Page:British campaigns in Flanders, 1690-1794; being extracts from "A history of the British army," (IA britishcampaigns00fort).pdf/371

 of the stores at Brussels having begun some time

before. Finally, on the 21st, he marched away; and the Duke, since the corps in British pay had now shrunk to seven thousand men, contracted his quarters, and took up a new position closer to Tournai.

But meanwhile the news that Ostend was in danger had, as usual, stirred Dundas to unwonted exertion in England. He still made a fetish of the place, and his original intention seems to have been to defend it, without any particular reference to the Duke of York's operations. On the 17th of June, therefore, he ordered Lord Moira's force in the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands to sail for Ostend at once, together with drafts of recruits and three fresh regiments from Ireland, making in all a reinforcement of about ten thousand men. On the 20th Moira's troops embarked, and on the 21st the Eighth, the Forty-Fourth, and the recruits arrived at Ostend. The drafts, it must be remarked, arrived without arms or military appointments of any kind; and it was only a fog at sea that prevented a whole regiment, the Ninetieth, from being also landed there without either arms or clothing, Dundas having ordered it to embark without enquiry as to these details. But Pichegru meanwhile did not remain idle, and leaving Ypres on the 20th marched upon Clerfaye's position at Deynse. The Austrian General, after a short

defence of his entrenchments, retired, with the loss of not a few men and three guns, first to Ghent, and then beyond it, finally taking up a position on the north side of the canal that runs from Ghent to Sluys,

where he was presently joined by his detachments

from Bruges. On the 25th of June there arrived at