Part I: Introduction

By dawn on 9 September York had withdrawn ten miles, and although forced to abandon the siege train for lack of transport, the army had escaped from being surrounded. It is fair to state that although the operation was a failure, scarcely any blame may be attached to the Duke. As Richard Glover has remarked, "everything required of the commander in the field was brilliantly performed," and it is clear that the Duke had done his utmost to ensure the success of the siege.

He was nevertheless greatly disappointed at the failure, and wrote to the Prince of Wales "I confess I am exceedingly hurt at having been obliged to retire from before Dunkirk. However, being convinced that it was not owing to my own fault, and that I was only passive in that business, I bear it with all the philosophy and resignation I am master of."

Far from blaming him for the failure, his army recognised that the fault lay with the home government. The Duke had reached the coast on the day appointed for the arrival of the siege train, and, as he wrote to the King "to my great astonishment and disappointment I found no one ship arrived." The delay caused by the Government in sending out the requisite materials was solely responsible for the failure at Dunkirk, despite the fact that Dundas had requested advice on what artillery to prepare for the siege in late April, and Murray had furnished him with the details in early May, over three months before the town was invested. As Abercromby's biographer has stated, "the plan of the English Cabinet was bad, and the means that ought to have been provided by the Minister for its execution were criminally defective." The naval force, at Dundas' admission so essential to the success of the operation, arrived only on 10 September, the day after the Duke had retreated, and a full seventeen days after Dunkirk had been invested. (20)

OSTEND

A further example of the hindrances imposed on the Duke's army, caused by inappropriate orders from the Government, concerned Ostend. Despite the failure to secure one channel port, Dundas had every intention to do all in his power to ensure the safety of Ostend. Although Dundas gave as his reason the need for a port of supply for the Duke's army, it is clear that he was primarily concerned with the security of property belonging to British merchants, and the retention of their support for the Government and the war, rather than the practical problems associated- with detaching troops to serve as a garrison. He had recommended the occupation of Ostend in mid March 1793, and subsequently wrote to Murray in May of "the most serious consequences" of a French attack on the town. His concern was so great that his anxious enquiries as to it defence formed a part of nearly every despatch sent to York's Adjutant-General between May and July 1793.

After his failed attempts to persuade the Austrians or Dutch to garrison the town, Dundas despatched on officer of Engineers, Captain Mann, to supervise the defence works. This officer was closely followed by some artillery for the defences, neither of which had been requested by the Duke or Murray. By the middle of July, Dundas was expressing concern at the expense of putting the town in an adequate state of defence, leaving the Duke no option but to reverse Dundas' policy and cancel any further work on repairing the fortifications, an operation he had so recently been ordered to perform.

Although repeatedly advised by the Duke of York and Murray that Ostend had never been threatened from attack, and was purely a liability, Dundas persisted in his exhortations for its defence. Murray finally lost patience with the Secretary of War in late October 1793 having recently received Dundas' latest set of instructions for the conduct of the campaign.

He wrote, "I cannot avoid putting you in mind by the way, that the same messenger brought an advice to besiege St. Quentin, an order to keep a body of troops at Ostend, & strong exhortations against dividing or detaching from the armies."

What Murray could also have pointed out that to besiege St. Quentin would have required the further division of the army into an investing and covering force, as at Dunkirk.

He concluded, "the paper in question seems to me to be like most others written at a distance from the scene of action, specious in the general principle, & inapplicable to the case in question." Although perfectly correct, it is very likely that the expression of such home truths were in part responsible for the dismissal of Murray at the end of the 1793 campaign. (21)

Despite this clear statement of views regarding the impracticality of defending the port, Dundas felt no hesitation in continuing to despatch orders for the defence of Ostend to Murray's successor, Sir James Craig. General Stewart informed Dundas in May 1794 that "notwithstanding any alarms you may have heard about this place, I never had the least apprehension of its danger, otherwise you may depend upon it, I should have informed you."

Less than six weeks after receiving this information, Dundas' fears overcame him once more, and he sent Lord Moira with several thousand men to the port. With slightly more restraint than Murray had shown the previous year, Moira informed the Minister that the place was totally indefensible, and that he planned to march the troops under his command to join the Duke's army. In fact, Ostend was never even in danger of attack for nearly eighteen months, between March 1793 and July 1794, and Dundas' worries over its security had generated no small degree of ill-feeling as well as inconvenience, due to the detachment of troops to form a garrison. (22)

THE ALLIES

Unfortunately for the Duke, much of his strategy was also dictated by his allies, and principally by the Austrians, whose troops composed the great majority of those on the frontiers of northern France. This was especially the case in the campaign of 1794, when, at the insistence of the British Government, York's command was swopped from the coastal flank to the centre of the allied position, so that he could be more under Coburg's immediate direction. Dundas had attempted to secure the Duke's recall in early 1794, as he persisted in his opinion that the Dunkirk failure had been the Duke's, and not his own.

As a compromise, Dundas had agreed to the new allied dispositions, as well as the secondment of Austrian troops to the Anglo-German contingent, in order to effectively prohibit any independent operation on the Duke's behalf. Nevertheless, even in 1793 when he was able to act with greater independence, the forces commanded by the Duke of York were too small for him to attempt to conduct his own operations away from the main body of the army.

As General David Dundas wrote to the Prince of Wales at the end of September 1794, "from our numbers and situation we could only be considered as a satellite influenced by the movements of the greater Austrian body". (23) Although the British were initially impressed with the Austrian troops, their cavalry was reputed to be the finest in Europe, there were growing signs of alarm at the Austrian tactics. The `cordon system', though dear to the Austrian heart, resulted in the distribution of small numbers of men over a very wide area, in an attempt to prevent the enemy approaching from any direction whatever. Consequently, Coburg was rarely able to concentrate his forces for a decisive blow at one particular point.

Even worse, from the British viewpoint, were the over-complicated plans of attack formulated by the Austrian staff (headed by Major-General Mack), which relied on the co-ordination of many different columns of troops with orders to achieve complete encirclement of the enemy. Although partially successful at Famars on 23 May 1793, in that the French were forced from their position, the difficulty of timing the arrival of the various columns at given points precluded a pursuit and led to the escape of the enemy. (24)

The Grand Old Duke of York Part II: 1793-4

The Retreat from Dunkirk
Battle of Tourcoing and Recall
Battle of Linselles: 18 August 1793
Footnotes

More Duke of York British Involvement in the Low Countries, 1793-4 (NN # 4)

Introduction
British Expeditionary Force
Strategy and Siege of Dunkirk