The Historical Works of Hilaire Belloc. Hilaire Belloc

Emperor had determined to return to Vienna. The Allied army was indeed still left upon that front, but the French continued to pour up against it. It was again their numbers that brought about the next and the final victory.

      Far off, upon the east of that same line, the army which is famous in history and in song as that of the Sambre et Meuse was violently attempting to cross the Sambre and to turn the line of the Allies. Coburg reinforced his right opposite the French left, but numbers had begun to bewilder him. The enthusiasm of Saint-Just, the science of Carnot, decided victory at this eastern end of the line.

      Six times the passage of the Sambre had failed. Reinforcements continued to reach the army, and the seventh attempt succeeded.

      Charleroi, which is the main fortress blocking the passage of the Sambre at this place, could be, and was, invested when once the river was crossed by the French. It capitulated in a week. But the evacuation of Charleroi was but just accomplished when Coburg, seventy thousand strong, appeared in relief of the city.

      Showing effect of Ypres, Charleroi and Fleurus in wholly throwing back the Allies in June 1794.

      Ypres captured on June 19 by the French, they march on Oudenarde and pass it on June 25 to 27. Meanwhile Charleroi has also surrendered to the French, and when, immediately afterwards, the Austrians try to relieve it, they are beaten at Fleurus and retire on Brussels.

      Thus the English at Tournai and all the Allied Forces at Condé, Valenciennes, Landrecies, and Mons are imperilled and must surrender or retire.

      The plateau above the town where the great struggle was decided, is known as that of Fleurus, and it was upon the 26th of June that the armies were there engaged. Never before had forces so equal permitted the French any success. It had hitherto been the ceaseless requisitioning of men to supply their insufficient training and command, which had accomplished the salvation of the country. At Fleurus, though there was still some advantage on the French side, the numbers were more nearly equal.

      The action was not determined for ten hours, and on the French centre and left was nearly lost, when the Reserves' and Marceau's obstinacy in front of Fleurus village itself at last decided it.

      The consequences of the victory were final. As the French right advanced from Fleurus the French left advanced from Ypres, and the centre became untenable for the Allies. The four French fortresses which the enemy still garrisoned in that Belgian "belt" of which I have spoken, were invested and re-captured. By the 10th of July the French were in Brussels, the English were beaten back upon Holland, the Austrians retreating upon the Rhine, and the continuous success of the revolutionary armies was assured.

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      While these things were proceeding upon land, however, there had appeared a factor in the war which modern desire for comfort and, above all, for commercial security has greatly exaggerated, but which the student will do well to note in its due proportion. This factor was the military weakness of France at sea.

      In mere numbers the struggle was entered upon with fleets in the ratio of about two to one, while to the fleet of Great Britain, already twice as large as its opponent, must be added the fleets of the Allies. But numbers did not then, nor will they in the future, really decide the issue of maritime war. It was the supremacy of English gunnery which turned the scale. This triumphant superiority was proved in the battle of the 1st of June, 1794.

      The English fleet under Lord Howe attacked the French fleet which was waiting to escort a convoy of grain into Brest; the forces came in contact upon the 28th of May, and the action was a running one of three days.

      Two examples must suffice to prove how determining was the superiority of the British fire. The Queen Charlotte, in the final action, found herself caught between the Montagne and the Jacobin. We have the figures of the losses during the duel of these two flagships. The Queen Charlotte lost forty-two men in the short and furious exchange, the Montagne alone three hundred. Again, consider the total figures. The number of the crews on both sides was nearly equal, but their losses were as eleven to five. It cannot be too often repeated that the initial advantage which the English fleet gained in the great war, which it maintained and increased as that war proceeded, and which it made absolute at Trafalgar, was an advantage mainly due to the guns.

      The reader must not expect in a sketch which ends with the fall of Robespierre any treatise, however short, upon the effect of sea power in the revolutionary wars. It has of late years been grossly exaggerated, the reaction which will follow this exaggeration may as grossly belittle it. It prevented the invasion of England, it permitted the exasperation and wearing out of the French forces in the Peninsula. But it could not have determined the fate of Napoleon. That was determined by his Russian miscalculation and by his subsequent and consequent defeat at Leipsic.

      Upon the early success of the Revolution and the resulting establishment of European democracy, with which alone these pages deal, sea power was of no considerable effect.

      FOOTNOTES:

      6. Incidentally it should be noted how true it is that this supreme military quality is a matter of organisation rather than of the physical power of troops; in the Napoleonic wars the marching power of the English troops was often proved exceptional, and perhaps the greatest of all feats accomplished by a small body was that of the Light Brigade marching to the succour of Wellington at Talavera.

7. I must not, in fairness to the reader, neglect the great mass of opinion, from Jomini to Mr. Fortescue's classic work upon the British Army, which lays it down that the Allies had but to mask the frontier fortresses and to advance their cavalry rapidly along the Paris road. Historical hypothesis can never be more than a matter of judgment, but I confess that this view has always seemed to me to ignore—as purely military historians and especially foreign ones might well ignore—the social condition of "'93." Cavalry is the weakest of all arms with which to deal with sporadic, unorganised, but determined resistance. To pass through the densely populated country of the Paris road may be compared to the forcing of an open town, and cavalry can never be relied upon for that. As for the army moving as a whole without a perfect security in its communications, the matter need not even be discussed; and it must further be remembered that, the moment such an advance began, an immediate concentration from the north would have fallen upon the ill-guarded lines of supply. It may be taken that Coburg knew his business when he sat down before this, the last of the fortresses.