1745 BATTLE OF FONTENO Y. XXIIL 387 tenant-Colonel Lord Charles Hay, of the first Guards (the CHAP. Grenadiers), stepped to the front and saluted the French household infantry opposite his battalion. Taking out a flask he drank to their health, adding: "We are the English Guards and hope you will stand till we come up to you, and not swim the Schelde as you did the Main at Dettingen ".1 He then called for three cheers from his men. The salute and cheers were returned; the English advanced and at thirty paces the French fire rang out. After two repulses, the British, still exposed to a fierce cross-fire, found themselves masters of the enemy's position. Saxe in vain endeavoured to retrieve the repulse of his infantry by successive charges of cavalry. The garrison of Fontenoy had expended their ammunition and the marshal sent word to Louis XV. to retreat across the Schelde. Cumberland's troops were at that time, 1.30 P.M., in three sides of a square with oblique fronts caused by the falling back of both his flanks before the enfilading fire. Saxe concentrated the fire of a battery of four cannon upon the advancing British. Under cover of this fire, seeing that the Dutch on his right flank shewed no disposition to renew their attack, Saxe withdrew the troops opposed to them to reinforce his centre. A convergent advance was now made by the French. The Irish brigade, consisting of six regiments of infantry, stationed in reserve on their left flank, threw itself upon the British right which was being swept by a storm of grape. The reinforced French infantry of the centre again advanced, exchanging volley for volley, and were followed by a charge of the entire French household cavalry. The troops near Fontenoy charged the British left. His own cavalry which Cumberland had, too late, ordered forward, had become entangled with a mass of 1 Voltaire's version is well known: "My Lord Charles Hai, capitaine aux Gardes Anglaises, cria: Messieurs des Gardes-Francaises, tirez. Le Comte d'Auteroche leur dit à voix haute: Messieurs, nous ne tirons jamais les premiers, tirez vous mêmes. Les Anglais firent un feu roulant." Siècle de Louis XV., ch. xv. (ed. 1775). Carlyle, however, discovered a letter from Lord Charles, written about three weeks after the battle, giving the account adopted in the text. Frederick the Great, bk. xv., ch. viii., p. 119 (ed. 1864). It is, of course, possible that the French misunderstood Lord Charles and replied as Voltaire reports. According to Colonel Townshend (Life of first Marquis Townshend, p. 62) the French guards were under orders to reserve their fire. The advantage of reserving fire is explained by a writer in Notes and Queries, 8th Ser., ii., 433. Ligonier's official account says "we received their fire". CHAP. Dutch and Austrian fugitives and unable to act effectively. XXIII. Before these combined attacks the British and Hanoverians fe A genera slowly back, overwhelmed by superior numbers. retreat was conducted in admirable order under cover of the cavalry, though the French captured about forty guns, the contractors who had horsed them having fled with the teams at the first check. During the night the allied army trudged wearily thirteen miles to Ath on the road to Brussels. The orderliness of the retreat is attested by the figures of the slain, it being remembered that the allies had conducted assaults upon intrenched positions. While they lost 7,545 officers and men, of whom only 1,544 were Dutch, the loss of the French was 7,137. The author of the Traité des Légions, sometimes supposed to have been Saxe himself, extols the steadiness of the British infantry. While France abandoned itself to a frenzy of rejoicing, and Voltaire sang the pean of victory in the poem "Fontenoy," Saxe pressed the siege of Tournay vigorously. The French were reinforced to nearly 100,000 men, and in Königsegg's belief were "more than twice as strong as the allies". The capitulation of the town, and on June 20 of the citadel of Tournay, set this great army free. Ghent, despite an effort of Cumberland to relieve it, surrendered in the middle of July with immense stores and munitions of war. Oudenarde speedily followed. On August 24 Ostend, the naval base of the British, was after a bombardment surrendered by the Austrian General Chanclos, and Nieuport fell on September 5. Flanders lay at the feet of France. A fortnight later urgent orders were received by Cumberland in his headquarters at Vilvorde to detach from his attenuated army of 30,000 troops ten of the best battalions under Ligonier, some 7,500 men, to join Wade at Newcastle for service against "the Young Pretender". At the end of October Cumberland himself returned home, and the 6,000 Hessians, all that was left of the British contingent, embarked for Leith in mid-December. Elsewhere on the continent fortune had been unfavourable to the Austrian cause. Maria Theresa, "pursuing her Silesia madness," had sent a combined army of Austrians and Sax 1 4th ed., 1757. 2 Horatio Walpole to Robert Trevor, October 25, O.S., 1745, Trevor MSS. p. 132. 1745 HOSTILITIES AGAINST GENOA. 389 ons into that province which was defeated by Frederick on CHAP. June 3, N.S., at Hohenfriedberg, and compelled to retreat into XXIII. Bohemia. This victory, following hard upon Fontenoy, inspired the English cabinet with the idea of working on the Prussian king's jealousy of French predominance in Germany to persuade him to re-enter their alliance. Frederick shewed himself ready to come to terms, and a preliminary convention was concluded at Hanover on August 26 by which Great Britain guaranteed Silesia to Prussia. By the treaty of Dresden on December 25, forced upon her by a threat of the British ministry to withdraw her subsidies, Maria Theresa sullenly accepted the terms of the convention of Hanover. Frederick, in return, acknowledged the election of her husband Francis of Lorraine and Tuscany as emperor, and became thereby, as a prince of the empire, committed to a defence of his imperial rights. In Italy, as elsewhere, the war had gone ill for Great Britain's allies. The Genoese determined to enter into an alliance with France and Spain. In virtue of a treaty signed at Aranjuez on May 7, 1745, they sent 10,000 troops to the Spanish army in Italy. Among the terms of the treaty was the support of the establishment of Elisabeth Farnese's younger son, Don Philip, in north Italy in return for an extension of Genoese territory. This was an occasion on which Sardinia looked to England to make its power felt in the war in Italy. Vice-Admiral Rowley, who had been left in command in the Mediterranean upon the recall of Lestock and Mathews, had under him a fleet of thirty-five ships of the line, and was entrusted with the duty of preventing the landing of additional Spanish troops in Italy or the junction of the Spanish fleet of sixteen ships at Cartagena with the French Brest fleet then cruising to the west of Gibraltar. After being joined in May by Rear-Admiral Medley with seven line-of-battle ships and a frigate, Rowley was strong enough to detach Commodore Cooper with six ships of the line and a frigate for hostilities against Genoa. Cooper bombarded that city without effect, but did much destruction at San Remo and Finale. Thence he sailed to Corsica, drove the Genoese garrison out of Bastia, 1 1 1 Du Cane MSS., pp. 48, 53, Hist. MSS. Comm., 1905. 2 L. Bossi, Istoria d'Italia (1823), xix., 247. Apparently about September. Gent. Mag., 1745, p. 559. CHAP. and reduced the greater part of the island to submission to the XXIII. King of Sardinia. On the mainland, however, the combined forces of the Bourbon powers, Spain, France, and Naples, swept all before them. Amid the prevailing gloom in England, one gleam of satisfaction shone forth. It will be remembered that in the negotiations preliminary to the treaty of Utrecht, Torcy had been energetic in refusing to abandon the North American fisheries. These were protected by Louisbourg on the island of Cape Breton commanding the mouth of the St. Lawrence, which remained in the possession of France. On the armament and fortification of this stronghold the French government was estimated to have expended £1,000,000 sterling, for Louisbourg boasted the title of the Dunkirk of North America. It was a standing menace to the New England colonies and the avenue of communication of the French settlements in America and Canada with France. The capture of Louisbourg by Commodore Peter Warren on June 27, aided by 4,000 colonial troops, was felt to be a landmark in English history. It was not merely a turn in the tide of misfortune. Help had come from an unlooked-for quarter, and the colonies, hitherto a burden, had revealed a new source of strength. Warren was promoted rear-admiral, Pepperell, the colonists' elected commander, received a baronetcy, and in 1748 parliament voted £255,000 to reimburse their expenditure. 1"Our new acquisition of Cape Breton is become the darling object of the whole nation; it is ten times more so than ever Gibraltar was." The Earl of Chesterfield to Robert Trevor, August 13, 1745, Trevor MSS., p. 127. CHAPTER XXIV. THE REBELLION OF 1745. AFTER the abandonment of the projected invasion of 1744, CHAP. Prince Charles remained at Paris, the centre of a small knot of XXIV. Jacobite conspirators. The French court had become alive to the fact that the assurances of the Jacobites as to the disposition of the English people, the unpopularity of the dynasty, and the strength of the navy were untrustworthy.1 Chavigny, the French envoy to the Emperor Charles VII., wrote begging Louis XV. to get rid of "that phantom of a pretender and summed up the Jacobites as "bons à rien, sinon pour se précipiter et ceux qui se concertent avec eux "2 The failure of 1744 is the key to the neglect of an opportunity under the more promising circumstances of 1745. Prince Charles, however, remained sanguine. He procured a small brig of twenty guns named the Du Teillay, lying at Nantes, on board of which he shipped such arms and munitions of war as, by borrowing and pawning, he had been able to get together— 1,500 muskets, 1,000 broadswords, twenty small field-pieces, "two of which a mule may carry," and some ammunition, beside 7,000 louis d'or. He secretly embarked on June 22, narrowly escaped capture by an English man - of war, touched at Erisca in the Hebrides, and finally cast anchor at Loch-na-Nuagh, between Moidart and Arisaig, where he landed with seven companions known to Jacobites as the "Seven men of Moidart". When on August 19, O.S., his standard of "white, blue and red silk" was unfurled in the vale of Glenfinnan, it was joined by Lochiel, 600 Camerons, 250 Stewarts of Appin, and 450 of the clan Macdonald. A list sent by 1 Colin, Louis XV. et les Jacobites, pp. 117-124. 2 Duke de Broglie, Frédéric II. et Louis XV., 1742-44 (Paris, 1885), ii., 212. |