British Campaigns in Flanders 1690-1794: Being Extracts from "A History of the British Army"Fortescue, J. W. (John William), Sir
History
British Campaigns in Flanders 1690-1794: Being Extracts from "A History of the British Army"
Fortescue, J. W. (John William), Sir
Flanders -- History, Military; Great Britain -- History, Military -- 18th century
the sick nearly eleven thousand; and when a man was ordered to hospital
his comrades would exclaim, “Ah, poor fellow, we shall see thee no
more, for thou art under orders for the shambles.” On one occasion five
hundred invalids were embarked from Arnheim in barges under charge of
a single surgeon’s mate, without sufficient provisions, without even
sufficient straw, and brought to Rhenen, where they were left on board
for want of sufficient space to admit them to the hospital. A Dutch
gentleman counted at one time the bodies of forty-two men who had thus
perished of neglect in the barges and had been thrown out dead on to
the bank. Meanwhile the rascals who bore the name of surgeon’s mates
charged forty thousand pounds for wine for the sick, and, not content
with robbing the State by themselves drinking what was supplied,
actually plundered the helpless patients committed to their care. Such
was the economy of Dundas’s military administration—to obtain recruits
by the offer of lavish bounties, to break down their health by giving
them insufficient clothing, and to contract with scoundrels so to
maltreat them, medically, that they should not recover.[285]
Fortunately for himself the Duke of York was summoned home on the 27th
of November to hold personal communication[286] with Ministers; and
indeed it seemed as if the campaign were ended. Upon his departure
he placed the British troops under Lieutenant-general Harcourt, and
the foreign troops in British pay under Lieutenant-general Walmoden,
apparently dividing the supreme command between the two. This
arrangement was evidently due to the Duke’s unwillingness to subject
the British to the Hanoverian Walmoden, who was senior to Harcourt;
but, even so, it seems to be absolutely indefensible. The French, being
exhausted by the campaign, went into temporary cantonments, Moreau’s
division on the west bank of the Rhine over against the line from
Wesel to Emmerick, Souham’s in and about Nimeguen, Bonnaud’s between
the Meuse and the Waal, and the remainder about Bois-le-Duc and Grave.
The Allies were distributed along the north bank of the Waal from Tiel
eastward to the Pannarden Canal, which connects the Waal with the Leck
(as the Rhine from Arnheim downward is called), the Dutch taking charge
of the Bommeler Waert. Eastward from the Pannarden Canal to Wesel
the Allied left was to be covered by thirty thousand Austrians under
General Alvintzy, which Clerfaye, on the instance of Henry Dundas,
agreed to furnish for a payment of one hundred thousand pounds a month.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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