The Years of Endurance (59 page)

But for four days Abercromby made no move. He was short of provisions and water and without waggons, horses and artillery. It was all he could do to get supplies up from the Helder. The landscape, soaked in rain, seemed inhospitable and unfriendly, and, owing to the way in which the expedition had been hurried, he was without accurate intelligence of either the country or the forces against him. Two brigades of ex-Militiamen who landed from England on the 28th only seemed to increase the difficulties. His officers were young and inexperienced. In the whole of his force only the Guards
and 92nd Highlanders had had a
ny serious experience of Continental warfare.

Opposed to the expedition from the first, Abercromby did not feel justified in pushing ahead with untried troops and without thf*

¹
Moore,
I,
343.

material requisite for a pitched battle. Instead he bivouacked among the sand-dunes, exposed to incessant wind and rain, and waited with Scottish caution until he had collected a few horses and reconnoitred the broader lands to the south of the Marsdiep. Not till September 2nd did he move forward a few miles to a position along the Zype canal between Petten and the Zuyder Zee. Here, with 18,000 men, he entrenched himself to cover the landing of the Duke of York and the main Anglo-Russian armament.

Nor did those with knowledge of military affairs blame him. The King, when the news reached him at Weymouth on September 1 st, wrote that it would be best to follow up the initial success with caution and wait for reinforcements to make the next move decisive. The country was thrilled by the landing, the bloodless capture of the Dutch fleet and the news of Suvorof's victory at Novi: the thought of an early peace made up even for the summer's deluge and ruined crops. Soon the gallant Russians from the Baltic would be emulating among Dutch water-meadows and windmills the exploits of their countrymen in Italy. Meanwhile every day witnessed the departure of more splendid-looking regiments from the great camp on Barham Downs and the arrival of more Militiamen. That the latter were in such a state as to be unable even to turn out for a review which the Prime Min
ister wished to hold after Aber
cromby's victory, worried no one: the eighteenth century expected soldiers to be drunk when they had money in their pockets. And the moment seemed one for legitimate intoxication. Pitt confidently expected that the Army, having freed Holland, would soon be at liberty for a still more glorious operation. For with French Royalists in arms and the combined navies of France and Spain bottled up in Brest, a wonderful possibility floated before British minds. Plans for a new expedition to Brittany were preparing in the Admiralty and War Office, and there was even talk of a Russian landing on the banks of the Seine.
¹

Meanwhile the naval and military commanders in the field continued to wait on events. Not being engaged with
the
enemy, they fell to quarrelling with one another. Precautions, born of earlier experience, had been taken to prevent this: before the expedition sailed Vice-Admiral Mitchell had issued an Order of the Day recommending all under him " to behave with that good

¹
Spencer
Papers,
III,
117-25.

fellowship and cordiality towards the troops they are about to serve with as shall cause them to meet a return of a like esteem, by which they will be mutually endeared to each other and the better enabled to act with zeal and energy in their Sovereign's cause." Such co-operation, he added, could not fail to ensure success.
¹
But by September 4th Mitchell was complaining of Abercromby and Abercromby of Mitchell. The latter—described by St. Vincent as a " bull-necked Centurion "—seemed to think that his own part in the invasion had ended with the surrender of the Dutch fleet. For though the General repeatedly urged him—" in the strongest terms " —to fit out gunboats and use them in the Zuyder Zee against the French right and rear, Mitchell did not even trouble to answer his colleague's letters. The truth is
that
both officers had reached an age when they found it difficult to take the initiative.

General Brune, Commander-in-Chief of the French forces in Holland, had no such difficulty. He was thirty years younger than Abercromby: an active, impulsive man, typical of his country and the Revolution that had made him. He used the breathing-space given him by the cautious invaders to assemble his troops and hurry them into the threatened peninsula north of the Haarlem isthmus. By September 9th he had got together 21,000 men, a force slightly superior to Abercromby's but, being two-thirds of it Dutch, of uncertain sympat
hies. But as Abercromby so unac
countably did nothing, Brune assumed—what the former never seemed to assume—that his foe must have grave difficulties of his own. He therefore attacked him at dawn on the 10th.

In this he erred. All along the line he was repelled with heavy loss. The Militia lads from the English shires, fighting in prepared defensive positions, showed a steady courage worthy of Burrard's Brigade of Guards. The Dutch, aware that their hereditary Prince was in the British lines, took to their heels at the first chance, and the French were forced to retreat. Had Abercromby under his stolid Scottish courage possessed the imagination to realise the effect of his victory on the Dutch mind, he might—with support from Mitchell's gunboats—have been in Amsterdam in two days.

But instead of thinking of Brune's difficulties, which at the moment seemed to that volatile Frenchman wellnigh desperate, Abercromby could think of nothing but his own. Nearly two

¹
Spencer
Papers,
III, 156.

thousand of his men, landed on an inhospitable shore without greatcoats or adequate tent equipment, were sick; fuel, food and water were short; transport hopelessly deficient and communication with the ships constantly interrupted by the surf. The shivering troops could not even obtain spirits, since no
s
utler
had been sent from England. As for the Dutch, all that Abercromby could see were stolid, sullen farmers who lounged about his lines
with
their pipes in dieir mouths like passive spectators of an unpleasant disturbance and chaffered with his commissariat
officers
for their cattle and boats.
¹
They were very unlike the ardent patriots whom the Prince of Orange had painted in such glowing colours before the expedition sailed. " I believe the Prince has been deceived," wrote the old soldier, " in thinking that he has more friends than enemies in this country. If we can advance, every one will be on our side, but there are few who will risk anything."
²
He failed to see that in this he condemned himself.

But Abercromby's period of sole responsibility was nearing an end. On the night
of
September 12th the Duke of York landed and during the next few days 8000 more British arrived and 12,000 Russians. The latter were escorted from the Baltic by Captain Sir Home Popham. They were men of an incredible toughness, " all hoffs, choffs and koffs," who slept on bare decks, lived on boiled grain and quas and even ate
With
relish the tallow which they scraped out of the ships' lanterns and washed down with train oil. On one British frigate the Russian captain, who was much liked for his jovial courage, never took his boots off the whole voyage and spent much of his time sharpening his spear on the ship's grinding-stone, swearing he would sacrifice every Frenchman he met.
³

No attempt was made to use the newcomers in a landing farther down the coast in the French rear—the nightmare that haunted Brunc. But
the
return of Lord Duncan from sick leave and the arrival of Home Popham stimulated Admiral Mitchell to a certain activity. Popham was full of ideas, even bombarding the First Lord
with
them: he was aware, he apologised, that he
was
forward in projects but, since they were sure to be modified
by
steadier

¹
Bunbury, II, 41.

²
Fortescue,
IV,
668.

³
Gardner,
207 ;
Spencer
Papers,
III, 17.

military heads, they could do no harm. Meanwhile he prepared gunboats to harry the French flanks.

The Duke of York was now at the head of an army of more than 40,000 men, three-quarters of them British: as large a force as any Englishmen had commanded on the Continent since Marlborough. But it was understood that, as a constitutional prince, he was to be guided by the advice of his senior Lieutenant-Generals— Abercromby, David Dundas, Pulteney and Lord Chatham. As his strength was nearing its maximum he decided to attack without delay—a resolve which, in view of the purpose of the expedition, his advisers could scarcely challenge—and fight his way to the defile of Holland and thence to Amsterdam. He divided his force into four columns: 12,000 Russians among the North Sea sand-dunes on the right under General D'Hermann, and 12,000 British under Abercromby on the left, with two smaller columns under Dundas and Pulteney in between. For the first time in the war the artillery was to act under a single command, the guns being withdrawn from the battalions and massed in " brigades " or batteries with their own drivers. Among them was one to become famous: the new " Chestnut" Battery.

On the evening of September 18th Abercromby set off to cover the fifteen miles to Hoorn on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, where he was to guard the Allied left and utilise any success won by the main forces to the west. Before dawn on the 19th he had surprised and captured the town. Here his tired men lay down to rest and await events. On the right the Russians, two hours before the scheduled time, had already commenced their attack. Advancing down the road under the sandhills they pushed forward in a solid mass at immense speed, heroically oblivious to their losses. Storming the village of Groat they poured through the enemy's entrenchments and forced their way into Bergen, two miles behind his lines. Had there been a reserve close behind to follow up their success, the battle would have been won by eight in the morning.

But owing to their having started two hours too early, Dundas's column was not yet in position to support them. As soon as they entered the town the Russians, who by this time were little more than a brave mob firing wildly in every direction, lost impetus and began to straggle after plunder. When Brune, throwing in his reserve, counter-attacked, they proved no match for the clever

and experienced French. General D'Hermann was killed, his second-in-command taken .prisoner and the survivors driven back in confusion. Their panic, following hard on their incredible valour of the dawn, communicated itself to the untrained British Militia, and the situation on the right was only saved by the steadiness of the Artillery and Brigade of Guards. When one of the Duke's staff called on a hard-pressed battalion of the First Guards, nearing the end of its physical powers and ammunition, to hold a village, one of the Grenadiers lifted his chin from the muzzle of his rifle and growled: " Give us some more cartridges and we will see what can be done." And they held it.

While Dundas's wearied men struggled to retrieve the Russian debacle, Pulteney's column—of which nothing much had been hoped—was steadily pushing ahead across dykes and canals. By two in the afternoon it had carried the village of Oudkarspel, midway between Bergen and Hoorn. An hour later the Dutch troops facing it began to yield before its steady volleys. Daendels, their commander, was carried away in the flying stream and only narrowly escaped capture. The battle, which had been all but won in the morning and even more nearly lost at noon, trembled again in the balance as the scales tilted towards a British victory. Had Abercromby resumed his march from Hoorn and appeared, as intended in such an event, on the flank of the shattered Dutch at Alkmaar, he might have converted the defeat of the enemy's centre into a rout. But he spent the day resting and waiting for information. The virtual immobilisation of 12,000 British troops a dozen miles from the battlefield robbed the Allies of their numerical superiority. At dusk the Duke of York, shaken by the failure of his right, broke off the battle and recalled Abercromby to his lines.

Such was the Battle of Bergen: " the unfortunate 19th," as Admiral Mitchell described it in an indignant dispatch to the Admiralty. It cost the British 1450 men and the Russians 2600 men and twenty-six guns. The French and Dutch lost sixteen guns and about the same number of men. But as they remained in possession of their lines and the Allies failed to force their way to the defile of Holland, the French claimed the victory. The most serious consequences was the bad feeling roused between Russians and British. The former, forgetting their disregard of the time schedule, attributed their defeat and the loss of their commander solely to their allies' failure to support them. The latter were equally shocked by what they regarded as Russian ill-discipline and barbarity. " The Russians is people," wrote one scandalised Militiaman, " as has not the fear of God before their eyes, for I saw some of them with cheeses and butter and all badly wounded, and in particular one man had an eit day clock on his back and fiting all the time which made me to conclude and say all his vanity and vexation."
¹
Matters were not improved by the Duke of York, who enjoyed a Hanoverian talent for mimicry and who, though the kindest of men and the soul of tact in his official letters, was apt in his cups among his familiars to indulge it at the expense of the Muscovite generals.
²