Page:British campaigns in Flanders, 1690-1794; being extracts from "A history of the British army," (IA britishcampaigns00fort).pdf/246

 *kirk, but was in great want of gunners. At last,

on the 27th, the transports came with gunners, but

without guns; on the 29th a frigate, the Brilliant, and a few armed cutters appeared off the coast; and

on the 30th Admiral Macbride arrived to concert operations, but without his fleet.

By an arrangement, which was repeated at least once more during the war, Macbride's squadron, being intended to act with the Army, had been removed from the control of the Admiralty and placed under the orders of Dundas, so that he alone was responsible for this miscarriage. "Why did you not earlier suggest to me naval co-operation at Dunkirk?" he wrote angrily to Murray on the 29th. "I had always a conceit in my own mind as to its usefulness, but I had no authority to quote for it." This is an instructive example of Dundas's methods as a War Minister. The project of besieging Dunkirk emanated from himself and his colleagues in the Cabinet, and from them alone. No military man approved it, though the Duke of York, out of loyalty to his masters, dutifully upheld it; and Dundas never quoted any authority but his own for undertaking it, nor for his constant interference with the conduct of the operations that preceded it. He had indeed a good many conceits in his own mind, the most fatal of which was that he understood how to conduct a campaign; and he had privately made vague inquiries of Murray, as to the need for naval co-operation, so far back as in April. But the point was not one to be decided off-hand by a General, for the question was not whether a fleet would be useful, but whether