May 16.
The army was as usual to be divided. The first column, of four thousand Hanoverians under Bussche, was to march by Dottignies upon Mouscron, detaching a third of its strength northward on the high road from Tournai to Courtrai, and, having captured Mouscron, was to open communication with the second column. The second column, of twelve battalions and ten squadrons, or about ten thousand men, under Field-Marshal Otto, was to advance by Leers and Wattrelos upon Tourcoing. The third column, of twelve battalions and ten squadrons under the Duke of York, was to move by Lannoy against Mouveaux, sixteen British squadrons being held in reserve at Hertain under General Erskine. The fourth column, of ten battalionsand sixteen squadrons under Count Kinsky, was to be employed partly in covering the Duke’s left flank; but the bulk of it was to advance on Bouvines and there force the passage of the Marque. The fifth column, of seventeen battalions and thirty-two squadrons under the Archduke Charles, was to march to Pont-à-Marque, sending a small detachment northward by Templeuve to preserve communication with the fourth column. Having gained the passage of the Marque the Archduke was to attack the enemy on the western side of the river, and, after leaving detachments to guard the bridges, to wheel northward, unite forces with Kinsky and move up with him to join the Duke of York at Mouveaux. Finally the sixth column under Clerfaye was to march from Oyghem on the left bank of the Lys, force the passage of the river above Menin on the morning of the 17th, and manœuvre in rear of the enemy about Mouscron and Tourcoing. Thus the design was to attack the enemy’s front with half the army, turn both their flanks with the remainder, and destroy the French irremediably; but whether the surest way of attaining this object was to disperse the troops in isolated columns over a front of twenty miles in a blind and strongly enclosed country—this was a question over which Craig, at any rate, shook his head.
May 17.
Miscarriages of the great plan began early. Clerfaye did not receive his orders for the movement towards Menin until late on the morning of the 16th, and did not march until the evening. His progress was much delayed by the heavy sandy roads, and, consequently, it was the afternoon of the 17th before his corps reached Wervicq, and attempted to cross the Lys by the bridge. The French, however, had covered it by entrenchments which blocked his passage; and, when the pontoons were asked for, it was found that by some mistake theyhad been left behind. Several hours were wasted while they were coming up, and the pontoon-bridge was consequently not laid until late at night, when a few battalions only crossed the river, the remainder of the force bivouacking on the left bank. The general result was that Clerfaye’s corps, one-fourth of the whole army, counted for nothing in the first day’s operations.[236]
The march of the remaining columns was begun in a thick fog which rendered concerted movements difficult, and the Austrian Staff seems to have made no allowance for the varying distances to be covered by the columns; Kinsky having little more than seven miles to traverse from Froidmont to Bouvines, whereas the Archduke Charles had fully fifteen miles from St. Amand to Pont-à-Marque. Bussche concentrated at St. Leger, a little to west of Warcoing, in the night, advanced upon Mouscron, and captured it, but was driven out again with very heavy loss, and forced back to Dottignies. For this misfortune Mack was chiefly responsible, by directing the detachment of so large a proportion of this column on a perfectly aimless errand towards Courtrai. Otto, on Bussche’s left, fared better, driving Compère’s troops from Leers, Wattrelos, and Tourcoing; but, unfortunately, with no further result than to join them to Thierry’s brigade behind Mouscron, to the greater discomfiture of the unfortunate Hanoverians.
To the left and south of Otto the Duke of York with about ten thousand men[237]advanced by Templeuve upon Lannoy which, after a sharp cannonade, he attacked with the brigade of Guards in front whilethe Light Dragoons turned it by the left; but the enemy beat so hasty a retreat that they escaped with little loss. Leaving two Hessian battalions in Lannoy, the Duke pushed on to Roubaix, where the enemy stood, with greater force both of infantry and artillery, in an entrenched position; but, in spite of a very obstinate resistance, the Guards carried this post also with the bayonet. Having no intelligence of the columns on his right and left, the Duke rightly decided to leave his advanced guard at Roubaix, and to fall back with his main body to Lannoy; when to his dismay he received a positive command from the Emperor himself, who with the Headquarters Staff had accompanied the rear of his column, to push on to the attack of Mouveaux. This order was sheer folly, unless indeed it were dictated by wanton and deliberate wickedness;[238]but it was reiterated in spite of all protests, and though the evening was falling and the troops were weary with a long and harassing day’s work under a burning sun, the Duke reluctantly obeyed. The French position at Mouveaux was enclosed by palisades and entrenchments and flanked by redoubts; but for the third time the brigade of Guards drove the enemy out brilliantly with the bayonet. The Seventh and Fifteenth Light Dragoons under Abercromby’s personal direction at once pressed forward in pursuit, and galloping round the village, which had been kindled by theflying French, overtook the fugitives, and cut down three hundred of them. Three guns were captured; and one small party of the Fifteenth actually rode into the French camp at Bondues,[239]nearly two miles to west of Mouveaux, and set the troops there running in every direction. The main body of the Duke’s column then bivouacked astride of the road between Mouveaux and Roubaix.
With the two columns south of the Duke, however, affairs had gone but indifferently. Kinsky’s advance from Froidmont was delayed by a message from the Archduke Charles, to the effect that his force could not possibly reach the Marque at the appointed hour of six in the morning; but in due time Kinsky moved forward to Bouvines, and drove the French from their entrenchments. The enemy, however, broke down the bridge over the Marque as they retired, and, until the advance of the Archduke began to make itself felt, Kinsky was unable to repair it, since the passage was commanded by a battery of heavy guns. The Archduke’s column had meanwhile left St. Amand at ten o’clock on the evening of the 16th, and after driving back the French advanced posts at Templeuve[240]and Cappelle, a little to east of Pont-à-Marque, finally succeeded in forcing the passage of the river at that point. But it was not till two o’clock in the afternoon, instead of six in the morning of the 17th, that his army had passed to the west bank of the Marque; and his soldiers were too much exhausted to move further than Lesquin, a little east of the road between Pont-à-Marque and Lille. Therehe bivouacked on the heights between Lesquin and Peronne, a village about three miles to south-east of it; his men having been on foot for twenty-two hours, marched more than twenty miles over bad roads, and fought a sharp action for the passage of the river. His advance, however, had forced the enemy to evacuate Sainghin, and thus enabled Kinsky to repair the bridge at Bouvines; but none the less Kinsky, with excess of caution, would not cross the river, and encamped for the night on the right bank, which was for him the wrong bank, of the Marque.
At the beginning of this day the French commanders had no information of any movements of the Allies beyond the march of Clerfaye; and, accordingly, the divisions of Souham and Moreau, together with Vandamme’s brigade, had crossed to the left bank of the Lys. The advance of the Allies from the east and the combats about Tourcoing, however, soon undeceived them. Pichegru being, as Soult said, fortunately absent, Generals Souham, Moreau, Macdonald, and Reynier met in council at Menin; and on the evening of the 17th they decided to make new dispositions and to set their troops at once in motion. Vandamme’s brigade alone was left on the north bank of the Lys to watch Clerfaye, and the remainder of the troops on that site crossed the river to take up their appointed stations. Malbrancq’s brigade was posted between Roncq and Blancfour, villages lying from three to four miles due south from Menin on the road to Lille; to the left of Malbrancq, Macdonald’s brigade crowned the heights of Mount Halluin; the rest of Souham’s division, under Generals Daendels and Jardon, lay some three miles away to the east of Macdonald, occupying a line between Aelbeke and Belleghem, a village lying a little to the south of Courtrai; and the gap betweenMacdonald and these troops was filled by the brigades of Compère and Thierry about Mouscron. Thus the formation of the French left wing was that of a double echelon; the three divisions being arranged at the three angles of an isosceles triangle, with the van at the apex, Mouscron, and the rear before Menin and Courtrai. The right wing, consisting of Bonnaud’s and Osten’s divisions, some thirty thousand strong, was assembled about Flers, two miles and a half to the east of Lille; where orders arrived on the evening of the 17th from Souham that a general attack was designed for the morrow, in which the duty of Bonnaud’s division would be to march upon Lannoy and Roubaix.
It was not without anxiety that the reports from the various columns of the Allies were awaited on the evening of the 17th at the Austrian headquarters at Templeuve. The failures of Bussche to capture Mouscron, and of the Archduke Charles to reach the point assigned to him, had sufficed to mar Mack’s plans; and of Clerfaye there was no news whatever.May 17–18.Orders were therefore sent at three o’clock next morning to the Archduke Charles to march at once with his own and Kinsky’s corps upon Lannoy; while the Duke of York and Otto were directed to attack Mouscron at noon, in the hope that before that time something would have been heard of Clerfaye. But it seems to have occurred to none of the Austrian Staff that the disposition of the Allied army, as prescribed by Mack, positively invited the French to take the offensive. On this night Bussche lay at Dottignies and Coyghem with his weakened corps of Hanoverians. On his left the main body of Otto’s column, seven and a half battalions and three squadrons, was at Tourcoing, with detachments of two battalions at Wattrelos, and of three battalions and three squadrons at Leers, on theline of his retreat. Thus his force was distributed in isolated patches along a length of five miles, with its right flank not only unprotected, but actually threatened by a superior force of the enemy, lying within three miles both of Tourcoing and Wattrelos.
On Otto’s left the Duke of York’s column was as dangerously dispersed. The Guards, with the Seventh and Fifteenth Light Dragoons, under Abercromby, were at Mouveaux; four Austrian battalions and the Sixteenth Light Dragoons were at Roubaix; the Fourteenth, Thirty-seventh, and Fifty-third were on the road between Roubaix and Lille, in order to repel any attack from the garrison of the latter place; two Hessian battalions lay at Lannoy, and four squadrons of Austrian hussars were engaged in patrolling. The Duke’s right was indeed covered, but his left was exposed to attack not only by the garrison of Lille but by Bonnaud’s superior force about Flers; and thus both his column and Otto’s practically passed the night pent in on three sides by forces of thrice their strength. To the left, or southward, there was a gap of four miles between the Duke’s troops and the nearest of Kinsky’s detachments, which lay at Pont-à-Tressin and Chereng, with the main body still further south at Bouvines; while the Archduke Charles, with nearly one-fourth of the whole army, lay over against him at Sainghin on the other side of the Marque, with advanced detachments pushed far to the south-west at Seclin. Finally, Clerfaye, with rather more than a fourth of the entire Allied force, was still on the western side of the Lys at Wervicq. Certainly the dispositions lent themselves to a plan of annihilation.
May 18.
At three o’clock on the morning of the 18th, while Coburg was signing the orders for his troops, theFrench army began its march to the attack. On the south Osten’s division was left about Flers and Lezennes, to watch the Archduke Charles and Kinsky; while Bonnaud, dividing his eighteen thousand men into two columns, directed them northward, the one by L’Hempenpont upon Lannoy, the other by Pont-à-Breug upon Roubaix. Simultaneously Malbrancq’s brigade marched south from Roncq upon Mouveaux; Macdonald’s from Mount Halluin upon the western front of Turcoing; Compère’s from Mouscron upon the northern front; Thierry’s, also from Mouscron, together with Daendels’s from Aelbeke, upon Wattrelos; while Jardon’s brigade moved from Belleghem towards Dottignies to hold the Hanoverians in check. Excluding this last brigade, sixty thousand men in all were thus turned upon the six posts in which the eighteen thousand men under Otto and the Duke of York were dispersed.
Otto’s force, being nearer to the enemy, was the first to feel the weight of the attack. General Montfrault, who commanded at Tourcoing, perceiving the overwhelming strength of the enemy, begged reinforcements from the Duke of York, who sent him two Austrian battalions from Roubaix, but with strict orders that they should return in the event of their arriving too late to save the town. As a matter of fact they did arrive too late, for the garrison had already been driven from Tourcoing; but none the less they attached themselves, as was perhaps natural, to Montfrault, who stood fast on the eastern skirts of the town and held back the enemy for a time, until a French battery unlimbering on ground to the north of him, forced him to retire. Seeing himself threatened by large bodies of cavalry, Montfrault formed his troops into a large square, with four battalions andlight artillery in front, one battalion on each flank, and the cavalry in the rear. In this order he fell back, his heavy artillery and waggons being enclosed in the centre of the square, and his light troops skirmishing on all four sides. It was about half-past eight when he began his retrograde movement; but already Wattrelos, the first post on his rear, was in possession of the enemy. The garrison, two Hessian battalions, had manfully resisted an attack of six times their number until eight o’clock, when, finding themselves in danger of being surrounded, they retired, and, with the help of two companies sent forward by General Otto, withdrew successfully to Leers. Montfrault thereupon found himself compelled to leave the main road for a by-way, which ran between Wattrelos and Roubaix, in order to continue his retreat.
Between six and seven o’clock, rather later than the opening of the attack on Tourcoing and Wattrelos, Bonnaud’s two columns came up from the south upon Lannoy and Roubaix; and shortly afterwards Malbrancq’s brigade from the north fell upon Mouveaux, while a part of the French force that had captured Tourcoing appeared also on the north of Roubaix. The Duke of York despatched urgent messages to recall the two Austrian battalions which he had sent to Otto, but of course in vain; and meanwhile he made such head as he could with his handful of troops against overwhelming odds. The troops at Mouveaux were disposed in two sides of a square, the left showing a front towards the east at Mouveaux, the guns stationed in the angle at the northern end of the village, and the right thrown back to the hamlet of Le Fresnoy. To the south, the British brigade of the Line under Major-general Fox, near Croix, soughtto bar the way against part of Bonnaud’s division from Lille; but to defend the rest of the ground there were but three Austrian battalions. Of these half a battalion was stationed in Roubaix itself, and the remainder echeloned to the right rear of Fox’s brigade behind the sources of the Espierres brook, which ran along the southern skirts of the village. These Austrian battalions seem to have been the first to give way, and one of them, by Craig’s account, did not behave as it ought; but they were pressed hard both in front and on their right flank, which, owing to the absence of the two battalions sent to Otto, was wholly uncovered. One brigade of Bonnaud’s division therefore succeeded in forcing its way between Mouveaux and Roubaix to Le Fresnoy; and the Duke thus saw Abercromby and the brigade of Guards absolutely cut off from him. Moreover, though he knew it not, the victorious French of Thierry’s and Daendels’s brigades were coming down from Wattrelos upon his rear. Seldom has a General found himself, through no fault of his own, in a more extraordinary position. He had been assured that the Archduke Charles would join him from the south, and he had therefore ordered Abercromby to defend Mouveaux to the last extremity; but not a sign of an Austrian was to be seen whether to south or north. His first instinct was to ride to the Guards at Mouveaux; but this was seen to be out of the question. He then tried to make his way to Fox’s brigade, but found that the French were in possession of the suburbs of Roubaix, and that he was cut off from this brigade also. Realising then that, his Austrian battalions being dispersed, he had not a man left to him except two squadrons of the Sixteenth Light Dragoons, he took a small escort from them and rode to Wattrelos,hoping to obtain from Otto the means for extricating the Guards. Meanwhile he sent orders to Abercromby to retire to the heights on the east side of Roubaix.
Montfrault, however, had fared ill in his attempt to withdraw. Until he reached the ground between Wattrelos and Roubaix, his square preserved good order; but being attacked at that point by overpowering numbers from the south as well as from north and west, it was broken up, and fled in disorder towards Leers. Meanwhile General Fox, finding himself absolutely isolated, at length gave the order for his brigade, which so far had held its own, to retire. The retreat began in perfect order, and the brigade, having successfully fought its way to the road at Lannoy, followed it for some distance, under incessant fire from all sides, until checked by a battery covered by an abatis, which the French had thrown up on the road. The first shots from this battery struck down several men, and Fox for the moment feared that surrender would be inevitable; but fortunately in the ranks of the Fourteenth was a French emigrant who knew the district well, and undertook to lead the brigade across country. It pursued its retreat therefore under constant fire of artillery and musketry in front and on both flanks, and with cavalry constantly threatening its rear; but it kept its assailants at bay, and at one moment made so sharp a counter-attack as to take temporary possession of some French guns. Thus partly by good luck, partly by good conduct, partly by the misconduct and mismanagement of the enemy, the three battalions contrived to reach Leers, with the loss of all their battalion-guns excepting one, and of nine officers and five hundred and twenty-five men out of eleven hundred and twenty. The greatest credit was given to General Fox for thecoolness, skill, and patience with which he extricated his brigade.
Abercromby appears to have begun his retreat from Mouveaux at about nine o’clock, but of necessity very slowly, having with him a considerable number of guns. The retirement was conducted in perfect order as far as Roubaix, the Seventh and Fifteenth Light Dragoons covering the rear with great gallantry. At Roubaix the French, though in occupation of the suburbs, were not in possession of the little walled town, which was still held by a dismounted squadron of the Sixteenth Light Dragoons. The place consisted of a single long street, the direct continuation of which led to Wattrelos, while, just outside the eastern gate, the road to Lannoy turned sharply to the right, being bordered on one side by a deep ditch and on the other by the Espierres brook. To defile through the town took necessarily much time, but the guns emerged safely and the Guards also. Next to the Guards were the Austrian Hussars, still in the street; then in rear of them a party of the Fifteenth; next to this party were the Sixteenth, who were formed up in the market-place; and in rear of all were the remainder of the Fifteenth, holding the pursuing French in check. All was still in order when a French gun posted on the Wattrelos branch of the street suddenly opened fire from the edge of the town, sending shot after shot among the Austrian Hussars. The ordeal would have been a severe one for any troops, and presently the Hussars dismounted and tried to find a way out among the houses, but in vain. The trial became unendurable as the French pressed on and opened fire on all sides upon the horsemen thus pent in for slaughter; and at last the whole body remounted, galloped wildlydown the road, swung round the corner, where the French infantry thrust vainly at them with their bayonets, and raced onward for three or four hundred yards, when the foremost troopers suddenly found the way blocked by horseless guns. The French had brought a second gun to enfilade the road to Lannoy, and the drivers of the British cannon had fled. The shock of this mass of galloping horsemen suddenly checked was appalling. In an instant the ground was strewn with men and horses, kicking and struggling in frantic confusion, while a number of bât-horses dashed into the ranks of the Guards, plunging and lashing out, with their loads hanging under their bellies. For a short time the disorder appears to have been beyond remedy, for a belt of wood surrounding the town gave excellent shelter to the French sharpshooters, who had a very easy target in the mass of struggling men and animals. Very soon, however, the Guards recovered themselves, and cleared a way for the cavalry to pass on beyond the wood to open ground. There the Light Dragoons rallied, the rear-guard was re-formed, and the retreat, always under heavy fire, was resumed towards Lannoy.
That village, which was enclosed by a low earthen rampart and a shallow ditch, had likewise been attacked early by one of Bonnaud’s brigades from Lille, but had been defended with the greatest gallantry by two battalions of Hessians, who were apparently still in possession when the British troops approached it, though surrounded on the west side, and indeed nearly on all sides, by the French.[241]The Britishofficers, however, could see no sign of a friendly garrison, and Colonel Congreve was actually wheeling his cannon round to open fire on the place, when there galloped up to them some blue-coated horsemen, who, being mistaken for Hessians, were allowed to approach without molestation, and succeeded in cutting the traces of some of the guns before they were discovered. The Guards then perceiving their retreat to be cut off, faced about against their pursuers, and, leaving the high road, made their way across country as best they could south-eastward to Marquain. The Hessians in Lannoy, either before or shortly after this, were forced to evacuate the village, and, finding the road to Leers blocked by the enemy, were likewise obliged to make their way across country in disorder, losing out of nine hundred officers and men some three hundred and thirty, of whom two hundred were cut off and captured in Lannoy itself.
Meanwhile the Duke of York, conspicuous bythe star on his breast, had been hunted all over the country by the enemy’s dragoons, and had escaped, as he frankly owned, only by the speed of his horse. On reaching Wattrelos he found it in the hands of the French, but passing beyond it under constant fire he came upon a gallant little party of Hessians still holding the bridge of the Espierres brook. These by a final attack with the bayonet gained a little respite for him, but were presently swept away from the bridge, and escaped only by fording the brook neck-deep. The Duke, thinking apparently that the bridge was lost, or not knowing of its existence, spurred his horse into the brook; but the animal rearing up and refusing to enter the water, he dismounted, scrambled over on foot, and taking a horse from one of his aide-de-camps, at last succeeded in finding Otto. About Leers and Nechin the fragments of Otto’s force, together with some of the Duke of York’s men, rallied upon the few battalions that held these places. The French did not press their advantage, and at half-past four the action came to an end. The loss of the Allies was about three thousand men killed, wounded, and missing, which was relatively slight, for, with proper management and conduct on the part of the French, not a man of the Duke’s and Otto’s columns would have escaped alive. The Brigade of Guards lost one hundred and ninety-six officers and men killed, wounded, and missing, the flank-companies being the heaviest sufferers; while the Seventh, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Light Dragoons, who by general admission behaved admirably, lost fifty-two men and ninety-two horses. The total loss of the British of all ranks was nine hundred and thirty, besides which nineteen out of their twenty-eight guns were captured.
It may be asked what the rest of the army was doing on this day, while these two columns, together less than one-third of the whole, were in process of annihilation. The answer is that, for some reason, it observed a conspiracy of inaction. Bussche sat still at Dottignies exchanging occasional shots with Jardon’s brigade. Clerfaye crossed the Lys near Wervicq at seven o’clock in the morning, and turning eastward advanced between Bousbecque and Linselles, where he was met by Vandamme’s brigade, which numbered eight thousand men against his sixteen thousand. He engaged the French, overthrew their right wing, took eight guns, and then remained stationary; until, being informed of the approach of more French troops about Bondues, he withdrew to the Lys, which he recrossed on the next day, and thence retreated northward. The behaviour of Kinsky and of the Archduke Charles was still more extraordinary. Kinsky, on being asked by one of his officers for orders at six o’clock in the morning, replied that he was sick and no longer in command. The Archduke Charles received at five in the morning the order to move at once upon Lannoy, a distance of six miles, so that his troops might well have come upon the scene of action between eight and nine. He did not march till noon, though within sound of the guns, nor did he strike the road from Tournai to Lille until three, when he received orders to return to Tournai. The military renown justly earned later by the Archduke forbids us to believe that this delay was due to ignorance; and the fact that, though the Duke of York had early informed the Emperor of his danger, not a word was sent to hasten the Archduke or Kinsky, shows clearly that their torpidity was not unexpected nor disapproved at headquarters. Jealousy of the Duke of York and of Mack are among the reasons assignedto account for the general paralysis of the Austrian commanders; but possibly the true reason was that Thugut was sick of the war in Belgium, and wished the English to sicken of it also. Why he should have chosen the slaughter of several hundred British and Austrians as the best means of forwarding his purpose, and how he persuaded Austrian officers to second him therein, are matters which only an Austrian can determine. For us it must suffice that the decisive battle of the campaign was lost by the deliberate design of the Imperial Generals. Before long they were to learn that those who court defeat for dishonest ends may, when they least desire it, find defeat thrust upon them.[242]