The Years of Endurance

by Arthur Bryant

  to persevere in the attempt, and he has met with the success he deserved. The chances of war are infinite."1

  Abercromby's victory of the 28th had struck panic into the doubting Dutch and filled the French authorities with dismay. In all Holland there were only 10,000 French troops, of whom 5000 were concentrated in Zeeland to prevent a landing in the islands. At any moment the Dutch army, another 20,000 men, might follow the fleet's example. It was idle to hope for aid from Paris. A fortnight before the French in Italy, attempting to relieve Mantua, had attacked Suvorof prematurely and been routed at Novi, their young commander, Joubert, paying for his mistake with his life. With the crisis approaching in Switzerland and the Archduke Charles marching, the Directory had its hands full.

  Had, therefore, Abercromby pressed southwards along the causeway roads towards Alkmaar he would have encountered little resistance and might have penetrated at once into the main part of Holland, south of the narrow neck between Haarlem and Amsterdam. There was every reason for doing so, for the nature of the country was unfavourable to a quick advance in the face of serious defence. The flat marshy pastures inside the dunes were dissected by countless canals and dykes, confining the movement of large bodies to the causeways. And it was already the end of August, with the gale season approaching and the only good harbours in the country far to the south. If ever time was precious to a commander, it was at that moment.

  But for four days Abercromby made no move. He was short of provisions and water and without waggons, horses and artillery. It was all he could do to get supplies up from the Helder. The landscape, soaked in rain, seemed inhospitable and unfriendly, and, owing to the way in which the expedition had been hurried, he was without accurate intelligence of either the country or the forces against him. Two brigades of ex-Militiamen who landed from England on the 28th only seemed to increase the difficulties. His officers were young and inexperienced. In the whole of his force only the Guards and 92nd Highlanders had had any serious experience of Continental warfare.

  Opposed to the expedition from the first, Abercromby did not feel justified in pushing ahead with untried troops and without thf*

  1 Moore, I, 343.

  material requisite for a pitched battle. Instead he bivouacked among the sand-dunes, exposed to incessant wind and rain, and waited with Scottish caution until he had collected a few horses and reconnoitred the broader lands to the south of the Marsdiep. Not till September 2nd did he move forward a few miles to a position along the Zype canal between Petten and the Zuyder Zee. Here, with 18,000 men, he entrenched himself to cover the landing of the Duke of York and the main Anglo-Russian armament.

  Nor did those with knowledge of military affairs blame him. The King, when the news reached him at Weymouth on September 1 st, wrote that it would be best to follow up the initial success with caution and wait for reinforcements to make the next move decisive. The country was thrilled by the landing, the bloodless capture of the Dutch fleet and the news of Suvorof's victory at Novi: the thought of an early peace made up even for the summer's deluge and ruined crops. Soon the gallant Russians from the Baltic would be emulating among Dutch water-meadows and windmills the exploits of their countrymen in Italy. Meanwhile every day witnessed the departure of more splendid-looking regiments from the great camp on Barham Downs and the arrival of more Militiamen. That the latter were in such a state as to be unable even to turn out for a review which the Prime Minister wished to hold after Abercromby's victory, worried no one: the eighteenth century expected soldiers to be drunk when they had money in their pockets. And the moment seemed one for legitimate intoxication. Pitt confidently expected that the Army, having freed Holland, would soon be at liberty for a still more glorious operation. For with French Royalists in arms and the combined navies of France and Spain bottled up in Brest, a wonderful possibility floated before British minds. Plans for a new expedition to Brittany were preparing in the Admiralty and War Office, and there was even talk of a Russian landing on the banks of the Seine.1

  Meanwhile the naval and military commanders in the field continued to wait on events. Not being engaged with the enemy, they fell to quarrelling with one another. Precautions, born of earlier experience, had been taken to prevent this: before the expedition sailed Vice-Admiral Mitchell had issued an Order of the Day recommending all under him " to behave with that good

  1 Spencer Papers, III, 117-25.

  fellowship and cordiality towards the troops they are about to serve with as shall cause them to meet a return of a like esteem, by which they will be mutually endeared to each other and the better enabled to act with zeal and energy in their Sovereign's cause." Such co-operation, he added, could not fail to ensure success.1 But by September 4th Mitchell was complaining of Abercromby and Abercromby of Mitchell. The latter—described by St. Vincent as a " bull-necked Centurion "—seemed to think that his own part in the invasion had ended with the surrender of the Dutch fleet. For though the General repeatedly urged him—" in the strongest terms " —to fit out gunboats and use them in the Zuyder Zee against the French right and rear, Mitchell did not even trouble to answer his colleague's letters. The truth is that both officers had reached an age when they found it difficult to take the initiative.

  General Brune, Commander-in-Chief of the French forces in Holland, had no such difficulty. He was thirty years younger than Abercromby: an active, impulsive man, typical of his country and the Revolution that had made him. He used the breathing-space given him by the cautious invaders to assemble his troops and hurry them into the threatened peninsula north of the Haarlem isthmus. By September 9th he had got together 21,000 men, a force slightly superior to Abercromby's but, being two-thirds of it Dutch, of uncertain sympathies. But as Abercromby so unaccountably did nothing, Brune assumed—what the former never seemed to assume—that his foe must have grave difficulties of his own. He therefore attacked him at dawn on the 10th.

  In this he erred. All along the line he was repelled with heavy loss. The Militia lads from the English shires, fighting in prepared defensive positions, showed a steady courage worthy of Burrard's Brigade of Guards. The Dutch, aware that their hereditary Prince was in the British lines, took to their heels at the first chance, and the French were forced to retreat. Had Abercromby under his stolid Scottish courage possessed the imagination to realise the effect of his victory on the Dutch mind, he might—with support from Mitchell's gunboats—have been in Amsterdam in two days.

  But instead of thinking of Brune's difficulties, which at the moment seemed to that volatile Frenchman wellnigh desperate, Abercromby could think of nothing but his own. Nearly two

  1 Spencer Papers, III, 156.

  thousand of his men, landed on an inhospitable shore without greatcoats or adequate tent equipment, were sick; fuel, food and water were short; transport hopelessly deficient and communication with the ships constantly interrupted by the surf. The shivering troops could not even obtain spirits, since no sutler had been sent from England. As for the Dutch, all that Abercromby could see were stolid, sullen farmers who lounged about his lines with their pipes in dieir mouths like passive spectators of an unpleasant disturbance and chaffered with his commissariat officers for their cattle and boats.1 They were very unlike the ardent patriots whom the Prince of Orange had painted in such glowing colours before the expedition sailed. " I believe the Prince has been deceived," wrote the old soldier, " in thinking that he has more friends than enemies in this country. If we can advance, every one will be on our side, but there are few who will risk anything." 2 He failed to see that in this he condemned himself.

  But Abercromby's period of sole responsibility was nearing an end. On the night of September 12th the Duke of York landed and during the next few days 8000 more British arrived and 12,000 Russians. The latter were escorted from the Baltic by Captain Sir Home Popham. They were men of an incredible toughness, " all hoffs, choffs and koffs," who slept on bare decks, lived on boiled grain and quas and even ate With relish the tallow which th
ey scraped out of the ships' lanterns and washed down with train oil. On one British frigate the Russian captain, who was much liked for his jovial courage, never took his boots off the whole voyage and spent much of his time sharpening his spear on the ship's grinding-stone, swearing he would sacrifice every Frenchman he met.3

  No attempt was made to use the newcomers in a landing farther down the coast in the French rear—the nightmare that haunted Brunc. But the return of Lord Duncan from sick leave and the arrival of Home Popham stimulated Admiral Mitchell to a certain activity. Popham was full of ideas, even bombarding the First Lord with them: he was aware, he apologised, that he was forward in projects but, since they were sure to be modified by steadier

  1 Bunbury, II, 41.

  2 Fortescue, IV, 668.

  3 Gardner, 207 ; Spencer Papers, III, 17.

  military heads, they could do no harm. Meanwhile he prepared gunboats to harry the French flanks.

  The Duke of York was now at the head of an army of more than 40,000 men, three-quarters of them British: as large a force as any Englishmen had commanded on the Continent since Marlborough. But it was understood that, as a constitutional prince, he was to be guided by the advice of his senior Lieutenant-Generals— Abercromby, David Dundas, Pulteney and Lord Chatham. As his strength was nearing its maximum he decided to attack without delay—a resolve which, in view of the purpose of the expedition, his advisers could scarcely challenge—and fight his way to the defile of Holland and thence to Amsterdam. He divided his force into four columns: 12,000 Russians among the North Sea sand-dunes on the right under General D'Hermann, and 12,000 British under Abercromby on the left, with two smaller columns under Dundas and Pulteney in between. For the first time in the war the artillery was to act under a single command, the guns being withdrawn from the battalions and massed in " brigades " or batteries with their own drivers. Among them was one to become famous: the new " Chestnut" Battery.

  On the evening of September 18th Abercromby set off to cover the fifteen miles to Hoorn on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, where he was to guard the Allied left and utilise any success won by the main forces to the west. Before dawn on the 19th he had surprised and captured the town. Here his tired men lay down to rest and await events. On the right the Russians, two hours before the scheduled time, had already commenced their attack. Advancing down the road under the sandhills they pushed forward in a solid mass at immense speed, heroically oblivious to their losses. Storming the village of Groat they poured through the enemy's entrenchments and forced their way into Bergen, two miles behind his lines. Had there been a reserve close behind to follow up their success, the battle would have been won by eight in the morning.

  But owing to their having started two hours too early, Dundas's column was not yet in position to support them. As soon as they entered the town the Russians, who by this time were little more than a brave mob firing wildly in every direction, lost impetus and began to straggle after plunder. When Brune, throwing in his reserve, counter-attacked, they proved no match for the clever

  and experienced French. General D'Hermann was killed, his second-in-command taken .prisoner and the survivors driven back in confusion. Their panic, following hard on their incredible valour of the dawn, communicated itself to the untrained British Militia, and the situation on the right was only saved by the steadiness of the Artillery and Brigade of Guards. When one of the Duke's staff called on a hard-pressed battalion of the First Guards, nearing the end of its physical powers and ammunition, to hold a village, one of the Grenadiers lifted his chin from the muzzle of his rifle and growled: " Give us some more cartridges and we will see what can be done." And they held it.

  While Dundas's wearied men struggled to retrieve the Russian debacle, Pulteney's column—of which nothing much had been hoped—was steadily pushing ahead across dykes and canals. By two in the afternoon it had carried the village of Oudkarspel, midway between Bergen and Hoorn. An hour later the Dutch troops facing it began to yield before its steady volleys. Daendels, their commander, was carried away in the flying stream and only narrowly escaped capture. The battle, which had been all but won in the morning and even more nearly lost at noon, trembled again in the balance as the scales tilted towards a British victory. Had Abercromby resumed his march from Hoorn and appeared, as intended in such an event, on the flank of the shattered Dutch at Alkmaar, he might have converted the defeat of the enemy's centre into a rout. But he spent the day resting and waiting for information. The virtual immobilisation of 12,000 British troops a dozen miles from the battlefield robbed the Allies of their numerical superiority. At dusk the Duke of York, shaken by the failure of his right, broke off the battle and recalled Abercromby to his lines.

  Such was the Battle of Bergen: " the unfortunate 19th," as Admiral Mitchell described it in an indignant dispatch to the Admiralty. It cost the British 1450 men and the Russians 2600 men and twenty-six guns. The French and Dutch lost sixteen guns and about the same number of men. But as they remained in possession of their lines and the Allies failed to force their way to the defile of Holland, the French claimed the victory. The most serious consequences was the bad feeling roused between Russians and British. The former, forgetting their disregard of the time schedule, attributed their defeat and the loss of their commander solely to their allies' failure to support them. The latter were equally shocked by what they regarded as Russian ill-discipline and barbarity. " The Russians is people," wrote one scandalised Militiaman, " as has not the fear of God before their eyes, for I saw some of them with cheeses and butter and all badly wounded, and in particular one man had an eit day clock on his back and fiting all the time which made me to conclude and say all his vanity and vexation." 1 Matters were not improved by the Duke of York, who enjoyed a Hanoverian talent for mimicry and who, though the kindest of men and the soul of tact in his official letters, was apt in his cups among his familiars to indulge it at the expense of the Muscovite generals.2

  Direct attack having failed to dislodge the French, a council of war was held to consider other possibilities. The Duke proposed that 4000 more Russians from Kronstadt and some fresh troops from England should be used with part of the forces already landed either in a descent on the North Sea coast behind the French lines or in an attack from the Zuyder Zee on Amsterdam, where the Dutch were reported to be spoiling for a rising. But both Abercromby and David Dundas opposed amphibious operations of any kind—a prejudice which they seemed to share with Admiral Mitchell. The Duke therefore reluctantly abandoned the idea in favour of a second frontal attack.

  Planned for September 29th, the attempt had to be postponed till October 2nd owing to another appalling bout of storm and rain. This time the main assault on the French left was undertaken by Abercromby with the pick of the British Army. Advancing rapidly along the beach, he reached the village of Egmont seven miles down the coast before encountering serious opposition. But here, lacking trained riflemen capable of dealing with the French sharpshooters, he suffered heavy casualties, including his second-in-command, Major-General Moore, who was dangerously wounded. It was the skill and gallantry shown that day by this young hero —now thirty-seven—which laid the foundations of that reputation as the first soldier of the new army which he retained till his death at Corunna.

  Meanwhile the other three columns were held up by the main

  1 Colburn's Military Magazine, Feb., 1836, cit. Fortescue, IV, 677.

  2 Bunbury, II, 44.

  French lines around the village of Bergen, three miles away, largely through the refusal of the Russians to obey orders. Had Abercromby been able to march to Dundas's assistance he might have cut off the main enemy force and won a decisive victory. But his men were exhausted, parched with thirst and short of ammunition. He again forgot that his opponent's plight might be still worse. After dusk Brune withdrew unmolested, leaving the British in possession of Alkmaar and the Egmonts.

  The hopes of those inclined to hope—of the politicians at home and the younger office
rs on the spot—now rose again. Spencer described Egmont as a " glorious and important victory "; Popham thought that after the " wonderful gallantry of the British troops " the French would soon be pushed beyond the Meuse. But the generals did not share the prevailing optimism. Even the news of the Archduke's speedy capture of Mannheim failed to cheer them. They were oppressed with the lack of transport, the soaking ground and endless dykes under the lowering Dutch skies, and the pitiless surf that endangered their precarious communications with England. They pushed on slowly after the enemy, but they did so with heavy hearts. Yet had they been able to read the letters passing between the French commanders and their Government in Paris, they might have felt—and behaved—differently.

  For after Egmont even Brune abandoned hope. He wrote on October 4th that if the British continued to attack, lassitude among his troops might cause disaster, that Dutch desertion was growing, and that the Batavian Government, impressed by the Allied successes, was showing unmistakable signs of hedging. Like the Duke of York, he was short of provisions, his bread waggons having been taken for the wounded and large supplies having been abandoned at Alkmaar. Such was the position when on October 6th the Allies cautiously resumed their advance, with the intention of reconnoitring the new French-Batavian line from Wyk on the North Sea through Kastrikum to Akersloot, about half a dozen miles south of Alkmaar. Beyond it lay the narrow defde, scarcely four miles wide, between the ocean and an inlet of the Zuyder Zee, through which the interior could alone be reached.