Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
hinted that the Austrians desired defeat! With the latter extravagant and even comic suggestion I will deal later in this study; for the moment I am only concerned with the responsibility of the Duke of York.
It must, in the first place, be clearly understood that the failure of the plan does not reflect upon the judgment of that commander. It failed because Clerfayt was not up to time, and because too much had been asked of the fifth column. The Duke came of a family not famous for genius; he was exceedingly young, and whatever part he may have had in the framing of this large conception ought surely to stand to his credit.
It is true that Mack, the Austrian General, drafted details of the plan immediately before it was carried into execution, and our principal military historian in this country tells us how “on the 16th, Mack prepared an elaborate plan which he designed.”3
Well, the 16th was the Friday.
Now we know that on the 11th of May, the Sunday, the Emperor and his staff had no intention of making a combined attack to cut off Souham from Lille, for orders were given to Clerfayt on that day to engage Souham along the valley of the Lys for the purpose of holding the attention of the French, and in the hope of recovering Menin—the exact opposite of what would have been ordered if a secret and unexpected attempt to cut off Souham by crossing further up the river had been intended. It was at the same moment that the Duke of York was sending word to Clerfayt on his own account, to the effect that he intended to submit a plan to the Emperor, and it is worth noting that in the very order which was sent to Clerfayt by the Emperor he was told to refer to the Duke of York as to his future movements.
The archives of the Ministry of War at Vienna have it on record that the Duke of York made a definite statement of a plan to Clerfayt, which plan he intended to submit to the Emperor immediately, and a letter dated upon the Monday, the 12th—four days before there is any talk of Mack’s arranging details—York writes to Clerfayt telling him that he hopes to make his decisive movement against the enemy on the Wednesday, the 14th.
On the 13th, Tuesday, the orders of the Emperor to both Clerfayt and the Duke of York (which are also on record) set down this plan in detail, mentioning the point Wervicq at which Clerfayt was expected to cross the river Lys, and at the same time directing the Duke of York to march northward with the object of joining Clerfayt, and thus cutting off the French forces massed round Courtrai from their base. Further, in this same despatch, the initiative is particularly left to the Duke of York, and it is once more from him that Clerfayt is to await decisions as to the moment and details of the operation.
The same archives record the Duke of York sending Lieut.-Colonel Calvert to Clerfayt upon the 14th, to tell him that he meant to attack upon the morrow, the 15th, and they further inform us that it was on the English Prince’s learning how scattered were Clerfayt’s units, and how long it would therefore take him to concentrate, that action was delayed by some thirty-six hours.
Evidence of this sort is absolutely conclusive. The plan was not Mack’s; it was York’s.
PART IV
THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE BATTLE
Tourcoing is an action the preliminaries of which are easy to describe, and need occupy little of our space, because it was a battle in which the plan of one side was developed and prosecuted almost to its conclusion without a corresponding plan upon the other side.
As a rule, the preliminaries of a battle consist in the dispositions taken by each side for hours or for days—sometimes for weeks—beforehand, in order to be in a posture to receive or to attack the other side. These preliminaries include manœuvring for position, and sometimes in the fighting of minor subsidiary actions before the main action takes place.
Now, in the case of Tourcoing, there was none of this, for the French at Tourcoing were surprised.
The surprise was not complete, but it was sufficiently thorough to make the whole of the fighting during the first day, Saturday (at least, the whole of the fighting in the centre of the field), a triumph for the allied advance.
Let us first appreciate exactly how matters looked to Souham when, on the 15th, the Thursday, the blow was about to fall upon him.
He had under his orders, with headquarters now at Courtrai, now at Menin (see sketch map on p. 58), rather less than 40,000. In that dash upon Courtrai a fortnight before, which had led to the dangerous establishment of so large an advanced body in front of the main French line, one main effect of that advance had been to push back, away to the left beyond the Lys, more than 16,000, but less than 20,000 men under the Austrian General, Clerfayt. With that army, Clerfayt’s body, Souham had remained continually in touch. Detachments of it were continually returning to the valley of the Lys to harass his posts, and, in a word, Clerfayt’s was the only force of the enemy which Souham thought he had need to bear in mind.
The bulk of the Austrian army he knew to be quite four days’ march away to the south, at first occupied in the siege of Landrecies, and later stationed in the vicinity of that fortress.
Of course, lying in his exposed position, Souham knew that a general attack upon him from the south was one of the possibilities of the situation, but it was not a thing which he thought could come unexpectedly: at any rate he thought himself prepared, by the use of his scouts and his spies, to hear of any such advance in ample time.
In case he should be attacked, the attack might take one of many forms. It might try to drive him over the Lys, where Clerfayt would be ready to meet him; or it might be a general attack upon Courtrai as a centre; or it might be (what had, as we have seen, been actually determined) an attempt to cut him and all his 40,000 off from the main French line.
This main French line ran through the town of Lille, and Lille not only had its garrison, but also at Sainghin, outside the fortifications to the south-east, a camp, under Bonnaud, of 20,000 men. If the attack from the south or from the north, or from both, managed to cut Souham off from Bonnaud’s camp, and from the garrison at Lille, he was ruined, and his 40,000 were lost; but he hoped to be kept sufficiently informed of the enemy’s movements to fall back in time, should such an attempt be made, and to provide for it by effecting a junction with Bonnaud before it was delivered.
Pichegru, the Commander of the whole French army of the north, who had ordered the advance on Courtrai, happened to be absent upon a visit to the posts away south upon the Sambre River. Souham was therefore temporarily in full command of all the troops which were to be concerned in the coming battle. But the position was only a temporary one, and that must account for the deference he paid to the advice of the four generals subordinate to him, and for the council which he called at Menin on the critical Saturday night which decided the issue. He himself quotes his commission in the following terms:—“Commander-in-Chief of all the troops from the camp at Sainghin to Courtrai inclusive.”
From the beginning of the week, when a detachment of his troops had but just recovered from a sharp action with the Duke of York’s men towards Tournai, Souham appreciated that the forces of the enemy were gradually increasing to the south of him, and that the posts upon the Scheldt were receiving additional enforcements of men. But neither his judgment nor the reports that came in to him led him to believe that the mass of the Austrian army was coming north to attack him. And in this he was right, for, as we have seen, the Emperor did not make up his mind until Wednesday the 14th, which was the day when orders were sent to the Arch-Duke Charles to march northward.
Souham’s attitude of mind up to, say, the Thursday may be fairly described in some such terms as follows:—
“I know that a concentration is going on in the valley of the Scheldt to the south and east of me; it is pretty big, but not yet exactly dangerous, though I shouldn’t wonder if I were attacked in a few days from that quarter. What I am much more certain of is that active and mobile force which I beat off the other day, but which is still intact under the best General opposed to me, Clerfayt.