The Years of Endurance (19 page)

For knowledge of men and affairs, Pitt had to rely on his Home Secretary, the 51-year-old Henry Dundas. This bustling, genial, irrepressible, ruddy-faced Scot looked after the worldly management of the Tory Party, and, while in office, of the country. He had, as Pitt liked to say of him, a turn for facilitating business. As befitted a master of honest jobbery—for the man, like all who surrounded Pitt, was a patriot—he was a great pluralist. As Home Secretary, he was also responsible for the Colonies. As First Commissioner for India,
he controlled the political patronage and mili
tary operations of the East India Company. He was also Treasurer of the Navy and Groom of the Stole.

Dundas was Pitt's boon companion in his one human failing— the
bottle
. The confidences of these two over the port were the delight of the wits and cartoonists. The latter loved to portray them waxing maudlin over a bumper and a loyally emblematic chamber pot at Pitt's Wimbledon lodgings or swaying into the House of Commons after dinner.
¹
With his Scottish accent, his commonplace, clubbable mind and his bluff, good-natured " Wha' wants me? " Dundas was a great figure in the House of Commons and City. He was a first-rate politician: a past-master of jobs, compromises and arrangements, always thinking of the lobby and the next election. He knew nothing of the art of war, for which by training and temperament he was little fitted.

Unfortunately he supposed he was: for his self-confidence like his joviality was inexhaustible. His first act after the declaration of war was to draw up a Memorandum recommending that no change should be made in any of his many offices. Nor was it. Since the Secretary-at-War was outside the Cabinet and the First Lord of the Admiralty sunk in slothful good-living, Dundas, with his command of the Prime Minister's ear, his direction of Colonial and Indian operations and his footing in the Admiralty, became virtually Minister for Defence.

Such were the men with whom Pitt faced the armed Jacobin. His mind was not trained to run in warlike grooves: it had just suffered a profound shock and disappointment. He was dazed by the unreasoning of this barbarous appeal to violence. Strategy, unlike finance, was an unfamiliar dimension to him.

¹
Among the
Bacchanalian Epigrams of the
Opposition wits were : " Pitt: ‘
I can't discern the Speaker, Hal, can you
?'
" Dundas : ‘
Not see the S
peaker ! Damme, I see two I *’
"

and

" Pitt: ' Europe's true balance must not be overthrown.'

" Dundas : ‘
Damn Europe's balance : try to keep your own
!'

Seeing France's naval weakness his first plan was to attack her only on the wa
ter. He would use his scanty mili
tary forces in conjunction with his fine fleet to strip her of her colonies. The wealth won in the West and East Indies would equip Allied armies to attack her by land. Increased customs receipts would pay for Austrian and Prussian subsidies. This was the " blue water " policy which his own father had made so glorious and profitable during the Seven Years War. Its principle of limited liability naturally appealed to a Minister whose main object had always been to balance national accounts and whose hatred of war was based at least partly on its expense. It commended itself, too, to the Navy, to the City whose treasure lay in Caribbean sugar islands, and to the politicians who reckoned that captured colonies would come in useful as bargaining counters at the peace conference.

Yet even this conception of war required men. And because of the country's pacific policy in the past men were lacking. There were not enough at first even to man the fleet. Nineteen, or nearly a quarter, of the eighty-one battalions which constituted the infantry strength of the British Army were already fully absorbed in garrisoning those West Indian islands from which the main attack on France's colonies was to be launched. Even these had had to be reinforced recently to cope with the unrest of the slave population. And so unhealthy were the islands that the normal annual wastage from disease was 25 per cent. To take the offensive an additional force of at least 20,000 was needed. To raise a fraction of it the Government was forced to take the " flank " or picked companies from every garrison battalion in Britain and commit them to a long sea voyage and a climate notoriously destructive to white troops.

But no sooner had promises of reinforcements been dispatched to the Governors of Jamaica and Barbados, than the Government's entire plan was unhinged by the course of events in Europe. Danger at her own front door at once deprived Britain of the initiative. On February 16th, Dumouriez invaded Holland. Prussia, treacherously husbanding her resources for aggression against Poland, failed to supply the army promised under its treaty obligations to its western neighbour. Beside themselves with terror the Dutch plutocrats appealed to Britain, unju
stly
reproaching her for their defenceless condition. The British Ambassador declared that they could scarcely ask more if their country
were a part of Yorkshire. " But
I incline to think," he added, " it should be considered as such for the present."

For if the Dutch and their coastline were not to fall to the Jacobins, Britain had no option. It was to prevent this that she had gone to war. There was only one hope. In the path of the French armies lay the Hollandsdiep—a broad estuary which British gunboats supported by a handful of resolute troops might be able to hold for a few weeks until the Prussian and Austrian armies arrived. The Cabinet promptly decided to send the only force available. On February 20th the seven battalions of the Foot Guards were drawn up on the Horse Guards' Parade. The King's soldier son, the Duke of York, told the men that it had been decided to dispatch the first battalion of each of the three regiments to Holland and asked for volunteers to bring them up to strength. True to its tradition, the entire Brigade stepped forward.

When the 2000 redcoats, narrowly missing shipwreck in their tiny, hastily-improvised transports,
reached Helvoetsluys on March 1
st, the situation appeared desperate. The Dutch were unable or unwilling to make the slightest effort to help themselves; a British Staff Officer complained that the unconcern with which the burghers listened to the French guns at Willemstad made his blood boil.
¹
It looked as if nothing could stop the enemy. Yet on that very day the inherent weakness in the Revolution revealed itself. A hundred miles to the east the sluggish armies of Austria took the offensive and the Republican volunteer levies at once bolted. For their high spirits of the previous autumn had been sapped by the neglect and corruption of their political leaders. Their favourite demagogue, " Papa " Pache at the War Office, had swindled and starved them out of all confidence. Trusting no one, they took to their heels. But for the leisurely ways of the Prince of Coburg, the Austrian generalissimo, they might have been annihilated. As it was, Dumouriez's plan for the invasion of Holland was ruined. With his right flank exposed he fell back to Neerwinden, where he was again defeated on March 18th. A week later the Austrians were back in Brussels and the French inside their own frontiers.

Further Republican disasters followed. The trickery and greed of the Paris demagogues had destroyed whatever patriotism and

¹
" But the climate," he added,
" is
of a nature to keep us all tolerably cool."—
Calvert,
25.

patience the victor of Jemappes possessed. Furious at their knavery, the restless, scheming Dumouriez had formed the Caesarian plan of marching at the head of his army on Paris as the saviour of a demoralised country. Defeated, he now decided to achieve his ambition with the help of the enemy. On the last day of the month he sent an aide-de-camp to the astonished Austrians and offered to evacuate the Netherlands and march against the Convention. Three days later he delivered up the French War Minister and three other politicians who had been visiting his headquarters. Failing to carry his troops with him, he followed himself on April 5th.

Within a fortnight the war had been transformed. The door was wide open to an Allied advance across the northern plains of France. The chance seemed too great to reject. Pitt and Dundas, strongly pressed by the King, consented to postpone their West Indian projects and throw their whole striking force into Flanders. To fill the place of the still missing Prussians they promised to put 40,000 British, Hanoverians and Hessians into the field. They thus committed themselves against their better judgment to a continental campaign of the costly kind dear to William III and Marlborough. Yet, reluctant to relinquish the more popular " blue water " strategy of their dreams, they insisted that the British contingent might be withdrawn whenever they chose. In this way they vainly imagined they could preserve their freedom of action.

Their Allies were equally anxious to preserve theirs. All of them had what seemed to them more urgent objectives than a common victory over the Republic they had once more ceased to fear. The Prussian and wanted to extend their eastern frontiers. They were not prepared to waste men and money on another western campaign until this had been achieved. The Austrians wanted territorial accessions on the Danube to counterbalance the acquisitions of their Russian and Prussian neighbours. Without these they did not feel secure. They therefore put forward a plan for exchanging Belgium for Bavaria with the Bavarian Royal Family. Britain, whose historic barrier against French aggression in the Low Countries was the presence of Austria, hastily sought to prevent this by bribing the Imperial Government with a promise of French frontier fortresses.

All this chaffering lowered the tone of the war. The grand crusade of Burke's imagination was degenerating into a vulgar scramble for territorial aggrandisement. Even Holland put in a claim for compensatory fortresses. The Allies argued that they were the victims of French aggression—not for the first time in the past century—and that it was only fair that France should
pay. But the evil did not end th
ere. Though the road to Paris lay open, the Allied armies remained motionless on the French frontier for weeks while their politicians debated " indemnities." British unprepared-ness as well as Allied greed contributed to the delay. For it was one thing for Pitt to promise an army: another to produce it. Hanoverians and Hessians bought with British gold might march in haste across the muddy lanes of north Germany; the Guards, joyously escaping from the boredom of Helvoetsluys, float down chilly Dutch canals towards a kindlier Flanders, and the Government hurriedly replace every availab
le regiment with home service
“
Fencible " corps raised for the duration. But the depleted ranks had to be filled with recruits, transformed overnight into soldiers by making them drunk with bounty money and bundling them, still dazed, into transports. A Staff Officer complained after they had landed that they were " totally unfit for service . . . being mo
stly
either old men or quite boys, extremely weak and short." " How they are to be disposed of till they can be taught their business," wrote the apologetic Adjutant-General, "
I
am at a loss to imagine. I was not consulted on the subject until it was too late."
¹

The command of this polyglot army was entrusted to the 28-year-old Duke of York. Having been indentured by his father to Frederick the Great, he had acquired some reputation as a martinet if not as a soldier. The Government had little faith in the appointment. But it felt that the Duke as a prince of the blood might be able to hold his own with the Royalties at Coburg's headquarters. His Chief of Staff, Major-General Sir James Murray
²
—a brilliant but shy man—had as little confidence in himself as the Government in the Commander-in-Chief. The most experienced soldier in the expeditionary force was an old Scot, Major-Gene
ral Ralph Aber
cromby.

When on May 1
st Coburg at last advanced, it was with the stately deliberation of eighteenth-century military science. He had

¹
Calvert
, 52-

²
In July, 1794,
Murray assumed the additional name of Pulteney.

more than 100,000 men, of whom over half were Austrians, many of them veterans of the Turkish wars. The diversity of their race, habits and uniforms much impressed their British comrades. " The drawings which Captain Cook brought back from the South Seas," wrote Major Calvert, " are nothing to some of our friends! " In the demoralised state of France there seemed little to stop a swift and resolute march on Paris. But the pedants of the Imperial Staff would do nothing contrary to the canons of their text-books. Every road by which a French raiding party might advance against rear or flank had to be guarded, every outpost laboriously driven in and even the smallest fortress stormed or blockaded. The army advanced with infinite slowness, spread out in an enormous cordon from Maubeuge to Ostend. As soon as it reached the frontier fortresses of Conde and Valenciennes, it stopped to besiege them in form. Nothing would induce Coburg to advance further till they had been reduced.