XIII. 1793. him back on the besieging force, and raise the siege, CHAP. instead of interposing between them, and destroying both. The object to be thus attained was important, and its achievement proved the salvation of France. But it fell very far short of the great success expected by the French government; and the failure of the Republican general Th. v. 239, to enter into the spirit of their orders, at length brought ii. 370, 371. him to the scaffold.1 1 240. Hard. raised, and this campaign. Sept. 5 to 7. 8th Sept. The attack was commenced on Marshal Freytag in the 66. beginning of September. A series of engagements took The siege is place, from the 5th to the 7th September, between the ruinous conFrench and the covering army, which terminated unfa-sequence of vourably to the Allies; and at length, on the morning of on the whole the 8th, a decisive attack was made by General Houchard on the main body of the Austrians, consisting of nearly eighteen thousand men, near Hondscoote, in which the latter were defeated with the loss of fifteen hundred men. Meanwhile, the garrison of Dunkirk, acting in concert with the external army, made a vigorous sally on the besiegers, with forces superior to their own, and exposed them to the most imminent peril. The Duke of York, finding his flank harassed by the attacks of Houchard, in consequence of the defeat of the covering force, justly deemed his situation too precarious to risk a further stay in the lines, and on the night of the 8th, withdrew his besieging force, leaving fifty-two pieces of heavy artillery, and a large quantity of ammunition and baggage, to the conquerors. The consequences of this defeat proved ruinous to the whole campaign. It excited the most extravagant joy at Paris, and elevated the public spirit to a degree great in proportion to their former depression. The dislodging of a few thousand men at the extremity of the line, changed the face of the war from the German Jom.iv.54, Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. The Convention, Reg. 1793, p. 381. Th. relieved from the dread of immediate danger, and the v. 242, 244. peril of invasion, got time to mature its plans of foreign 54. conquest,2 and organise the immense military preparations 61. Ann. Toul. iv. 53, XIII. CHAP. in the interior; while Fortune, weary of a party which threw away the opportunities of receiving her favours, 1793. passed over to the other side. 67. follow up their success with vigour. Sept. 12. Houchard, however, did not improve his advantages as The Repub- might have been expected. Instead of following up the licans do not plan of concentrating his forces upon a few points, he renewed the system of division, which had been so imprudently adopted by his adversaries. The forces of the Duke of York, in the camp to which he retired, being deemed too powerful for an immediate attack, he resolved to assail a corps of Dutch who were posted at Menin. A series of actions, with various success, in consequence ensued between the detached corps of the Allies, which kept up the communication between the Duke of York's army and the main body of the Imperialists under Prince Cobourg. On the one hand, the Dutch, overwhelmed by superior masses of the enemy, were defeated with the loss of two thousand men, and forty pieces of cannon; while, on the other, General Beaulieu totally routed the army of Houchard at Courtray, and drove him behind the Lys. Nor did the disaster rest there. The panic communicated itself to all the camps, all the divisions; and the army which had lately raised the siege of Dunkirk, sought shelter in a promiscuous crowd under the cannon of Lisle -a striking proof of the unfitness of the Republican levies as yet for field movements, and of the ease with which, by 1793, 383. energetic operations in large masses at that period, the Th. v. 246, greatest successes might have been obtained by the numerous and disciplined armies of the Allies, if acting together or in concert, and led by an able commander.1 Sept. 15. 1 Jom. iv. 55, 65, 66. Ann. Reg. Hard.ii.369. 247. Toul. iv. 55. 68. chard is ar executed. This last disaster proved fatal to General Houchard, And Hou- already charged with culpable inactivity, in not following rested and up the advantages at Hondscoote by an immediate attack upon the British force. Accused by his own officers, he was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal at Paris, condemned and executed. The English had sacrificed Admiral Byng for having suffered a defeat; the Romans XIII. 1793. had condemned Manlius for having fought in disobedience CHAP. to the orders of the Senate; but this was the first instance in history of a victorious general having been put to death for gaining a success which proved the salvation of his country. The proceedings of the Convention against this unfortunate general are chiefly interesting from the evidence they afford of the clear perception which those at the head of affairs had obtained, of the principles in the military art to which the subsequent successes of the Republican forces were chiefly owing. "For long," said Barèrre, "the principle established by the Great Frederick has been recognised, that the best way to take advantage of the courage of the soldier is to accumulate the troops in particular points in large masses. Instead of doing this, you have divided them into separate detachments, and the generals intrusted with their command have generally had to combat superior forces. The Committee of Public Salvation, fully aware of the danger, had sent the most positive instructions to the generals to fight in large masses; you have disregarded their orders, and, in Corresp. consequence, reverses have followed." From these sions, it is not difficult to recognise the influence which the master-mind of Carnot had already acquired in the 130. direction of military affairs.1 expres du Com. de Salut Public, i. 231. Jom. iv. 69. Toul. iv. 69. besieged. takes the the army. command of Sept. 29. To compensate so many reverses, the Allies at length sat down before Maubeuge, an important fortress, the Maubeuge is possession of which would have opened the plains of St Jourdan Quentin and the capital to invasion, and the siege of which, undertaken at an earlier period, and by the main strength of their forces, would have determined, in all probability, the success of the war. Landrecies was already blockaded, and the French troops, avowedly inferior in the field, were all concentrated in intrenched camps within their own frontier. A vigorous effort was indispensable to prevent the Allies from carrying these strongholds, and taking up their winter-quarters without opposition in the French territory. In these alarming circumstances, the Committee XIII. 1793. men. CHAP. of Public Salvation alone did not despair of the fortunes. of the Republic. Trusting with confidence to their own energy, and the immense multitude of the levies ordered, they took the most vigorous measures for the public defence, and, by incessantly urging on the new conscripts, soon raised the forces in the different intrenched camps, on the Flemish frontier, to one hundred and thirty thousand Great part, it is true, formed but a motley group; peasants, without arms or uniforms, fiercely debating every question of politics, forming themselves into battalions, and choosing their own officers, presented a force little competent to face, in the open field, the regular forces of Austria and the Confederation. But the possession of so many fortified towns and intrenched camps gave them the means of organising and disciplining these tumultuary masses, and enabled the regular troops, amounting to a hundred thousand men, to keep the field.1 At the head of the whole was placed General JOURDAN,* a young 1 Toul. iv. officer, hitherto untried in separate command, though Jom. iv.112, distinguished in subordinate situations, but who, placed between victory and the scaffold, had sufficient confidence in his own talents to accept the perilous alternative. 133, 134. 114, 115, 116. 70. measures of At the same time, the most energetic measures were Vigorous taken by the Committee of Public Salvation. All France the Commit was declared in a state of siege, and the authorities were tee of Public authorised to take all the steps necessary to provide for the public defence in such an emergency. "The revolu Salvation. * Jean Baptiste Jourdan, one of the first generals of the Revolution who rose to great distinction, and who afterwards became marshal of France, was born at Limoges on the 2d April 1762. His father was an obscure surgeon; and he enlisted at the age of sixteen as a simple private in the regiment of Auxerrois. He served in that capacity in the American war, and, having returned to France on the termination of that contest, he obtained his discharge. Soon after he married a marchande de modes, and set up a haberdashery shop, but on so humble a scale, that the future marshal of France carried his pack on his back from fair to fair. In autumn 1791, when recruits for the army were enlisted in every part of France, he entered as a volunteer in one of the new battalions; and, as his experience gave him a great advantage over his pacific comrades, he was at once named by acclamation chief of the second battalion of Haute Vienne. At its head he served during the campaign of 1792 under Lafayette; in the whole of which the admirable condition of the battalion, as well as his XIII. 1793. tionary laws," said Robespierre, "must be executed with CHAP. rapidity; delay and inactivity have been the cause of our reverses. Henceforward the time allowed for the execution of the laws must be fixed, and delay punished with death." St Just drew a sombre picture of the state of the Republic, Oct. 10. and the necessity of striving vigorously against the manifold dangers which surrounded them. Having excited the highest degree of terror in the Assembly, he obtained their consent to the following resolutions :-That the subsistence requisite for each department should be accurately estimated, and all the superfluity placed at the disposal of the state, and subjected to forced requisitions, either for the armies, the cities, or departments, that stood in need of it; that these requisitions should be exclusively regulated by a commission appointed for that purpose by the Convention; that Paris should be provisioned for a year; a tribunal instituted for the trial of all those who should commit any offence against these measures, destined to provide for the public subsistence: the government of France declared revolutionary till the conclusion of a general peace, and, until that arrived, a dictatorial power be vested in the Committee of Public Salvation and the Convention; and that a revolutionary army, consisting of six thousand men, and twelve hundred cannoneers, be established at Paris, and cantoned there at the expense 1 Hist. Parl. of the more opulent among the citizens.1 It was proposed xxvi. 147, in the Cordeliers, that to this should be added a provi- v. 278. sion for the establishment of an ambulatory guillotine, own courage and skill, attracted general attention. In consequence he was, on 27th May 1793, appointed general of brigade, and, two months after, general of division, in which last capacity he commanded the advanced guard of Houchard, which defeated the English and raised the siege of Dunkirk. By a singular combination of chances, characteristic of those days of revolution, the same victory which brought Houchard, the commander-in-chief, to the guillotine, raised Jourdan, who led the advanced guard, to the highest destinies; for he was shortly after appointed by Carnot to the command of the great army destined to raise the siege of Maubeuge. He gained the battle of Fleurus in 1794; but was entirely defeated by the Archduke Charles in Germany in 1796, and by Wellington in Spain in 1813. He was rather a methodical, calm, and intrepid general, than endowed with any great genius for war.-Biographie Universelle, lxviii. 294, 296. 151. Th. |