The Years of Endurance

by Arthur Bryant

  That morning Abercromby, advancing along the North Sea beach, found himself at the outskirts of Wyk, some way in front of the general Allied movement and widiin easy striking distance of the defile. On the left of the line Dundas also moved rapidly, capturing Akersloot and pushing on towards Uitgeest, half-way between that place and the Zuyder Zee. But in the centre Brune, opposed by a Russian column outside Kastrikum, called up his reserves and with characteristic "impetuosity counter-attacked. Within a few minutes what had been intended by the Allied Command as an affair of outposts became a general engagement. The Russians, their discipline undermined by suspicion, were only saved from disaster by a brilliant charge of the 7th Light Dragoons under Lord Paget, sixteen years later to command the cavalry at Waterloo. Abercromby, abandoning all hope of seizing the defile, was also forced to hurry to their aid.

  For several hours a desperate fight continued round Kastrikum. It was pelting with rain, the country was confused and intricate, and clouds of smoke hung like fog in the trees. The Duke, trying to follow the course of events from the church tower of Alkmaar, completely lost control of the battle. Both he and Ins advisers were deceived by the vigour of Brune's counter-attack into believing that the French had received reinforcements from the interior— a fear which had grown during the melancholy weeks of waiting into an obsession.

  The feelings of the opposing commanders on the morrow of the battle were, therefore, curiously similar. Brune, whose outnumbered soldiers, though temporarily successful against the Russians, had been worsted by nightfall at every point by the stubborn patience of the British, felt that any renewal of the fight would result in the rout of his army and an Orange rising. Abercromby and David Dundas, appalled by their casualties and the inexperience of their young Militiamen—" all powerful if attacked but without resource if beaten " 1—and baffled by problems of supply and transport, multiplied tenfold by the weather, felt that the only safety lay in a strong defensive line. They, therefore, represented to the Duke the necessity for an immediate retreat to the Zype canal. The young Commander-in-Chief, realising the gravity of the decision, asked them to put their reasons in writing. This they did in a compendious " Appreciation of the Situation " which enumerated all their own difficulties and dangers and omitted those

  1 Abercromby to Dundas, Oct., 1799.—Fortescue, IV, 699.

  of the enemy. They appreciated everything except the situation " on the other side of the hill." 1

  To the dismay, therefore, of the British rank and file, who imagined in the words of one of them that they had given the French a " complete drubbing," 2 and to the even greater astonishment of the enemy, the Allied Army on the evening of October 7th began to retreat. By the 9th it was back in its old lines behind the Zype. Some of the supply waggons took two days to cover the nine miles of mud. Ironically, as soon as they reached safety the weather cleared for the first time that autumn and grew so mild that the troops were able to battle. Their spirits, however, did not recover.

  The retreat was the subject of mutual reproaches between the Services. Admiral Mitchell announced that what he had always dreaded had come to pass: the army had missed a glorious opportunity and should have been in Amsterdam long ago. " You'll pardon my ideas of a soldier," he wrote to the First Lord, " I hope that your Lordship does not think that I mean to criminate." It is just to add that his more enterprising subordinate, Home Popham, did not share his views. As an experienced transport officer he had grown deeply impressed with the badness of the army's communications, the inadequacy of its single port and the shortage of shipping. He felt, too, that the expedition had been sent to the wrong place.

  Two days after the retreat all hope of using the army against any other part of Holland was dashed by the news from Germany. The departure of the Archduke Charles from Zurich and the arrival of Korsakoff's Russians had been followed by a succession of disasters. From the first the latter had shown a dangerous contempt for the enemy and a disregard of all normal precautions. Where the Archduke advised the posting of a regiment, Korsakoff only placed a company, remarking scornfully: "I understand you; an Austrian battalion or a Russian company! " The convergent movements from widely separated mountain valleys by which the Russians were to drive the French from Switzerland would have been perilous if directed against undisciplined barbarians: in the

  1 See two brilliant articles by Colonel Alfred Burne in the Army Quarterly and the Fighting Forces for October, 1939.

  2 Surtees, Twenty-five Years in the Rifle Brigade, 28.

  face of Massena it was madness. Before Suvorof, battling his way over the Alps with incredible hardihood, could emerge from the St. Gothard, the French had flung their main force against Zurich. By the night of September 24th Korsakoff's army was surrounded.

  Russian heroism redeemed Russian folly," but failed to avert disaster. Korsakoff, disdaining MasseUa's summons to surrender, fought his way out of the trap, but at the cost of all his horse, guns and transport. Suvorof drove his army over goat-tracks along the edge of precipices to the rendezvous, only to find that his countrymen and the Austrians had been forced to retreat. To escape destruction he had to break through a ring of foes and lead his exhausted and starving veterans over desolate passes of ice and snow. Achieving what to any other man would have been impossible, he lost 13,000 men, every cannon and waggon he possessed, and all but broke his heart. It was the first time the old hero had ever been defeated.

  The Cabinet reviewed these events on October 15th, In view of the uselessness of further campaigning, the mounting toll of British sick and the reports of the Admiralty on the difficulties of maintaining supplies on that windswept coast, they resolved -Grenville alone protesting—to abandon the idea of holding the Fielder during the winter. Three days later the Duke of York agreed with Brune for an armistice. Each side still underestimated the other's difficulties. Brune was haunted by the fear of a Dutch rising and by news of Chouan Successes on the Loire. The invaders, who had only three days' bread left, were therefore to their surprise allowed to depart in peace. Eight thousand French prisoners were to be repatriated, but not the Dutch fleet. "Whatever the British do, they always succeed in adding to the number of their ships," an Austrian observer noted.

  The evacuation was completed early in November though at a loss of four ships and several hundred men. The Russians were landed at Yarmouth, where they alarmed the inhabitants by drinking the oil from the street lamps.1 The country after its high hopes was bitterly disappointed. Pitt tried to explain the failure away by the weather, contending—falsely—that the diversion had enabled

  1 Fortescue, IV, 701.

  the Russians and Austrians to triumph at Novi. " It ought," he added, " to be a source of satisfaction to us that our army has been restored to us safe and entire." But the country took no pleasure in the thought, and the Opposition made full use of its opportunity. Sheridan, imitating Pitt's Jove-like complacency, pointed out that, besides the capture of the Dutch fleet, the nation had gained some useful knowledge. It had been found that no reliance could be placed in the Prime Minister's knowledge of human nature, that Holland was a country intersected by dykes, that the weather in October was not so good as in June. The question was whether the price paid had not been too dear.

  The worst consequence of the debacle was that the country lost its reviving faith in the Army. The bounding confidence of the summer was succeeded by an extreme pessimism about Continental operations. Sheridan expressed the general view of Dundas's offensive policy by describing it as nibbling at the rind of France " From this moment until Arthur Wellesley's first victories in Portugal nine years later, the British people, as opposed to their Prime Minister, took up a non possumus attitude as to their ability to rescue Europe from itself. They concentrated their efforts instead on saving themselves.

  Before the sailing of the expedition Windham had predicted that it would destroy in the bud, and before it came to its full strength, an Army that with a little delay might have exceeded anything yet know
n by England.1 But what it destroyed was not the Army but the nation's faith in its ability to use it. Pitt's airy notion of doubling it with further drafts from the Militia faded into nothing. Dundas's project for capturing the Combined Fleets by a landing on the Brest peninsula—something that " by its brilliancy and importance might surpass the battle of the Nile " 2— lost its appeal. And though in pursuit of Windham's Chouan crusade the now thoroughly disgruntled Russians were moved to the Channel Islands—where their impact on the islanders appears to have been much like that of Peter the Great on Evelyn's holly hedges—the preparations for a descent on France were pursued with little vigour. The insurgents, instead of receiving the troops they had hoped for from England, only saw their enemies rein-

  1Windham, II, 113.

  2Spencer Papers, III, 128.

  forced, for, as soon as the British had departed, Brune's army set off at full speed for the Loire.

  As the hopes of England, so high for the past year, fell, those of France rose. On the day that the British regained the lines of the Zype, Napoleon Bonaparte landed at Frejus. When the people of the little town heard the news they swarmed down to the waterside, breaking quarantine, and bore the hero ashore. For the stature of the absent General had been steadily rising in the French imagination. All others who had taken his place—soldiers and politicians alike—were knaves and bunglers: he alone was invincible, patriotic and virtuous. The people knew nothing of his failures: everything of his successes. His return was preceded by the news of an astonishing victory in July when, following his withdrawal from Syria, he had routed an army of 15,000 Turks landed by a British squadron at Aboukir. Scarcely a man had escaped his terrible recoil.1 Now, hearing of the plight of his war-racked country from some newspapers which Sidney Smith had sent him, he had run the gauntlet of the British cruisers and after a thrilling six weeks' voyage reached France.

  The pear was ripe for his plucking. The French people were longing for a deliverer. To them Bonaparte appeared as the heir of the Revolutionary dream. All the way to Paris, vast crowds surrounded his carriage, acclaiming him as their saviour. Only the corrupt Directors and politicians did not want him, and they were divided among themselves. Within three weeks of his arrival he had cast in his lot with the strongest faction and by armed force had overthrown the Constitution. It was the most popular thing that had happened in France since the meeting of the States General.

  But to the English, wearily watching these events from the other side of the Channel, it was only another sordid Paris revolution. On the whole, so far as ruined hopes and crops enabled them to rejoice at anything, they welcomed it, for they felt that the new regime could not last. Canning thought it portended a restoration of the Bourbons: the two Dictators, Bonaparte and Sieyes, linked only by their common treachery to others, would soon betray one another. Windham was not so hopeful: to him the only

  1 One of the very few to reach the British ships was an Albanian private, thirty years later to become famous as Mehemet Ali.

  lesson to be learnt from the latest display of illegality across the Channel was that all intercourse or compromise with the evil thing must be shunned. " A Government such as the present, dropt from the clouds or rather starting from underneath the ground, is in no state to offer anything. It cannot answer for its own existence for the next four-and-twenty hours." 1

  Accordingly when, having been elevated under a brand new Constitution to the rank of First Consul, Bonaparte on Christmas Day, 1799, addressed a personal letter to King George proposing peace, it was treated with scant courtesy. Couched in reasonable terms and asking whether the war between the two countries which had ravaged the earth for eight years was to continue until it had destroyed civilisation, it was viewed in England merely as a trick to upset the financial treaty impending with Austria in return for that country's agreement to restore the King of Piedmont. It was also regarded—from an upstart like Napoleon—as an impertinence. No reply was therefore returned. A memorandum, sent by the Foreign Secretary to Talleyrand, stated in frigid terms that His Majesty saw no reason to depart from the forms long established for transacting business with foreign States and that the French people's best hope of peace, if they wanted it, was to restore their ancient rulers. A surer way of rendering the Bourbons unpopular could scarcely have been devised.

  Yet British statesmen were right in believing that Bonaparte's motives were not genuine. " What I need," he told Junot at a New Year's Eve reception, " is time, and time is just the one thing that I cannot afford. Once conclude peace, and then—a fresh war with England! " His aim was to drive a wedge between the Allies and pose to his countrymen as the apostle of reason and moderation. The Foreign Office's foolish reply enabled him to prove to the French people, who were longing for peace, that peace was made impossible by the selfish, grasping islanders and their dupes, the Austrians. Already the Russians, furious at the Austrian intrigues which had robbed them of victory, had virtually dropped out of the war. The soldier Bonaparte, wanting to give Europe peace, was denied it by foreign usurers and mediocre politicians. The only thing left him was to teach these blunderers how to wage war.

  So the man who had been raised to supreme power to give

  1 Windham to Pitt, 18th Nov., 1799.—Windham Papers, II, 143.

  France peace, was able to ask his countrymen for new armies. He recalled the exiled Carnot to the War Office and raised a quarter of a million men. In the utmost secrecy he built up a great reserve. It was his intention—though he was debarred from doing so by Sieyes's bogus Constitution- to lead it in person. For it had not been to keep Cromwell from the battlefield that the Self-Denying Ordinance had been passed.

  France's recovery was too sudden and miraculous to be yet apparent to the outer world. Despite Russia's defection, the Dutch fiasco and the reverses in Switzerland, the odds still seemed to favour the Allies. Austria, aided by a new British loan, had concentrated an enormous army in Italy, where all but the last vestiges of French conquest had been eliminated. The British Navy, stronger than ever, commanded the Atlantic, the North Sea and the Mediterranean. Malta and Egypt were still locked in an iron ring.

  Moreover, Britain still had an Army. With 80,000 Regular troops and a large force of Militia and Volunteers for home defence, she could play her part in the coming land campaign if she chose. " Bring me back as many good troops as you can," Dundas had told Abercromby after the decision to evacuate the Helder, " and before next spring I will show you an army the country never saw before."1 In December, Stuart had again urged that the 6000 troops of the Mediterranean Command at Minorca should be brought up to sufficient strength to strike in the rear of the struggling French on the Genoese Riviera. With 15,000 more men he guaranteed his ability to cut their communications at any point between Genoa and Toulon.

  But the Government's military nerve had been shattered. For six weeks it returned no answer to Stuart's proposals. Not till the beginning of February, 1800, and then only to hearten its Austrian ally, did it approve his plan in principle. But it proceeded to cut down the proposed reinforcement from 15,000 to 10,000, and in March from 10,000 to 5,000. And even these were not ready to sail till April.

  For the Cabinet was now hopelessly divided. Dundas on the whole was in favour of Stuart's expedition. But Windham still passionately advocated the Chouan cause, which neither he nor his colleagues were aware was already lost. He represented the obligation

  1 Fortescue, IV, 775.

  to help the Royalists before they were overwhelmed as a first call on Britain's honour and was so persistent that be carried his point. Six thousand troops were set apart for an operation off the Brittany coast, and in May were dispatched under Thomas Maitland to seize Belleisle. They found the place far too strongly held to be taken and spent five precious weeks in transports off the Breton coast waiting for new orders from England.

  By the time that the other 5000, after idling for nearly a month at their anchorage, sailed under General Pigott for Minorca at the end of
April, Stuart, worn out by fretting and disappointment, had resigned. The cause of his final breach with Dundas was his refusal to accede to a Cabinet decision—taken in an eleventh-hour attempt to placate Russia—to hand over the brave people of Malta to the despotism of the Tsar. In this he was politically right: the decision was dishonourable and in any case useless, for Russia had already resolved to withdraw from the Coalition. But as Dundas said: " If officers are to control our councils there is an end to ail government," and Stuart had to go.1 He died eleven months later, one of the great soldiers England has wasted.

  He was succeeded in the Mediterranean Command by Abercromby. The instructions given to the old man by the Cabinet mark the nadir in British strategy. With a total force of 12,000 he was to reinforce the besiegers of Malta, provide 4000 for the defence of Minorca, assist the Austrian armies in Italy, co-operate with any rising in the south of France, protect Naples and Portugal and, if possible, attack Tenerife.

  Abercromby sailed in the frigate Seahorse on May 15 th, 1800, accompanied by Major-Generals Moore and Hutchison. Before he reached Minorca on June 22nd, the Continental campaign in which he was to have taken part was over. At the beginning of April the Austrians, concentrating more than 100,000 men in northern Italy, had taken the offensive under old Melas. By the middle of the month they had cut the French army in two and driven Massena into Genoa. At that moment Lord Keith's fleet had complete command of the sea. Had any British troops been available they could have been landed at any point on the French or Italian Riviera.