The Years of Endurance (58 page)

Government fell and a new Directory—in reality as corrupt as the old—was set up to prosecute the war more vigorously. The defeats on the Trebbia and at Zurich led to a renewal of Jacobin terrorism, a fresh conscription and the appointment of Bernadotte as War Minister. Under his regimen a forced loan was levied on property and 200,000 conscripts called to the colours.

Such was the position in August, 1799, when the British prepared to launch their invasion of the Continent. As was inevitable in a parliamentary country the pros and cons of doing so had been widely discussed. Public opinion strongly supported the idea; despite Britain's achievement at sea there was a feeling that she was not pulling her weight and must rouse herself from sloth to renew the laurels of Agincourt and Blenheim. Two years of drilling against invasion had made the country martial-minded; the scarlet coat and bugle call had become natural to Englishmen. They had even founded a Military Academy, and established a Royal Staff Corps to train sappers in the science of reducing Continental fortresses. On June
4th
the King on his sixty-second birthday took the salute in Hyde Park as 10,000 London Volunteers and Militia marched past with the precision of Prussians. The little monarch, erect on his white charger and making great sweeps with his hat, was beside himself at the sight, chuckling repeatedly over the gibe of a French General about a nation of shopkeepers. " Call them the Devil's Own! " he cried as the Inns of Court Volunteers swung past, " call them the Devil's Own! "
¹

All that Britons asked at that moment was to test their mettle against the enemy. The thought consoled them for the perpetual rain and cold of that cheerless, barren summer, relieved the shortage of coal and vegetables, and even reconciled them to the new income-tax forms. Since the beginning of the year one after another of the Fencible regiments had been voluntarily relinquishing their immunity to foreign service. For like the haughty seamen, they too wanted to have a crack at Johnny Crapaud. They had no doubt as to the result. At midsummer Canning recorded his belief in the imminent collapse of " the monstrous fabric of French crimes and cruelties and abominations."

Almost the only people who did not share the popular enthusiasm
¹
Wheeler and Broadley, II, 244.

for an invasion of the Continent were the senior officers of the Regular Army. They knew too much of the might of the French armies and the haphazard methods of supply and transport employed by British politicians and administrators. Behind them was a long succession of disasters, surrenders and evacuations extending for nearly a quarter of a century over the present and American wars. Advanced in years, sobered by misfortune, long accustomed to fighting at a disadvantage, their minds lacked resilience.

Early in June the Governm
ent had summoned Sir Ralph Aber
cromby from Edinburgh to take the principal command. The brave old Scot, who was sixty-five, expressed the strongest disapproval of the project, which he predicted would be attended by the usual disasters. It was not, however, in his soldier's creed to refuse a professional task committed to him by the civil authority. The wisest course would have been to have passed him over for a younger man who believed in victory. But neither Stuart nor Moira—the two best general officers for a bold offensive—possessed the necessary seniority, and neither was popular with the Cabinet. Instead, the Duke of York was seconded from the Horse Guards to take command with Abercromby as chief adviser.

By its treaty with Russia the Government had committed itself to a larger expeditionary force than was immediately available. It therefore had recourse to the Militia. On July 12th, a month before the " secret armament" was to sail, an Act was hurried through Parliament to draft Militiamen into Regular regiments. In the prevailing mood of enthusiasm tens of thousands took the
£10 bounty and volunteered for foreign service. Of their fine, soldierly appearance and potential fighting capacity, there could be no dispute. But of their readiness for Continental warfare, there was justification for a good deal.

While British cruisers harried the European coastline from Brest to the
Texel, alarming the French auth
orities, a great military encampment was formed on the Kentish Downs between Canterbury and Deal. Here the advance guard of the invasion force assembled under Abercromby. And here, in growing numbers and in every degree of intoxication, came the bounty men from the Militia. The difficulty of absorbing them into their regiments in time to take the field never troubled the Government.

To supervise the great departure the Prime Minister and Secretary for War took up residence at Walmer Castle. Both were strongly impressed with the urgency of the venture. The summer was well advanced, the gale season approaching and the Continental campaign at a crucial stage. In September the Russians, moving to their new positions, were to strike in Switzerland, and the Archduke Charles was to take the offensive on the Lower Rhine. If Suvorof could smash Massena in the Alps as he had smashed Moreau in Lombardy, October might see a Slavonic invasion of France through her vulnerable Swiss frontier. The delivery of the British blow before the French levies could be mobilised might well prove decisive.

Pitt, therefore, showed impatience at Abercromby's interminable litany of obstacles. The fine old soldier, who under his shaggy eyebrows gave contemporaries the impression of a good-natured lion, was always raising difficulties in his slow, Scottish manner. He pointed out that the Army was almost entirely without facilities for moving its guns, sick, stores and provisions. " The Emperor of Russia," he wrote, " may make a general into a private man by his fiat, but he cannot make his army march without their baggage. It is only in a free country like ours that a Minister has absolute power over an army. . . . An army is not a machine that can move of itself; it must have the means of moving."
¹
The complaints led to the hasty formation on August 12th of a Royal Waggon Train of five troops—increased in September to eight—each of four officers and seventy drivers, mostly retired cavalrymen: the first germ of an Army Service Corps.

But to Pitt all this was trifling: the ill-timed pedantry of an old woman in a red coat. " There are some people," he murmured, " who have pleasure in opposing whatever is proposed." Advised by the Foreign Office and Orange partisans, he was so obsessed with the idea that the Dutch would rise that it never occurred to him that the Army would have any difficulties of supply and communication. " The operation," wrote Grenville to Dundas, " will be rather a counter-revolution than a conquest." The politicians forgot that refugees are not the best judges of a country from which they have been expelled, and that there is a wide difference between sympathy with a foreign cause and revolutionary action to support it.

¹
Fortescue,
IV,
646.

Just as the advance guard was preparing to embark, news arrived that the combined fleets of France and Spain were returning from their fruitless Mediterranean foray. Though Keith was in close pursuit, there was always the possibility that they might sweep up the Channel and attack the assembled transports. But on August 12th it became known that Bruix had put into Brest. With a Grand Fleet of more than fifty battleships based on Torbay and " the whole naval power of France and Spain under lock and key,"
¹
all danger passed. On the 13 th, Abercromby was hurried to sea.

It was left to the General and Admiral Mitchell to decide whether the expedition should occupy Walcheren and the islands at the mouth of the Meuse or make a landing farther north on the tip of Holland called the Marsdiep between
the
North and Zuyder Seas. On the ground that Walcheren was too bare for concealment and that the Marsdiep isthmus, being long and narrow, was unlikely to be defended in force, Abercromby chose the latter. An initial success here would cut off the naval base of the Helder and endanger the Dutch fleet at the Texel. It would also enable the British, after forcing an entry into the Zuyder Zee, to advance southwards down the isthmus with both flanks protected by warships. The disadvantage was that the Marsdiep was some distance from the main centres of population where a rising was expected, and that before these could be reached the French might have time to organise strong resistance.

The initial wisdom of the decision was quickly proved. For on the first day at sea the almost incessant rain of the past few weeks turned to a south-wester. The transports would have fared ill among the islands. As it was they remained in danger for a week before the wind abated sufficiently to make a landing possible. During that time the country was in the greatest alarm, for no one had anticipated storms of such intensity and duration so early in the year.
²

But the Navy did its work well. The two hundred vessels of the fleet kept together, and on the 21st the wind fell. That night the low Dutch coast could be clearly seen in the moonlight. But next day, after the Dutch Governor of the Helder had been summoned to surrender, the storm again freshened. Not till the 26th,

¹
Spencer
Papers,
III, 112.

²
See
D'Arblay,
III, 188.

nearly a fortnight after leaving England, could
the
transports resume their station in-shore. By that time water and provisions were dangerously low. And owing to the Admiral's premature summons, the defenders were expecting a landing.

Abercromby, however, decided to persist. At dawn on the 27th disembarkation began at a point about four miles south of the Helder in the face of determined fire. It was covered by a tremendous barrage from the guns of Duncan's battleships which the old Admiral had placed at the disposal of the expedition. The first tow consisted of 3000 men. Daendels, the Dutch commander, had nearly twice as many. The flat-bottomed barges for which Abercromby had asked had not been provided and several boats overturned in the surf. But the fire of the great ships and the fierce persistence of the landing parties wore down the defenders, many of whom were in secret sympathy with the invaders. By nightfall the bulk of Abercromby's 10,000 troops were ashore, the sandhills of Groot and Klein Keten in their hands, and the Helder cut off from the rest of Holland. The British suffered about 500 casualties; the French and Dutch nearly three times as many.

Had old Abercromby, who had been in the heat of the fire all day,
¹
been less exhausted, enemy losses would have been still heavier. By not pushing his outposts to the edge of the sandhills, where the marshy meadows to the Zuyder Zee could be over-looked, he allowed the garrison of the Helder to escape in the night along the solitary road running under the dunes. Early next morning John Moore, who had commanded the northernmost landing party, occupied the town without opposition.

Two days later Admiral Mitchell, entering the channel between the Helder and Texel Island, captured the Dutch fleet at anchor. At sight of the British ships the seamen forced their officers to haul down the Republican flag and hoist that of the House of Orange. Seven Dutch ships of the line—the survivors of Camper-down—and eighteen smaller warships with 6000 seamen passed into British keeping without firing a shot. " Thus," wrote John Moore in his diary, " the greatest stroke that has perhaps been struck in this war has been accomplished in a few hours and with a trifling loss. The expedition . . . began with every appearance against it. . . . It showed great enterprise in Sir Ralph
¹
Duncan
to
Spencer,
28th Aug., 1799.—
Spencer
Papers,
III, 178.

to perseve
re in the attempt, and he has met with the success he deserved. The chances of war are infinite."
¹

Abercromby's victory of the 28th had struck panic into the doubting Dutch and filled the French authorities with dismay. In all Holland there were only 10,000 French troops, of whom 5000 were concentrated in Zeeland to prevent a landing in the islands. At any moment the Dutch army, another 20,000 men, might follow the fleet's example. It was idle to hope for aid from Paris. A fortnight before the French in Italy, attempting to relieve Mantua, had attacked Suvorof prematurely and been routed at Novi, their young commander, Joubert, paying for his mistake with his life. With the crisis approaching in Switzerland and the Archduke Charles marching, the Directory had its hands full.

Had, therefore, Abercromby pressed southwards along the causeway roads towards Alkmaar he would have encountered little resistance and might have penetrated at once into the main part of Holland, south of the narrow neck between Haarlem and Amsterdam. There was every reason for doing so, for the nature of the country was unfavourable to a quick advance in the face of serious defence. The flat marshy pastures inside the dunes were dissected by countless canals and dykes, confining the movement of large bodies to the causeways. And it was already the end of August, with the gale season approaching and the only good harbours in the country far to the south. If ever time was precious to a commander, it was at that moment.