Flanders Campaign

Flanders Campaign
Date 1793–1794 Location Largely in Netherlands, Belgium and Northern France Result French victory. Austrian Netherlands annexed to France. Batavian Republic created as a French satellite.
Belligerents
France	Austria Great Britain  Dutch Republic Hanover
Commanders
Charles Pichegru Joseph Souham Jean Moreau Jean-Baptiste Jourdan	Prince of Saxe-Coburg Archduke Charles Mack von Lieberich Duke of York William Harcourt

The Flanders Campaign took place in 1793 and 1794 during the French Revolutionary War. An alliance of states led by Britain and Austria, launched an attempt to invade France and defeat the French Revolution. An allied army was despatched to fight the French Revolutionaries in Flanders. After several initial victories, they failed to dislodge the French garrison at Dunkirk and then were forced to retreat in the face of a massive French counter-attack.

The troops withdrew to southern Holland where an agreement was attempted made to evacuate these forces entirely. When this broke down the British withdrew into Hanover, from where they were eventually returned to Britain. Following their departure the victorious French pushed on to Amsterdam and replaced the Dutch Republic with a satellite state the Batavian Republic in 1795.

Background

While Austria had declared war on France in 1792 the British had been relatively unconcerned by the French Revolution. Only after the execution of the French King Louis XVI in 1793 did they finally go to war with the new French Republic joining the growing number of states in the First Coalition.

The French occupation of Antwerp in the Austrian Netherlands undermined British security as a French invasion force could be launched far easier from there than any existing French base.^[1] The British Prime Minister, William Pitt, therefore decided to launch an expedition to Flanders to eject the French with the long-term goal of pushing south to Paris and ending the French Revolution.

Austria and Prussia broadly supported this aim, but were both extremely short of money. Britain agreed to pay a million pounds to put a large Austrian army in the field, while despatching around 20,000 British troops under the King's younger son the Duke of York to take part in the campaign.^[2] The Austrians were under the command of Prince Josias of Coburg, who took on overall control of operations as he was the most experienced of the Allied Generals.

Campaign

Initially just 1,500 troops landed with York in February 1793. The Austrians already looked to be winning the war, following victories at Aldenhoven, Neerwinden and Louvais.^[3] France was facing attacks on many different fronts, and few expected the war to last long.^[4] A number of border fortresses such as Conde and Mainz were besieged and taken, and the Allies began to push into France itself supported by a Prussian offensive through the Rhineland.

Dunkirk

After some initial successes, York laid siege to the French port of Dunkirk which was considered vital for victory. Pitt hoped to use it as a bargaining counter at any future peace negotiations.^[3] This led to conflict with the Austrian commander, Prince Coburg, who would have preferred these forces to accompany his thrust towards Cambrai.

York's forces turned out to be woefully ill-prepared for a protracted siege, and hadn't brought any heavy siege guns with them. The Battle of Hondshoote forced them to withdraw, and abandon all their siege equipment. The British withdrew northwards towards Brussels, but managed to salvage the situation thanks to support from the Austrians. Reinforcements had to be shipped in from Britain to stop the Allied line form collapsing completely that winter.^[5]

By now the allied forces numbered around 300,000, with 40,000 British troops.^[6] York won a morale boosting victory at the Battle of Beaumont in April 1794, earning particular praise for leading the cavalry charge that broke the French.^[7] Other notable victories included Viconge and Lincelles.^[8]

French offensive

The Battle of Tourcoing proved a major turning point as the Allies failed to cope with the scale of the devastating French counter-attack

In May 1794, the French launched a massive counter-attack. The Allies attempted to check them at the Battle of Tourcoing. It proved disastrous, with the Allies losing over 5,000 men in a single day. After this the Austrian commitment to the war increasingly evaporated. They had suffered a number of defeats to the French on the Italian front, and wanted to withdraw their army from the Low Countries to try and counter a potential French attack on Austria itself.^[9] Another major defeat at Battle of Fleurus saw the Austrians break off from the rest of the Allies and start retreating East towards the Rhineland, all but abandoning their century long control of the Austrian Netherlands.

The loss of Austrian support led to the collapse of the campaign^{[citation needed]}. None of the other coalition partners had sufficient forces in the theatre to check the French advance, and so they began to retreat northwards, abandoning Brussels. The French continually harried them, catching up with them as they crossed the Dutch border. The British managed to make a fighting retreat at the Battle of Boxtel.

Fall of the Dutch Republic

The French had by Autumn taken Eindhoven, and then paused their pursuit on the River Waal. York was recalled and replaced by General Harcourt.^[10] By this stage the Prussians were in peace talks with the French, and Austria looked to be about to follow suit. Pitt angrily rejected any suggestion of negotiating with France^[10], but the British position in Holland looked increasingly insecure.^[11]

As the rivers froze solid, the French resumed their advance and on 19 January 1795 reached Amsterdam, which city by that time had already been taken over by Dutch revolutionaries. The stadtholder, William V, Prince of Orange fled to exile in England, and Dutch revolutionaries, who had been part of the invading French forces under general Herman Willem Daendels, proclaimed the Batavian Republic.^[12]

British Evacuation

The British continued their retreat northwards, by now ill-equipped and poorly clothed.^[13] By Spring 1795 they had left Dutch territory entirely, and reached the port of Bremen, a part of Hanover. There they waited for orders from Britain. Pitt, realising that any imminent success on the continent was virtually impossible, at last gave the order to withdrew back to Britain, taking with them the remnants of the Dutch, German and Austrian troops that had retreated with them. York's army had lost more than 20,000 men in the two years of fighting.^[14]

Aftermath

The Duke of York led British forces during the campaign and it is with him it is often popularly associated.

For the British and the Austrians the campaign proved disastrous. Austria had lost one of its most valuable territories the Austrian Netherlands (largely constituting modern Belgium) while the British had lost their closest ally on the European continent - the Dutch Republic. It would be more than twenty years before a friendly pro-British government was installed in Amsterdam again.

York was widely portrayed as an incompetent dilettante, whose lack of military knowledge had led to disaster.^[15] The campaign led to his widespread ridicule, although it did not stop from holding future military commands. The campaign demonstrated the numerous weaknesses of the British army, and a progamme of reform was planned. Ironically this was placed under the command of the Prince Frederick, Duke of York in his new role as Commander-in-Chief^{[citation needed]}.

Both the British and the Austrians abandoned the Low Countries as their major theatre of operations, a drastic swich in strategy as it had previously been their main theatre in other European wars. Britain instead decided to use its maritime power to launch a series of strikes against French colonies in the West Indies. The Austrians now made the Italian front their main line of defence. Britain did briefly attempt to launch a later invasion of the Netherlands in 1799, again under the Duke of York, but this swiftly floundered and they were forced to conclude the Convention of Alkmaar and withdraw again.^[16]

Legacy

One of the most lasting features of the campaign is probably the nursery rhyme The Grand Old Duke of York, though there remains some considerable debate whether the rhyme refers to the later 1799 campaign when York again led a British army into the Low Countries.^[15]

The future Duke of Wellington learnt much from this campaign, in which he had served as a young Lieutenant Colonel. As commander of the Thirty Third foot, it was he who had enabled the British to escape largely unharmed at the Battle of Boxtel.^[17] He later drew on these experiences during his own later more sucssesful campaigns in India and Spain.

The term Tommy Atkins, usually shortened to Tommy, used to describe British soldiers is often reported to have its origins in this campaign^{[citation needed]}.

References

1. ^ Lambert p.30
2. ^ Rodger p.426
3. ^ ^{a b} Harvey p.126
4. ^ Harvey p.119
5. ^ Harvey p.130
6. ^ Harvey p.133
7. ^ Urban p.99
8. ^ Harvey p.135
9. ^ Urban p.99-100
10. ^ ^{a b} Harvey p.139
11. ^ Holmes p.31
12. ^ Schama, pp. 178-192
13. ^ Holmes p.29
14. ^ Harvey p.140
15. ^ ^{a b} Urban p.98
16. ^ Harvey p.333-34
17. ^ Holmes p.28-32

Bibliography

• Harvey, Robert. War of Wars: The Epic Struggle Between Britain and France 1789-1815. London, 2007
• Hague, William. Pitt the Younger:
• Hibbert, Christopher George III: A Personal History. Penguin Books, 1999.
• Holmes, Richard. Wellington: The Iron Duke. Harper Collins, 2003.
• Lambert, Andrew. Nelson: Britannia's God of War. Faber and Faber, 2005.
• Rodger, N.A.M. Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815. London, 2007
• Scarrow, Simon. The Dutch Republic., London, 1993
• Schama, S. Patriots and Liberators. Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813, New York, Vintage books, 1977 ISBN 0679729496
• Urban, Mark. Generals: Ten British Commanders Who Shaped the World. Faber and Faber, 2005.