Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/189

  To complete the story of ’93 it remains to sketch, very briefly, the principal events on the eastern and southern frontiers of France. These present, in the main, no special features, and all that it is necessary to retain of them is the fact of their existence. What this multiplication of their tasks meant to the Committee of Public Safety and to Carnot in particular it is impossible to realize. It was not merely on the Sambre and the Scheldt, nor against one army of heterogeneous allies that the Republic had to fight for life, but against Prussians and Hessians on the Rhine, Sardinians in the Alps, Spaniards in the Pyrenees, and also (one might say, indeed, above all) against Frenchmen in Vendée, Lyons, Marseilles and Toulon.

On the Rhine, the advance of a Prussian-Hessian army, 63,000 strong, rapidly drove back Custine from the Main into the valleys of the Saar and the Lauter. An Austrian corps under Wurmser soon afterwards invaded Alsace. Here, as on the northern frontier, there was a long period of trial and error, of denunciations and indiscipline, and of wholly trivial fighting, before the Republicans recovered themselves. But in the end the ragged enthusiasts found their true leader in Lazare Hoche, and, though defeated by Brunswick at Pirmasens and Kaiserslautern, they managed to develop almost their full strength against Wurmser in Alsace. On the 26th of December the latter, who had already undergone a series of partial reverses, was driven by main force from the lines of Weissenburg, after which Hoche advanced into the Palatinate and delivered Landau, and Pichegru moved on to recapture Mainz, which had surrendered in July. On the Spanish frontier both sides indulged in a fruitless war of posts in broken ground. The Italian campaign of 1793, equally unprofitable, will be referred to below. Far more serious than either was the insurrection of (q.v.) and the counter-revolution in the south of France, the principal incidents of which were the terrible sieges of Lyons and Toulon.

For 1794 Carnot planned a general advance of all the northern armies, that of the North (Pichegru) from Dunkirk-Cassel by Ypres and Oudenarde on Brussels, the minor Army of the Ardennes to Charleroi, and the Army of the Moselle (Jourdan) to Liége, while between Charleroi and Lille demonstrations were to be made against the hostile centre. He counted upon little as regards the two armies near the Meuse, but hoped to force on a decisive battle by the advance of the left wing towards Ypres. Coburg, on the other side, intended, if not forced to develop his strength on the Ypres side, to make his main effort against the French centre about Landrecies. This produced the siege of Landrecies, which need not concern us, a forward movement of the French to Menin and Courtrai which resulted in the battles of Tourcoing and Tournai, and the campaign of Fleurus, which, almost fortuitously, produced the long-sought decision.

The first crisis was brought about by the advance of the left wing of the Army of the North, under Souham, to Menin-Courtrai. This advance placed Souham in the midst of the enemy’s right wing, and at last stimulated the Allies into adopting the plan that Mack had advocated, in season and out of season, since before Neerwinden—that of annihilating the enemy’s army. This vigorous purpose, and the leading part in its execution played by the duke of York and the British contingent, give these operations, to Englishmen at any rate, a living interest which is entirely lacking in, say, the sieges of Le Quesnoy and Landrecies. On the other side, the “New French” armies and their leaders, without losing the energy of 1793, had emerged from confusion and inexperience, and the powers of the new army and the new system had begun to mature. Thus it was a fair trial of strength between the old way and the new.

In the second week of May the left wing of the Army of the North—the centre was towards Landrecies, and the right, fused in the Army of the Ardennes, towards Charleroi—found itself interposed at Menin-Courtrai-Lille between two hostile masses, the main body of the allied right wing about Tournai and a secondary corps at Thielt. Common-sense, therefore, dictated a converging attack for the Allies and a series of rapid radial blows for the French. In the allied camp common-sense had first to prevail over routine, and the emperor’s first orders were for a raid of the Thielt corps towards Ypres, which his advisers hoped would of itself cause the French to decamp. But the duke of York formed a very different plan, and Feldzeugmeister Clerfayt, in command at Thielt, agreed to co-operate. Their proposal was to surround the French on the Lys with their two corps, and by the 15th the emperor had decided to use larger forces with the same object.



On that day Coburg himself, with 6000 men under Feldzeugmeister Kinsky from the central (Landrecies) group, entered Tournai and took up the general command, while another reinforcement under the archduke Charles marched towards Orchies. Orders were promptly issued for a general offensive. Clerfayt’s corps was to be between Rousselaer and Menin on the 16th, and the next day to force its way across the Lys at Werwick and connect with the main army. The main army was to advance in four columns. The first three, under the duke of York, were to move off, at daylight on the 17th, by Dottignies, Leers and Lannoy respectively to the line Mouscron-Tourcoing-Mouveaux. The fourth and fifth under Kinsky and the archduke Charles were to defeat the French corps on the upper Marque, and then, leaving Lille on their left and guaranteeing themselves by a cordon system against being cut off from Tournai (either by the troops just defeated or by the Lille garrison), to march rapidly forward towards Werwick, getting touch on their right with the duke of York and on their left with Clerfayt, and thus completing the investing circle around Souham’s and Moreau’s isolated divisions. Speed was enjoined on all. Picked volunteers to clear away the enemy’s skirmishers, and pioneers to make good difficult places on the roads, were to precede the heads of the columns. Then came at the head of the main body the artillery with an infantry escort. All this might have been designed by the Japanese for the attack of some well-defined Russian position in the war of 1904. Outpost and skirmisher resistance was to be overpowered the instant it was offered, and the attack on the closed bodies of the enemy was to be initiated by a heavy artillery fire at the earliest possible moment. But in 1904 the Russians stood still, which was the last thing that the Revolutionary armies of 1794 would or could do. Mack’s well-considered and carefully balanced