The War of Wars

by Robert Harvey

  Unaware of these developments, Pitt behaved with aristocratic hauteur in this, the first real engagement of the war. In July he went to his country home at Holmwood and then to visit his mother towards the end of August, travelling down to Walmer to walk up the partridges with his confidant, Dundas. On 3 September the ebullient Duke of York invited Pitt and Dundas to cross the Channel to witness his attack as though it were a military exercise; they declined. On 6 September he attacked – only to discover the enormous size of the army he was facing – some 45,000 men. In a huge pitched battle he suffered some 10,000 casualties and retreated rapidly.

  The first battle of the war had been a complete disaster, with blame attaching to Richmond for mistakes in the supplying of the forces, the navy under the Earl of Chatham, Pitt’s elder brother, for failing to furnish support in time, and the Prussians and the Austrians for failing to tie down sufficient quantities of French troops on their fronts – as well as to the hapless Duke of York. Richmond almost resigned from the government after Pitt voiced criticism. The King was furious at the humiliation of his favourite son, who took the defeat badly. Public opinion was highly critical. The British had also lost standing on the continent: they had no card to play as they had not captured Dunkirk, and their army was now redundant, with huge losses suffered in a failed and futile cause.

  The Prussians immediately began to lose interest in the French war: always keen on spoils, they had anticipated an easy victory, and this was not to be had. The Prussians were anyway furious that their German-speaking rivals, the Austrians, had taken Valenciennes and Condé in the name of the Emperor, not of Louis XVI – which also infuriated French loyalist officers. The Prussians decided to switch their attentions back to Poland: Frederick William left his army on the Rhine to join his Polish forces.

  The Duke of York was sent to reinforce the Austrians in besieging the town of Maubeuge. But the Austrians were beaten back and together with the British forced towards the coast. Reinforcements had to be rushed to prevent a defeat before the armies went into winter quarters. The only news that raised Pitt’s spirits in 1793 had come on 13 September, when the British Mediterranean fleet and Spanish navy landed at Toulon at the request of the city, now in rebellion. This victory had come to Britain entirely by accident, without a British life being lost, where it had eluded them in north-west Europe, with a staggering loss of 18,500 men by the end of the year.

  Pitt was elated and talked of the ‘final success of the war’ being in sight. In a flurry of activity, the government ordered ten British companies from Gibraltar as well as 10,000 Hessians from Flanders and two regiments in Ireland to be sent to reinforce Toulon, which Prussia believed would act as a bridgehead to open a new southeast front in France. The Austrians were asked to send 5,000 troops from northern Italy and the Neapolitans 5,000 more. Together with 9,000 Sardinians and 3,000 Spaniards promised for the following year, Pitt believed he could muster an army of 60,000 men in the south of France.

  Yet by October there were only some 13,000 allied troops: the Austrians in particular were unimpressed by the capture of Toulon, asserting that the northern front was far more important as it threatened Paris. The Austrians, who had some 93,000 troops in the Netherlands and 38,000 on the Rhine, regarded the excitable British, with some 22,000 men including their German mercenaries (the Prussians had 46,000), as no more than minor players on the continent, and were not disposed to accept their orders.

  Meanwhile the position at Toulon was turning awkward: the French pretender for the Regency after Louis’s execution, his brother the Comte de Provence, wanted to land there and proclaim the restoration of the monarchy. He had to be forcibly detained at his point of departure, Genoa. The British had publicly come out in favour of monarchy in France, but only in the vaguest possible terms: ‘His Majesty invites the co-operation of the people of France . . . He calls upon them to join the standard of an hereditary monarchy, not for the purpose of deciding, in this moment of disorder, calamity, and public danger, on all the modifications of which this form of government may hereafter be susceptible, but in order to unite themselves once more under the empire of law, of morality, and of religion . . .’ The aim was not to lose the support of moderate republicans. The British were also quarrelling with their Spanish allies as to who should be in command of land forces. The British naval commander, Hood, did well in the American War of Independence, but was sixty-nine and had a less sure touch on land.

  However, all these ambitious plans were frustrated in mid-December when the young French artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, successfully captured the heights overlooking the harbour. On the following day Hood was forced to evacuate. He gave the order to Sidney Smith to destroy the captured French fleet in a single night, that of 18 December. Smith valiantly tried to carry out his order: thirty-three French ships altogether were destroyed. One English ship was wrecked when a French powder ship nearby was blown up by the Spaniards. Eleven more were badly damaged, leaving fourteen intact. Meanwhile, there was an appalling scene, as French troops skirmished with the withdrawing British and allied forces on the outskirts of town. The inhabitants hysterically milled around the harbour, desperate to get away: some 15,000 people from Toulon were received aboard the British ships, some 4,000 aboard a single one, the Princess Royal.

  Subsequently Hood was blamed for not having seized the entire French fleet as prizes before Toulon fell: but the Spaniards also claimed them, and a war would have broken out between the two allies had he attempted such a thing. The huge damage done to the French fleet – the first major British naval victory of the war – was however overshadowed by the utter collapse of the allied war effort in the south. The Austrians were blamed by the British but, as Chatham remarked, the situation had required either a total commitment of forces or immediate abandonment. This second appalling defeat in the ‘short war’ was compounded by the revenge of the Jacobins against Toulon: of Toulon’s 28,000 inhabitants after the British evacuation, only 7,000 were still alive a month later.

  Having failed in the north and south, the British at last turned their attentions to the west, where the Vendée war was still in full swing. An expedition of 12,000 men, including 2,000 cavalry, prepared to descend on the Isle de Noirmoutiers opposite the mouth of the Loire, to prepare for an attack on Nantes. The commander was to be the Earl of Moira, formerly Lord Rawdon, a distinguished veteran in the American War of Independence and a protégé of Lord Cornwallis.

  From the first Moira found his force being depleted by demands from other areas, particularly the West Indies. When at last he set out in December, and reached the coast of Cherbourg, he found no royalists to greet him: they had already been defeated and dispersed. By mid-January 1794, after hanging about hopelessly off the French coast, the expedition had returned to Cowes.

  Still worse was to follow. Pitt tried to put the best gloss on the disaster of the first year of the war, claiming he had saved Holland and Flanders, when in fact the Austrians and Prussians had saved them, and the British had merely failed at Dunkirk and Toulon, losing nearly 20,000 men. He and Grenville resolved to embark on a new continental offensive against France with their tricky allies, Austria and Prussia.

  Chapter 18

  THE GRAND OLD DUKE OF YORK

  The British army was now reorganized on a more ordered footing, with provision for raising 175,000 regulars, 52,000 militia – some 16,000 of them in Ireland – ‘fencible’ (volunteer) cavalry and 34,000 hired mercenaries. A new campaign was planned, involving two pincers to close in on Paris. An army would be landed near Le Havre and move up the Seine; another would advance from the north-east: this would consist of some 300,000 men, 40,000 of them British and German soldiers which would advance from Flanders and seize the frontier fortresses.

  It was the old plan again, under the old commander, the twenty-nine-year-old Duke of York whom both Pitt and Dundas privately considered incompetent, but were unable to replace: the Austrians actually preferred him because they be
lieved they could manipulate him. The Prussians, who were to provide 100,000 men, insisted that because the war was being waged entirely in British interests they be paid £2 million. The British were understandably reluctant to pay. So too were the Austrians, who were by now deeply suspicious of their Prussian rivals. Not until April was agreement reached for a reduced Prussian force of 62,400 men at a cost of around £1 million paid largely by the British.

  All now seemed well: the King of Prussia, no less, decided to command his army; the Emperor of Austria also took command of his forces, arriving in Belgium to inspect the allied armies on 9 April. This brought to an end an unseemly squabble in which the Duke of York, who had refused to serve under the Austrians’ best general, General Clairfait, because of his inferior status, agreed to serve under the Emperor. As was remarked at the time: ‘one incompetent prince, who knew little about war, was thus to be commanded by another incompetent prince who knew nothing.’

  Just ten days later, however, a large Polish uprising under the popular Thaddeus Kosciusko, which had broken out the previous month, moved on to capture Warsaw. This aroused intense anxiety among Britain’s continental allies: the Russians wanted help to quell it; the Austrians were alarmed at the destabilization of central Europe; and the Prussians wanted to share in any possible spoils. But for the moment the campaign against France proceeded. The fortress of Landrecies was taken, partly by a brilliant British cavalry charge. It became a classic in British military history. On 24 April, two squadrons of British and two of Austrian cavalry, numbering 400 men, had come across a body of 800 French cavalry in thick woods near Montrecourt. They pursued the larger French force up a hill, where they found themselves face to face with an entire division. The British promptly charged forward, while the Austrians engaged in a flanking movement. They were taking on sixty cannon, aiming straight at them, supported by 12,000 men, ranged in six battalions. The charge of the 15th Hussars was memorably described by a young cornet, Robert Wilson:

  When we began to trot, the French cavalry made a movement to right and left from the centre, and at the same moment we saw in lieu of them, as if created by magic, an equal line of infantry, with a considerable artillery in advance, which opened a furious cannonade with grape, while the musketry poured its volleys. The surprise was great and the moment most critical; but happily the heads kept their direction, and the heels were duly applied to the ‘Charge!’ which order was hailed with repeated huzzas . . .

  The guns were quickly taken; but we then found that the chaussée, which ran through a hollow with steep banks, lay between them and the infantry. There was, however, no hesitation; every horse was true to his master, and the chaussée was passed in uninterrupted impetuous career. It was then, as we gained the crest, that the infantry poured its volley – but in vain. In vain also the first ranks kneeled and presented a steady line of bayonets. The impulse was too rapid, and the body attacking too solid, for any infantry power formed in line to oppose, although the ranks were three deep. Even the horses struck mortally at the brow of the bank had sufficient momentum to plunge upon the enemy in their fall, and assist the destruction of his defence . . .

  The French cavalry, having gained the flanks of their infantry, endeavoured to take up a position in its rear. Our squadrons, still on the gallop, closed to fill up the gaps which the French fire and bayonets had occasioned, and proceeded to the attack on the French cavalry, which, though it had suffered from the fire of part of its own infantry, seemed resolved to await the onset; but their discipline or their courage failed, and our horses’ heads drove on them just as they were on the half-turn to retire.

  A dreadful massacre followed. In a chase of four miles, twelve hundred horsemen were cut down, of which about five hundred were Black Hussars. One farrier of the 15th alone killed twenty-two men. The French were so panic-stricken that they scarcely made any resistance, notwithstanding that our numbers were so few in comparison with the party engaged, that every individual pursuer found himself in the midst of a flock of foes.

  As the British and Austrians pursued the French, they came across a baggage train carrying fifty more guns and fell upon this, spiking the guns. The pursuit continued for six miles, leaving 1,200 French casualties in its wake. There had been a couple of other considerable feats of British arms – at Vicogne, when the Coldstream Guards had crossed a narrow bridge in the face of French guns and overrun the French position, and at Lincelles when they overcame a heavily manned French redoubt – but this was the first really superb feat of arms.

  The British and Austrian army now plunged on into France. Wilson again captured the intensity of the fighting at Mouveaux:

  The cry of ‘Charge to the right!’ ran down the column, and in the same moment we were all at full speed. The enemy redoubled his efforts, and struck at us with his bayonets fixed at the end of his muskets, as we wheeled round the dreaded and dreadful corner, already almost choked with the fallen horses and men which had perished in the attempt to pass. My little mare received here a bayonet-wound in the croup, and a musket-ball through the crest of her neck. Two balls lodged in my cloak-case behind the saddle, and another carried away part of my sash. Our surgeon and his horse were killed close at my side, and a dozen of my detachment fell at that spot under the enemy’s fire. We still urged on, ventre à terre, pursued by bullets.

  Suddenly, before the least notice could be given, the whole column of cavalry was arrested in its career, and at the same moment, of course, recoiled several yards. The confusion, the conflict for preservation, the destruction which ensued, baffles all description. Three-fourths of the horses, at one and the same moment, were thrown down with their riders under them or entangled by the bodies of others. The battling of the horses to recover themselves, the exclamations of all sorts which resounded through the air, accompanied by the volleys of the triumphing enemy, presented a picture d’enfer which, as one of the French then firing upon us, and afterwards taken, told me, even made his own and his comrades’ hair stand on end . . . It was not till I got over the ditch that I saw the cause of our calamity. Fifty-six pieces of cannon with their tumbrels, etc, stood immovable in the road, the drivers having cut away the traces and escaped with the horses when they found the enemy’s fire surrounding them. Such was the consequence of sending out as drivers the refuse of our gaols – for that was the practice of the day.

  Never, never could a column be more completely surrounded and by five times its numbers; never did a body of men so circumstanced escape with such a comparatively small loss. At Pontachin a column of 1,800 French had endeavoured to force its way through some orchards. When the mass was wedged in one of them which had a very small outlet, the Austrians had opened a battery of twelve guns – 12-pounders – upon it, and with such remarkable razing precision and effect, that I myself counted 280 headless bodies. Such a beheading carnage was perhaps never paralleled.

  The British and Austrians were now over-extended, partially cut off in the rear and under fire on both sides. On 8 May, the French counter-attacked at Turcoine. The British were forced to fight a rearguard action, while the Austrians remained strangely passive. The British lost nineteen guns out of twenty-eight, while eighteen Austrian battalions failed to support them. Craig, the Duke of York’s adjutant-general, fulminated: ‘We never saw an Austrian but by two and threes turning away. I am every day more and more convinced that they have not an officer among them.’ The allies regrouped to resist the French charges at Tournai and on the Sambre.

  The King of Prussia chose this moment not to join his forces in the west but in the east, on the Polish front. The Austrians, concluding pessimistically that western Flanders was lost, went on the defensive, and the Emperor decided to return to Vienna at the end of May. The Prussians now refused to do the bidding of the British, and the Austrians seemed all but out of the fight, falling back along all their lines.

  On 26 June Moira landed at Ostend with some 7,000 reinforcements and marched to Ghent: one of his officers was Lie
utenant-Colonel Arthur Wellesley, a novice in war. The Duke of York meanwhile wrote angrily to Prince Coburg that ‘we are betrayed and sold to the enemy’ by the retreating Austrians. The French crossed the Sambre again, this time under General Jourdan, with reinforcements of 70,000 men, the army of Sambre-et-Meuse, the Republic’s best. They thrust between the British-Dutch forces and the Austrians to the east.

  The British believed the Emperor of Austria had sold out. In fact he had left because he recognized that his brother, the Archduke Charles, was a far more gifted commander – although he suffered from epilepsy which would incapacitate him at critical moments. He was ably supported by his chief of staff, General Mack von Lieberich. But it is true that the Austrians had no great enthusiasm for the war and had long sought to disembarrass themselves of the troublesome burden of governing their far-flung Netherlands possessions.

  Jourdan turned his entire army against the Austrians and they met on the battlefield of Fleurus on 26 June. The Austrians fought furiously and inflicted enormous losses on the French. The battle lasted the whole day – ‘fifteen hours of the most desperate fighting I ever saw in my life’, as a young officer, Soult, was later to remember, having had five horses shot from beneath him. Another soon to be famous young French officer, Bernadotte, fought beside him.

  Archduke Charles boldly suggested a cavalry counter-attack to go behind the French and break their lines. But the Austrian commander, Coburg, ordered a retreat as dusk settled to a ridge called Mont St Jean above the village of Waterloo. The allied armies now fell apart, going their separate ways – the British towards Antwerp, the Dutch across the Cheldyt, and the Austrians towards the Rhine.

  Brussels fell on 11 July, and Antwerp later in the month. Holland’s very survival was now at stake. Nieuport fell to the French and hundreds were butchered. The Austrians were now in full flight towards the Rhine. Cologne fell in October as Jourdan’s army pushed forward.