The Years of Endurance (24 page)

Not having watched the enemy's point of departure, Howe had no clue to his whereabouts or the oncoming course of the convoy. All he knew for certain was that five hundred miles out in the

Atlantic Montagu, having set the British merchantmen on their way, was cruising over a two-hundred-mile stretch of water in the hope of intercepting
the
latter. In the event of his doing so. his six capital ships ran the risk of meeting not merely Vanstabel's two escorting battleships but Nielly's five and Villaret Joyeuse's twenty-six, all of which were sure to be shadowing the convoy's path.

For eight days Howe searched the Atlantic in vain. But on May 28th, 460 miles west of Ushant, his frigates sighted Villaret Joyeuse to windward sailing N.N.E. before the wind in three columns. Though there was a heavy swell and the French, ship for ship, were superior in tonnage and gun-power, Howe clung for two days to the enemy's tail, harassing his rear ships and battling for the weather gage. By the night of the 29th he had got the French to leeward and forced four of their ships out of the line for the loss of only one of his own. In forty hours of continuous fighting and manoeuvring his skilful tactics had gone far to redress his earlier strat
egic error. He could look forwar
d on the morrow to a fleet action with twenty-five battleships and an enemy on his lee with only twenty-two.

But during the brief summer night fog fell. For two days the fleets were hidden from one another. Occasionally, as narrow lanes of light parted the mist, the look-outs in the British frigates, clinging grimly to the French flanks, caught glimpses of shadowy giants gliding from darkness to darkness or saw aloft, caught in the sunshine, peaks of dazzling white canvas. Then the mists would close again. While they did so Nielly's squadron joined Villaret Joyeuse, bringing his strength up to twenty-six ships; and the great convoy, over a hundred vessels strong, passed within a few miles of the British Fleet sailing unscathed and unseen towards France. On the same day Montagu, despairing of finding either the convoy or his own admiral, put back to Plymouth.

By gradua
lly leading Howe away from the
convoy's track Villaret Joyeuse had saved France. But he could do no more. The English Admiral, confiding in his hard-wrought lifetime's craft of sailing ships and fleets, was not to be kept from his chosen
prey. The dawn of Sunday, June 1
st, rose on a clear horizon, a soft sea bathed in sunshine,
and four miles to leeward the French
Fleet.

At that glorious moment of his career, true to his country's tradition, Howe sent his men down to breakfast. At twenty minutes to nine, feeling his work done, he shut his signal book with the nearest he ever came to a gesture. For four days and nights the brave old man had been continuously on deck giving orders, snatching such sleep as he could upright in his chair. Now he was content. The rest he could leave to his captains and crews. They knew " Black Dick's " courage and devotion to duty and he had no doubt of theirs. Had he been aboard the
Prince,
he would have heard Captain Collingwood observing to his Rear-Admiral that it was about the time their wives were going to church, and that he trusted that the peal they were going to sound in the Frenchmen's ears would outring all the bells in England.
¹

As soon as the oncoming British ships were within range the French opened fire. But with a single exception, the British kept on their course in silence with their gunports closed. Between the long decks, where the brass-tipped cannon gleamed in double lines, the seamen, stripped to the waist, waited with the easy discipline of men perfectly trained to an art now about to be tested. In the
Brunswick
they sang to cheer themselves in the darkness, the lieutenant of the lower-deck reporting that till they got the word to fire they were all as happy as princes singing " Rule Britannia." It was about ten o'clock that Howe's flagship, the
Queen Charlotte,
breaking the French line, swept the giant
Montagne
with a single broadside, which killed three hundred of her crew and left a gap in her stern through which a coach could have been driven. " Such a fire," wrote Collingwood, " as would have done you good to have heard! "

There was little science in the actual fighting. It was a captain's not an admiral's battle. The French line, pierced in twenty places, dissolved into islands of smoke and thunder within which individual ships battered away at one another. The most famous of these duels was between the
Brunswick
and
Vengeur.
Unable to open the lower-deck ports, which were jammed against her opponent's sides, the guns' crews of the
Brunswick
fired through them at point-blank range, while her men dashed buckets of water over the flames. After losing her captain and a diird of her company she forced
Vengeur
to strike, and almost simultaneously captured a French

¹
Collingwood,
21.

three-decker, which had attacked her on the other bow. Two hundred of the
Vengeurs
crew were rescued naked from the water, while others who had fortified their patriotism with liquor became a legend, and went down with her singing snatches of the " Marseillaise."

Everywhere the story was the same. The French had a slight numerical superiority in ships and a substantial one in guns and men: 20,000 to 17,000 sailors.
¹
But though they fought bravely they were no match in seamanship and gunnery for their assailants. After some hours, Villaret Joyeuse, who, though recently only a lieutenant, handled his command with skill, withdrew his fleet and escaped to the north-west. Howe, almost carried by hi$ officers from the quarter-deck, was too exhausted to pursue. Seven dismasted French battleships remained in his possession, one of which sank before she could be brought to port. " We have conquered the rascals! " wrote eleven-year-old Midshipman Parker to his mother.

N
early a fortnight after the battl
e the Admiral returned to Portsmouth with his prizes. Their decks were ploughed up with shot, and the wounded, many of them hob-nailed peasants, still lay in heaps where they had fallen. But the decks of the British men-of-war were scoured and spotless, the brass was shining and the crews alert .at their stations. The aristocrats of the ocean had returned with their wonted glory. Their pleasure at their achievement was undimmed, for in the joy of the battle they had quite forgotten the object for which they had sailed: the French, Captain Collingwood told his friends, had been sent out with the express purpose of destroying them. The King went down to receive the victors, and every window in town was illuminated or smashed by the patriot mob. But Villaret Joyeuse brought back something more precious to his country than glory. On the day after Howe's return the grain fleet entered Brest. At the eleventh hour famine was averted.

Britain had lost her last chance of victory before the swelling military strength of France became too great to contain. While Howe was allowing the French battle fleet to lure him from the convoy's track the Emperor of Austria was leaving Flanders for Vienna. For far in the east the Poles, daring
the
impossible, had risen against their oppressors and driven them out of Warsaw.

Once

¹
Among the British sailors was the 69th Regiment of Foot.

more the Prussians massed on their eastern frontiers, while the Austrian Chancellor, Thugut, mad with jealousy, became haunted by a single fear: that his country would be left out of the final partition of Poland. In comparison the retention of Belgium seemed to him of no consequence. He sought only to break off the western campaign and retire to the Rhine.

While Imperial headquarters meditated treachery and the Duke of York's forces avenged their losses in a stubborn stand before Tournai, the French continued their assaults on the Allied left. Relying on the inactivity of the Prussians, Carnot ordered Jourdan —the thirty-three-year-old victor of Wattignies—to leave the Moselle undefended and march to the aid of the assailants. Early in June the reconstituted army of Sambre-et-Meuse crossed the Sambre, and after a series of desp
erate engagements invested Char
leroi. When a fortnight later Coburg, with his main force, moved to the relief of the town it was too late. During an undecided action at Fleurus on the 26th the old German learnt that Charleroi had fallen. He called off the battle and retreated, leaving the Republicans masters of the field and, though no one knew it, of the next two decades of European history.

Carnot's purpose had been achieved. The speed and fury of his attack had triumphed: the persistence and numbers of his ragged peasant battalions had broken the overstrained cordon of the professional armies of the
ancien regime.
Its flank laid bare by the Austrian retreat, the British expeditionary force was compelled to abandon Tournai, Oudenarde and Ghent without a shot. On July
5
th at an Allied Council on the future field of Waterloo the Duke of York pleaded with Coburg for a stand on the ridge of Mont St. Jean. But scarcely had the decision to fight been reached than the Austrians retreated again, this time eastwards towards their bases on the Rhine, leaving the road to Brussels open. By doing so they not only exposed York's flank but left him no alternative but to fall back in isolation northwards on his own base at Antwerp. All direct contact between the Allies was now severed. " The opinion which the British nation must have on the subject," the Duke of York wrote to Prince Coburg, " is that we are betrayed and sold to the enemy." A fresh force from Englan
d, which had been hastily lande
d at Ostend under Moira to save that indefensible port, only escaped encirclement by a brilliant march across the French front to join its retreating comrades. Among its officers was the future victor of Waterloo, the 25-year-old Arthur Wellesley, who as Lieutenant-Colonel of the
33
rd Regiment of Foot was seeing active service for the first time.

During these fatal events Pitt was engaged in the political operation known to the eighteenth century as enlarging his bottom. For long the more sober of his former opponents had felt that the Party differences of the past were trifling compared with the Jacobin peril to civilisation. They took the view that support was due to any Government opposing it. " My determination," Windham had written, " is open, steady war against the whole Jacobin faction, and junction for that purpose with whomever it may be necessary to join."
¹
The only thing which had prevented the main body of Whigs from entering a national Government had been the exaggerated scruples of their leader, the old Duke of Portland, about Fox.

At the beginning of July
the
importance of presenting the wavering Allies with the spectacle of a united Britain banished all remaining hesitations. Lord Fitzwilliam became President of the Council; Spencer, Lord Privy Seal; Windham, Secretary-at-War; and Portland, Home and Colonial Secretary in place of Dundas, for whom a new Secretaryship of State was created, that of War. Soon afterwards Fitzwilliam took the Viceroyship of Ireland and Spencer succeeded Chatham as First Lord of the Admiralty. Burke, who had just retired from Parliament, gave the new Administration his blessing. Pitt offered a peerage to the old man who had done so much to bring about this national union but, broken by the fatal illness of his only son, he refused all honours.

These changes strengthened the Government internally as well as externally. Spencer might know little of the sea, but it was an advantage to have a First Lord who did not keep naval officers waiting every morning till he could bring himself to get up.
²
Dundas might not be the right man to wield its powers but a Secretaryship of State for War was an advance in the direction of administrative sanity. Though preferred only to a minor post, the

¹
Windham Papers,
1,
192.

²
Lord Chatham said it did not signify, it was an indulgence. He could not give it up."—
Farington,
I, 54.

chivalrous Windham brought to the administration a fanatic hatred of Jacobinism able to provide staying power in dark days.

Having reconstituted the Cabinet Pitt made another attempt to revive the spirit of his Allies. Feeling that it was better to defend the country on the Scheldt than on the Thames, he offered to add 30,000 troops to the payroll in return for a change in the Austrian high command and a more vigorous prosecution of the war. At the same time he instructed Malmesbury to press Prussia for the 62,000 men promised by that faithless kingdom in return for British subsidies.

But, true to their historic principle of taking everything and giving nothing, the Prussians remained motionless in the Palatinate. The Austrians, withdrawing their armies co the Rhine under a secret understanding with Robespierre, left the French to recapture their frontier fortresses unmolested. The Royalist volunteers in their garrisons were delivered over to their merciless countrymen. On the capitulation of Nieuport five hundred of them were driven into the fort ditch and mown down with grapeshot. The frenzied tyrants in Paris ordered even the British and Hanoverian prisoners to be massacred—an order which Pichegru, an honourable man, refused to carry out.