Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
again, and my best troops and my offensive must be directed against that. I am far superior in numbers to Clerfayt, and if I can bring him to an action and break him, I can then turn to the others at my leisure: for the moment I have only one front to think of—that on the north.”
But the negligence which he or his informants were guilty of—a negligence that was to prove so nearly fatal to all those 40,000 French troops—consisted in the failure to discover what was up upon Friday the 16th.
During those twenty-four hours the Arch-Duke Charles had brought up his column to St. Amand; the other four columns upon the Scheldt were concentrated, and upon the north of the Lys, Clerfayt had got orders to move upon Wervicq, and was, during the middle hours of Friday, actually upon the march. Yet, during all that day, Friday the 16th, Souham remained ignorant of the extremity of his peril.
The orders which he dictated upon the Friday night, and largely repeated upon the following morning of Saturday the 17th of May, show how little he expected the general action that was upon him. He arranged, indeed, for a cordon of troops to be watching, in insufficient numbers, the side towards the Scheldt, and he sent to Bonnaud and the camp at Sainghin, outside Lille, orders to keep more or less in touch with that cordon. The instructions to this cordon of troops along the eastern side of the French position is no more than one of general vigilance. It is still to Clerfayt and towards the north alone that he directs an offensive and vigorous movement.
In a word, he was a good twenty-four hours behind with his information. He was wasting troops north of the Lys in looking for Clerfayt at a time when that General was already on the march to Wervicq, and he was leaving a scattered line of insufficient bodies to meet what he did not in the least expect, the rapid advance of Bussche, Otto, and York during that Saturday upon Mouscron, Tourcoing, and Roubaix.
Therefore it was that although Bussche’s insufficient force was driven out of Mouscron at last by superior numbers, Otto and York succeeded in sweeping all the resistance before them, and, in the course of that Saturday, reached the first Tourcoing, the second Roubaix, and even Mouveaux.
The whole problem of warfare consists in a comparison between the information that each side has of the movements of the other. The whole art of success in war pivots upon the using of your enemy’s ignorance. Had the allies upon this occasion been more accurate in keeping to their time-table, and somewhat more rapid in their movements, they would have caught the French commander still under the illusion that there was no danger, save from the north, and would have succeeded in cutting off and destroying the main French force by getting in all together between Courtrai and Lille. For at that same moment, the early hours before daybreak of the 17th, the allies had begun their movement.
PART V
THE TERRAIN
The terrain over which the plan of the allies was to be tested must next be grasped if we are to understand the causes which led to its ultimate failure.
That terrain is most conveniently described as an oblong standing up lengthways north and south, and corresponding to the sketch map overleaf. That oblong has a base of twenty miles from east to west, a length from north to south of thirty-five.
These dimensions are sufficient to show upon what a scale the great plan of the allies for cutting off Souham at Courtrai was designed.
At its south-eastern corner the reader will perceive the town of St. Amand, the furthest point south from which the combined movements of the allies began; while somewhat to the left of its top or northern edge, at the point marked “A,” the northern-most body connected with that plan, the body commanded by Clerfayt, was posted at the origin of the movement.
The object of the whole convergence from the Scheldt on one hand, and from Clerfayt’s northern position upon the other, being to cut off the French forces which lay at and south of Courtrai from Lille, and the main line of the French army, it is evident that the actual fighting and the chances of success or disaster would take place within a smaller interior oblong, which I have also marked upon the sketch map. This smaller or interior oblong measures about sixteen miles at its base by about twenty-five miles in length, and includes all the significant points of the action.
The points marked 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively are the points at which the five columns advancing from the Scheldt valley northward were to find themselves before dawn on the morning of Saturday the 17th of May. We are already acquainted with them. They are Warcoing, Bailleul, Templeuve, Froidmont, and Pont-à-Marcq respectively; while the point marked 6 is Wervicq, from which Clerfayt was to start simultaneously with the five southern columns with the object of meeting his fellows round Tourcoing.
The town of Courtrai will be perceived to lie in the north-eastern angle of this inner oblong, the town of Lille rather below the middle of its western side. In all the country round Courtrai, and especially to the south of it, within the triangle X Y Z, lay the mass of Souham’s command of 40,000 men. There were many posts, of course, scattered outside that triangle, and connecting Courtrai with Lille; but the links were weak, and the main force was where I have indicated it to be.
A large body of French troops being encamped just under the walls of Lille at B (by which letter I mark Sainghin camp), and that fortress also possessing a garrison, the plan of cutting both these off from the 40,000 French that lay in the country near Courtrai involved getting the main part of the allies up from these points of departure on the south, and Clerfayt’s body down from its point of departure on the north to meet upon the line drawn between Lille and Courtrai. Upon this line (which also roughly corresponds to the only main road between the two cities) may be perceived, lying nearer Lille than the centre of such line, the small town of Tourcoing and the village of Mouveaux. It was upon these two points that four of the five southern columns were to converge northward, the second and third column reaching them first, the fourth and fifth marching up from the left in aid; and it was also, of course, upon these two points that Clerfayt was to march southward from the post at Wervicq, that had been given him as his point of departure before dawn upon that Saturday morning. If everything went perfectly, the great mass of the allied army should have found itself, by noon of Saturday the 17th, as I have said, astraddle of the Lille-Courtrai road, and effectively cutting off the French troops to the north.
What was the nature of the wide countryside over which these various movements were to take place?
It was part of that great plain of Flanders which stretches from the River Scheldt almost unbroken to the Straits of Dover and the North Sea. In the whole of the great oblong represented by my sketch map there is hardly a point 150 feet above the water level of the main river valleys, while the great mass of that territory is diversified by no more than very broad and very shallow rolls of land, the crests of which are sometimes and exceptionally as much as fifty feet above the troughs, but the greater part thirty, twenty, or even less. Here and there an isolated hummock shows upon the landscape, but the general impression of one who walks across from the valley of the Lys to that of the Scheldt is of a flat, monotonous land in which one retains no memory of ascent or descent, and in which the eye but rarely perceives, and that only from specially chosen points, any wide horizon.
To-day the greater part of this country suffers from the curse of industrialism and repeats—of course, with far less degradation—the terrible aspect of our own manufacturing towns. Roubaix and Tourcoing in particular are huge straggling agglomerations of cotton-spinners and their hands. A mass of railways and tramways cut the countryside, and the evil presence of coal-smoke mars it everywhere: at least within the region of Lille, Tourcoing, and Roubaix.
In May 1794, though a considerable industry had begun to grow up in Lille itself, the wide, open countryside round the town was entirely agricultural. Much of it was what soldiers call “blind” country: that is, it was cut up into fields with numerous hedges; there were long farm walls and a great number of small watercourses fringed with trees. But, on the other