Page:The Marquess of Hastings, K.G..djvu/35

Rh life of the Duke who had determined not to fire at his opponent.

By the death of his father, June 1793, Rawdon succeeded as second Earl of Moira in the peerage of Ireland. In the following October he was promoted Major-General, and shortly afterwards he undertook an expedition to La Vendée, to support the attempt there being made to overturn the revolution in France. This expedition proved a failure and the troops did not even land; one of the bravest of the insurgent chiefs, La Rochejaquelein, had just been killed, and disunion reigned among the remainder, the people at that time distrusting them so far as to imagine that their leaders would desert in the British ships.

The next year, the army in Flanders under the Duke of York was in difficulties; the allies, among whom there was little concerted action or cordiality, were being driven back by the ardour of the revolutionary armies of France. On the 18th May the Duke was defeated, and although he avenged this reverse four days later, yet he became involved in the general disasters of the campaign. Ypres fell on the 17th June, and the British were obliged to retreat upon Oudenarde and on the 3rd July upon Antwerp. On the 26th June the battle of Fleurus made the position of the allies desperate. Lord Moira was about this time encamped near Southampton with