followed him westward with half of his army as far as
Solesmes, midway between Cambrai and Landrecies. ◆Oct. 28.◆ On the
evening of the 28th Grey arrived at Ostend, and at once sent the
Forty-second and four companies of Light Infantry to the help of
Nieuport. On the same evening the Duke of York having reached Camphin, a
few miles east of Cysoing, detached Abercromby with four battalions and
two squadrons[179] northward against the French post at Lannoy. The
place was captured with little loss, and the British Light Dragoons did
terrible execution in the pursuit of the flying enemy. ◆Oct. 29.◆ On the
following night another division, under the Austrian General Kray, made
a brilliant attack upon the post of Marchiennes, driving out the French
with a loss of nearly two thousand men and twelve guns, at a cost to
itself of fewer than one hundred casualties. ◆Oct. 30.◆ Meanwhile the
French, on hearing of the Duke of York’s advance upon their flank, had
retired from Menin and Ypres; and early on the next morning Vandamme,
fearing to be cut off, retreated from before Nieuport, leaving four guns
and a quantity of ammunition behind him. So easy was it to change the
whole face of affairs by concentrating a compact force against one point
and rolling up a cordon from end to end. It is almost comical to observe
how at first both sides used the cordon-system; how the French, after
abandoning it with success, relapsed into it once more; and finally how
the Allies, also abandoning it under British direction, in their turn
gained the upper hand.
Throughout this anxious period the interference of Dundas with the
operations had been incessant, and his tone by no means the most
courteous. The incoherence and folly of his orders may best be judged
from a summary of the reply which Murray at length found time to
write on the 20th of October. “Let me point out to you,” he wrote,
in effect, “that the same messenger brought to me from you, first,
advice to besiege St. Quentin; secondly, orders to keep a body of
troops at Ostend; and, thirdly, strong exhortations against division
or detachment of our force. As to Ostend, if Nieuport holds out, it is
safe for the winter; and I see no reason why Nieuport should not hold
out. As to St. Quentin, this means taking a train of artillery there
in the month of November. It means also that twenty thousand out of
Coburg’s twenty-five thousand men must be detached, while the remaining
five thousand remain quietly between three fortified towns and a
forest, from which fifty thousand men may attack them from all sides at
any time. Further, the detached force must draw its subsistence from
a distance of forty miles across the whole French army without any
other protection than that of those five thousand men.” “I beg pardon,”
he continued, “for taking up your time with this kind of argument,
which it was not your intention to enter into, but I think it is right
to show that, perhaps, people in England are not more infallible in
their judgments than those upon the Continent.” Irony so keen sped
home even through the dense armour of Dundas’s conceit. “You have
not sufficiently weighed the feeling of this country,” he answered,
taking refuge in bluster, “if you think that any successes could have
counterbalanced the loss of Ostend.” Murray hastened to soothe him by
pointing out that the Duke of York, though against his own military
judgment, had strictly obeyed the Cabinet’s instructions as to the
protection of Ostend, and that it was not Grey who had saved it but
the Duke himself, who, before he knew of Grey’s arrival, had forced
Vandamme to retire by threatening his communications.[180]
This sharp passage of arms silenced Dundas for the time, though, as
will be seen, it taught him little wisdom for the future. Meanwhile,
after a few small affairs of outposts, the campaign came to an end.
The Emperor of Austria sent orders to Coburg to fight a general
action, for no particular object; and the Committee of Public Safety
gave the like instructions to Jourdan, in the hope that he might be
able to advance to Namur and so to threaten the Austrian line of
communication. But neither was in a position to obey. The campaign had
been most arduous, as a war of posts must always be, not only from the
innumerable minor actions, but from the strain imposed on the troops
by constant vigilance and by endless marching to and fro to reinforce
the threatened points of the cordon. The losses on the side of the
Allies had been great: those of the French had been enormous, not only
in men but in material, for the Allies had taken from them over two
hundred guns. In brief, both armies were thoroughly exhausted; and
yet the Allies had accomplished comparatively little, owing partly to
the false plan imposed by England, partly to the false tactics of the
Austrian commanders, still more to the misunderstandings and jealousy
that make coherent action so difficult in an army composed of many
nations. On the Rhine likewise little had been effected. Soon after
the victory of Pirmasens the King of Prussia left his army for Posen;
◆Oct. 13.◆ and, though the Austrian General Wurmser drove the French
in utter confusion from the lines of Weissenburg, yet, in consequence
of faulty dispositions and of the half-hearted co-operation of the
Prussian troops, an advantage which might have been decisive was turned
to little account. Prussia, in truth, was not anxious to aid Austria
in gaining Alsace; while the Polish question, as always, kept the two
powers in an attitude of mutual suspicion and mistrust. There was
nothing, therefore, left to the Allies but to take up cantonments for
the winter, which they accordingly did, while Grey and the whole of the
eight battalions with him returned to England. The Allies had missed
their chance in Flanders; and the chance was gone for ever.
VOL. IV. BOOK XII. CHAPTER IX
◆1793.◆
It is now necessary to sum up the relative conditions of France and the
Allies at the close of 1793. The British enterprises against the French
at Dunkirk, in La Vendée, and at Toulon had one and all failed; but the
tale of disaster was even then not fully told. Upon arrogating to itself
the appointment of Generals in the field, the Committee of Public Safety
had appointed ◆Oct.–Nov.◆ Pichegru and Hoche to command respectively the
armies of the Rhine and Moselle. Pichegru had been a non-commissioned
officer of artillery before the Revolution, had since obtained command
of a battalion of volunteers, and, by assiduous courting of the Jacobin
leaders, had become a Lieutenant-general without seeing a shot fired.
Hoche, as we have seen, had risen from the ranks of the French Guards,
had distinguished himself in high command at Dunkirk, and, above all,
had attracted Carnot’s attention by a memorandum condemning the
dispersion of troops after the Austrian manner, and advocating
everywhere concentration and a vigorous offensive. “This young fellow
will go far,” said Carnot, as he handed the document to Robespierre. “A
very dangerous man!” objected the other, who dreaded the success of any
man except himself. The task prescribed to Hoche was to relieve Landau,
then blockaded by the Prussians; but he found his army in such ill
condition that he hesitated to attempt anything until strengthened by
Pichegru, when he made a general attack upon the Prussians under the
Duke of Brunswick at Kaiserslautern, and was beaten back with heavy
loss. ◆Nov. 28–30.◆ Thanks to Carnot’s influence, however, his failure
was forgiven to him; and his new project, that he should reinforce
Pichegru with two-thirds of his troops and fall upon the Austrians under
General Wurmser at Hagenau, was approved. Wurmser perceived the
gathering storm, and appealed to Brunswick for help; but King Frederick
William had expressly forbidden the Duke to engage himself in any
important operations, and the Prussians did not move until too late.
◆Dec. 23.◆ On the 23rd of December Hoche opened his attack with great
skill and success, and would have annihilated Wurmser, had not Brunswick
interfered at the last moment to check the pursuit of the French.
◆Dec. 26.◆ The Austrian commander, furious because Brunswick had not
supported him from the first, then returned to the eastern bank of the
Rhine, thus uncovering the Prussian left, and obliging them likewise to
abandon the greater part of the Palatinate, and to content themselves
with protecting the neighbourhood of Mainz. Landau, therefore, was
recaptured by the French; the eastern frontier of France was purged of
the enemy; and, above all, the ill-feeling between Austria and Prussia
was more than ever embittered. Broadly speaking, the French by the close
of the year had contended successfully alike with the Coalition and with
internal foes, having lost ground only in the Eastern Pyrenees to Spain,
the enemy from which it could be most easily recovered.
Nevertheless the authority of the Committee of Public Safety was by no
means yet fully assured. The Commune of Paris, representing the most
infamous of the population, had been jealous of it from the first; and
the useful service of the little band of Workers had been accomplished
only with great difficulty and by constant concessions to the party of
violence. Representatives of the people vested with arbitrary powers
still accompanied the armies, interfering with the operations, punishing
by summary execution the slightest fault or failure, whether realised or
merely suspected, levying barbarous and oppressive requisitions, and
thus driving officers, men, and civil population alike to despair. In no
army was this policy of terror more ruthlessly pursued than in that of
the Rhine, where unlimited powers were exercised by the representatives
Lebas and St. Just, of whom the latter, a young man of twenty-six, gave
himself the airs of omnipotent Jove, with a guillotine for thunderbolt.
A campaign, however, cannot be won solely by decapitation of one’s own
troops; and in the winter of 1793–1794 this fact began to impress
itself, in respect not only of the army but of France at large, upon
some of the ruling men in Paris. But it was no easy matter to convince
the unspeakable rogues of the Commune of Paris that terror, which had
brought to them personally enormous profit, was, as a national policy, a
failure. Early in December 1793 the Committee of Public Safety took
several measures to abridge the powers of the Commune; and some of the
men who had in earlier days been most violent favoured the reaction
towards a milder rule; but none the less Collot d’Herbois, who had been
the author of most atrocious cruelties at Lyons since the recapture of
the city, continued to obtain official approval of his conduct. Dread of
summary restoration of order by some victorious General continually
haunted the minds of many of the leaders, and notably of Robespierre;
◆Dec. 25.◆ and, since the only idea of this last was to support
whichever party was at the moment the stronger, he upheld Collot, and
sought popularity by proposing the execution of another batch of
Generals. Thus the opening of the new year witnessed a complete revival
of the system of terror.
Immediate mischief was the inevitable result. Carnot had wished after
the victory of Savenay to institute a policy of conciliation in La
Vendée; but, on the contrary, a ruffianly soldier named Turreau was let
loose upon the district with his “infernal columns,” as if to
exterminate a herd of wild beasts. The country was laid waste, the
villages were burned, and such victims as could not escape the soldiery
were swept into Nantes, to be murdered after such manner as might please
the still greater ruffian, Carrier. Thereupon the people at once took up
arms again. A smuggler bearing the nickname of Chouan[181] organised a
band of his fellows for revenge, and was soon imitated by others.
Charette and Stofflet again came forward as leaders; and there began a
desultory guerilla war, fraught with constant disaster to the Republican
troops, which gnawed deeply into the heart of France. At the same time,
as if to increase the difficulties of its capable commanders in the
field, the Convention lent a ready ear to all complaints against them.
The Representatives attached to the armies, with the true instinct of
politicians of all times and nations, were careful to take to themselves
the credit for every victory, and to impute to the military the blame
for every reverse; ◆1794 Jan. 1.◆ and a savage decree was passed that
any General condemned to death should be executed in front of his own
troops. Successful commanders ran as great a risk as unsuccessful.
Kléber, Marceau, Lapoype, and Bonaparte were one and all denounced in
the spring of 1794 by the civilians who had aspired to direct them in
the field; and it was only by much labour and cunning that Carnot was
able to save their lives.
Nevertheless, despite all drawbacks, there was progress towards
improvement in the French army. True, there was still shameful rascality
on the part of contractors,[182] which was countenanced by Bouchotte
under the protection of Robespierre, and which caused much suffering and
desertion. The levy _en masse_ again had proved a failure; but, on the
other hand, compulsion to personal service, without exemption of any
kind, had forced a better class of recruit into the ranks;
◆1793 Nov. 22◆ and it was wisely determined to incorporate these new
levies with the battalions at the front, which possessed officers and
non-commissioned officers of experience to train them. Finally, the
reorganisation of the army into demi-brigades, consisting each of two
battalions of volunteers and one battalion of regulars, was, after long
delay, decreed and gradually brought about. ◆1794 Jan. 8.◆ Innumerable
useless corps were swept away; the establishments of existing corps were
increased; and the law as to election of officers was practically,
though tacitly, ignored.[183] ◆Feb. 12.◆ At the same time a succession
of decrees forbade the attendance of deputations from regiments upon the
Convention, strove to check abuses and waste in the matter of
requisitions, and made a new regulation that no soldier should rise to
any grade of command—from corporal to general—who could not read and
write. ◆Feb 15.◆ All this wrought for discipline and efficiency, for
many of the Colonels and Generals appointed by the Jacobins, being
unable to read a map or even a letter, had brought about great confusion
at the War Office and frequent disaster in the field.[184] At the same
time, strenuous efforts were made to improve the cavalry, which had
hitherto been absolutely useless; and its establishment was fixed at
twenty-nine regiments of heavy and fifty-four of light cavalry, or
ninety-six thousand men in all. The horse-artillery also, after but a
single year of existence, was augmented to eight thousand men, and the
field-artillery, including detachments for battalion guns, to twenty-six
thousand men. The whole force of France at the beginning of 1794 reached
six hundred thousand effective men, or about half of the figure which,
from motives of policy or conceit, was invariably assigned to it by the
orators of Paris.
Moreover, to turn military improvements to the best advantage, events
conspired to throw power more and more into the hands of the Committee
of Public Safety. ◆1793 Dec. 22.◆ By a clever decree, the Committee
contrived to disarm the hired ruffians who supported the Commune, and to
make over their weapons to the army; and this blow was followed three
months later by the accusation and execution of the leaders of the
Commune itself, including Hébert, the supreme ruffian, and Ronsin and
Vincent, two of the greatest scoundrels in the War Office.
◆1794 March 29.◆ The next attack was directed against Danton and others,
who had recognised the failure of the policy of terror, and wished to
end it; and accordingly he and his followers went to the guillotine on
the 5th of April. ◆April 5.◆ This was the work of Robespierre, who at
one time had been the firm ally of both of these factions, but was now
seeking supreme power in order to carry out certain ideas of his own for
the social regeneration of France. Being an absolutely mediocre man, of
the type which small provincial journals delight to honour with the
title of “our talented townsman,” he was wholly lacking in the ability
and experience required for the business of administration; and he seems
to have agreed, without knowing what he did, to the abolition of
Ministers for departments and the substitution of boards, responsible to
the Committee of Public Safety, in their place. Hereby the little knot
of Workers, who had real capacity as well as boundless industry, gained
an affluence of power, and the military service an increase of
efficiency; for their labours were too high for the control of a petty
lawyer who possessed no gift but that of composing bad essays, and knew
no resource but that of cutting off heads. Nor was the activity of the
Workers confined to France alone. Revolutionary agents had been busy all
over Europe with persuasive tongues and still more persuasive purses.
They had bribed high officials to second Carnot’s military projects by
conspiracies at Turin, Naples, Florence, and Genoa; they had met with
much encouragement in Holland, and counted on further success in
Switzerland; they had made some impression upon Denmark, had half gained
Sweden, and had spared no expense to rouse the Turk against Austria. The
cost of these negotiations was enormous, but the Government of France
was playing for high stakes, knowing well that without victory in all
quarters in the coming campaign, bankruptcy and starvation must
inevitably bring down the Revolution with a crash.
On the military side Carnot had decided to strike at important points
only, and elsewhere to stand on the defensive. In the south he
designed to invade Italy, hoping that treachery at Turin would make
the work easy; but the principal struggle, as he knew, must be fought
out in Belgium. He did not, however, confine his schemes of aggression
to that quarter only. He recognised with true insight that Britain
was France’s most formidable enemy; and he had actually projected
and prepared for an invasion of England, with the help of the Brest
fleet, and for a march upon London. The plan was bold, indeed wild
in its extravagance, being founded on a false idea that disaffection
in England was as deeply seated and as widely spread in action as it
was noisy and inflated in speech. None the less the bare menace of
invasion served a useful purpose—to scare and disconcert the British
Government.[185]
◆Jan. 21.◆ In truth it must have been with no very pleasant feelings
that Ministers met Parliament in January 1794, having no better news
to lay before the Houses than a tale of failure in all quarters. Pitt
had, at least, the consolation that a section of the Whigs, headed
by the Duke of Portland, in the same month announced to him their
intention of separating themselves from Fox, and of giving the Ministry
an independent support. It was, however, felt that such an arrangement
could neither be satisfactory nor of long continuance, since, as Sir
Gilbert Elliot put it, Portland’s party would be no more than “a
detached auxiliary force, to act on one occasion, to retire on another,
and to be a perpetual object of anxiety to those whom they meant to
serve, of hope to the enemy and of speculation to the rest of the
world.”[186] Moreover, there were members of it, most notably William
Windham, who were extremely dissatisfied with the military policy, or
want of policy, initiated by Dundas.[187] Negotiations were, therefore,
set on foot for the inclusion of Portland and some of his friends in
the Cabinet; and, after six full months spent in bargaining, it was
finally arranged, on the 11th of July 1794, that Portland should become
Second Secretary of State, Lord Fitzwilliam Lord President, and Lord
Spencer Lord Privy Seal, while Windham displaced the incompetent and
corrupt Sir George Yonge as Secretary at War. It may be well to add
at once that in December Lord Spencer exchanged the Privy Seal for
the Admiralty with the capable but indolent Lord Chatham, while Lord
Mansfield took over the Presidency of the Council, and Lord Fitzwilliam
accepted the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland.
But these changes were accompanied by a reform of the greatest
importance in the history of our military administration. Pitt was
resolute in refusing to permit the War Department to lie in the Duke of
Portland’s hands; wherein he was probably right, for the Duke, though
he carried with him votes in the House of Commons, brought nothing
to the Council Board beyond a certain ponderous irresolution. Pitt
thereupon arranged, though with some difficulty, that Portland should
administer the Home Department, including the Colonies, but should have
no authority over naval and military business, for control of which
he created a third and new Secretariat of State for War. In itself
this measure was valuable and sound, but it was absolutely vitiated
by the selection of Henry Dundas to fill the new post. In the face of
the shameful blunders of the past eighteen months this appointment
was almost criminal; but Pitt’s ignorance of war was unfortunately
surpassed only by his infatuated trust in his friend. Thus Henry Dundas
became the First Secretary of State for War, the very worst man that
could possibly have been chosen to found the traditions of such an
office. His methods have found faithful imitation by all too many of
his successors.[188]
So much may be said by anticipation of events which, though not
actually accomplished, were practically assured at the opening of the
session of 1794. But the secession of Portland’s following by no means
left the Opposition without keen critics of the conduct of military
affairs. Tarleton the guerilla-leader of the American war, though
a vain and shallow man, knew enough to hit the many weak points of
Henry Dundas’s enterprises, and he was backed by one abler and more
solid than himself, Major Thomas Maitland, of the Sixty-second Foot, a
brother of the extreme radical, Lord Lauderdale. We shall see more of
Maitland, who is still remembered at Malta as “King Tom,” in the years
before us. Fox also, though as usual guilty of opposition which was
purely factious, rightly pressed home upon the Government the duty of
defining to themselves what was their true object. If, he argued, the
purpose of the war were to substitute some form of government for the
present tyranny in France, then Toulon was worth more than the West
Indies; if on the other hand it was to obtain permanent possessions,
then the West Indies were worth more than Toulon. To this the
Government answered by the mouth of Jenkinson, that their end was to
destroy the existing government in France; but both he and Pitt added
that Toulon was not to be considered of such importance as to justify
a sacrifice of the opportunity for acquiring the French West Indies.
Plainer evidence could not have been given of the utter unfitness of
both to direct a formidable war.[189]