The 1794 Campaign in Flanders
William Hague, in his excellent biography of Pitt, has this to say about the campaign of 1793:
It is hard to escape the conclusion that the British war effort in 1793 suffered from the lack of a consistent strategic thrust. Furthermore, the mismatch between chosen objectives and the materials available to deliver them was itself a failure of strategy. Pitt ran the war through Dundas, who, as Secretary of State for Home Affairs and the Colonies, had direct responsibility for it, and through Grenville as Foreign Secretary. Their efforts in these early stages suffered from inexperience and a tendency to interfere in operational matters, which combined with Pitt’s naturally optimistic nature to produce unrealistic assumptions. On the other hand, Pitt brought to the leadership of the war effort his usual diligence and capacity for controlling government departments. Through his two Secretaries of State he oversaw the whole effort of the British state in a way Lord North in the American War of Independence would never have contemplated. He even deputised for them if they were away …1
Later, Hague states: ‘The failure to gain a decisive advantage over France in 1793 was arguably the single most calamitous occurrence in the life of Pitt, for from it so much of the pain and tragedy of later years unfolded.’2
For the campaign of 1794 Pitt made a determined effort to raise more troops in England and to secure the support of the Prussians for a new offensive. Accordingly, between November 1793 and March 1794 about 30,000 men were enlisted for the regular army in England, though this was achieved by a corrupt system tolerated by government ministers. Rich young men were effectively bribed with a rank in the army based on the number of soldiers they were able to recruit: the more recruits, the higher the rank. If these officers took to the field, this could mean that very young and inexperienced men were in positions of senior command; if they decided to sell their soldiers on, they could retire for the rest of their lives on the half-pay pension equivalent to the rank they had been granted.3 Meanwhile, after tortuous negotiations, Pitt was successful in persuading the Prussians in April 1794 to provide 62,000 men in return for a down payment of £300,000 and £50,000 a month. Britain and Holland provided the money, and the Prussians agreed to fight wherever they were asked.
The grand plan was that the allies should advance on Paris and deliver a knock-out blow, and the emperor, Francis II, arrived to command the allied troops in person, although he still relied strongly on the advice of Coburg and Mack, among others. The British government had left York in no doubt that in matters involving the overall strategy of the fighting he was to take his orders from the emperor. Francis held a review on 16 April near Le Cateau, but one Guards officer, at least, felt that he was a poor sight compared with the Duke of York:
Of diminutive stature, eyes sunk in his head
Resembling a Mercury moulded in lead,
With swarthy complexion and pitiful mien
Judge, beside him, to how much advantage was seen
With the form of a hero and strength of roast beef,
Great Frederick! Our noble Commander-in-Chief.4
Advancing in five columns, the allies took Le Cateau, Fremont and Vaux and moved on to besiege Landrecies. The French attempt to relieve the fortress was brilliantly countered by York’s British cavalry, acting in concert with his Hanoverian troops, and a force of 30,000 French was put to flight, with its commander captured, together with thirty-five cannon. This was a notable victory for York, described by a French historian as showing the French army, ‘immobilized in front of a fortress, being outmanoeuvred and turned by an active and enterprising enemy, propelled by the invincible spirit of the offensive’.5 York’s military biographer goes so far as to say, ‘If Wellington defeated forty thousand Frenchmen in forty minutes at Salamanca, it can be said with equal exactitude that York defeated thirty thousand Frenchmen in thirty minutes on the plains of Le Cateau.’6
Landrecies fell on 29 April and the emperor ordered York to reinforce the Austrian General Clerfait’s troops at Tournai, an unpleasant march in heavy rain across muddy terrain. On 10 May the main French army, commanded by General Pichegru, attacked between Courtrai and Tournai, and York achieved another notable success near Willems, causing a larger French force to flee, leaving thirteen guns and over four hundred prisoners. York was so pleased with the performance of his cavalry in this engagement that he presented its commander with his own sword, an unconventional and generous gesture.
At this point York found himself in disagreement with the Austrian high command’s insistence on the ‘cordon’ system of fighting, i.e. stringing out troops thinly over a long line of defence. He much preferred concentrating forces in strategic centres, which would be approved by modern strategists. He wrote to his father, ‘I humbly agree with your Majesty that the system of cordons, into which the Austrians have fallen ever since the beginning of this war, is exceedingly pernicious as well as dangerous and has been the real origin of all the misfortune to which they have been subject.’7
On 16 May the allies agreed to attack the French positions between Lille, Menin and Courtrai, with the aim of driving them out of Flanders. The troops involved were 4,000 Hanoverians under Bussche, 11,000 British under York, and 52,000 men, mostly Austrian, but including British, Hanoverian, Hessian and Dutch, in separate forces commanded by General Otto, Count Kinsky, the Archduke Charles and General Clerfait. On 17 May York was ordered to advance to Tourcoing, which he considered a dangerously exposed position, with large French armies to his front and rear. He questioned the wisdom of this strategy but his objections were overruled by the Austrians and he pressed on. The following day, with no support in sight from the Austrians, he ordered his army back to a safer position and decided to ride in person to consult with General Otto in the village of Wattrelos. Arriving there, he found that Otto had retreated and the French were everywhere, so under fire from the enemy and an easy target in his elaborate uniform complete with the Garter star and blue sash, he drew his sword and galloped as fast as he could to escape the pursuing French cavalry. When his horse refused to jump a ditch, he had to wade across and find another mount. Eventually he made safe contact with the Austrians.
York blamed Austrian indecisiveness for the very unsatisfactory outcome of this ‘battle of Turcoing’ and in fact he received a letter of apology from the emperor, expressing his satisfaction with the way York had removed his men from danger. Indeed, one modern military analyst has written that ‘as an example of glory snatched from defeat, the battle of Turcoing may perhaps rank with Fontenoy and Dunkirk in British annals’.8 Yet to York’s troops their advance and retreat probably seemed demoralizing, and this is one occasion when some British wag might well have given new words to an old nursery rhyme which can be traced back to the 1620s:
The King of France went up the hill
With twenty thousand men
The king of France came down the hill
And never went up again.
The jingle that has subsequently gained an extraordinary degree of fame runs, of course,
The grand old Duke of York
He had ten thousand men
He marched them up to the top of the hill
And he marched them down again.
At Turcoing York had around 10,000 British troops under his command and they were ordered first to advance from the so-called ‘heights’ (a mild eminence) near Roubaix, and then to return to them, which would not have been popular with the men. So in some ways this scenario seems suitable, although, as we shall see later, it is not likely that the ‘Grand Old Duke of York’ jingle was ever current during York’s lifetime. What is quite clear, however, is that, contrary to oft-repeated myth, York was not in any sense personally responsible for a serious ‘defeat’ at Turcoing.9
The muddled events at Turcoing destroyed York’s confidence in the Austrians and he wrote to his father, complaining that the placing of British, Hanoverian and Hessian troops under the command of Austrians was not working well because the Austrian generals tended to give their allies the most dangerous tasks, to save their own troops. Moreover, the Austrians had begun to think that the French armies had become too strong and numerous and were keen to benefit from any partition of the weak state of Poland with Russian and Prussia. Indeed the emperor, with Mack, left the army on 29 May, handing the command to Prince Waldeck.
So far, the Prussian troops which Britain and the Dutch had agreed to finance had taken no part in the action but their arrival was now imminent and Lord Cornwallis was sent, under York’s command, to liaise with them. However, Frederick William II, like Francis II, was at this point more interested in the fate of Poland. In 1772 Austria, Russia and Prussia had taken advantage of the serious weakness of the Polish state and agreed a ‘partition’, each taking large tracts of territory and leaving a much reduced Poland. In 1793 Prussia and Russia annexed further large portions of the country while Austria was engrossed in Flanders and by the middle of 1794 it seemed very likely that Poland would disappear entirely – as in fact happened in 1795, when the rest of the country was divided between Austria, Prussia and Russia. This explains why Britain’s Austrian and Prussian allies from the middle of 1794 were increasingly diverted from the war against France, because of the rich gains to be made in the east.
In May 1794 France’s National Convention released a document announcing that ‘England is capable of every outrage on humanity and of every crime towards the Republic. She attacks the rights of all nations and threatens to annihilate liberty …’ Accordingly, French soldiers were ordered to take no English prisoners: ‘When, therefore, the results of battle shall put in your power either English or Hanoverians, strike: not one of them must return to the traitorous land of England, or be brought into France. Let the British slaves perish and Europe be free.’ York replied with an instruction to his troops, which he ordered to be read out and explained at three successive roll calls. It said that:
The National Convention of France, pursuing their gradation of crimes and horrors, which has distinguished the periods of its government as the most calamitous of any that has yet occurred in the history of the world, has just passed a decree that their soldiers shall give no quarter to the British or Hanoverian troops. His Royal Highness anticipates the indignation and horror which has naturally arisen in the minds of the brave troops whom he addresses, upon receiving this information. His Royal Highness desires, however, to remind that mercy to the vanquished is the brightest gem in a soldier’s character, and exhorts them not to suffer their resentment to lead them to any precipitate act of cruelty on their part, which may sully the reputation they have acquired in the world.10
York made sure that this order was made available to the enemy and many French soldiers quietly ignored the instructions of their own government.
By June 1794 it was clear that Carnot’s policies had resulted in a significant increase in the number of French troops in the Low Countries, while the morale of the Austrians had declined and half their officers were attempting to resign and follow the emperor and Mack home to Vienna. On 1 June Pichegru besieged Ypres, which fell on 18 June, and General Jourdan, with a second French army, attacked on the other flank and besieged Charleroi. Pichegru marched on from Ypres to Deynse, where he defeated the Austrians under Clerfait on 23 June, driving them back beyond Ghent. Meanwhile Coburg marched to the relief of Charleroi, but arrived on 26 June, the day the city surrendered. Coburg then attacked Jourdan’s forces at Fleurus, just north of Charleroi, but in fifteen hours of desperate fighting the French, helped by a reconnaissance balloon which reported the enemy’s movements, drove the Austrians back. The French casualties, at around 5,000, were probably higher than those of the allies and Coburg might have regrouped, but he lost his nerve and retreated towards Brussels, thereby conceding a tactical victory which proved decisive. After this the government in Vienna seems to have made the decision to abandon the troublesome Austrian Netherlands and to ensure instead that it would benefit from the next partition of Poland.
On 1 July York rode forty miles at night to meet Coburg for a war council, at which he asked the blunt question ‘What are the Austrian intentions regarding the Low Countries?’ and received a written reply which read: ‘The Archduke Charles and the generals pledge their word of honour that they have no orders from His Majesty [the emperor] to quit the Low Countries, and in consequence, they feel, as honourable men, obliged to defend the country as long as human force will allow them, and to all extremities.’11 Yet even as this was being written, the fortresses of Tournai, Oudenarde, Ghent and Mons all fell to the French, leaving only Valenciennes, Condé, Landrecies and Quesnoy in the hands of the allies. By 7 July Coburg had retreated eastwards, far away from his ally, and York sent him a pretty straight letter, expressing his feelings: ‘I own I am at length driven to the necessity of openly stating to your Serene Highness that the opinion which the British nation must have on a subject cannot be other than that we are betrayed and sold to the enemy, and your Serene Highness knows that in a country such as Great Britain popular opinion is not to be despised.’12
Had Pichegru now made a determined attack on the allied troops he might have swept all before him, but the politicians in Paris had decided on an invasion of England and instead ordered him to pull back and secure the ports of Ostend, Nieuport and Walcheren for this enterprise. York received reinforcements in the shape of Lord Moira and 7,000 troops fresh from Britain, and despite the gloomy outlook he maintained a cheerful disposition, for which he was widely admired. Colonel Craig informed ministers in London that it would be impossible for York ‘to conduct himself with more temper and resolution than he does in a situation so critical and in which he feels his responsibility to be so great. His Royal Highness is perfectly aware of all the danger, and feels every anxiety incident to it, but is neither cast down nor negligent of the precautions which are necessary. The greatest unanimity prevails among us which in our present situation is of some consequence.’ Another eye-witness recorded that ‘the Duke of York rises daily in esteem, keeps up no state, has no unnecessary people with him, sometimes hardly a servant, and generally wears a plain coat’.13
By the middle of July Pichegru had captured Malines, the Dutch had lost Louvain and the Austrians had retreated still further, so that the British and Austrian armies were entirely separated. In these circumstances, for York to have attacked on his own would have been folly so at the end of July he withdrew northwards to the comparative safety of Holland.
In Holland, 1794
From August 1794 York was no longer under Coburg’s command and the British, Hanoverian, Hessian and Dutch troops looked to him for their leadership. Now that Flanders had fallen to the French, York decided that his main aim should be the defence of Holland itself. The allies were in possession of five Dutch fortresses – Bergen-op-Zoom, Breda, Bois-le-Duc, Grave and Nymegen – so York positioned the Dutch forces close to Bois and stationed his own army near Breda. During August the French were occupied in capturing Nieuport, Ostend and Sluys in preparation for their intended invasion of England, so York was inactive and ten of his generals chipped in with forty pounds each to celebrate his thirty-first birthday in fine style with a dinner for 150 people.
Pitt, Dundas and Grenville had been dismayed by the withdrawal of the Austrians and they sent a deputation to Vienna urging them to re-engage in the war and to dismiss Coburg, whom they blamed for much of the Austrian inactivity and lack of success. Coburg was in fact recalled and replaced with Clerfait but the Austrians, aware of his limitations, suggested to Pitt that if Cornwallis were to be appointed commander of the force currently under York’s command and raised to the rank of field marshal, they would be prepared to accept him as supreme commander of all the allied forces, including their own. This was music to the ears of Pitt and Dundas, but there were three obstacles: the views of the king, York and Cornwallis. York made clear that he would be disappointed to have to relinquish his command but that he would do so if ordered, although he would not wish to serve under Cornwallis. Cornwallis’s view was that he was reluctant to accept the responsibility and unwilling to command the duke. The king’s view was that he would prefer his son to remain at his post and after a good deal of diplomacy and several changes of mind by all parties except the king and the duke, York remained in command.
On 28 August Pichegru began his invasion of Holland and the following day York grouped his forces of about 30,000 men in a secure position by the river Aa, near Bois. Jourdan’s army, meanwhile, drove the Austrians even further eastwards towards the Rhine and the fortresses of Valenciennes and Condé surrendered. On 14 September Pichegru attacked one of York’s outposts at Boxtel and took prisoner two battalions of Hessians with considerable ease. York sent General Abercromby with a sizeable force to retake Boxtel, but Abercromby decided that he was so heavily outnumbered that it would be foolish to attack. He withdrew, with the loss of about thirty men killed and ninety taken prisoner in an engagement which gave the young Colonel Arthur Wesley (later the Duke of Wellington) his first taste of action under enemy fire. York was informed, inaccurately, that Pichegru probably had about 80,000 troops at this point and he held a council of war to consider his options. Abercromby and Craig were in favour of retreat, as was the civilian William Windham, newly appointed secretary at war, who was present. Although not himself enthusiastic about the retreat, York ordered his troops northwards across the Meuse.
York was sent reinforcements, but we are told that they were ‘green troops, inadequately trained, equipped and disciplined and badly officered; some of the new colonels were youths scarcely out of their teens’.14 Meanwhile, the government looked into the possibility of giving the supreme allied command to the Duke of Brunswick, under whom York would willingly have served, but Brunswick refused. On 10 October the Dutch surrendered Bois and York sent British troops to reinforce Nymegen and renewed his requests that Clerfait should give Austrian support. On 28 October Clerfait sent a force of 7,000 Austrians under General Werneck towards Nymegen but at this point the Hanoverians under Walmoden got cold feet and urged York to abandon Nymegen. Werneck, acting on his own, constructed a bridge across the Rhine at Wesel in order to attack the French from the east, but his forces were easily repelled and the bridge was dismantled.
For most of the campaign York’s opinion of his Dutch allies as a fighting force had been very low and his relations with their young commander, the Hereditary Prince William of Orange, had been strained. Increasingly he had also become disillusioned with the Austrians, whose appetite for the war in Flanders had steadily diminished. The Hanoverians had generally been very reliable, but now their commander, Walmoden, seemed to have lost the will to fight. As for York’s British troops, the more recent recruits were untrained and ill-disciplined and there were many incidents of looting and criminal behaviour, some of them punished by courts martial, but not all. Moreover, the outlook for the campaign looked far from good. The Austrians were gradually pulling out; the Prussians, despite promises and payments, had never appeared on the field of battle and the Dutch, as ever, were weak and indecisive. The French, on the other hand, were growing stronger with every month and they had already taken control of Flanders and were poised to capture Holland. Letters describing the seriousness of the situation reached Cornwallis in England and he passed them on to ministers, who had already decided that a change of command was necessary, if only to appease political critics.
On 23 November Pitt wrote a long letter to the king regretfully insisting that York should be recalled to London, highlighting the indecision among his commanders and the indiscipline of some of his troops. Pitt’s main argument, however, was that, as a subordinate to Coburg, York had acquitted himself well, but that he had encountered more difficulties when left to his own devices:
It seems generally felt [he wrote] that, when the Duke of York was originally appointed to the command, it was under circumstances in which he would naturally act in conjunction with officers of the first military reputation, with whom the chief direction of operations would naturally rest. But by the course of events he is now placed in a situation where the chief burden rests upon himself and where his conduct alone may decide on the fate of Holland, and perhaps on the success of the war. Such a risk appears to be too great to remain committed to talents, however distinguished, which have not the benefit of long experience, and which cannot therefore be expected at such time to command general confidence.15
This time the king acquiesced and Dundas wrote to York, recalling him to London, on 27 November 1794. It was not a letter of dismissal and York was instructed to hand over temporary command of the British forces to General William Harcourt, and of the Hanoverians to General Walmoden. Once in England, he went first to Oatlands to see his wife, and then to Windsor, where he was warmly greeted by his father. There then followed a period of about ten weeks when he was technically still in command, though not responsible for the fate of his army, which was left in the hands of ministers and the generals in the field.
He did not find Oatlands the same as he had left it, because earlier that year, on 6 June, while he was away with his army, a fire broke out in a wing of the house which contained the laundry and grand armoury. It blazed away furiously for one and a half hours, destroying two thousand pounds worth of weapons. Frederica was in her bedroom in the main house, which would probably have been destroyed as well but for the help of local people who demolished a gateway linking the burning wing with the main house, thereby bringing the blaze under control. The king went to Oatlands on the following day to view the damage and immediately gave orders for the destroyed wing to be rebuilt at his expense.16
Meanwhile, in Holland the French showed no sign of taking up winter quarters and this imposed further strains on the British forces, which were ill-equipped for a winter campaign. Many of the infantry had no greatcoats and they were often housed in barns and other inadequate accommodation. Typhus fever and exposure to the cold caused major casualties and it has been estimated that in November 1794 nearly half of the 21,000 soldiers in British pay were sick.17 By the middle of December the weather was so exceptionally cold that the rivers of the Rhine delta, the natural defences of Holland, froze over, allowing the French to cross and threaten the British and Dutch positions. Marching across the ice on the Meuse, Pichegru attacked the allied line near Arnhem on 14 January 1795 and, although the French were beaten back, both Walmoden and Harcourt came to the conclusion that they could not fight on for long.
On 20 January 1795 the French captured Amsterdam and a few days later the icebound Dutch fleet surrendered to a force of French cavalry. The rebel Dutch ‘Patriots’, who had opposed the House of Orange since the beginning of the French Revolution, supported the French in the establishment of the ‘Batavian Republic’, a client state of France comprising both Flanders and Holland, and William V of Orange and his sons fled into exile in England. Fortescue calls the period that followed these events ‘amongst the most tragical in the history of the Army’.18 The Hanoverians made their way back to the electorate, but Harcourt had to lead his increasingly indisciplined and bedraggled men through Germany to Bremen, on the north German coast, from where they were eventually transported home in the middle of April 1795.
In many ways it was fortunate for the Duke of York that he had been recalled to London in November the previous year, before the fall of Holland and the subsequent repatriation of the demoralized British army. In February 1795 he was appointed to the administrative post of commander-in-chief of the army and raised by his father to the rank of field marshal. Certainly George III felt that, faced with an exceptionally difficult mission, his son had acquitted himself honourably and had not lost heart or shown weakness of character despite having to deal with unsupportive ministers, vacillating and temperamental allies and, above all, a determined and resilient enemy.
In 1973 Professor Richard Glover, one of the leading military historians of this period, surveyed the evidence and made this judgement on York’s performance as a field commander:
At the siege of Dunkirk everything that York could do was done brilliantly; but he was atrociously let down by his own government (whose failings he most magnanimously covered up) and he was ill-supported by his Hanoverian subordinate Field Marshal Freytag. In the five-pronged attack which his Austrian allies directed against the French at Turcoing in 1794, York carried out his orders to the letter. But only one other commander did so. As a result the British received the punishment that comes all too naturally to detachments thrust unsupported into exposed positions; and but for the Duke’s skilful leadership they would have been still worse handled. His attempted defence of Holland in the autumn of 1794 was frustrated by the incredible ineptness of his Dutch ally. These failures, little as he deserves blame for them, have eclipsed his remarkable successes in lesser actions where he was in full command …19