But meanwhile the news that Ostend was in danger had, as usual, stirred Dundas to unwonted exertion in England. He still made a fetish of the place, and his original intention seems to have been to defend it, without any particular reference to the Duke of York’s operations. On the 17th of June, therefore, he ordered Lord Moira’s force in the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands to sail for Ostend at once, together with drafts of recruits and three fresh regiments from Ireland, making in all a reinforcement of about ten thousand men. On the 20th Moira’s troops embarked, and on the 21st the Eighth, the Forty-fourth, and the recruits arrived at Ostend. The drafts, it must be remarked, arrived without arms or military appointments of any kind; and it was only a fog at sea that prevented a whole regiment, the Ninetieth, from being also landed there without either arms or clothing, Dundas having ordered it to embark without enquiry as to these details.[251] But Pichegru meanwhile did not remain idle, and leaving Ypres on the 20th marched upon Clerfaye’s position at Deynse. ◆June 23.◆ The Austrian General, after a short defence of his entrenchments, retired, with the loss of not a few men and three guns, first to Ghent, and then beyond it, finally taking up a position on the north side of the canal that runs from Ghent to Sluys, ◆June 24.◆ where he was presently joined by his detachments from Bruges. ◆June 25.◆ On the 25th of June there arrived at Ostend, after a voyage of nineteen days from Cork, one squadron of the Fourteenth Light Dragoons and the Thirty-third regiment, the latter under the command of an officer whose name it still bears, but who was then an impecunious younger son of five-and-twenty, possessed indeed of some skill in playing the violin, but still distinguished by no higher title than that of Colonel Arthur Wellesley. ◆June 26.◆ On the morrow Moira with the last of the reinforcements[252] also reached Ostend, where he found an advanced guard of the French within four miles of the town, a large force of several thousand men close behind it, and the Commandant very wisely embarking his garrison with a view to retreat. The whole district was in a state of panic; but Moira promptly landed the whole of his men, and having observed the difficulties of defending Ostend, and the military worthlessness of the place, quietly selected his fighting ground outside it. “I am not at all satisfied with my position,” he wrote calmly to Dundas, “but since you appear to attach importance to the town I will do my best to maintain it.” “The defences are so detestable,” he added cheerfully to Nepean, “that I shall go into the open field if we must come to blows. If you are to lose everything it does not signify if you are beaten into the bargain.”[253] It is dangerous for a General, be he even so able as Moira, to address an English Minister of War in this strain; for, in the event of mishap, the