[Illustration: SKETCH MAP SHOWING THE OPPOSING FRENCH AND ALLIED LINES. APRIL 1794] Pichegru, who was in command of that frontier army, attacked, with 30,000 men, the positions of the allies near Le Cateau, well to the right or south-east of their centre and his, and was beaten back. It was upon the 14th of April that the Emperor of Austria joined Coburg at Valenciennes, held a review of his troops (including the British contingent, which will be given later in detail), fixed his headquarters in the French town of Le Cateau, and at once proceeded to the first operation of the campaign, which was the siege of the stronghold of Landrecies. The Dutch contingent of the allies drove in the French outposts and carried the main French position in front of the town within that week. By the 22nd of April the garrison of Landrecies was contained, the beleaguering troops had encircled it, and the siege was begun. After certain actions (most of them partial, and one of peculiar brilliance in the history of the British cavalry), actions each of interest, and some upon a considerable scale, but serving only to confuse the reader if they were here detailed, Landrecies fell after eight days' siege, upon the 30th of April. An advance of the Austrian centre, after this success, was naturally expected by the French. That normal development of the campaign did not take place on account of a curious episode in the strategy of this moment to which I beg the reader to give a peculiar attention. It is necessary to grasp exactly the nature of that episode, for it determined all that was to follow. While the fate of Landrecies still hung in the balance, and before the surrender of the town, Pichegru had, in another part of the long line, scored one of those successes which in any game or struggle are worse than losing a trick or suffering a defeat. It was one of those successes in which one gets the better of one's opponent in one chance part of the general contest, but so triumphs without a set plan, with no calculation upon what should follow upon the achievement, and therefore with every prospect of finding oneself in a worse posture after it than before. To take an analogy from chess: Pichegru's error, which I will presently describe, might be compared to the action of a player who, taking a castle of his opponent's with his queen, thereby leaves his king unguarded and open to check-mate. Wherever men are opposed one to the other in lines, each line having the mission to advance against the other, it is a fatal move to get what footballers call "'fore side": to let a portion of your forces advance too far from the general line held by the whole, and to have the advanced part of that portion thus isolated from the support of its fellows. Such a formation invites a concentration of your opponents against the isolated body, and may lead to its destruction.