tion, the splendid spectacle was exhibited of ninety thousand men moving to the attack with the precision and regularity of a field-day. The Germans occupied a series of heights behind the river, from whence their numerous artillery kept up a destructive plunging fire upon the advancing columns of the French; but nothing could arrest the enthusiasm of the Republicans. The French grenadiers, with Bernadotte at their head, plunged into the stream, and drove the Austrians from the opposite heights; while General Scherer, on the other wing, also forced the passage of the river, and made himself master of Düren. These disasters induced Clairfait, who still bravely maintained himself in the centre, to order a general retreat, which was effected before nightfall, with the loss of three thousand men, while that of the French did not amount to half the number.

all their vast possessions on the left bank of the Rhine, but Luxembourg and Mayence.

77. Nor were the operations of the left wing, destined for the invasion of Holland, less successful. After the retreat of the Duke of York, Pichegru, whose forces amounted to seventy thousang efficient troops, formed the siege of Bois-le-Duc, the situation of which, being at the confluence of three streams, was of importance as a base to future operations. The States-General had neglected to provide for the defence of this important fortress; and the Duke of York had not a man he could detach for its succour. Its garrison was too weak either to man the works or undergo the fatigue of a siege; the fort of Crevecœur surrendered almost at the first shot, and in a fortnight after the place capitulated, after a resistance disgraceful to the Dutch arms. After its capture, the British general distributed his troops along the line of the Waal, in hopes of being able to maintain a communication with the fortress of Grave, now threatened with a siege; but Pichegru, continuing his career of success, crossed the Meuse, and attack

76. This battle a second time decided the fate of Flanders, and threw back the Imperial army beyond the Rhine. The Austrians in haste crossed that river at Muhlheim, and Jourdan entered Cologne the day following, and soon afterwards extended his troops to Bonn.ed the advanced posts of the Allies with Soon after the siege of Maestricht was seriously undertaken, and such was the activity of the Committee of Public Salvation, that a splendid siege-equipage, of two hundred pieces, descended the Meuse, and speedily spread desolation through the city. A large cavern, discovered in the rock on which the fort of St Petre was situated, gave rise to a subterraneous warfare, in which the French soldiers, ever ready to adapt themselves to circumstances, speedily distinguished themselves, and acquired a superiority over their opponents. At length, on November 4, the garrison, despairing of being relieved, capitulated, upon condition of not serving against the French till regularly exchanged; and this noble fortress, with three hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, fell into the hands of the Republicans. After this event, and the capture of the castle of Rheinfels by the army of the Moselle, which shortly after took place, there remained to the Imperialists nothing of

so much vigour that they were compelled to fall back, with considerable loss, across the Waal. Disconcerted by this check, the Duke of York stationed part of his troops in an intrenched camp, under the cannon of Nimeguen, and the remainder in a line around Thiel, and between the Waal and the Leck, communicating with the Dutch corps at Gorcum, in the hope of being permitted to remain there undisturbed during the winter. Meanwhile Pichegru invested Grave and Venloo; the latter of which, though defended by a sufficient garrison of eighteen hundred men, and amply provided with artillery and ammunition, surrendered before the works were injured, from the mere annoyance of the enemy's musketry.

78. The successive intelligence of the defection of the Prussians, and the open abandonment of the Low Countries by the Austrian troops, which exposed Holland and Hanover to the immediate

upon the besiegers, who had the temer-sieged; and Breda, one of the last of ity to open their trenches, though the the Dutch barrier towns, invested. place was only invested on the left bank 81. The French army, worn out with of the Waal, gained a brilliant but ephe- seven months of incessant marching meral success, attended by no import- and bivouacs, now stood excessively in ant consequences. Shortly after, the need of repose. The clothing of the French established some batteries, des- soldiers was in rags, their shoes were tined to command the bridge which worn out, and the equipments of the connected the town with the intrench- artillery, but for the supplies obtained ed camp in its rear, and soon sank some in the captured places, would long ago of the pontoons composing it. This have been exhausted. But all the reso much disconcerted the allied com- presentations of the generals upon these manders that they hastily evacuated points were overruled. The Committee the place, with the bulk of the troops of Public Salvation, inflamed by the under their orders, in the night, leaving spirit of conquest, and guided by the its defence to an inadequate garrison of enterprise of Carnot, resolved upon exthree thousand men. These soldiers, acting from them fresh sacrifices. Acfeeling themselves unable to man the customed to find every difficulty yield works, discouraged by the flight of their to the devotion of the Republican solfellow-soldiers, overawed by the re-diers, or be overcome by the prodigious doubled fire of the besiegers, and despairing of maintaining the place, immediately attempted to follow their example. Terror seized their ranks; they precipitated themselves upon the bridge, which was burned before the rear-guard had passed over. One regiment was obliged to capitulate, and part of another, embarked on a flying bridge, was stranded on the left bank, and next day made prisoners by the French. Thus this splendid fortress, which rendered them masters of the passage of the Waal, fell into the hands of the Republicans. The Dutch loudly reproached the British with the aban-parations having been completed, the donment of this important point, but apparently without reason; for how was it to be expected that the Duke of York, with thirty thousand men, was to maintain himself in presence of seventy thousand French, with the Rhine in his rear, when three times that force of Austrians had deemed themselves insecure till they had that river, a hundred miles farther up, thrown between them and the enemy? Be that as it may, the evacuation of Nimeguen completed the misunderstanding between the allied powers, and by spreading the belief in Holland that their cause was hopeless, and that their allies were about to abandon them, eminently contributed to the easy conquest of the United Provinces which so soon after followed. Grave was immediately be

amount of the Republican levies, they resolved, after a month's rest to the troops, to prosecute their successes in the midst of a rigorous winter, and to render the severity of the season the means of overcoming the natural defences of the Dutch provinces. The first object was to cross the Waal, and, after driving the allied forces over all the mouths of the Rhine, penetrate into Holland by the Isle of Bommel. For this purpose, boats had for some time past been collected at Fort Crevecœur, and pontoons and other materials for a bridge at Bois-le-Duc; and, the pre

passage was commenced at daybreak on the 12th November. But the firm countenance of the Allies defeated all their attempts; and after several ineffectual efforts, Moreau, whose sagacity clearly perceived the danger of persisting in the design, withdrew his troops, and the army was put into winter-quarters, on the left bank of the Meuse and the Rhine.

82. Early in December, the Duke of York, supposing the campaign finished, set out for England, leaving to General Walmoden the perilous task of protecting, with an inferior and defeated army, a divided country against a numerous and enterprising enemy. But a severe frost, which soon after set in, and rendered that winter long memorable in physical annals, made the Re

course of ages, brought down an immense mass of sand, gravel, and other alluvial matter, which, accumulating on the level shores near its entrance into the sea, have at length formed the plains of Holland, through which its now broken and lazy current with difficulty finds a passage, in many different branches, to the German Ocean.

84. A territory formed in this manner, by the confluence at their entrance into the sea of many different streams, is of course exceedingly flat, and in many places broken both by large internal lakes, and by considerable external arms of the sea and mouths of

publicans conceive the design of invading Holland during the season when the frost had rendered the numerous canals and rivers which intersected the country passable for troops and artillery. The prospect of that danger excited the utmost alarm in the mind of General Walmoden, who saw the Meuse frozen in his front, while the Rhine and the Waal, the waters of which are prevented from congealing by the tide which flows up them, were charged with floating ice in his rear, and thus were alike impassable for boats or land forces. In these circumstances he was justly afraid that the same severe weather which exposed his line to the at-rivers. So frequent, indeed, are these tacks of the enemy in his front, would render the passage of the arms of the sea in his rear impracticable in the event of retreat. Influenced by these apprehensions, he passed his heavy cavalry to the other side of the Waal, evacuated his magazines and hospitals upon Dewenter, and ordered the Prince of Hesse Darmstadt, cantoned with the most advanced corps in the Island of Bommel, to abandon it on the first intelligence of the passage of the Meuse by the enemy.

83. Situated around the mouths of the Rhine, HOLLAND exhibits the most striking contrast to the stupendous range of snowy mountains in which that noble rivertakes its rise. It is remarkable that the two most celebrated republics of Europe, and the only ones which have long survived the changes of time, are placed at the opposite extremities of the same stream; and that freedom in the one has found the same shelter in the mountains from which it springs, as in the other, amidst the marshes in which it is lost before emptying itself into the sea. The Meuse and the Scheldt on the south, and the Vecht and Issel on the north, flow through a part of its surface; but the principal rivers which traverse the Dutch territory, the New Issel, the Waal, as well as the Rhine properly so called, and a multitude of lesser branches, are but mouths of that mighty stream. Like the Danube, the Nile, the Ganges, the Mississippi, and all other great rivers, the Rhine has, in the

aqueous interruptions of the Dutch ter-
ritory, that in many places it is com-
posed rather of a cluster of islands, than
a continuous tract of dry land; and the
inhabitants, from the constant necessity
of traversing the water, in passing from
one part of the country to another, and
the large proportion of their subsistence
and their wealth which they derive from
its fisheries or its commerce, are almost
entirely nautical in their habits. So
general is the custom of looking to
naval communication as the great means
of intercourse, that when lakes or firths
are wanting, the industry of the people
has supplied artificial means of obtain-
ing it; and a multitude of canals, cut
in every direction, at once afford cheap
and commodious channels for commerce,
and furnish water for innumerable arti-
ficial cuts, by which the riches of irri-
gation are diffused over their extensive
meadows. These broad expanses were
originally sandy and sterile; but the
pasturage of centuries has covered them
with a thick coating of mingled animal
and vegetable remains; and in no part
of the world are more luxuriant crops
of grass now obtained, or more skill
evinced in the management of the dairy.
The stormy waves of the German Ocean
are only kept out from these low and
grassy meads by dykes, constructed in
former times at an incredible expense,
and maintained in these by incessant
vigilance and attention. There the
barrier, raised by human hands,
"Spreads its long arm amidst the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore;