The Years of Endurance

by Arthur Bryant

  Even before Bruix left the Mediterranean further disasters befell the French armies. On May 27th Suvorof surprised Turin, capturing more than 250 guns, 80 mortars and 60,000 muskets. By the end of the first week of June the Russian outposts had reached the head of the Alpine passes looking into France. A week later the Calabrian patriots, supported by a British fleet, captured Naples. Then on June 17th Suvorof, marching at high speed to cut Macdonald's fine of retreat on the Trebbia, defeated him in one of the hardest-fought and bloodiest battles of the war. During the pursuit over the mountains the Russians took 13,000 prisoners, including four Generals.

  In Germany and Switzerland also the fortunes of France were crumbling. Here, as in Italy, the Aulic Council had forbidden a vigorous pursuit in order to secure fortresses. For Thugut and his Emperor had learnt nothing from the defeats of four years. They had still to grasp that the first fruits of victory depended on destroying the enemy's army. Yet despite these handicaps the patient Archduke was ready by the beginning of June to attack the lines of Zurich. Though his first assault was repelled, he forced Massena by the 7th to fall back, leaving the city and immense stores of arms in his hands. As the French withdrew and the puppet Government of Swiss traitors fled in their wake, the peasantry rose in the hills.

  Such was the position at midsummer, 1799, less than eleven months after the deliverance of the Nile. Now 200,000 tired Frenchmen, dangerously spread out on a failing front from the Texel to Genoa, faced half again as many assailants commanded by two great masters of war. The Republic's attempt to restore the naval balance in the Mediterranean had failed, and beyond the narrow seas on her northern flank the untried Army of England was waiting its chance to attack.

  For the conviction was growing that the hour for England's return to the Continent had come. Four years had passed since a British soldier had set foot on the European mainland save as a fugitive raider. During that time much had been done to make the Army a more effective force. By 1799 the folly of mortgaging the flower of the nation's manhood for sugar islands had at last dawned on the authorities. In five years 100,000 young Britons had been killed or permanently disabled by the Caribbean climate.

  But in 1797 General Abercromby had laid the foundation of a less wasteful policy by raising a dozen negro regiments to garrison the islands. When the planters threatened to flog all who joined, the shrewd old Scot succeeded in obtaining Dundas's authority to enfranchise negro recruits—an important step in human betterment achieved, not for the last time in British colonial administration, through the exigencies of war and the courage of a liberal-minded soldier.

  The Government, taught by bitter experience, endorsed the new system in defiance of vested interests. In the following year a thirty-eight-year-old Brigadier, Thomas Maitland, having taken over command at Mole St. Nicolas, entered into negotiations with the negro chieftain, Toussaint l'Ouverture, for a British evacuation of Santo Domingo. He had the sense to recognise that Toussaint and his dusky followers were as little friendly to the Republican authorities as they had been to the Royalist planters. By ceasing to make war on them and extending a hand of friendship, he won their gratitude and separated them from the French and Spaniards. His withdrawal from the island in October, 1798, was fiercely criticised by the West Indian slaveowners. But it saved the country thousands of precious lives.

  Cornwallis's conciliatory Irish policy also lessened the strain on British man power. For the first time since the war began the Government was able to use its forces where it wanted instead of being compelled to hurry them where they were needed. In December, 1798, General Stuart, after his conquest of Minorca, had proposed the formation of a Mediterranean force to operate against the enemy's southern flank. Striking at French communications on the Genoese Riviera in the summer of 1799, it might have engulfed the armies of Moreau and Macdonald in irretrievable disaster.

  But the Government, having other plans, ignored Stuart. Political and naval considerations demanded the employment of the Army nearer home. Russia and Prussia, whose active co-operation was the major concern of British diplomacy in the winter of 1798-9, were both traditionally interested in the former United Netherlands. To win over Prussia Britain had offered its Sovereign a preponderant influence in Dutch affairs and, in the last resort, even annexation. And when Prussian cowardice and jealousy of

  Austria could not be overcome, Britain, with her eye on Russia, continued to make the expulsion of the French from Holland her first objective. For not only was it a natural meeting ground for British and Russian troops, but the menace of the Dutch coast still haunted the Admiralty.

  On June 22nd, 1799, a treaty was signed by Britain and Russia for an immediate Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland. Britain was to provide 30,000 troops and find the money for 18,000 Russians. The hereditary Stadtholder of Holland and his son, the Prince of Orange, both exiles on English soil, assured the Cabinet that their countrymen would rise as one man against the French.

  The project was linked up with a wider one for regrouping the Allied armies for a major offensive in the autumn. In Italy and Switzerland co-operation between Russia and Austria had been proving increasingly difficult. The half-crazed dictator of Russia, now in one of his recurrent moods of universal benevolence, was haunted by grandiloquent visions: of a holy league of all sovereign States to liquidate the Revolution, restore the pre-war international status quo (except in partitioned Poland) and re-unite Christendom. Alarmed by these, the realpolitik rulers of Austria, who neither wished to restore Piedmont to its Royal House nor exchange Venetia for Belgium, had forbidden the indignant Suvorof to press down the Alpine valleys into Savoy until he had reduced Mantua and the other Italian fortresses they coveted. In retaliation the Marshal had threatened to resign his command.

  To resolve these discords it was decided to transfer Suvorof and his Russians to Switzerland, where they were to join a second Russian army, subsidised by England, which was due there in August under Korsakof. The Italian theatre was to be left to the Austrians, while the Archduke Charles was to march north to the defence of the Lower Rhine and so draw off French forces from Holland before the Anglo-Russian invasion.

  This general post of commanders and armies in the middle of a campaign—bitterly opposed by the Archduke—was adopted at the moment that the French, rendered desperate by peril, were beginning to recover something of their old spirit. The murder of two of the, French delegates to the dissolving Congress of Rastadt in the spring by a troop of drunken Austrian hussars had roused a frenzy of hatred against Germany. During the summer the French

  Government fell and a new Directory—in reality as corrupt as the old—was set up to prosecute the war more vigorously. The defeats on the Trebbia and at Zurich led to a renewal of Jacobin terrorism, a fresh conscription and the appointment of Bernadotte as War Minister. Under his regimen a forced loan was levied on property and 200,000 conscripts called to the colours.

  Such was the position in August, 1799, when the British prepared to launch their invasion of the Continent. As was inevitable in a parliamentary country the pros and cons of doing so had been widely discussed. Public opinion strongly supported the idea; despite Britain's achievement at sea there was a feeling that she was not pulling her weight and must rouse herself from sloth to renew the laurels of Agincourt and Blenheim. Two years of drilling against invasion had made the country martial-minded; the scarlet coat and bugle call had become natural to Englishmen. They had even founded a Military Academy, and established a Royal Staff Corps to train sappers in the science of reducing Continental fortresses. On June 4th the King on his sixty-second birthday took the salute in Hyde Park as 10,000 London Volunteers and Militia marched past with the precision of Prussians. The little monarch, erect on his white charger and making great sweeps with his hat, was beside himself at the sight, chuckling repeatedly over the gibe of a French General about a nation of shopkeepers. " Call them the Devil's Own! " he cried as the Inns of Court Volunteers swung past, " call them the Devil's Own! "
1

  All that Britons asked at that moment was to test their mettle against the enemy. The thought consoled them for the perpetual rain and cold of that cheerless, barren summer, relieved the shortage of coal and vegetables, and even reconciled them to the new income-tax forms. Since the beginning of the year one after another of the Fencible regiments had been voluntarily relinquishing their immunity to foreign service. For like the haughty seamen, they too wanted to have a crack at Johnny Crapaud. They had no doubt as to the result. At midsummer Canning recorded his belief in the imminent collapse of " the monstrous fabric of French crimes and cruelties and abominations."

  Almost the only people who did not share the popular enthusiasm 1 Wheeler and Broadley, II, 244.

  for an invasion of the Continent were the senior officers of the Regular Army. They knew too much of the might of the French armies and the haphazard methods of supply and transport employed by British politicians and administrators. Behind them was a long succession of disasters, surrenders and evacuations extending for nearly a quarter of a century over the present and American wars. Advanced in years, sobered by misfortune, long accustomed to fighting at a disadvantage, their minds lacked resilience.

  Early in June the Government had summoned Sir Ralph Abercromby from Edinburgh to take the principal command. The brave old Scot, who was sixty-five, expressed the strongest disapproval of the project, which he predicted would be attended by the usual disasters. It was not, however, in his soldier's creed to refuse a professional task committed to him by the civil authority. The wisest course would have been to have passed him over for a younger man who believed in victory. But neither Stuart nor Moira—the two best general officers for a bold offensive—possessed the necessary seniority, and neither was popular with the Cabinet. Instead, the Duke of York was seconded from the Horse Guards to take command with Abercromby as chief adviser.

  By its treaty with Russia the Government had committed itself to a larger expeditionary force than was immediately available. It therefore had recourse to the Militia. On July 12th, a month before the " secret armament" was to sail, an Act was hurried through Parliament to draft Militiamen into Regular regiments. In the prevailing mood of enthusiasm tens of thousands took the £10 bounty and volunteered for foreign service. Of their fine, soldierly appearance and potential fighting capacity, there could be no dispute. But of their readiness for Continental warfare, there was justification for a good deal.

  While British cruisers harried the European coastline from Brest to the Texel, alarming the French authorities, a great military encampment was formed on the Kentish Downs between Canterbury and Deal. Here the advance guard of the invasion force assembled under Abercromby. And here, in growing numbers and in every degree of intoxication, came the bounty men from the Militia. The difficulty of absorbing them into their regiments in time to take the field never troubled the Government.

  To supervise the great departure the Prime Minister and Secretary for War took up residence at Walmer Castle. Both were strongly impressed with the urgency of the venture. The summer was well advanced, the gale season approaching and the Continental campaign at a crucial stage. In September the Russians, moving to their new positions, were to strike in Switzerland, and the Archduke Charles was to take the offensive on the Lower Rhine. If Suvorof could smash Massena in the Alps as he had smashed Moreau in Lombardy, October might see a Slavonic invasion of France through her vulnerable Swiss frontier. The delivery of the British blow before the French levies could be mobilised might well prove decisive.

  Pitt, therefore, showed impatience at Abercromby's interminable litany of obstacles. The fine old soldier, who under his shaggy eyebrows gave contemporaries the impression of a good-natured lion, was always raising difficulties in his slow, Scottish manner. He pointed out that the Army was almost entirely without facilities for moving its guns, sick, stores and provisions. " The Emperor of Russia," he wrote, " may make a general into a private man by his fiat, but he cannot make his army march without their baggage. It is only in a free country like ours that a Minister has absolute power over an army. . . . An army is not a machine that can move of itself; it must have the means of moving." 1 The complaints led to the hasty formation on August 12th of a Royal Waggon Train of five troops—increased in September to eight—each of four officers and seventy drivers, mostly retired cavalrymen: the first germ of an Army Service Corps.

  But to Pitt all this was trifling: the ill-timed pedantry of an old woman in a red coat. " There are some people," he murmured, " who have pleasure in opposing whatever is proposed." Advised by the Foreign Office and Orange partisans, he was so obsessed with the idea that the Dutch would rise that it never occurred to him that the Army would have any difficulties of supply and communication. " The operation," wrote Grenville to Dundas, " will be rather a counter-revolution than a conquest." The politicians forgot that refugees are not the best judges of a country from which they have been expelled, and that there is a wide difference between sympathy with a foreign cause and revolutionary action to support it.

  1 Fortescue, IV, 646.

  Just as the advance guard was preparing to embark, news arrived that the combined fleets of France and Spain were returning from their fruitless Mediterranean foray. Though Keith was in close pursuit, there was always the possibility that they might sweep up the Channel and attack the assembled transports. But on August 12th it became known that Bruix had put into Brest. With a Grand Fleet of more than fifty battleships based on Torbay and " the whole naval power of France and Spain under lock and key,"1 all danger passed. On the 13 th, Abercromby was hurried to sea.

  It was left to the General and Admiral Mitchell to decide whether the expedition should occupy Walcheren and the islands at the mouth of the Meuse or make a landing farther north on the tip of Holland called the Marsdiep between the North and Zuyder Seas. On the ground that Walcheren was too bare for concealment and that the Marsdiep isthmus, being long and narrow, was unlikely to be defended in force, Abercromby chose the latter. An initial success here would cut off the naval base of the Helder and endanger the Dutch fleet at the Texel. It would also enable the British, after forcing an entry into the Zuyder Zee, to advance southwards down the isthmus with both flanks protected by warships. The disadvantage was that the Marsdiep was some distance from the main centres of population where a rising was expected, and that before these could be reached the French might have time to organise strong resistance.

  The initial wisdom of the decision was quickly proved. For on the first day at sea the almost incessant rain of the past few weeks turned to a south-wester. The transports would have fared ill among the islands. As it was they remained in danger for a week before the wind abated sufficiently to make a landing possible. During that time the country was in the greatest alarm, for no one had anticipated storms of such intensity and duration so early in the year.2

  But the Navy did its work well. The two hundred vessels of the fleet kept together, and on the 21st the wind fell. That night the low Dutch coast could be clearly seen in the moonlight. But next day, after the Dutch Governor of the Helder had been summoned to surrender, the storm again freshened. Not till the 26th,

  1 Spencer Papers, III, 112.

  2 See D'Arblay, III, 188.

  nearly a fortnight after leaving England, could the transports resume their station in-shore. By that time water and provisions were dangerously low. And owing to the Admiral's premature summons, the defenders were expecting a landing.

  Abercromby, however, decided to persist. At dawn on the 27th disembarkation began at a point about four miles south of the Helder in the face of determined fire. It was covered by a tremendous barrage from the guns of Duncan's battleships which the old Admiral had placed at the disposal of the expedition. The first tow consisted of 3000 men. Daendels, the Dutch commander, had nearly twice as many. The flat-bottomed barges for which Abercromby had asked had not been provided and several boats overturned in the surf. But the fire of the great ships
and the fierce persistence of the landing parties wore down the defenders, many of whom were in secret sympathy with the invaders. By nightfall the bulk of Abercromby's 10,000 troops were ashore, the sandhills of Groot and Klein Keten in their hands, and the Helder cut off from the rest of Holland. The British suffered about 500 casualties; the French and Dutch nearly three times as many.

  Had old Abercromby, who had been in the heat of the fire all day,1 been less exhausted, enemy losses would have been still heavier. By not pushing his outposts to the edge of the sandhills, where the marshy meadows to the Zuyder Zee could be over-looked, he allowed the garrison of the Helder to escape in the night along the solitary road running under the dunes. Early next morning John Moore, who had commanded the northernmost landing party, occupied the town without opposition.

  Two days later Admiral Mitchell, entering the channel between the Helder and Texel Island, captured the Dutch fleet at anchor. At sight of the British ships the seamen forced their officers to haul down the Republican flag and hoist that of the House of Orange. Seven Dutch ships of the line—the survivors of Camper-down—and eighteen smaller warships with 6000 seamen passed into British keeping without firing a shot. " Thus," wrote John Moore in his diary, " the greatest stroke that has perhaps been struck in this war has been accomplished in a few hours and with a trifling loss. The expedition . . . began with every appearance against it. . . . It showed great enterprise in Sir Ralph 1 Duncan to Spencer, 28th Aug., 1799.—Spencer Papers, III, 178.