possibly even of his intentions, for he left Moreau’s division alone
to deal with him; and, having moved Souham’s division to the
east bank of the Lys, himself on the same day attacked the line of the
Allies in force. Souham advanced against the Hanoverians on the Allied
right, but, though he forced the posts of Dottignies and Coyghem, was
repulsed from Espierres. On the left of the Allies thirty thousand
French moved out in two columns against the Duke of York’s entrenched
position between Lamain and Hertain; the stronger column of the two,
which included five thousand cavalry, following the main road from
Lille to Tournai, the other turning south-east from Bouvines by Cysoing
upon Bachy, as if to turn the Duke’s left flank. This latter column was
checked by a couple of battalions and three squadrons under command of
an Austrian officer at Bachy, and was unable to penetrate further. The
other and more formidable body carried the advanced posts of Baisieux
upon the main road, and of Camphin about a mile to south of it, and
forming on the plain between these two villages opened a furious
cannonade from howitzers and heavy guns. Thereupon the Duke, perceiving
a gap in the enemy’s line, whereby the right of their main body was
uncovered, ordered sixteen squadrons of British Dragoons and two of
Austrian Hussars to advance into the plain of Cysoing by the low ground
that lies south of the heights of Lamain, and from thence to attack.
The cavalry obeyed with alacrity; but the ground on the plain,
though perfectly level and unenclosed, was much broken by patches of
cole-seed, grown in trenches after the manner of celery, which checked
the progress of the heavy dragoons. Moreover the French infantry, for
the first time since the Revolution, threw themselves into squares and
faced the galloping horsemen with admirable firmness. Nine regiments of
cavalry in succession charged up to the bayonets, but with insufficient
speed, and fell back baffled.[231] Nevertheless they followed the
French up the plain from south to north, until, a little to westward of
Camphin, their left came under the fire of some French heavy batteries,
established on the gently rising ground before the village of Gruson.
The Duke then ordered a brigade of British infantry to move forward
between that village and Baisieux, at the same time sending down four
battalions along the track which the cavalry had taken, to support
their attack. The French infantry thereupon retreated from Camphin in
a northerly direction towards the village of Willems, their cavalry
covering the movement; while the British cavalry, now reinforced by six
more squadrons, hovered about them watching for their opportunity to
attack. At length they fell upon the French horsemen on both flanks,
and utterly overthrew them, after which they renewed their attempt upon
the infantry, but again without success. At last, however, a little to
the south of Willems, the battalion-guns of the British infantry came
up and opened fire, when the French, after receiving a few shots, began
to waver. The squadrons again charged, and an officer of the Greys,
galloping straight at the largest of the squares, knocked down three
men as he rode into it, wheeled his horse round and overthrew six more,
and thus made a gap for the entry of his men. The sight of one square
broken and dispersed demoralised the remainder of the French. Two more
squares were ridden down, and for the third time the British sabres had
free play among the French infantry. Over four hundred prisoners were
taken, thirteen guns were captured, and it was reckoned that from one
to two thousand men were cut down. The loss of the British was thirty
men killed, six officers and seventy-seven men wounded, ninety horses
killed and one hundred and forty wounded and missing, the Sixth Dragoon
Guards being the regiment that suffered most heavily. It is hardly
necessary to call attention to the arm which was lacking on this day,
or to point out that a single battery of horse-artillery would have
enabled the cavalry to break the squares at the first onset, would
greatly have increased the enemy’s losses, and would have made the
day’s operations more decisive. Not for eighteen years was the British
cavalry destined again to ride over French battalions as they rode on
this day; and then Stapleton Cotton was fated once more to be present,
leading not a squadron of Carbineers, but a whole division of horse to
the charge at Salamanca. But the 10th of May 1794 is chiefly memorable
as marking the date on which the new French infantry showed itself not
unworthy of the old.[232]
[Illustration:
WILLEMS
10 May 1794.
_Stanford’s Geogl. Estabt., London._
]
◆May 11.◆ After the action the French main body retired once more across
the Lys to its old camp between Menin and Courtrai; ◆May 12.◆ but on the
11th Souham attacked Clerfaye in his position at Lendelede, about four
miles north of Courtrai, and after an obstinate engagement forced him to
retire still further northward to Thielt, with the loss of fifteen
hundred men and two guns. Meanwhile the Duke of York, in spite of his
success on the 10th, became anxious as to his position in presence of
numbers so overwhelmingly superior, and pressed Coburg to send him
reinforcements. At the Emperor’s headquarters, however, there was some
hesitation whether the principal army should move eastward to the
assistance of Kaunitz on the Sambre, or westward for the salvation of
Flanders. The first idea was to make a demonstration towards Cambrai
with a part of the force; the next to make a rapid march and invest
Avesnes, also with only a part of the force, in order to take pressure
off Kaunitz. The idea of moving with the whole army to any given point
seems to have occurred to none of the Austrian Generals. ◆May 11.◆ Then
came the Duke of York’s application for help, whereupon General Kinsky
was ordered with some six thousand horse and foot to Denain, to enable
Wurmb’s detachment at that place to join the Duke of York at Tournai.
◆May 12.◆ One day later arrived news from Kaunitz that he had been
compelled to fall back still further northward from the Sambre, and was
attacked on all sides; the fact being that Carnot on the 30th of April
had directed fifteen thousand men from the army of the Rhine to join the
army of the Ardennes, so as to ensure decisive superiority on the
Sambre. Upon this, Coburg determined that the subdivision of the army
into fragments must cease, and called upon the Emperor to choose between
the Sambre and Flanders, as the sphere of action for the entire force.
Intelligence of a successful engagement fought by Kaunitz and of
Clerfaye’s retreat to Thielt inclined the Emperor to Flanders; and
though, even then, Austrian pedantry insisted that some eight thousand
men under the Prince of Orange must remain in the vicinity of
Landrecies, ◆May 14.◆ yet the bulk of the army on the 14th commenced its
march westward.
This movement, however, was by no means to the taste of some of the
Emperor’s advisers; and it becomes necessary at this point to turn for a
moment from the western to the eastern centre of European disturbance,
and to glance at the influence which events in Poland had exerted upon
the Imperial Cabinet. It has already been said that Thugut’s only object
in persuading the Emperor to take personal command in the field, was
that the operations might subserve his own policy. With this view the
Minister prepared to remove to Valenciennes, which was to be the
political headquarters of the Empire during the Emperor’s stay in the
Netherlands; but before he could leave Vienna he was startled by the
news of a general rising in Poland. ◆March 25.◆ This insurrection under
the leadership of Kosciusko broke out on the 25th of March, and spread
with a rapidity and success which left the Russians absolutely helpless.
Catherine, greedy for the partition of Turkey, had already moved the
best of her troops southwards; and the only force of any kind upon the
spot was that of Prussia, which fact in itself was enough to kindle
Thugut’s jealousy. ◆April 20.◆ On the 20th of April Kosciusko, after two
days’ fighting, captured Warsaw; ◆April 25.◆ and five days later
Catherine, while asking the Emperor for the troops due to her by treaty,
mentioned also how greatly she needed the help of the Prussians, from
whom likewise she had claimed assistance. Meanwhile King Frederick
William, growing nervous lest the rebellion should infect also his own
Polish provinces, after some hesitation decided to throw the Treaty of
the Hague to the winds; wherefore, withdrawing twenty thousand of his
troops from the Rhine, he left Berlin on the 14th of May to take
personal command of his army in Poland.
All this was gall and wormwood to Thugut, and the more so because
Kosciusko had expressed a wish to place Austrian troops in occupation
of Poland rather than yield it to the Prussians. He became more and
more anxious to have done with France, if possible by a separate
peace with the Republic, and to devote all Austria’s energies to the
thwarting of Prussia in the East. The embitterment of his hostility
towards Prussia brought him more than ever in conflict with Coburg
and Mack, who desired above all things a good understanding with
the second great power of Germany; but, unfortunately, he found two
officers of like sentiments with himself in the Prince of Waldeck, who
held a high position on the Staff, and General Rollin, who of all men
possessed greatest influence with the Emperor. It was therefore with
profound dissatisfaction that Thugut’s ignoble clique saw the mass of
the Austrian troops drawn nearer to France and further from Poland;
and though outwardly they swallowed their ill-humour, yet they had
every intention of compassing their own ends, even by means the most
infamous.[233]
◆May 15.◆
On the 15th of May the Emperor joined the Duke of York at Tournai,
and the Archduke Charles brought the Austrian army from Landrecies
to St. Amand, eleven miles to south of it. The field, on which the
decisive action was to be fought, was one that had drunk deep of human
blood. It may be described as the parallelogram enclosed by a line
drawn south-eastward from Courtrai to Tournai, thence south-westward
to Pont-à-Marque, thence north-westward through Lille to Wervicq, and
thence north-eastward back to Courtrai. To east it is bounded by the
Scheldt, to north by the Lys; and through the midst of it, flowing
first from south to north past Pont-à-Marque and Cysoing to Lannoy, and
thence westward into the Deule and so to the Lys, runs the Marque, a
stream impassable except by bridges, owing to soft bottom and swampy
banks. The principal bridges were those of Pont-à-Marque on the great
road to Paris, and Pont-à-Tressin on the road from Tournai to Lille;
but there were others on by-roads at Louvil, Bouvines, Gruson, Tressin,
L’Hempenpont, Pont-à-Breug and Marque, most of them fortified and
strongly held by the French. Two smaller streams of the same character
as the Marque, but running from west to east, form also important
obstacles within this arena, namely, the Espierres brook, which has
its source close to Roubaix and flows into the Scheldt at Espierres,
and the Baisieux brook, which rising near Hertain joins the Scheldt
at Pont-à-Chin. The ground is mostly level, with the exception of the
undulating heights that rise from the Lys, the low ridge upon which
stood the villages of Roubaix and Lannoy, and the group of hills about
Tournai itself; but it was thickly studded with villages, linked
together by chains of innumerable cottages and farm-houses, which were
all of them enclosed by hedges. The fields were cut up by swampy brooks
and by a ramification of wide drains, which, with other enclosures,
practically forbade the movements of troops except by road. The roads,
however, even then were many; and the principal highways were nearly
broad enough to permit an advance in column of half-companies;[234] but
all of them, as well as the waterways, were lined with trees, making
it extremely difficult to see the movements of troops from a distance.
Thus it was and is a country unfit for cavalry, and far better
adapted in that day to the tactics of the French than of the Allied
infantry.[235]
Within the parallelogram the French were somewhat widely scattered.
Osten’s division of ten thousand men lay at Pont-à-Marque. To the
left or northward of it the bulk of Bonnaud’s division of twenty
thousand men was encamped at Sainghin, with detachments occupying also
Pont-à-Tressin and Lannoy, further north upon the Marque. Souham’s
division of twenty-eight thousand, and Moreau’s of twenty-two thousand
men lay on the south bank of the Lys between Courtrai and Aelbeke,
a village nearly four miles south of it, with Thierry’s brigade at
Mouscron, and Compère’s brigade at Tourcoing to preserve communication
with Bonnaud. In all, the French army numbered eighty-two thousand men.
Against this force Coburg could pit sixty-two thousand, twelve
thousand of them cavalry. Of the Allied army, fourteen thousand under
the Archduke Charles were at St. Amand; seventeen thousand under the
Duke of York at Tournai; nine thousand under Kinsky at Marquain; four
thousand Hanoverians under General von dem Bussche at Warcoing, on
the Scheldt; and, lastly, sixteen thousand men under Clerfaye were at
Oyghem, about five miles north and east of Courtrai on the north bank
of the Lys. The whole of these troops, excepting Clerfaye’s corps,
could easily be concentrated within twelve hours at Tournai, from
which a swift and resolute attack upon the southern flank of Souham
and Moreau, by Roubaix, Mouveaux and Bondues, might have cut them off
from Lille, driven them into the arms of Clerfaye and overwhelmed them.
The Austrians, however, were not to be weaned from their own methods,
and accordingly on the 16th Mack prepared an elaborate plan, which he
designed, and even declared, to be a plan of annihilation.
◆May 16.◆
The army was as usual to be divided. The first column, of four
thousand Hanoverians under Bussche, was to march by Dottignies upon
Mouscron, detaching a third of its strength northward on the high
road from Tournai to Courtrai, and, having captured Mouscron, was
to open communication with the second column. The second column,
of twelve battalions and ten squadrons, or about ten thousand men,
under Field-Marshal Otto, was to advance by Leers and Wattrelos upon
Tourcoing. The third column, of twelve battalions and ten squadrons
under the Duke of York, was to move by Lannoy against Mouveaux, sixteen
British squadrons being held in reserve at Hertain under General
Erskine. The fourth column, of ten battalions and sixteen squadrons
under Count Kinsky, was to be employed partly in covering the Duke’s
left flank; but the bulk of it was to advance on Bouvines and there
force the passage of the Marque. The fifth column, of seventeen
battalions and thirty-two squadrons under the Archduke Charles, was
to march to Pont-à-Marque, sending a small detachment northward by
Templeuve to preserve communication with the fourth column. Having
gained the passage of the Marque the Archduke was to attack the enemy
on the western side of the river, and, after leaving detachments to
guard the bridges, to wheel northward, unite forces with Kinsky and
move up with him to join the Duke of York at Mouveaux. Finally the
sixth column under Clerfaye was to march from Oyghem on the left bank
of the Lys, force the passage of the river above Menin on the morning
of the 17th, and manœuvre in rear of the enemy about Mouscron and
Tourcoing. Thus the design was to attack the enemy’s front with half
the army, turn both their flanks with the remainder, and destroy the
French irremediably; but whether the surest way of attaining this
object was to disperse the troops in isolated columns over a front
of twenty miles in a blind and strongly enclosed country—this was a
question over which Craig, at any rate, shook his head.
◆May 17.◆
Miscarriages of the great plan began early. Clerfaye did not receive
his orders for the movement towards Menin until late on the morning
of the 16th, and did not march until the evening. His progress was
much delayed by the heavy sandy roads, and, consequently, it was the
afternoon of the 17th before his corps reached Wervicq, and attempted
to cross the Lys by the bridge. The French, however, had covered it
by entrenchments which blocked his passage; and, when the pontoons
were asked for, it was found that by some mistake they had been left
behind. Several hours were wasted while they were coming up, and the
pontoon-bridge was consequently not laid until late at night, when
a few battalions only crossed the river, the remainder of the force
bivouacking on the left bank. The general result was that Clerfaye’s
corps, one-fourth of the whole army, counted for nothing in the first
day’s operations.[236]
The march of the remaining columns was begun in a thick fog which
rendered concerted movements difficult, and the Austrian Staff seems
to have made no allowance for the varying distances to be covered by
the columns; Kinsky having little more than seven miles to traverse
from Froidmont to Bouvines, whereas the Archduke Charles had fully
fifteen miles from St. Amand to Pont-à-Marque. Bussche concentrated
at St. Leger, a little to west of Warcoing, in the night, advanced
upon Mouscron, and captured it, but was driven out again with very
heavy loss, and forced back to Dottignies. For this misfortune Mack
was chiefly responsible, by directing the detachment of so large
a proportion of this column on a perfectly aimless errand towards
Courtrai. Otto, on Bussche’s left, fared better, driving Compère’s
troops from Leers, Wattrelos, and Tourcoing; but, unfortunately,
with no further result than to join them to Thierry’s brigade behind
Mouscron, to the greater discomfiture of the unfortunate Hanoverians.
To the left and south of Otto the Duke of York with about ten thousand
men[237] advanced by Templeuve upon Lannoy which, after a sharp
cannonade, he attacked with the brigade of Guards in front while the
Light Dragoons turned it by the left; but the enemy beat so hasty
a retreat that they escaped with little loss. Leaving two Hessian
battalions in Lannoy, the Duke pushed on to Roubaix, where the enemy
stood, with greater force both of infantry and artillery, in an
entrenched position; but, in spite of a very obstinate resistance, the
Guards carried this post also with the bayonet. Having no intelligence
of the columns on his right and left, the Duke rightly decided to
leave his advanced guard at Roubaix, and to fall back with his main
body to Lannoy; when to his dismay he received a positive command from
the Emperor himself, who with the Headquarters Staff had accompanied
the rear of his column, to push on to the attack of Mouveaux. This
order was sheer folly, unless indeed it were dictated by wanton and
deliberate wickedness;[238] but it was reiterated in spite of all
protests, and though the evening was falling and the troops were weary
with a long and harassing day’s work under a burning sun, the Duke
reluctantly obeyed. The French position at Mouveaux was enclosed by
palisades and entrenchments and flanked by redoubts; but for the third
time the brigade of Guards drove the enemy out brilliantly with the
bayonet. The Seventh and Fifteenth Light Dragoons under Abercromby’s
personal direction at once pressed forward in pursuit, and galloping
round the village, which had been kindled by the flying French,
overtook the fugitives, and cut down three hundred of them. Three guns
were captured; and one small party of the Fifteenth actually rode into
the French camp at Bondues,[239] nearly two miles to west of Mouveaux,
and set the troops there running in every direction. The main body of
the Duke’s column then bivouacked astride of the road between Mouveaux
and Roubaix.
With the two columns south of the Duke, however, affairs had gone but
indifferently. Kinsky’s advance from Froidmont was delayed by a message
from the Archduke Charles, to the effect that his force could not
possibly reach the Marque at the appointed hour of six in the morning;
but in due time Kinsky moved forward to Bouvines, and drove the French
from their entrenchments. The enemy, however, broke down the bridge
over the Marque as they retired, and, until the advance of the Archduke
began to make itself felt, Kinsky was unable to repair it, since the
passage was commanded by a battery of heavy guns. The Archduke’s column
had meanwhile left St. Amand at ten o’clock on the evening of the 16th,
and after driving back the French advanced posts at Templeuve[240] and
Cappelle, a little to east of Pont-à-Marque, finally succeeded in
forcing the passage of the river at that point. But it was not till
two o’clock in the afternoon, instead of six in the morning of the
17th, that his army had passed to the west bank of the Marque; and his
soldiers were too much exhausted to move further than Lesquin, a little
east of the road between Pont-à-Marque and Lille. There he bivouacked
on the heights between Lesquin and Peronne, a village about three miles
to south-east of it; his men having been on foot for twenty-two hours,
marched more than twenty miles over bad roads, and fought a sharp
action for the passage of the river. His advance, however, had forced
the enemy to evacuate Sainghin, and thus enabled Kinsky to repair the
bridge at Bouvines; but none the less Kinsky, with excess of caution,
would not cross the river, and encamped for the night on the right
bank, which was for him the wrong bank, of the Marque.
At the beginning of this day the French commanders had no information
of any movements of the Allies beyond the march of Clerfaye; and,
accordingly, the divisions of Souham and Moreau, together with
Vandamme’s brigade, had crossed to the left bank of the Lys. The
advance of the Allies from the east and the combats about Tourcoing,
however, soon undeceived them. Pichegru being, as Soult said,
fortunately absent, Generals Souham, Moreau, Macdonald, and Reynier
met in council at Menin; and on the evening of the 17th they decided
to make new dispositions and to set their troops at once in motion.
Vandamme’s brigade alone was left on the north bank of the Lys to
watch Clerfaye, and the remainder of the troops on that site crossed
the river to take up their appointed stations. Malbrancq’s brigade
was posted between Roncq and Blancfour, villages lying from three to
four miles due south from Menin on the road to Lille; to the left of
Malbrancq, Macdonald’s brigade crowned the heights of Mount Halluin;
the rest of Souham’s division, under Generals Daendels and Jardon,
lay some three miles away to the east of Macdonald, occupying a line
between Aelbeke and Belleghem, a village lying a little to the south
of Courtrai; and the gap between Macdonald and these troops was filled
by the brigades of Compère and Thierry about Mouscron. Thus the
formation of the French left wing was that of a double echelon; the
three divisions being arranged at the three angles of an isosceles
triangle, with the van at the apex, Mouscron, and the rear before Menin
and Courtrai. The right wing, consisting of Bonnaud’s and Osten’s
divisions, some thirty thousand strong, was assembled about Flers, two
miles and a half to the east of Lille; where orders arrived on the
evening of the 17th from Souham that a general attack was designed for
the morrow, in which the duty of Bonnaud’s division would be to march
upon Lannoy and Roubaix.
It was not without anxiety that the reports from the various columns
of the Allies were awaited on the evening of the 17th at the Austrian
headquarters at Templeuve. The failures of Bussche to capture Mouscron,
and of the Archduke Charles to reach the point assigned to him, had
sufficed to mar Mack’s plans; and of Clerfaye there was no news
whatever. ◆May 17–18.◆ Orders were therefore sent at three o’clock
next morning to the Archduke Charles to march at once with his own
and Kinsky’s corps upon Lannoy; while the Duke of York and Otto were
directed to attack Mouscron at noon, in the hope that before that time
something would have been heard of Clerfaye. But it seems to have
occurred to none of the Austrian Staff that the disposition of the
Allied army, as prescribed by Mack, positively invited the French to
take the offensive. On this night Bussche lay at Dottignies and Coyghem
with his weakened corps of Hanoverians. On his left the main body of
Otto’s column, seven and a half battalions and three squadrons, was
at Tourcoing, with detachments of two battalions at Wattrelos, and
of three battalions and three squadrons at Leers, on the line of his
retreat. Thus his force was distributed in isolated patches along a
length of five miles, with its right flank not only unprotected, but
actually threatened by a superior force of the enemy, lying within
three miles both of Tourcoing and Wattrelos.