The Great British Battles. Hilaire Belloc
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few thousand Hanoverians, under Bussche, were to take up their position at Warcoing, just upon and across that river. Two miles further south, Otto, with a larger Austrian force accompanied by certain English cavalry (the numbers will follow), was to concentrate at Bailleul.
The Duke of York’s own large force, which had been at Tournai for over a week, was to go forward a little and concentrate at Templeuve. Five miles to the south of Templeuve, at Froidmont, a column, somewhat larger than the Duke of York’s, under Kinsky, was to concentrate.
There were thus to be concentrated upon the south of the French wedge four separate bodies under orders to advance northward together.
The first, under Bussche, was only about 4000 strong, the Hanoverians and Prussians; the second, under Otto, from about 10,000 strong; the third, under the Duke of York, of much the same strength, or a little less; and the fourth, under Kinsky, some 11,000.
These four numbered nearly, or quite, 35,000 men, less than the “nearly 40,000” at which certain French historians have estimated their strength.
To these four columns (which I will beg the reader to remember by their numbers of first, second, third, and fourth, as well as by the names of their commanders, Bussche, Otto, York, and Kinsky) a fifth must be added, the appreciation of whose movements and failure is the whole explanation of the coming battle.
The fifth column was a body of no less than 16,000 men coming from the main Austrian body far south, and ordered to be at St. Amand upon the Scheldt somewhat before the concentration of the other four columns, and to advance from St. Amand to Pont-à-Marcq. Upon reaching Pont-à-Marcq this fifth column would be in line with the other four at Warcoing, Bailleul, Templeuve, and Froidmont, and ready to take its part in the great forward movement towards the north.
In order to appreciate the way in which the issue was bound to depend upon this fifth column, I must now detail the orders given to all six, the five columns in the valley of the Scheldt, and the sixth body, under Clerfayt, north of the Lys; for it is these orders which constitute the soul of the plan.
Bussche, with his small body of 4000 Hanoverians, the first column, had the task of “holding” the apex of the French wedge when the attack should begin. That is, it was his task to do no more with his inferior forces than send one portion up the road towards Courtrai, so that the advanced French troops there should be engaged while another part of his small command should attack the little town of Mouscron, which the French held, of course, for it was within their wedge of occupation. It was obviously not hoped that this little body could do more than keep the French occupied, prevent their falling back towards Lille, and perhaps make them believe that the main attack was coming from Bussche’s men.
The second column, under Otto, was to advance upon Tourcoing, in those days a little town, now a great manufacturing city.
The third column, that under the Duke of York, was to march side by side with Otto’s column, and to make for Mouveaux, a village upon a level with Tourcoing upon this line of advance, and to be reached by marching through Roubaix (now also a great manufacturing town, but then a small place).
None of these advances, Bussche’s, Otto’s, or York’s, was of any considerable length. The longest march through which any of these three columns had to fight its way was that of the Duke of York from Templeuve to Mouveaux, and even this was not eight miles.
The fourth column, under Kinsky, had a harder task and a longer march. It was to carry Bouvines, which was in the hands of the French and nearly seven miles from Froidmont (Kinsky’s point of departure), and when it had done this it was to turn to the north with one part of its force in order to shelter the march of the Duke of York from attacks by the French troops near Lille, while another part of its force was to join with the fifth column and march up with it until both came upon a level with York and Otto in the neighbourhood of Tourcoing and Mouveaux.
Now it was to this fifth column, the 16,000 men or more under the Arch-Duke Charles, that the great work of the day was assigned. From Pont-à-Marcq they must attack a great French body quite equal to their own in numbers, even when part of Kinsky’s force had joined them, which French force lay in the camp at Sainghin. They must thrust this force back towards Lille, pour up northward, and arrive in support of Otto and York by the time these two commanders were respectively at Tourcoing and Mouveaux.
In other words, the fifth column, that of the Arch-Duke Charles, was asked to make an advance of nearly fourteen miles, involving heavy fighting in its first part, and yet to synchronise with columns who had to advance no more than five miles or seven.
Supposing all went well, Clerfayt—crossing the Lys at Wervicq at the same hour which saw the departure of the five southern columns from Warcoing, Bailleul, Templeuve, Froidmont, and Pont-à-Marcq respectively, was to advance southward from the river towards Mouveaux and Tourcoing, a distance of some seven miles, while the others were advancing on the same points from the south.
If the time-table were accurately kept and this great combined movement all fitted in, Clerfayt would join hands with the second, third, fourth, and fifth columns somewhere in the neighbourhood of Tourcoing and Mouveaux, a great force of over 60,000 men would lie between the French troops at Lille and Souham’s 40,000 in the “advanced wedge,” and those 40,000 thus isolated were, in a military sense, destroyed.
Such being the mechanism or map of the scheme, we must next inquire the exact dates and hours upon which the working of the whole was planned.
The Duke of York, as we have seen when he was arranging the business and writing to Clerfayt and the Emperor, had talked of moving upon the 14th, by which presumably he meant organising the attack on the 14th, and setting the first columns in motion from their places of rendezvous in the early hours of that day, Wednesday, before dawn.
If that was in his mind, it shows him to have been a prompt and energetic man, and to have had a full appreciation of the place which surprise occupied in the chances of success. If, indeed, the Emperor got the Duke of York’s message in time on the 12th, if he had at once accepted the plan, and had with Napoleonic rapidity ordered the bulk of his forces (which were still right away south and east) to move, he might have had them by forced marches upon and across the Scheldt, and ready to execute the plan by the 14th, or at any rate by the morning of the 15th.
But from what we know of the family to which the Duke of York belonged, it is exceedingly improbable that this younger son of George III. had, on this one occasion only, any lightning in his brain; and even if he did appreciate more or less the importance of rapid action, the Emperor did not appreciate it. He committed the two contradictory faults of delaying the movement and of asking too much marching of his men, and it was not until the morning of the Wednesday, May the 14th, that the bulk of the Austrian army, which still lay in the Valenciennes and Landrecies district, broke up for its northward march, to arrive at the rendezvous beyond the Scheldt, and to carry out the plan.2
It was not until Thursday the 15th of May that the Emperor joined the Duke of York at Tournai, and very late upon the same day the Arch-Duke Charles had brought up the main body of the Austrian forces from the south to the town of St. Amand.
We shall see later what a grievous error it was to demand so violent an effort from the men of the Arch-Duke Charles’ command. From Landrecies itself to St. Amand is 30 miles as the crow flies; and though, of course, the mass of the troops which the Arch-Duke Charles had been thus commanded to bring up northward in such haste were most of them well on the right side of Landrecies when the order to advance reached them, yet the average march undertaken by his men in little more than twenty-four hours was a full twenty miles, and some of his units must have covered nearer thirty. I will not delay further on this point here; its full importance will appear when we come to talk of the action itself.
The Arch-Duke Charles being only as far as St. Amand on the evening of Thursday the 15th, and his rendezvous, that of the fifth column in the great plan, being Pont-à-Marcq, a further good sixteen miles north-westward, it was evident that the inception of that plan and the simultaneous advance of all the five columns from their five starting-points of Warcoing, Bailleul, Templeuve, Froidmont, and Pont-à-Marcq, could not begin even upon the 16th. It