Page:British campaigns in Flanders, 1690-1794; being extracts from "A history of the British army," (IA britishcampaigns00fort).pdf/337

 been compelled to fall back still further northward from the Sambre, and was attacked on all sides; the fact being that Carnot on the 30th of April had directed fifteen thousand men from the army of the Rhine to join the army of the Ardennes, so as to ensure decisive superiority on the Sambre. Upon this, Coburg determined that the subdivision of the army into fragments must cease, and called upon the Emperor to choose between the Sambre and Flanders, as the sphere of action for the entire force. Intelligence of a successful engagement fought by Kaunitz and of Clerfaye's retreat to Thielt inclined the Emperor to Flanders; and though, even then, Austrian pedantry insisted that some eight thousand men under the Prince of Orange must remain in the vicinity of Landrecies,

yet the bulk of the army on the 14th commenced its march westward.

This movement, however, was by no means to the taste of some of the Emperor's advisers; and it becomes necessary at this point to turn for a moment from the western to the eastern centre of European disturbance, and to glance at the influence which events in Poland had exerted upon the Imperial Cabinet. It has already been said that Thugut's only object in persuading the Emperor to take personal command in the field, was that the operations might subserve his own policy. With this view the Minister prepared to remove to Valenciennes, which was to be the political headquarters of the Empire during the Emperor's stay in the Netherlands; but before he could leave Vienna he was startled by the news of a general rising in Poland. This insurrection under the leadership of Kosciusko broke out on the

25th of March, and spread with a rapidity and success which left the Russians absolutely helpless. Catherine,