Dendre, reaching Lombeek Ste. Catherine, about eight miles west of
Brussels, on the ◆July 5.◆ 4th of July. On the morrow the leaders of the
coalesced armies again met in conference at Waterloo, when it was
decided that Clerfaye’s force should pass eastwards towards Brussels,
and that the army of the Allies should ultimately occupy a line from
Antwerp, by Louvain, Wavre, and Gembloux, to Namur, but that until the
7th, at any rate, the line in advance of Brussels, extending from Alost
by Braine-le-Comte and Nivelles to Sombref, should be maintained. Ghent
had already been evacuated; and accordingly on the next day Clerfaye’s
force began its march to join Coburg, while Moira moved to Alost and
brought his troops for the first time under the Duke’s personal command.
◆July 6.◆ But Jourdan meanwhile was not inactive. On the 6th he attacked
the whole line of the Austrians from Braine-le-Comte to Gembloux; and,
though repulsed after hard fighting on the east, where a concentrated
attack might have given him possession of the Austrian line of
communications, he succeeded in pushing Coburg’s right wing back from
Braine-le-Comte and Nivelles to Waterloo. Thereupon Coburg warned the
Duke of York that he must retire eastward and cancel the agreement made
on the 5th. The Duke answered with cold sarcasm that it was a new thing
for the Austrians to retire before thirty thousand Frenchmen, and
appealed to the Archduke Charles to keep Coburg to his engagements; but
received from him only a sad reply that orders must be obeyed. On the
7th and 8th Jourdan renewed his attacks, directing the best of his
strength against the Austrian left, which he forced back to the
battlefield of Ramillies. ◆July 7.◆ He then immediately invested Namur;
upon which Coburg, fearing to be cut off from the Meuse, ordered the
whole of his army to retire upon Tirlemont.
The Duke meanwhile, since his left was uncovered by the retreat of the
Austrians, withdrew, at Coburg’s request, very slowly northward to
Assche, and thence struck north-eastward to the Dyle, which he crossed
at Malines, fixing his headquarters at Contich, some eight miles north
of that city. A new line of defence was then taken up, which
sufficiently showed the divided counsels of the Allies. ◆July.◆ On the
right the British contingent, now numbering some thirty thousand men,
was posted on the Dyle from Antwerp to Malines. On its left the Prince
of Orange with the Dutch troops and from two to three thousand Austrians
covered the line from Malines to Louvain; and from Louvain the rest of
the Austrian army, between forty-five and fifty thousand men, was
extended in a south-easterly direction by Tirlemont, Landen, and Waremme
to the Meuse, with a detachment of four thousand more on the eastern
bank of that river, and between it and the Ourthe. Thus the British and
Dutch, who desired to defend Holland, could be deserted at any moment
which the Emperor should select for the pursuit of his own particular
object, namely, to carry his army away to share the plunder of Poland.
Craig, for his part, felt no doubt whatever that the British and Dutch
would very soon be left to their own resources.[256]
The reader may have felt surprised that, with a force of nearly one
hundred and fifty thousand men, the French should not have pressed the
Allies harder, and made an end of them long before. The fact was that
the Committee of Public Safety had interfered with the Generals on the
4th of July, by an order that the recapture of Valenciennes, Condé,
Landrecies, and Quesnoy should take precedence of any further
operations; and accordingly the army in Belgium had been weakened to
provide for this service. This was the work of Robespierre, who at the
time was inclined towards peace; and indeed peace appears to have been a
common topic of conversation between the French and Austrian outposts
from the beginning of July.[257] Thirty thousand French soldiers were
accordingly withdrawn to Valenciennes, as many more were wasted in
occupying ports of embarkation for England, and the remainder were
ordered to push the Allies completely out of Belgium, and then to occupy
a cordon from Antwerp to Namur. ◆July 12.◆ Pichegru, therefore, took
command in person of the left wing, and on the 12th moved with eighteen
thousand men against Malines, while Jourdan on the right simultaneously
advanced against Louvain, Jodoigne, and Huy on the Meuse. On the evening
of the 12th Pichegru drove the Duke of York’s advanced posts into
Malines, where they were promptly reinforced; ◆July 15.◆ but the
fortifications of the town were in ruins, and, on renewing the attack on
the 15th, the French captured the place with little difficulty. The
troops charged with the defence were Hessians and Dutch; and it appears
certain that the conduct of one or the other of them was not
irreproachable, though there are indications also that the Duke himself
was partly responsible for the mishap.
The Duke then threw his left back along the line of the Nethe from
Lierre to Duffel; ◆July 15.◆ but meanwhile Jourdan had on the same day
mastered Louvain, and in the course of the two following days Jodoigne
and Namur also. The Dutch troops about Louvain, upon the loss of that
town, fell back northward across the Demer, while the Austrians retired
eastward; and thus the line of the Allies was fairly broken owing to
their own divergent plans. ◆July 18.◆ The Duke of York had already in
these days concerted operations with the Prince of Orange for the
recapture of Malines on the 18th,[258] when he received a letter from
Coburg saying that, owing to the loss of that place and of Louvain, he
had ordered the troops formerly stationed at the latter city to fall
back to Diest, and was himself withdrawing from Tirlemont to Landen. The
Duke begged him before doing so to essay a general forward movement, but
received only a vague and unsatisfactory reply; ◆July 20.◆ and on the
morning of the 20th a staff-officer, while inspecting the left of the
Dutch position, discovered that the Austrians at Diest were already
retreating south-eastward on Hasselt, Coburg having given them orders to
this effect without saying a word of his intentions to the Duke of York.
◆July 22.◆ With his left flank thus again laid bare, the Duke was
obliged to evacuate Antwerp and retire due north from it across the
Dutch frontier to Rozendahl. ◆July 24.◆ Coburg likewise fell back to
eastward, crossed the Meuse at Maastricht, and took up a position about
seven miles south and east of that fortress at Fouron le Comte. Thus the
British and Austrians were finally parted.
It cannot be said that either of them was sorry to take leave of the
other. Even in 1793 their relations had not been too cordial, for the
Austrians, in their jealousy, would never allow foreign troops to
pass through their fortified towns, even during a forced march; and
thus the British were frequently condemned to make long and fatiguing
detours.[259] But the betrayal of the Duke of York’s column on the
18th of May, and the subsequent operations, deliberately contrived to
hasten the evacuation of the Netherlands, converted the dislike of
the British for the Austrians into the bitterest hatred and contempt.
At headquarters, again, the presence of a soldier such as Craig, with
ideas far more enlightened than those of the Austrians, and with some
means of insisting upon them through the medium of the Duke of York,
can hardly have contributed to harmony. It may be added that the
Austrian troops were as severe in their criticism of their chiefs,
and particularly of Waldeck, as were any of the British, proclaiming
loudly that the abandonment of Belgium was due to French gold.[260] In
fact the Austrian army, between heavy losses and deep distrust of its
leaders, was utterly demoralised; nor is it surprising that this should
have been so. It is indeed more than probable that, if Coburg had
wished to make a stand after the action of Fleurus, his men would not
have supported him. Of course Coburg had to bear the responsibility for
all this, and to digest as best he might some very bitter reproaches
from the Duke of York; yet it seems that in truth he was the person
the least to blame. Though as a commander in the field he was slow,
unenterprising, enamoured of vicious methods, and possessed of no
military quality except that of looking carefully to the wants of
his troops, yet he did not lack insight, sound sense, imperturbable
calm, and the instinct of honesty and straightforwardness. His name is
forgotten in England, though his portrait is still occasionally to be
found in English print-shops, showing that at one time he had gained
a certain fame, which was destined speedily to perish. It can only be
said of him that he was beloved by his men, that he bore the sins of
others without complaining, and that he was a loyal servant to an
unfaithful master.
VOL. IV. BOOK XII. CHAPTER XII
◆1794.◆
While the Allies in the Netherlands were thus giving way on all sides
during the months of June and July, the British Government naturally
bethought itself of the sixty thousand men which it had agreed to hire
from Prussia for operations in that quarter. The Ministers had reckoned
that these troops would be ready by the end of May; and accordingly,
as has been told, Lord Cornwallis was sent from England to arrange
with Marshal Möllendorf as to the part to be taken by the Prussians in
the campaign. Visiting the Duke of York on the way, Cornwallis agreed
with him that the protection of West Flanders, and, if possible, the
siege of Lille, were the matters of most urgent importance; and he
formulated his request to Möllendorf accordingly. ◆June 20.◆ He soon
discovered that he had been sent upon a fool’s errand. Möllendorf,
instead of sixty thousand, had but forty thousand men, deficient in
stores and supplies and absolutely wanting in transport, which he
declared himself unable to furnish without ready money from England.
The real difficulty was that the Allies were all at variance as to the
use that should be made of the Prussian troops. England wanted them to
aid in recovering West Flanders. Holland would at first have preferred
them to remain upon the Rhine, but presently yielded to the demands of
England. The Emperor of Austria not only raised strong objections to
the march of Prussian troops to Belgium, but claimed thirty thousand
of the sixty thousand men for the protection of the Empire, declaring
that their removal from the Rhine would expose all Germany to the
ravages of the French. Between these conflicting claims Möllendorf
found little difficulty in sitting still and doing nothing, which was
precisely what the advisers of King Frederick William most desired. By
the 18th of June Cornwallis had made up his mind that scanty help was
to be expected from Prussia, at any rate during the present campaign;
and neither he nor Lord Malmesbury was slow to express very decided
opinions as to the ill-faith of the Prussian Court.[261]
This was the situation when the failure of the Austrian attack
at Fleurus determined the Emperor to evacuate the Low Countries.
That potentate thereupon reversed his language as to the Prussian
contingent, and urged that Möllendorf should advance into Belgium;
nor did he hesitate, on the 15th of July, to order Coburg still to
defend the Austrian Netherlands, though he said nothing about sending
reinforcements to enable him to do so. This despicable lying and
trickery had, of course, but one object, that of drawing more money
from England under false pretences. The English Government, however,
though it had learned that no reliance was to be placed on Thugut’s
statements or promises, ◆July 19.◆ decided in the middle of July to
send Lord Spencer and Thomas Grenville to Vienna, to urge once more the
renewal of the offensive in Belgium. So far, therefore, the Emperor
seemed likely to gain his point; and since the King of Prussia had
shown remarkable weakness in dealing with the insurrection in Poland,
Francis had every reason to hope that decisive action in that country
would be delayed, until his own and the Russian armies could appear
there in sufficient force to dictate the final settlement according to
their own desires. The Prussian Ministers, on the other hand, when they
learned of the despatch of Spencer and Grenville to Vienna, became
nervous lest England should transfer the promised subsidy from her to
Austria; and they began to turn their thoughts to the negotiations of a
separate peace with France.[262]
◆July 2–13.◆
Meanwhile, through the energy of Carnot, reinforcements had been found
for the French army of the Rhine, which, after a fortnight’s hard
fighting on the heights about Kaiserslautern, forced Möllendorf to
retire under the cannon of Mainz with a loss of two thousand men and
sixteen guns. The Austrian troops on the Rhine thereupon withdrew from
the left bank of the river; and the miscarriage of a plan, concerted a
fortnight later for recovery of the lost ground, set the Generals of the
two nations quarrelling more bitterly than ever. ◆July 28.◆ The end of
July brought yet another stroke of good luck to France in the overthrow
of Robespierre and the execution of himself, St. Just, and other of his
principal colleagues. Robespierre’s latest achievement as a military
administrator had been to decree that no quarter should be shown to
British or Hanoverians in the field, an order which was disobeyed by the
French troops and laughed at by the British. The supreme imbecility,
apart from all other faults, of his rule had brought France to the last
stage of exhaustion; and, indeed, if the Allies had succeeded in keeping
the French armies out of Belgium, the latter must have perished of
starvation.[263] Robespierre’s death marked the close of the Terror and
the beginning of a return to common sense in the matter of
administration. The man, however, had lived long enough to waste the
energies of the armies of the North in the recovery of the four captured
fortresses in the frontier, when they should have been scattering the
Allies to the four winds; and thus it came about that the Duke of York
enjoyed a few weeks’ respite for the formation of new plans.
It was fortunate for him that it was so, for he now found himself
in serious trouble with his army. This was the result of the insane
system, allowed by Dundas, of raising men for rank. The regiments
despatched to Holland contained only a very few old soldiers mixed
with great numbers of recruits, who were utterly without training
and discipline. “Many of them do not know one end of a fire-lock
from the other,” wrote Craig, “and will never know it.” Six of the
battalions had been deprived of their flank-companies, that is to
say, of their best men, to make up General Grey’s force in the West
Indies; and no sooner did the new levies find themselves released from
the crimping-house and the gaol for active service, than they fell to
plundering in all directions. The Duke was obliged to issue a very
severe order on the 27th of July[264] to call the army to its senses;
but, with such officers as had been obtained under Dundas’s scheme,
it was impossible to expect the slightest obedience. In the first
place the army was lamentably deficient in Brigadiers and Generals
of division. Moira had only accepted the command of his force on
the condition that he should not serve in Flanders; and though, in
view of the perilous condition of the Allies when he landed, he had
waived his objections for the time, yet there was another obstacle
not so easily to be overcome. Albeit enjoying an independent command
of eight thousand men, Moira was almost the junior Major-general of
the army. Major-general Crosbie, who was with him, also held a more
important command than his seniors, such as Ralph Abercromby and David
Dundas, the latter of whom joined the Duke of York at the end of July.
Both Moira and Crosbie, therefore, went home, from delicacy towards
the feelings of their superiors; and the loss of Moira was bitterly
regretted as that of a very able officer who was idolised by his men.
The British troops now consisted of four brigades of cavalry and seven
of infantry,[265] making altogether some twenty-five thousand men; but
for all these there were, after the departure of Moira and Crosbie,
only four Generals—David Dundas, Stewart, Abercromby, and Fox, the
last of whom was fully employed as Quartermaster-general. This was the
more serious because the commanders of the new battalions, who had
been juggled into seniority by the Government and the army-brokers,
were not fit to command a company, much less a brigade. Some of them
were boys of twenty-one who knew nothing of their simplest duties.
Though they went cheerfully into action, they looked upon the whole
campaign as an elaborate picnic, for which they did not fail to provide
themselves with abundance of comforts; and thus the baggage-columns
were filled with private waggons under the charge of insubordinate
drivers. The junior officers, who were so scarce that few regiments
had as many subalterns as companies, appear in many cases to have been
worse than the senior, as is always to be expected when commissions
are to be obtained for the asking; nor with bad examples before them
were they likely to improve. Thrust into the Army to satisfy the claims
of dependents, constituents, importunate creditors, and discarded
concubines, many of these young men were at once a disgrace and an
encumbrance to the force. Hard drinking, which was the fashion then
in all classes from highest to lowest, was, of course, sedulously
cultivated by these aspirants to the rank of gentleman; and it was no
uncommon thing for regiments to start on the march under charge of the
Adjutant and Sergeant-major only, while the officers stayed behind,
to come galloping up several hours later, full of wine, careless
where they rode, careless of the confusion into which they threw the
columns, careless of everything but the place appointed for the end of
the march, if by chance they were sober enough to have remembered it.
These evils, too, were extremely difficult to check, for in 1794, as
in 1744, political interest rather than meritorious service was the
road to promotion. While the shameful traffic of the army-brokers and
the raising of endless new regiments continued, every officer who could
command money or interest was sure of obtaining advancement at home
without the knowledge of his chief in the field, and had, therefore,
not only no encouragement to do his duty, but an actual reason for
avoiding it. Thus the men were very imperfectly disciplined; there
were no efficient company-officers to look after them; no efficient
Colonels to look after the company-officers; no Generals to look after
the Colonels. Craig sought a remedy in begging for more Generals. “We
cannot get on,” he wrote, on the 5th of August, “without a good supply
and a supply of good. The evil to the discipline of the army increases
every day, and is likely to become very serious.”[267]
But the Duke’s difficulties did not end with the defects of his
officers and men. It had lately become the practice in time of peace
to issue to each regiment the materials for its clothing, to be made
up by the regiment itself, a system which had probably been designed
to obtain for the Colonels the largest possible profit. Nor must the
Colonels be blamed herein, for they were expected to make that profit,
which in those days was practically the only emolument open to general
officers. It was, of course, impossible for troops in the field to
spend three or four months in making up their clothes; and the result
was that; the Duke’s army was left almost naked. Moreover, in the hurry
of raising innumerable new corps, the responsibility for such details
as clothing, accounts, musters, and so forth had been overlooked; the
new officers knew nothing of the extremely complex methods of military
finance;[268] and the sudden vast increase of business thrown upon
agents and officials was greater than they could immediately bear.
Finally, quite apart from these failings in respect of the raiment of
entire battalions, no effort whatever was made to clothe the recruits
who were sent out to fill up the gaps in the various corps. These
unfortunate men, on being drafted into the depots in England, received
what was called slop-clothing, which signified a linen jacket and
trousers; and it is an actual fact that many of them were sent on
active service in this dress, without waistcoat, drawers, or stockings.
The result was that the Duke of York’s corps was in a worse state in
respect of clothing than had been hitherto recorded of any British
army.[269]
Another great difficulty, of which Craig had complained again and
again, was the want of drivers for the artillery. Lord Moira had
brought with him guns but no drivers; and there were but two captains
(not enough, as Craig said, to do a fortieth part of the work) at
disposal for the superintendence of a huge mass of horses. Thus a new
train of artillery, which had been sent out to replace the cannon
lost at Tourcoing, became a positive embarrassment. The Commissariat
also, as used so often to happen with British armies, was in a very
bad state. The men of the new corps of Royal Waggoners had been
recruited in London, and were the worst refuse of the population.
They were known, in fact, as the “Newgate Blues.” “A greater set of
scoundrels never disgraced an army,” wrote Craig, in his usual pithy
style. “I believe it to be true that half of them, if not taken from
the hulks, have at times visited them.... They have committed every
species of villainy, and treat their horses badly.” But the very worst
department of all was that of the hospitals, wherein the abuses were
so terrible that men hardly liked to speak of them. In December 1793
the inhabitants of one of the English ports had been stupefied by the
arrival of one hundred invalid soldiers from Ostend in indescribable
distress. They had been on board ship for a week in the bitter wintry
weather, without so much as straw to lie upon. Some of them were
dead; others died on being carried ashore. No provision had been made
for their comfort on landing, and, but for the compassion of the
gentry who subscribed money for their relief, the poor fellows might
well have perished.[270] Nothing was done to amend this state of
things. Dundas’s idea of putting an army in the field was to land raw
men on a foreign shore, and to expect discipline, arms, ammunition,
clothing, victuals, medical stores, and medical treatment to descend
on them from Heaven. Some kind of a medical staff was improvised out
of drunken apothecaries, broken-down practitioners, and rogues of
every description, who were provided under some cheap contract; the
charges of respectable members of the medical profession being deemed
exorbitant. “The dreadful mismanagement of the hospital is beyond
description,” wrote Craig, “and the remedy beyond my power. Every
branch and every fibre of every branch draws a contrary way. I really
doubt if there will be any way to get any good from this department but
by tying them all together and sending them to you to be changed for a
new set.”[271]