BRITISH CAMPAIGNS IN FLANDERS.•
Mit. EORTESCUE'S fascinating book on our campaigns in Flanders from the days of William JII. to those of the Duke of York appearq at the right moment when our thoughts are once more centred on the cockpit of Europe. It is not a new book, in the technical sense, for it is made tip of the Flemish chapters, in the period from 1690 to 1794, in the author's g; eat history of the British Army. But as few people, unfortunately, read histories that run to many volumes, we are sure that Mr. Fortescue's boOk will be a revelation to most readers, and that some account of its contents will be welcome.
The first chapter describes William unlucky but not inglorious campaigns, in which the valour of the English and Scottish regi- ments almost counterbalanced the blunders of their King and the ill- will or treachery of the Dutch Generals, and in which Sterne's Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim learned the art of siege war. The battle of Steenkirk on July 23rd, 1692, might have been a great
• British Campaigns in Flanders, 1600-1794: being Estrada front " A History of the British Army." By J. W. Ratcacue. London : Macmillan and Co. Oa. N. ncl.1
victory had not Count Solmes, the Dutch commander, declined to reinforce the advanced guard, which with twelve battalions charged and ahnost routed the fifty-three• battalions of the enemy. "13—n. the English," growled Solmea ; "if they are so fond of fighting, let them have a bellyful." Corporal James Butler, alias Trim, who was present, never forgave Solmes for deliberately sacrificing the British infantry : " Them was Cutts, ontinued the Corporal, clapping the fore- finger of his right 'hand upon the thumb of his left and counting round his hand—there was Cntt's, Maokay's, Angus's, Graham's, and Leven's, all cut to pieces ; and so had the English life-guards, too, had it not been for some regiments upon the right, who morched up boldly to their relief, and received the enemy's fire in their faces, before any one of their own platoons discharged a musket. They'll go to heaven for it, added Trim. . . . Trim is right, said my uncle Toby, nodding to Yorick ; he's perfectly right."
A' year later Marshal Luxemburg had his revenge on William at Landen, or Neerwindon, after a most stubborn fight in which the Allies " had at any rate dismayed every Frenchman on the field but Luxemburg." The hated Solmes was killed—or, as Corporal Trim put it, " he had his foot shot off for hie pains "—at Landen, and Trim himself was lamed. Two years later, in 1695, King William besieged and captured Namur, which the French had taken in 14392, and made the corner-stone of a• defensive line extending. to the sea. It was in this siege, as Mr. Fortescue does not fail' to note, that Captain Tobias Shandy received his wound, in the attack on the counterecarp before the St Nicholas Gate, and was thus led to beguile his leisure with the study of fortification. Such was the war in which " our armies swore terribly in Flanders," not for the first or for the last time.
The next six chapters are devoted to Marlborough's campaigns, and to his famous victories of Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet. The genius of " Corporal John " was never better displayed than in his last campaign of 1711, when, with greatly inferior forces, he' outmanoeuvred his very able opponent Villars and forced the famine lines between Etaples and Namur, which, Villars boasted, would be' Marlborough's ne pins ultra. Marlborough resolved to cross the flooded Senses at Arleux, due east of Arms, and to besiege Bouchain. He devised a scheme for making Vinare demolish his own works covering the Arleux causeway. First he attacked and captured• Arleux. He then greatly strengthened the defences, left a week garrison, and marched his army away to the west of Arras. Villain also moved westward behind his lines, but detached a force to re- capture Arleux. To make quite sure, Villain had the Arleux works. razed to the ground. Marlborough professed great annoyance, and ordered a general attack on the French lines- west of Arras, where success was impossible. But while Villars was hurriedly concentrating his forces at the threatened point, the British garrison• at Douay sallied out, crossed the Sensee at Arleux, and occupied the French linos. Meanwhile the army, starting at night, made a forced march' of forty miles in eighteen hours to Arleux, and took up its position south of the Sensee. When Villain realized what was hap- pening, he put himself at the head of the Household Cavalry and galloped off so furiously that he outdistanced all but a hundred of his troopers. But he was too late. The British cavalry had barred the road to Arleux, and Villain, blundering into our outposts,, lost his escort and escaped capture by a miracle. Marlborough's plan had succeeded, and' he ended his last campaign by taking Bouchain while Villain looked on, powerless to stop him. The next episode is that of Fontenoy in 1745, followed by the disaster at Roucoux in 1746, and the hard-fought action at Lauffeld outside Maestricht in 1747, where Marshal Saxe beat us for the third time. Never was there a more amazing feat of arms than the advance of. the British centre at Fontenoy, in parade order, with shouldered' arms, up share slope of half-a-mile, while the French batteries played on the silent ranks. " Every English account agrees that the French fired first," and that the courteous refusal of the French Guards to take the advantage is a pleasant legend. Having arrived within thirty yards of the enemy's line, and having received the French volley, the British at last opened fire—" ceaseless, rolling,, infernal tire " before which neither infantry nor cavalry could stand. Had our Dutch-allies on the left made a serious effort, had Ingoldsby on the right obeyed his orders to take the flanking battery, Fontenoy would have been a great victory. As it was, the centre boat off for a time even the famous Irish Brigade—" made up not of Irish only but of Scots and English also, desperate characters who went into action with a rope round their necks and-would fight like devils "— and at last retired in good order because it was too weak to push its advantage without support.
The remaining half of the book is given to the unfortunate cam- paigns of the Duke of York in- 1793 and 1794, fought for the most part over familiar ground round Nieuport and between Lille and Tourney, and ending with a disastrous retreat through Holland. No portion of Mr. Fortescue's history deserves closer study than- this, for its illustration of the truth that politicians should not try
to direct a campaign against the advice of expert soldiers. The Duke of York was not a great General, but he was intelligent and
willing, and cannot be fairly blamed for the misfortunes which befell . him. The culprit was Dundee, Pi tt's friend and colleague, who was un- questionably the worst War Minister—and- that' is- saying much'—
whomthis country over had. Dundee, in whom Pitt placed im- plicit confidence;: thought himself' a master of strategy, and, as a result, nearly destroyed the British Army in Flanders. He was always interfering with the Chief of Staff, he issued in rapid succes- sion the most incoherent and contradictory orders, and he expected to achieve great results with absurdly- small fortes employed at various points widely separated from one another. The Austrians, with whom we co-operated, were good troops under very bad Generals, typified by Mack, whose theory of war, not yet extinct by any means, " assigned as the first object not the annihilation of the enemy's force in the field, but the possession of certain geo- graphical points: which were called Strategic Objects." Revolu- tionary France owed more to Dundee and the Austrian commanders than to her ill-trained levies in the critical year 1793. The blunders of the Allies gave the French time to organize and school their new armies, which were then irresistible. Mr. Fortescue's detailed and caustic exposure of Dundee as War Minister is excellent reading, and the moral is by no means obsolete.
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