XVI. 1794. 145, 146. iv. 332. 49. the Austri left. midst of the Allied forces, exposed to attack both in front CHAP. and flank. The consequence of this was, that the great redoubt was on the point of being taken, and the French divisions in the centre were already in full retreat, when Jourdan hastened to the scene of danger with six battalions, who were formed in close columns, and checked the advance of the enemy. The French cavalry, under Dubois, made a furious charge upon the Imperial infantry, overthrew them, and captured fifty pieces of cannon; but, being disordered by their rapid advance, they were imme- 1 Jom. v. diately after attacked by the Austrian cuirassiers, who 149. Toul. not only retook the whole artillery, but routed the victors, Th. vi. 401. and drove them back in confusion upon their own lines.1 Meanwhile the Allied left, under Beaulieu, made the most brilliant progress. progress. After various attacks, the village Success of of Lambusart was carried, and the enemy's forces, for the ans on the most part, driven across the Sambre; but the vigorous fire of the French artillery prevented the Allies from debouching from the village, or obtaining complete success in that quarter. As it was, however, the situation of the Republicans was disadvantageous in every quarter. The right, under Moreau, was driven back, and in great part had recrossed the river; the left, under Montaigu, had abandoned the field of battle, and retreated to Marchiennes-au-Pont; while the forces in the centre had been in part compelled to recede, and the great redoubt was in danger of being carried. Four divisions only, those of Lefebvre, Championnet, Kléber, and Daurier, were in a condition to make head against the enemy. At this critical moment, when decisive success was within his grasp, Cobourg, hearing of the fall of Charleroi, and fettered by the secret instructions he had received, to risk as little as possible before retiring from Flanders, ordered a retreat at all points. Without detracting from the merit Jom. 5. of Jourdan, it may safely be affirmed that, if the Prince Th. vi. 401, of Orange, instead of drawing back his wing when he iv. 332. found it too far advanced,2 had united with the centre to 150, 152. 402. Toul. CHAP. XVI. 1794. 50. Allies re treat though attack Fleurus and the main body of the French army, while Beaulieu pressed them on the other side, the success would have been rendered complete, and a glorious victory achieved. But nothing is so perilous as to evince any symptoms of vacillation after a general engagement. The battle of not defeated. Fleurus, paralysed as success had been to the Austrians, was, in fact, a drawn engagement; the loss on both sides was nearly equal, being between four thousand and five thousand men to each side; the French had given way on both wings, the centre with difficulty maintained its ground; and the Imperialists only retreated because the fall of Charleroi had removed the object for which they fought; and the secret instructions of their general precluded him from adopting any course, how brilliant and inviting soever, which promised to be attended with any hazard to the army. Nevertheless, it was attended with the most disastrous consequences. The loss of Flanders immediately followed a contest which an enterprising general would have converted into the most decisive triumph. Cobourg retired to Nivelles, and soon after took post at Mont St Jean and Waterloo, at the entrance of the forest of Soignies, little dreaming of the glorious event which, under a firmer commander, and with the forces of a very differently united alliance, was there destined to counterbalance all the evils of which his prescribed retreat formed the commencement. Two days afterwards, the French issued from their intrenchments round Charleroi, and at Mount Paliul defeated the Allied rearguard, which fell back to Braine le Comte. Mons July 6 and 9. Was shortly after evacuated, and the Allies, abandoning 1 Jom. v. 152, 162. Toul. iv. the whole fortresses which they had conquered to their own resources, drew together in front of Brussels. Several actions took place in the beginning of July, between the rearguard of the Allies and the French columns at Mont St Jean, Braine l'Alleud, and Sambre; but at length, iii. 23, 24. finding himself unable to maintain his position without 406. concentrating his forces, Prince Cobourg abandoned Brussels, and fell back behind the Dyle.1 336. Hard. Th. vi. 405, XVI. 51. government gether the It was not without the most strenuous exertions of the CHAP. British government to prevent them, that these ruinous divisions broke out among the Allied powers in Flanders. 1794. Immediately after the treaty of 19th April was signed, Efforts of Lord Malmesbury, the British ambassador, set out from the British the Hague for Maestricht, where conferences were opened to hold towith the Prussian minister, Haugwitz, and the Dutch alliance. plenipotentiaries. Their object was to induce the Prussian forces to leave the banks of the Rhine, and hasten to the scene of decisive operations in Flanders. These demands were so reasonable, and so strictly in unison with the letter as well as spirit of the recent treaty, that the Prussian minister could not avoid agreeing to them, and engaged to procure orders from the cabinet of Berlin to that effect. But Moellendorf, acting in obedience to secret orders from his court, declined to obey the requisition of the plenipotentiaries, and engaged in a fruitless and feigned expedition towards Kayserslautern and Sarre Louis, at the very time that he was well aware that his antagonist, Jourdan, with forty thousand men, was hastening by forced marches to the decisive point on the banks of the Sambre. When the danger became more threatening, and the Emperor himself had repaired to the neighbourhood of Charleroi, to make head against the accumulating masses of the Republicans, the same requisitions were renewed, in a still more pressing strain, by the British and Dutch ministers. But it was all in vain. The Prussian general betook himself to one subterfuge after another, alleging that, by menacing Sarre Louis and Landau, he succoured the common cause more effectually than if he brought his whole forces to the walls of Charleroi; and at length, when driven from that pretext, he peremptorily refused to leave the banks of the Rhine. The ministers of the maritime "It is not for nothing," said Lord Cornwallis and Kinckel, the Dutch minister, "that we pay you our subsidies, nor in order that the subsidised power should employ the paid forces for its own purposes. If the Prussian troops do not act for the common cause, they depart from the chief object of the treaty."-HARD. iii. 65. CHAP. 1794. powers upon this broke out into bitter complaints at the breach of faith on the part of the Prussian government, and reproached the marshal with a fact which they had recently discovered, that, instead of sixty-two thousand men, stipulated by the treaty, and paid for by the Allies, only thirty-two thousand received daily rations at the army. The bad faith of the Prussians was now apparent; they were reproached with it. Moellendorf denied the charge; recriminations issued on both sides: at length they and iii. 5, 6, separated mutually exasperated; and Lord Cornwallis Disp. ii. 7. declared he would suspend the payment of the British subsidy.1 1 Hard ii. 545, 547; 7. Malmes. 52. Pichegru drives back West Flanders, and Brussels. After the departure of Cobourg from Tournay, the Allies strove in vain to make head against the superior forces of Clairfait in the Republicans in Maritime Flanders. Tournay was evacuated; and while Pichegru himself marched upon advances to Ghent to force back Clairfait, he detached Moreau with a considerable force to invest the places bordering on the ocean. Nieuport capitulated, Fort Ecluse, the key of the Scheldt, was blockaded, and the island of Cadsand overrun by the Republicans, who crossed the arm of the sea which separates it from the mainland by swimming. Clairfait, although reinforced by six thousand British, who had rapidly marched from Ostend, under Lord Moira, found himself unable to make head against Pichegru. The old German tactics of carrying on war by a series of positions, which only occasionally succeeded against the inconsiderable forces of Prussia, when guided by the genius of Frederic, totally failed when opposed to the vehement ardour and inexhaustible numbers of the Revolutionary armies. After in vain attempting, in conjunction with Cobourg, to cover Brussels, he was compelled to fall back behind the Dyle; while the Duke of York also retired in the same direction, and encamped between Malines and Louvain. The retreat of the Allied forces enabled the victorious armies of Pichegru and Jourdan to unite their forces at Brussels, where they met on the 10th July.2 July 10. 2 Jom. v. 155, 162. Th. vi. 406. Toul. iv. 334, 335. XVI. 1794. And thus, by a series of energetic movements and glorious CHAP. contests, were two armies, which a short time before had left the extremities of the vast line extending from Philipville to Dunkirk, enabled to unite their victorious forces for the occupation of the capital of Flanders. 53. the cabinet The Austrian cabinet at that period entertained serious thoughts of peace. The opinion was very general on the Views of Continent, that the fearful energy and bloody proscriptions of Vienna at of Robespierre had considerably calmed the effervescence this period. of the Revolution, and that his stern and relentless hand was alone adequate to restrain its excesses, and restore any thing like a regular government at Paris. These ideas received a strong confirmation from the speech which he delivered on occasion of the fête of the Supreme Being it was known that he had moderated many of the energetic plans of foreign invasion projected by Carnot, and that his brother had used his influence to preserve Piedmont and the north of Italy from an incursion, at a time when the Allies were little in a condition to have resisted it. The Imperial government was really desirous of an accommodation, in order to concentrate their armies and attention upon Poland, which was hourly approaching the crisis of its fate; and a large force had already entered Gallicia, where they professed their intention of coming as deliverers, and were received with open arms by the people of that province. Unable to bear, any more than Prussia, the weight of a double contest on the Rhine and the Vistula, and deeming the latter more material to the interests of the monarchy than the former, they had definitively determined at Vienna on the abandonment of the Belgian provinces, and were now only desirous of extricating themselves from a contest in which, as it appeared to them, neither honour nor profit was to be gained. A secret understanding, in consequence, took place between Cobourg and the French generals, the conditions of which were, that the Austrians should not be disquieted in their retreat to the Rhine, and the Repub |