William Pitt and the Great War by John Holland Rose (e book reader for pc .TXT) 📖

may be

ascribed the unquestioned superiority of Britain at sea. Of the 113

sail-of-the-line then available, about 90 could soon be placed in

commission, that is, so soon as the press-gang provided the larger part

of the _personnel_.

 

The state of the army was far less satisfactory. Never, in all

probability, since the ignominious times of Charles II, had it been in

so weak a condition relatively to the Continental Powers. In the Budget

of 1792 Pitt asked merely for 17,013 men as guards and garrisons in

these islands; and he reduced even that scanty force to 13,701 men for

the next six months. The regiments were in some cases little more than

skeletons, but with a fairly full complement of officers. Nominally the

army consisted of eighty-one battalions; but of these the West Indies

claimed as many as nineteen. India needed nine; and on the whole only

twenty-eight line regiments, together with the Guards and the cavalry,

remained for the defence of Great Britain and Ireland. Efforts were made

in December 1792 to bring in recruits, but with little effect. The

defence of London, the dockyard towns, and other important posts,

depended of course partly on the militia; 19,000 of that useful force

were embodied early in February. But as the authorities forbore to

compel men to serve in person, there was a rush for substitutes, which

naturally told against recruiting for the Line.[207] Volunteer

Associations were also relied on for local defence, and for overawing

the malcontent or disorderly elements in the populace. The safety of the

coasts and therefore of the capital rested primarily with the navy; and

for England the war promised to be almost entirely a naval war.

 

Equally chaotic was the administration for war. Some time in February

1793 Dundas sent to Pitt a Memorandum respecting a new arrangement of

offices which had been mooted in the Cabinet. The need of some change

may be judged by the fact that Dundas was Secretary for Home Affairs

(down to July 1794), First Commissioner for India (that is, virtually,

Secretary for India), and Treasurer of the Navy, besides drawing glory

and profit from his airy duties of Groom of the Stole. What changes had

been proposed does not appear; but Dundas expressed himself as follows:

"First: That I should remain precisely as I am while the war continues,

provided the arrangement takes place respecting the Groom of the Stole

to Lord Chatham, together with all the consequent changes in other

offices. This in my judgment is by much the best for the public service,

and ought to supersede all other individual wishes." Failing this

patriotic arrangement, Dundas requested that he should have the first

claim for the Privy Seal for Scotland, provided that Lord Chatham did

not take the Stole. He (Dundas) would give up the latter but retain his

office at the India Board and the Navy. Or, thirdly, if he received the

Privy Seal for Scotland, he would give up his other offices except that

at the India Board. This last plan would involve a large reduction of

income, but he preferred it to the others except the two previously

named.[208]

 

Nevertheless no change of any importance took place. Dundas continued to

be a portly pluralist, utterly unable to overtake the work of three

important offices, with the conduct of the war often superadded; and

Chatham remained at the Admiralty until the close of 1794, to the

annoyance of all champions of efficiency. In the course of that year

Pitt urged the need of strengthening both the Admiralty and War

Departments; but, as we shall see, Dundas strongly objected to the

creation of a Secretary of State for War, because his duties would

overlap those of the other Departments, and important decisions must be

formed by the Cabinet as a whole.[209] I shall touch on this question

more fully in Chapter XII, but mention it here as a sign of the mental

cloudiness which led British Ministers for the first eighteen months of

the war to plod along with the most haphazard arrangements known even to

that age. The contrast between the boyish irresponsibility of military

management in England and the terrible concentration of power in the

hands of Carnot at Paris, after July 1793, goes far to explain the

disasters to the Union Jack after the first few months of the war.

 

The triumph of the French Republic and its transformation into a

military Empire cannot be understood until we probe the inner weakness

of the First Coalition and realize the unpreparedness of Great Britain.

Moreover, as the Allies believed that France would speedily succumb,

the allocation of the spoil claimed their attention more than

preparations for the hunt. The unexpected vigour of the French might

have undeceived them. While Coburg was leisurely preparing to drive the

levies of Dumouriez from the district between Verviers and

Aix-la-Chapelle, the latter laid his plans for a dash into the almost

unprotected Dutch Netherlands, where he hoped to find precious spoils

and valuable munitions of war.[210] Breaking up therefore from Antwerp

on 16th February, the Republicans quickly advanced towards the estuary

known as the Hollandsdiep, while two other columns marched on Breda and

Bergen-op-Zoom. As Dumouriez had foreseen, the torpor of the

Stadholder's forces was as marked as the eagerness of the Dutch Patriots

to welcome the invaders. Breda fell on 26th February; but he failed to

cross the Hollandsdiep, for there the Sea Power intervened.

 

On 15th February Auckland begged that the Duke of York might be sent

over with a few battalions. The Ministry at once answered the appeal. On

20th February seven battalions of the British Guards were paraded at

Whitehall; the Duke of York announced that the first three would go to

Holland, and asked for volunteers from the other four. The whole line

stepped forward. Huddled on to small transports, the little force

reached the Dutch estuaries in time to thwart the efforts of Dumouriez.

Their arrival heartened the defenders of the Hollandsdiep, and held the

French at bay. Meanwhile Coburg had bestirred himself, and, marching on

Miranda's vanguard on the River Roer, threw it back in utter rout.

Dumouriez, falling back hastily to succour his lieutenant, encountered

the Austrian force at Neerwinden, where the unsteadiness of the

Republican levies enabled Coburg and his brilliant lieutenant, the

Archduke Charles, to win a decisive triumph (18th March). A great part

of the French levies melted away. The Belgians rose against the

retreating bands; and in a few days that land was lost to France. The

failure of Dumouriez to turn his army against the Convention, and his

flight to the Austrian outposts, need not be described here.[211]

Suffice it to say that the northern frontier of France lay open to

attack. An advance in force in the month of April or May might have

ended the war.

 

But, as we have seen, the Allies were too jealous and too distrustful to

act with the necessary vigour. Austria refused to recognize the Prussian

scheme for the Partition of Poland; and the North German Power

retaliated by withholding its contingent from the support of

Coburg.[212] That commander, finding himself duped by the Prussians,

pressed the British and Dutch Governments to send him succour. To this

he had some claim; for it was the Austrian victory at Neerwinden which

saved Holland from the French; and the best method of protecting that

land was to capture the northern fortresses of France. The Dutch army

numbered on paper 50,000 men; 13,500 Hanoverians were marching towards

Guelderland; 8,000 Hessians were entering the British service. In such a

case it would have been disgraceful not to assist Coburg in completing

his triumph. Thus, as often happens with British expeditions, the scope

of the Duke of York's operations now greatly widened. His original

instructions of 23rd February ordered him not to move more than

twenty-four hours away from Helvoetsluys. On 19th March, as the danger

lessened, the War Office gave him leave to advance, moving on the right

of Coburg's army towards Antwerp and Ghent.[213]

 

The news of Neerwinden led George III to adopt even more vigorous

measures. True, he disliked Coburg's pressing demand for help, seeing

that no treaty of alliance was formed; but he permitted the forward move

on Ghent, and formulated a still bolder scheme, that the British,

Hanoverians, and Dutch should advance to besiege Dunkirk; for the

capture of that place would enable a siege-train to be brought easily to

the Austrians for the leaguer of Lille and Valenciennes.[214] To

Grenville he expressed the hope that these measures would speedily end

the war.[215]

 

The letter is important as showing the great influence of the King on

military affairs. It must be remembered that Pitt, Grenville, and Dundas

(the three leading members of the Cabinet) had no knowledge of these

questions, while that shadowy personage, Sir George Yonge, Secretary at

War, had no seat in the Cabinet. A more unsatisfactory state of things

cannot be conceived. It tended to subject questions of military policy

to that influential trio, which in its turn was swayed by the will of

the King. According to constitutional custom, the Cabinet was

collectively responsible for questions of war policy; but it is

difficult to say how far Ministers were individually responsible. Pitt

and Grenville certainly influenced the decisions arrived at; Dundas drew

up and signed the chief military despatches; but the wishes of

George III had great weight.

 

    [Illustration: SEAT OF WAR IN FLANDERS.]

 

In fact, questions of war policy turned largely on motives other than

military. The resolve of the King and his Ministers to share in the

invasion of France sprang not only from feelings of military honour,

but also from the exigencies of diplomacy. By the middle of March it was

clear that Russia and Prussia would acquire unexpectedly extensive

tracts of Polish land. Francis II vented his spleen at this rebuff on

his Chancellor, Philip Cobenzl, who was virtually disgraced, while a

clever but unprincipled schemer, Thugut, took his place.[216] Another

unwelcome surprise was in store. The Emperor had hoped to find in the

Belgic-Bavarian exchange "compensation" for the presumedly moderate

gains of his rivals in Poland. But to this plan, as we have seen,

George III and his Ministers stoutly demurred; and Grenville held out

the prospect of the acquisition of Lille and Valenciennes in order once

more to lay that disquieting spectre. As it also alarmed some of the

German princes, whose help was needed against France, the Court of

Vienna saw this vision fade away until Thugut hit upon the design of

conquering Alsace, and finding there the means of effecting the

longed-for exchange. Pitt and Grenville, however, clung to the policy of

rooting Austria firmly at Brussels, with Lille and Valenciennes as her

outworks, and this involved the effort of winning those two fortresses

for the Hapsburgs. Thugut suggested that, if Austria could not secure

French Flanders, she must find compensation elsewhere; and he declined

to satisfy Eden's curiosity on this threatening word.[217] It therefore

behoved us to strengthen Austria's stroke at French Flanders, especially

as she now acquiesced in the British contention, that the Allies should

neither interfere with the form of Government in France nor recognize

the Comte de Provence as Regent.[218]

 

The British Government, however, moved forward its troops into Flanders

reluctantly, firstly, because it wanted to use them in the West

Indies,[219] and also discerned the preference of Frederick William for

a Polish to a Flemish campaign. That monarch and his generals left the

Austrians to bear the brunt of everything on the banks of the Rhine, and

also in Brabant. His manner of setting about the siege of Mainz was a

masterpiece of politic delay, in which amorous dalliance played its

part.[220] When complaints came from his Allies, he hotly retorted that

Coburg had sent him only 5,000 troops from the northern army instead of

the 15,000 that were promised. The Austrians replied with no less warmth

that Coburg needed those 10,000 men because he had had no succour from

the Prussian force supporting him. The result was that the Duke of

York's corps was thrust into the part which the Prussian contingent

ought to have taken. Accordingly Pitt and some of his colleagues deemed

it preferable, now that Holland was safe, to withdraw the British troops

with a view to a series of expeditions against the coasts and colonies

of France. This problem called for a clear and decided solution. Nowhere

do we so much lament the secrecy of Cabinet discussions as on these

questions--should the meagre forces of Britain be used on maritime

expeditions (their normal function in war), or form a petty division in

the crusade of two great Military Powers; or, worst of all, should they

be parcelled out in both kinds of warfare?

 

All that we know is that George III, on 29th March, strongly advocated

the siege of Dunkirk, in the hope that the capture of that seaport would

assist the Austrians in reducing the fortresses of French Flanders, and

thus put an end to the war. On the other hand, the Duke of Richmond

counselled the withdrawal of the British force for use against