Sir J. W. Fortescue

“ 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. ”

“ The trumpets rang out, and with wild cheering white coats, red coats, and blue coats whirled down upon the left flank and rear of the French. The French guns, hastily wheeled round, opened a furious fire of grape, while the infantry began as furious a fire of musketry; but the charging squadrons took no heed. Mansel, stung by the imputation of cowardice, which had been thrown out to account for his mishap on the 24th, had vowed that he would not come back alive, and dashing far ahead of his men into the thick of the enemy went down at once ”

“ SPECTATOR.—“The new volumes of A History of the British Army are of the same high quality as those which have gone before. We can give no higher praise, for Mr. Fortescue can only be compared with himself. He has no rivals as a student of military history, and we question whether he has any living superior as an historian.” ”

“ Just when his anxiety was greatest there came a letter from the Secretary of State, announcing that invasion of England was imminent, and hoping that troops could be spared from Flanders without prejudice to his operations. “What!” answered Ligonier indignantly; “are you aware that the enemy has seventy thousand men against our thirty thousand, and that they can place a superior force on the canal before us and send another army round between us and Antwerp, to cut off our supplies and force us to fight at a disadvantage? ”

“ Solmes lost both his head and his temper. “Damn the English,” he growled; “if they are so fond of fighting, let them have a bellyful”; and he sent forward not a man. Fortunately junior officers took matters into their own hands; and it was time, for Boufflers had now arrived on the field to throw additional weight into the French scale. The English Horse-grenadiers, the Fourth Dragoons, and a regiment of Dutch dragoons rode forward and, dismounting, covered the retreat of the Guards and Danes by a brilliant counter-attack. ”

“ On the 20th of February the seven battalions of British Guards were suddenly paraded before the Horse Guards; and the Duke of York, announcing that the first battalions of the three regiments were ordered to proceed on active service, called for volunteers from the others to bring them up to strength. The whole brigade thereupon stepped forward as one man; and five days later three battalions, numbering under two thousand men of all ranks and denominations, marched to Greenwich amid the cheers, and something more than the cheers, of an enormous and enthusiastic crowd. ”

“ By this time King George and his people in England were thoroughly sick of the war. The British had suffered severely in every action, but had reaped no success except in the fortunate victory of Dettingen. The Dutch had proved themselves useless and contemptible as Allies, their Government feeble and corrupt in council, their troops unstable if not dangerous in action. The Austrians, in spite of lavish subsidies, had never furnished the troops that they had promised, and had invariably obstructed operations through the obstinacy of their Generals and the selfishness of their 1748. ”

“ Nevertheless there are still not wanting men to believe the slanders of the contemptible faction then rising to power in England, that Marlborough fought the battle from pure lust of slaughter.
Notwithstanding all blunders, which were none of Marlborough’s making, Malplaquet was a very grand action. The French were equal in number to the Allies, and occupied a position which was described at the time as a fortified citadel. They were commanded by an able general, whom they liked and trusted, they were in good heart, and they looked forward confidently to victory. ”

“ The immediate problem of the defence of the Dutch provinces was left without so much as an attempt at solution. Both Grenville [Pg 179] in England and Auckland at the Hague had long foreseen the certainty of a French attack upon them, and had strained every nerve to stir the authorities to action. But the Stadtholder was a man of almost inhuman dulness, apathy and stupidity; and all popular energy was paralysed by the spirit of faction, which, never inactive in Holland, had under the influence of French agents become almost a spirit of revolution. ”

“ The enemy suffered them to approach within pistol-shot, only to deliver a volley which sent them staggering back; and, though the Austrians extended their line till it joined Gauvain’s detachment, yet they could make little way against the French fire. Lottum’s attack was hardly more successful. Heedless of the tempest of shot in their front and flank the Germans pressed steadily on, passed a swamp and a stream under a galling fire, and fell fiercely upon the breastwork beyond; but, being disordered by the ground and thinned by heavy losses, they were forced to fall back. ”

“ With their usual jealousy for supreme control, the Austrians mixed a contingent of their own troops with the Allies in every section of the army, an arrangement which gave rise to infinite confusion, since it made even small detachments dependent on two or three different sources of supply. For each nation made provision for its own troops in its own way, and, owing to diversities of system and of differences in calibre of muskets and cannon, it was impossible to enforce any effort towards uniformity. ”

“ The Duke of York, who had never contemplated so foolhardy an attack, wisely thought it best to make no complaint. The battalion itself, to judge by a letter from one of the officers to Lord Buckingham, was very indignant with the Duke; and there is every probability that [Pg 213] its complaints reached the ear of Pitt. I mention this, because, though the matter is in itself a small one, it gives conclusive evidence of the incessant friction which arose from the indiscipline of the British officers and from the mistrust which the Allies felt for each other. ”

“ The two battalions of Bourbonnois fell in hastily before their camp, with a battery of six guns before them. The dragoons of the right wing dismounted and hastened to seal up the space between Bourbonnois and the Sennette. The horse of the right was collected, and some of it sent off in hot speed to the left to bring the infantry up behind them on their horses’ croups. All along the line the alarm was given, drums were beating, men snatching hastily at their arms and falling into their ranks ready to file away to the right. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the day [Pg 398] 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. ”

“ That of the French was about eight thousand men; that of the Allies about twelve thousand, killed, wounded, and prisoners, and among the dead was Count Solmes, the hated Solmes of Steenkirk. The nineteen British battalions present lost one hundred and thirty-five officers killed, wounded, and taken. The French captured eighty guns and a vast quantity of colours, but the Allies, although beaten, could also show fifty-six French flags. And, indeed, though Luxemburg won, and deserved to win a great victory, yet the action was not such as to make the allied troops afraid to meet the French. ”

“ The French lost six thousand killed and wounded and nine thousand prisoners only, but they were thoroughly shaken and demoralised for the remainder of the campaign. The wearied army of the Allies lay on its arms on the battlefield, while Marlborough and Eugene waited impatiently for the dawn. As soon as it was light, forty squadrons, for the most part British, were sent forward in pursuit, while Eugene returned to his own army to hasten its march and to collect material for a siege. ”

“ Hence it is obvious that an invading army necessarily enjoyed a great advantage, since it menaced the fortresses of the enemy [Pg 5] while its own were unthreatened. Thus ten thousand men on the Upper Lys could paralyse thrice their number in Ghent and Bruges and the adjacent towns. On the other hand, if an invading general contemplated the siege of an important town, he manœuvred to entice the garrison into the field before he laid siege in form. Still, once set down to a great siege, an army was stationary, and the bare fact was sufficient to liberate hostile garrisons all over the country ”

“ At half-past seven the fog lifted, and the guns of both armies opened fire. Eugene and Marlborough thereupon parted, the former taking charge of the right, the latter of the left of the army. Then the divisions of Orange and of Lottum advanced in two dense columns up the glade. Presently the Dutch halted, just beyond range of grape-shot, while Lottum’s column pushed on under a terrific fire to the rear of the forty-gun battery and deployed to the right in three lines. Then the fire of the cannon slackened for a time, till about nine o’clock a salvo of the forty guns gave the signal for attack. ”

“ The condition of the army was very far from satisfactory. The troops themselves, or at any rate the British, were not seriously shaken by the rout of the previous day; but the Emperor and the Austrian commanders were much discouraged, and the animosity of the various nations towards each other was dangerously embittered. The British, above all, were furious against the Austrians for leaving them to be overwhelmed without so much as an attempt to assist them. “It is impossible,” wrote Craig to the War Office, “to bring the Austrians to act except in small corps. ”

“ Among Houchard’s subordinate generals was Jourdan. Dunkirk itself had for commandant General Souham, an energetic officer whose fame was soon to spread wide; and one of Souham’s battalions was commanded by Lazare Hoche.
Thus new men and a new principle of war, which were to crush the cordon-system out of existence, hung like an angry cloud to the south of Dunkirk; but the Generals of the Allies took no heed. Murray, indeed, had heard with anxiety of the increase of the [Pg 234] French force in his front, and had begged Coburg for reinforcements, which, however, could not be spared. ”

“ Meanwhile on the French side Carnot had girded himself for a supreme effort. “We must finish matters this year,” he wrote to Pichegru on the 11th of February; “unless we make rapid progress and annihilate the enemy to the last man within three months, all is lost. To begin again next year would mean for us to perish of hunger and exhaustion.” He therefore decided to combine the armies of the North, of the Ardennes and of the Moselle, and to mass two hundred and fifty thousand men along the line from Dunkirk to the Meuse. ”

“ In such circumstances, although the northern frontier of France was, from its proximity, the most convenient sphere of operations for a British army, they might well consider the advisability of removing all their forces from that quarter in order to concentrate them at Toulon, which Lord Hood’s negotiations had already engaged them to protect. French successes in the north could be only temporary and unprofitable if the Allies, by assisting the counter-revolution in the south, should deprive the Convention of the richest provinces of France. ”

“ At this moment Lord Stair, who had followed the course of operations carefully from England, came forward, [Pg 137] like a true pupil of Marlborough, with a new plan of campaign. His advice was that the Allies should turn Saxe’s tactics against himself. They should march south to Orchies, between Lille and Tournay, and there encamp, where they would be within reach of half-a-dozen French fortified towns. The French would not dare to leave the fortresses defenceless; and the garrisons necessary to render them secure would absorb the whole of their force in the field. ”

“ The organisation also was imperfect, for, though the army was indeed distributed into brigades and divisions, these were not kept together, but all detachments were formed of squadrons and battalions arbitrarily collected and entrusted to a general as arbitrarily chosen, who knew no more of the men than they knew of him. In the matter of tactics the Austrians had made no progress since the Seven Years’ War. Cavalry and infantry alike were still formed in three ranks, and the art of handling large bodies of cavalry had been nearly, though not wholly, forgotten. ”

“ Still, the inactivity of Coburg during April was marvellous. It never occurred to him to overwhelm [Pg 210] any one of Dampierre’s isolated divisions of untrained men by concentrating a superior force upon it. He never reflected that, even if both sides adhered to the cordon-system, the French could bring up the whole manhood of their country to make their cordon stronger than his own at every point. He allowed Dampierre to school his troops with impunity by perpetual affairs of outposts, without remembering that the French could more easily replace two men than he could replace one. ”

“ Nothing more could be done for the rest of the campaign, but to level the French lines from the Demer to the Mehaigne.
Thus for the third time a brilliant campaign was spoilt by the Dutch generals and deputies. Fortunately the public indignation both in England and in Holland was too strong for them, and Slangenberg, though not indeed hanged as he deserved, was deprived of all further command. Jealousy, timidity, ignorance, treachery, and flat imbecility seem to have been the motives that inspired these men, whose conduct has never been reprobated according to its demerit. ”

“ Fully half the men of the infantry had fallen out, and there were many who did not rejoin the army until the third day. Villars on his side moved forward and offered Marlborough battle under the walls of Cambrai; but the Duke would not accept it, though the Dutch deputies, perverse and treacherous to the last, tried hard to persuade him. Had the deputies marched in the ranks of the infantry with muskets on their shoulders and a kit of fifty pounds’ weight on their backs, they would have been less eager for the fray. ”