Page:British campaigns in Flanders, 1690-1794; being extracts from "A history of the British army," (IA britishcampaigns00fort).pdf/197

 *tion, and of course without transport of any description. Their commander was Colonel Gerard Lake of the First Guards, and he was ordered on no account to move his men above twenty-four hours' distance from Helvoetsluis, so as to be able to return on the

shortest notice. By the mercy of Heaven these troops safely reached that port, narrowly escaping a gale which would probably have condemned them either to drowning or asphyxiation; and four days later they

proceeded to Dort to oppose Dumouriez's passage of the Hollandsdiep. About the same time a flotilla of Dutch gunboats arrived in the Meuse, many of them manned by British sailors and flying British colours. Auckland, by threatening to take command in Holland himself, had at last compelled the miserable Stadtholder to issue orders for the defence of his country.

But the obstacles which were multiplying in Dumouriez's front were as nothing to the storm that

suddenly broke upon his flank. Miranda had duly moved up to the siege of Maastricht with a force inadequate to the task and, moreover, dangerously dispersed; but the Austrians, declaring themselves too weak to move, still remained torpid in their cantonments, perhaps the more stubbornly because the Prussian Agent at the Austrian headquarters was perpetually urging them to action. At last, however,

Coburg on the 26th began to concentrate his forty thousand men and to pass them in five columns across

the river; and on the 1st of March, to the great surprise of the French, he burst upon their cantonments on the Meuse, and for four days drove them in utter rout before him. Coburg himself and the left wing