sufficiently to enable the garrison to evacuate the place; and the
troops filed across the river. Two Dutch battalions were the last to
leave the place under the Dutch General Haak, who, most improperly,
was the first man of his nation to set foot on the bridge. As he did
so, a shot struck one of the pontoons with some effect, whereupon he
immediately ran across the bridge crying out that all was lost, and
reported with shameless mendacity that all his troops had passed over
except the rear-guard. Upon this the pontoon-bridge was immediately
fired, since a flying bridge had already been prepared for the passage
of the rear-guard. As luck would have it, however, a shot from the
French batteries cut the hawser; the flying bridge began to swing
round; and, to save it from running foul of the kindled boats, the
sailors dropped the anchor and so brought it up. When the burning
pontoons had floated away, some British seamen, who were employed on
the bridge, were for cutting it adrift, but the Dutchmen would not
allow them to do so, preferring certain capture to the risk of a few
cannon-shot. Thus eleven hundred of them were taken, either through
their own cowardice or through that of Haak—a lamentable occurrence in
an army which in the past had approved itself to be of incomparable
steadfastness and valour.[284]
The Duke, therefore, now held the line of the Waal including the
Bommeler Waert, and might well hope to hold it, if the Dutch did their
duty, until the army went into winter quarters. He had already put
most of his cavalry into cantonments across the Yssel, but the Dutch
threw every possible obstacle in the way of providing for the comfort
of the troops. The weather too grew wintry, and the men, miserably
clothed and housed in open barns, began to fall down very fast from
cold and typhus fever. None of them had greatcoats except some of the
Guards, Fourteenth, Thirty-seventh, and Fifty-third, who had received
those which had been provided by public subscription in 1793, and
which were now worn out. Flannel waistcoats had been supplied to the
rest by their officers, who had subscribed over a thousand pounds
for the purpose; and it appears that, without exaggeration, they had
little other clothing. Sheer nakedness, in fact, had been the cause
of much, though not of all, of the plundering that had disgraced the
army; and this evil had been aggravated by the bitter hostility of
the inhabitants towards the British. Not content with resenting real
outrages, which were far too abundant, they never ceased flying to
the Duke with frivolous and groundless complaints; and so disobliging
were the authorities that Lord St. Helens, Ambassador at the Hague,
tried for two months in vain to find places where the British might be
allowed to establish additional hospitals. ◆Nov. 27.◆ On the 27th of
November the infantry in British pay numbered twenty-one thousand and
the sick nearly eleven thousand; and when a man was ordered to hospital
his comrades would exclaim, “Ah, poor fellow, we shall see thee no
more, for thou art under orders for the shambles.” On one occasion five
hundred invalids were embarked from Arnheim in barges under charge of
a single surgeon’s mate, without sufficient provisions, without even
sufficient straw, and brought to Rhenen, where they were left on board
for want of sufficient space to admit them to the hospital. A Dutch
gentleman counted at one time the bodies of forty-two men who had thus
perished of neglect in the barges and had been thrown out dead on to
the bank. Meanwhile the rascals who bore the name of surgeon’s mates
charged forty thousand pounds for wine for the sick, and, not content
with robbing the State by themselves drinking what was supplied,
actually plundered the helpless patients committed to their care. Such
was the economy of Dundas’s military administration—to obtain recruits
by the offer of lavish bounties, to break down their health by giving
them insufficient clothing, and to contract with scoundrels so to
maltreat them, medically, that they should not recover.[285]
Fortunately for himself the Duke of York was summoned home on the 27th
of November to hold personal communication[286] with Ministers; and
indeed it seemed as if the campaign were ended. Upon his departure
he placed the British troops under Lieutenant-general Harcourt, and
the foreign troops in British pay under Lieutenant-general Walmoden,
apparently dividing the supreme command between the two. This
arrangement was evidently due to the Duke’s unwillingness to subject
the British to the Hanoverian Walmoden, who was senior to Harcourt;
but, even so, it seems to be absolutely indefensible. The French, being
exhausted by the campaign, went into temporary cantonments, Moreau’s
division on the west bank of the Rhine over against the line from
Wesel to Emmerick, Souham’s in and about Nimeguen, Bonnaud’s between
the Meuse and the Waal, and the remainder about Bois-le-Duc and Grave.
The Allies were distributed along the north bank of the Waal from Tiel
eastward to the Pannarden Canal, which connects the Waal with the Leck
(as the Rhine from Arnheim downward is called), the Dutch taking charge
of the Bommeler Waert. Eastward from the Pannarden Canal to Wesel
the Allied left was to be covered by thirty thousand Austrians under
General Alvintzy, which Clerfaye, on the instance of Henry Dundas,
agreed to furnish for a payment of one hundred thousand pounds a month.
The Allies’ line of defence seems to have been wrongly chosen, for,
owing to the Pannarden Canal, the mass of the waters of the Waal was
returned into the Leck, from which cause the Leck was less liable to
be frozen. Harcourt had endeavoured to establish a second bridge over
the Rhine besides that of the Arnheim, but the Dutch, from malice or
negligence, obstructed the forwarding of the materials, as indeed
they obstructed everything that might help the British. Altogether the
situation was not a happy one, for, though rain had fallen continuously
from the beginning of November, there was no saying when a frost might
set in and turn the rivers into stable ice. Moreover, Moreau, roused
by orders from Paris, became active again. ◆Dec. 11.◆ On the 11th of
December the French crossed the Waal in boats at several different
points to the attack of the Allied posts, and, though beaten back, left
behind them an unpleasant sense of insecurity.[287]
On the 16th Pichegru returned and resumed the command, ◆Dec. 18.◆ and
on the 18th the weather changed from rain to a severe frost. In a very
few days the Maas and Waal were full of floating ice, which began to
pack together, threatening to cover the whole breadth of their streams;
while on the Leck the rapidity of the current swept away the bridge of
boats at Arnheim. Harcourt, foreseeing that before long the ice on the
Waal would become passable by the enemy, prepared to retreat northward.
Just at this most critical moment, moreover, there arrived orders from
Dundas that seven British battalions of his army were required for
service elsewhere; that of these seven the Fortieth, Forty-fourth, and
Sixty-third must march to Helvoetsluys at once; and that Alvintzy, who
so far had thrown every possible difficulty in the way of co-operation
with the Allies, must find troops to take their place. Further, it
was now ascertained that the Dutch had gone far in negotiation with
the French, and there were strong rumours that an armistice had been
concluded between them. Meanwhile the cold increased; sentries were
frozen at their posts; and the ice on the Waal, in front of the Allies,
became strong enough to give passage to the French, while that on
the Leck in their rear, though thick enough to prevent the passage
of boats, was too thin to bear cavalry or artillery. Harcourt’s
anxiety was extreme; and he begged Dundas urgently for some further
instructions as to the duty expected of him, since the order to weaken
the force by sending home seven battalions was not in itself of any
great assistance.
◆Dec. 27.◆
Affairs were in this condition when, on the 27th, the French crossed the
Meuse on the ice to the Bommeler Waert, surprised the Dutch posts there,
and pushed on by Bommel over the frozen Waal to Tuil. The Dutch at this
place fled instantly without firing a shot, some of the fugitives
running on even to Utrecht. At Meteren, a few miles north of Tuil, the
French were checked by the Hessians; but, with their right flank exposed
by the flight of the Dutch, it was doubtful whether these could maintain
their position. ◆Dec. 28.◆ Their commander, however, General Dalwig,
decided to stand fast, and ascertained by reconnaissance next day that
the French did not exceed two thousand men; whereupon Walmoden ordered
ten battalions and six squadrons of British and Emigrants under David
Dundas to Geldermalsen, a short distance north of Meteren, in the hope
of annihilating this foolhardy French detachment. ◆Dec. 30.◆
Accordingly, at one o’clock on the morning of the 30th, the force moved
out from Meteren in three columns, two of them to move direct upon Tuil
from the north and north-east, while the third, under Lord Cathcart,
fetched a compass to close in upon the enemy from the west. Cathcart’s
column unfortunately found the roads impassable and never came into
action; but Dundas nevertheless attacked without him, and drove the
French, after a sharp fight, from their entrenchments and across the
Waal, with the loss of four guns and many killed and wounded, while his
own casualties did not exceed fifty. This checked the ardour of the
enemy for the moment, and during a few days there was peace upon the
Waal.[288]
Walmoden now reinforced his right about Tuil, for the news had reached
him that the fortresses of Gertruydenburg ◆1795.◆ and Heusden, on the
extreme right of the Allied line, were in serious danger; ◆Jan. 3.◆ and
on the 3rd of January 1795 he shifted his quarters to Amerongen, due
north of Tiel, and on the north bank of the Leck. Grave at this same
time capitulated, and released a large number of French troops for the
field. Moreau’s division therefore took up cantonments over against
Alvintzy’s corps from Xanten down the Rhine to the Pannarden Canal.
Souham’s division, now transferred to Macdonald, occupied the space
between the Meuse and Waal as far as the point opposite to Tiel; two
more divisions were in the Bommeler Waert, and yet two more about
Gertruydenburg and Breda. On the 3rd of January the weather again became
intensely cold, Jan. 4.◆ and at noon on the 4th two French detachments
from the Bommeler Waert marched over the ice, drove in the posts before
Tuil and at Hesselt, a little to the east of it, after hard fighting,
and thus gained a passage by which they could move westward on the north
bank of the Waal. ◆Jan. 5.◆ On the following day the French attacked
Tuil itself, whereupon the Dutch gunners at once fled from their
batteries on the river; but, advancing from thence against Geldermalsen,
the enemy was repulsed with some loss by the Thirty-third, Forty-second,
and Seventy-eighth, under the direction of General David Dundas. It was,
however, plain that these posts could not be held against a strong
attack so long as frost practically neutralised their natural defences;
and Walmoden recalled Dundas and all the troops in that quarter to the
north side of the Leck, in order to take up a new line of cantonments
extending from Arnheim on the east by Wageningen, Reenen, Amerongen, and
Wyk-by-Duurstede to Honswyk.
◆Jan. 6.◆
A sudden thaw on the 6th offered hopes of re-establishing the old
position on the Waal, and orders were issued on the 7th for a
reconnaissance in force of the whole line of the French posts on the
following day; ◆Jan. 8.◆ but on the morning of the 8th the frost
abruptly set in again, though not before the troops were already in
motion beyond power of recall. On the right, Dundas succeeded in driving
the enemy from their posts on the Linge to the Waal, and in recovering
Buren and Tiel. The brunt of the work fell upon the Fourteenth,
Twenty-seventh, and Twenty-eighth under Lord Cathcart; and these drove
the enemy in succession from the villages of Buurmalsen and Geldermalsen
and captured a gun, not, however, without a loss of one hundred and
thirty men to themselves. On the left the orders seem to have
miscarried, probably through the confusion due to divided command.
◆Jan. 10.◆ Before the operation could be carried any further, Pichegru,
finding that the ice on the Waal was stronger than ever, on the 10th
fell upon the Allied line in great force at three different points
between the Pannarden Canal and Tiel. The attack was repulsed upon the
right, but the Austrians were forced back on the left flank, and
Walmoden ordered the whole force to withdraw once more behind the Leck.
This was effected with little loss; Colonel Coote’s brigade of the
Fortieth, Fiftieth, and Seventy-ninth being the only British forces
severely engaged. Walmoden had fully intended to continue the retreat
eastward across the Yssel; but Lord St. Helens, at the Hague,
unfortunately protested against this, and another thaw enabled Walmoden
to acquiesce. On the night of the 12th frost again set in more severely
than ever, and on the 14th the French attacked along the whole line from
Arnheim to Reenen. ◆Jan. 15.◆ They were beaten back with heavy loss; but
Walmoden, feeling that he was unable to hold his ground, on the
following morning gave the order for a further retreat.
The days that followed are amongst the most tragical in the history of
the Army. During November and December the discipline of the troops in
Holland had greatly improved, but with the coming of the frost and the
hardships that attended the constant alarms and marches on the Waal,
it had once more broken down completely. Certain regiments of French
emigrants, which had joined the army late in the year, were the worst
offenders; but it seems certain that some of the British were not
far behind them. The country to the north of Arnheim is at the best
of times an inhospitable waste, and there were few dwellings and few
trees to give shelter or fuel after a dreary march through dense and
chilling mist over snow twice thawed and refrozen. Marauders from the
regiments of every nationality swarmed round the columns; the drivers
of the waggons freed themselves from all control, and the line of march
was disorderly beyond description. When the day was ended, the troops
of different nations fought for such scanty comforts as were to be
found; and once there was a pitched battle between the Guards and the
Hessians, who had been on bad terms with each other from the beginning
of the campaign. Day after day the cold steadily increased; and those
of the army that woke on the morning of the 17th of January saw about
them such a sight as they never forgot. Far as the eye could reach over
the whitened plain were scattered gun-limbers, waggons full of baggage,
of stores, or of sick men, sutlers’ carts and private carriages.
Beside them lay the horses, dead; around them scores and hundreds of
soldiers, dead; here a straggler who had staggered on to the bivouac
and dropped to sleep in the arms of the frost; there a group of British
and Germans round an empty rum-cask; here forty English Guardsmen
huddled together about a plundered waggon; there a pack-horse with a
woman lying alongside it, and a baby, swathed in rags, peeping out of
the pack, with its mother’s milk turned to ice upon its lips,—one and
all stark, frozen, dead. Had the retreat lasted but three or four days
longer, not a man would have escaped; and the catastrophe would have
found a place in history side by side with the destruction of the host
of Sennacherib and with the still more terrible disaster of the retreat
from Moscow.[289]
◆Jan. 19.◆
By the 19th the surviving fragments of the battalions reached their
destination on the Yssel, where they were cantoned on the west side of
the river from Zutphen to the sea. But there was no hope of long repose
for them there. Harcourt perceived clearly that the re-embarkation of
his force was now the only resource left to him, and that the place
of embarkation must be on the Weser, since the lack of supplies and
the incapacity of his commissariat-officers would inevitably forbid
him to remain long on the Ems. Within a week, want of victuals and the
hostility of the inhabitants compelled him to continue his retreat
from the Yssel; ◆Jan. 27–29.◆ and on the 27th the march eastward was
resumed, the main body of the British retiring towards Osnabrück, the
Germans upon Münster. One detachment of British,[290] however, was sent
northward under Lord Cathcart’s command to fetch a compass through West
Friesland and along the borders of Groningen, in order to ascertain
whether the people of these provinces were as ill-affected as their
fellows towards the House of Orange. By whose orders this isolated
force was despatched upon such an errand is uncertain; it is only
known that the column was followed up and incessantly harassed by the
enemy, and that it was not very successful in discovering friendly
sentiments among the Dutch. Upon reaching the Ems, the army halted,
and on the 5th February took up cantonments on the western bank of
the river, Cathcart on the extreme north guarding the passes of the
Bourtanger Moor from the Dollart southward, while Abercromby fixed his
headquarters further to south and west of the river at Bentheim, and
the Hanoverians retired to Münster.
The state of the troops by this time was worse than ever, for thousands
of sick had perforce been left behind on the Yssel. “Your army is
destroyed,” wrote Walmoden to the Duke of York; “the officers, their
carriages, and a large train are safe, but the men are destroyed.
The army has now no more than six thousand fighting men, but it has
all the drawbacks of thirty-three battalions, and consumes a vast
quantity of forage.” A more terrible reproach was never yet levelled
against any force; nevertheless it was rather the politicians than the
military commanders who had made such a reproach possible, by flinging
commissions broadcast to any man or even child who could afford to
satisfy the crimps. Upon entering German territory the men met with
kindlier treatment from the inhabitants; but the infamous conduct of
the French Emigrant Corps threatened to turn the Germans also into
enemies. It now became abundantly clear that most of these regiments
were simply frauds, imposed upon the English Ministers by a band of
unscrupulous adventurers. But the English army, of course, had to bear
the burden of their sins; and the Hanoverians and Hessians, naturally
espousing the cause of their countrymen, turned upon the British with
a bitterness which destroyed all cohesion between the nations of the
Allies.[291]
Meanwhile the French, after leaving their opponents to retreat
unmolested from the Leck, resumed their advance, and at the end of
January occupied Kampen and Zwolle on the Yssel. They made, however, no
attempt to hinder the further retirement of the Allies; and their
movements for the next fortnight were of the most leisurely description.
Then arrived rumours of a French understanding with Prussia, of the
neutralisation of North Germany, and of a line of demarcation to be
drawn according to the actual territory occupied by the opposing armies.
The French at once woke to the importance of gaining immediate
possession of Groningen and East Friesland, and General Macdonald’s
corps was detached to invade Groningen, while those of Moreau and
Vandamme remained in observation on the Yssel. ◆Feb. 27.◆ On the 19th of
February Macdonald occupied the town of Groningen, and thence turning
eastward he, on the 27th, attacked Cathcart’s fortified posts at
Winschoten. He was repulsed; ◆March 1.◆ but two days later the attack
was renewed with success by General Reynier, and Cathcart was forced to
retreat, which he did with great dexterity, crossing the Ems upon the
3rd. ◆March 3.◆ The entire British force then fell back to the east bank
of the Ems to hold the line from Emden to Rheine, headquarters being
fixed at Osnabrück.
Five days later the British Cabinet at last decided to withdraw its
troops from the Continent, ◆March 11.◆ and on the 11th Harcourt, to his
infinite relief, received intimation that transports for twenty-three
thousand men were on their way to him. The Hanoverians were in
consternation over the danger to which Hanover was exposed by this
measure, but there was no help for it. ◆March 16.◆ A few days later
Prussian troops arrived to hold the line of the Ems, and on the 22nd the
British began their march to Bremen for embarkation. The Prussians did
their utmost by obstruction, discourtesy, and insolence to disoblige
them on their passage through the country; but this was natural, for
they had always professed contempt for the British as a nation of
traders, and a tradesman is never so despicable to a dishonest customer
as when he refuses to grant him further credit. ◆April 14.◆ Finally, on
the 14th of April, the infantry and part of the artillery took ship for
England, leaving the remainder of the artillery and the whole of the
cavalry behind them under Lord Cathcart and David Dundas. The number
embarked was nearly fifteen thousand, some proportion of the sick having
been recovered; so that the losses after the retreat from the Leck must
have amounted to about six thousand men, of which not a tithe were
killed or wounded in action. Thus disgracefully ended the first
expedition of Pitt and Dundas to the Low Countries.
AUTHORITIES.—The British despatches relating to the expeditions
to Flanders will be found in _W.O. Orig. Corresp._ 46–48, and in
Entry Book No. 11. The number of private letters included in this
collection makes it of unusual value. For the campaigns at large
the best accounts known to me are in Ditfurth’s _Die Hessen in den
Feldzügen, 1793, 1794, und 1795_ (Kassel, 1839), and in Witzleben’s
_Prinz Friedrich Josias von Coburg-Saalfeld_ (Berlin, 1859), which is
not a little built upon Ditfurth, but contains much that is valuable
of its own and a superb atlas of maps. On the French side the short
memoir of David and the life of Pichegru are of little worth compared
with the narrative of Jomini. Marshal Macdonald’s _Mémoires_ are
disappointing at this period. Of English printed accounts the most
important is Jones’s _Historical Journal of the British Campaign
in 1794_. The _Journal_ of Corporal James Brown of the Coldstream
Guards supplies a few interesting details. Sir H. Calvert’s _Journal
and Correspondence_ is often of value; and there is a great deal of
most useful information in the foot-notes to the miserable doggerel
called the _Narrative of an Officer of the Guards_. Unfortunately the
author, like Brown and Calvert, was a Coldstreamer, for which reason
all three confine themselves chiefly to the doings of the brigade of
Guards. The regimental histories of the 14th Foot and 15th Hussars
have occasionally interesting material, but, taken altogether, the
regimental records are disappointing.
THE END
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
[Illustration:
THE NETHERLANDS in the 18th Century.
_Stanford’s Geogl. Estabt., London._
]
By the Hon. J. W. FORTESCUE
A
HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ARMY
With numerous Maps and Plans.
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VOLUMES I. and II.
_ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW._—“Mr. Fortescue has been the first to
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