assimilate the reinforcements of conscripts, for the most part “undesirables,” who now arrived. Mutiny and denunciations augmented the confusion in the French camp. Plan of campaign there was none, save a resolution to stay at Valenciennes in the hope of finding an opportunity of relieving Condé and to create diversions elsewhere by expeditions from Dunkirk, Lille and Sedan. These of course came to nothing, and before they had even started, Coburg, resuming the offensive, had stormed the lines of Famars (May 24), whereupon the French army retired to Bouchain, leaving not only Condé[1] but also Valenciennes to resist as best they could. The central point of the new positions about Bouchain was called Caesar’s Camp. Here, surrounded by streams and marshes, the French generals thought that their troops were secure from the rush of the dreaded Austrian cavalry, and Mack himself shared their opinion.
Custine now took command of the abjectly dispirited army, the fourth change of command within two months. His first task was to institute a severe discipline, and his prestige was so great that his mere threat of death sentences for offenders produced the desired effect. As to operations, he wished for a concentration of all possible forces from other parts of the frontier towards Valenciennes, even if necessary at the cost of sacrificing his own conquest of Mainz. But after he had induced the government to assent to this, the generals of the numerous other armies refused to give up their troops, and on the 17th of June the idea was abandoned in view of the growing seriousness of the Vendéan insurrection (see Vendée). Custine, therefore, could do no more than continue the work of reorganization. Military operations were few. Coburg, who had all this time succeeded in remaining concentrated, now found himself compelled to extend leftwards towards Flanders,[2] for Custine had infused some energy into the scattered groups of the Republicans in the region of Douai, Lille and Dunkirk—and during this respite the Paris Jacobins sent to the guillotine both Custine and his successor La Marlière before July was ended. Both were “ci-devant” nobles and, so far as is ascertainable, neither was guilty of anything worse than attempts to make his orders respected by, and himself popular with, the soldiers. By this time, owing to the innumerable denunciations and arrests, the confusion in the Army of the North was at its height, and no further attempt was made either to relieve Valenciennes and Condé, or to press forward from Lille and Dunkirk. Condé, starved out as Coburg desired, capitulated on the 10th of June, and the Austrians, who had done their work as soldiers, but were filled with pity for their suffering and distracted enemies, marched in with food for the women and children. Valenciennes, under the energetic General Ferrand, Fall of Valenciennes.held out bravely until the fire of the Allies became intolerable, and then the civil population began to plot treachery, and to wear the Bourbon cockade in the open street. Ferrand and the representatives with him found themselves obliged to surrender to the duke of York, who commanded the siege corps, on the 28th of July, after rejecting the first draft of a capitulation sent in by the duke and threatening to continue the defence to the bitter end. Impossible as this was known to be—for Valenciennes seemed to have become a royalist town—Ferrand’s soldierly bearing carried the day, and honourable terms were arranged. The duke even offered to assist the garrison in repressing disorder. Shortly after this the wreck of the field army was forced to evacuate Caesar’s Camp after an unimportant action (Aug. 7–8) and retired on Arras. By this they gave up the direct defence of the Paris road, but placed themselves in a “flank position” relatively to it, and secured to themselves the resources and reinforcements available in the region of Dunkirk-Lille. Bouchain and Cambrai, Landrecies and Le Quesnoy, were left to their own garrisons.
With this ended the second episode of the amazing campaign of 1793. Military operations were few and spasmodic, on the one side because the Allied statesmen were less concerned with the nebulous common object of restoring order in France than with their several schemes of aggrandisement, on the other owing to the almost incredible confusion of France under the régime of Danton and Marat. The third episode shows little or no change in the force and direction of the allied efforts, but a very great change in France. Thoroughly roused by disaster and now dominated by the furious and bloodthirsty energy of the terrorists, the French people and armies at last set before themselves clear and definite objects to be pursued at all costs.
Jean Nicolas Houchard, the next officer appointed to command, had been a heavy cavalry trooper in the Seven Years’ War. His face bore the scars of wounds received at Minden, and his bravery, his stature, his bold and fierce manner, his want of education, seemed to all to betoken the ideal sans-culotte Houchard.general. But he was nevertheless incapable of leading an army, and knowing this, carefully conformed to the advice of his staff officers Berthelmy and Gay-Vernon, the latter of whom, an exceptionally capable officer, had been Custine’s chief of staff and was consequently under suspicion. At one moment, indeed, operations had to be suspended altogether because his papers were seized by the civil authorities, and amongst them were all the confidential memoranda and maps required for the business of headquarters. It was the darkest hour. The Vendéans, the people of Lyons, Marseilles and Toulon, were in open and hitherto successful revolt. Valenciennes had fallen and Coburg’s hussar parties pressed forward into the Somme valley. Again the Allies had the decision of the war in their own hands. Coburg, indeed, was still afraid, on Marie Antoinette’s account, of forcing the Republicans to extremities, and on military grounds too he thought an advance on Paris hazardous. But, hazardous or not, it would have been attempted but for the English. The duke of York had definite orders from his government to capture Dunkirk—at present a nest of corsairs which interfered with the Channel trade, and in the future, it was hoped, a second Gibraltar—and after the fall of Valenciennes and the capture of Caesar’s Camp the English and Hanoverians marched away, via Tournai and Ypres, to besiege the coast fortress. Thereupon the king of Prussia in turn called off his contingent for operations on the middle Rhine. Holland, too, though she maintained her contingent in face of Lille (where it covered Flanders), was not disposed to send it to join the imperialists in an adventure in the heart of France. Coburg, therefore, was brought to a complete standstill, and the scene of the decision was shifted to the district between Lille and the coast.
Thither came Carnot, the engineer officer who was in charge of military affairs In the Committee of Public Safety and is known to history as the “Organizer of Victory.” His views of the strategy to be pursued indicate either a purely geographical idea of war, which does not square with his later principles and practice, or, as is far more likely, a profound disbelief in the capacity of the Army of the North, as it then stood, to fight a battle, and they went no further than to recommend an inroad into Flanders on the ground that no enemy would be encountered there. This, however, in the event developed into an operation of almost decisive importance, for at the moment of its inception the duke of York was already on the march. Fighting en route a very severe but successful action (Lincelles, Aug. 18) with the French troops encamped near Lille, the Anglo-Hanoverians entered the district—densely intersected with canals and morasses—around Dunkirk and Bergues on the 21st and 22nd. On the right, by way of Furnes, the British moved towards Dunkirk and invested the east front of the weak fortress, while on the left the Hanoverian field marshal v. Freytag moved via Poperinghe on Bergues. The French had a chain of outposts between Furnes and Bergues, but Freytag attacked them resolutely, and the defenders, except a brave handful who stood
- ↑ Coburg refrained from a regular siege of Condé. He wished to gain possession of the fortress in a defensible state, intending to use it as his own depot later in the year. He therefore reduced it by famine. During the siege of Valenciennes the Allies appear to have been supplied from Mons.
- ↑ Henceforth to the end of 1794 both armies were more or less “in cordon,” the cordon possessing greater or less density at any particular moment or place, according to the immediate intentions of the respective commanders and the general military situation.
