The success was but temporary. The French concentrated overwhelming numbers, and the army fell back on Antwerp, and then to Holland, and suffered terribly in the dreadful winter of 1794. The stubborn resistance of the rearguard, composed of the 14th, 37th, and 53rd, supported on the flanks by the skilful and bold work of the 7th, 15th, and 16th cavalry regiments, prevented a disaster which the indifference or probable disaffection of the Dutch troops did not tend to lessen; and finally, the dispirited but unbeaten force, abandoning its stores and spiking the guns it could not take with it, reached Bremen. The horrors of that dreadful march, begun on the 6th January 1795, are only equalled by the retreat from Moscow of a French army later; but the discipline and endurance of the troops was beyond all praise. The contemporary records especially mention the Guards, the 27th, 33rd, 42nd, 44th, and 78th Regiments for their splendid discipline. The 28th, too, were notorious for their strong regimental feeling. “Hospitals were their aversion. Their home was the battalion, and they were never happy away from it.” Of all the regiments, the hardy Scotsmen of the 42nd fared best; and in this disastrous campaign, honourable in all its details save that of mere success, another young officer, Arthur Wellesley of the 33rd, first saw fire at Boxtel. Thus the end of the last century was to give the early war-training to two great antagonists--Napoleon at Toulon and Wellington at Boxtel. This alone would render the military history of 1794-95 interesting to all who read. But the eighteenth century was to see yet another campaign in the Netherlandic area. It had not been, on the whole, peculiarly favourable to British arms, and the last campaign there was to be no exception to the rule. For, notwithstanding that the duke had the active co-operation of such men as Ralph Abercromby and John Moore, not much came of it. The allied Russians and British made little headway against the French with the “Batavian Republic,” and a check at Alkmaar, followed by a victory at Egmont-op-Zee on the 2nd October 1799 where, according to the duke, “under Divine Providence,” the French were entirely defeated, and where the Royals, the 20th, 25th, 49th, 63rd, 79th, and 92nd did their duty, practically terminated the Helder campaign. For, after an armistice, the British troops left the Netherlands, never to fight seriously in that district until the final victory of 1815, when Wellington, who first saw battle there, was to terminate a series of wars for which the Low Countries had for more than a century been the “cockpit.”