‘FAIRLY OUT-GENERALLED AND DISGRACEFULLY BEATEN’: THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE LOW COUNTRIES, 1793-1814 by ANDREW ROBERT LIMM A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY. University of Birmingham School of History and Cultures College of Arts and Law October, 2014. University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT The history of the British Army in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars is generally associated with stories of British military victory and the campaigns of the Duke of Wellington. An intrinsic aspect of the historiography is the argument that, following British defeat in the Low Countries in 1795, the Army was transformed by the military reforms of His Royal Highness, Frederick Duke of York. This thesis provides a critical appraisal of the reform process with reference to the organisation, structure, ethos and learning capabilities of the British Army and evaluates the impact of the reforms upon British military performance in the Low Countries, in the period 1793 to 1814, via a series of narrative reconstructions. This thesis directly challenges the transformation argument and provides a re-evaluation of British military competency in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The British Army and the Dunkirk Campaign, 1793 18 Chapter 2: British defeat in the Netherlands 1794-1795 and the Duke of York’s reforms 67 Chapter 3: The expedition to the Helder, 1799 94 Chapter 4: The expedition to the Scheldt, 1809 147 Chapter 5: The British Army and the debacle at Bergen-Op-Zoom, 1813-1814 202 Conclusion 244 Appendix 258 Bibliography 265 ABBREVIATIONS AG: Adjutant-General AHR: American Historical Review BCMH: British Commission for Military History BMJ: British Medical Journal C-in-C: Commander-in-Chief EHR: English Historical Review EJIR: European Journal of International Relations HJ: The Historical Journal HLQ: Huntington Library Quarterly IHR: International History Review JBS: Quarterly Journal of British Studies JCH: Journal of Contemporary History JMH: Journal of Modern History JMHS: Journal of Military History Society JSAHR: Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research JSS: Journal of Strategic Studies MPH: War Office Maps and Plans extracted to flat storage PP: Parliamentary Papers RUSI: Royal United Service Institute Journal QMG: Quartermaster-General WMQ: The William and Mary Quarterly INTRODUCTION This thesis evaluates the performance of the British Army in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars with specific reference to four of its campaigns in the Low Countries between 1793 and 1814. In doing so it provides a critique of the current view that, following the reforms of the Duke of York (1795-1809), the British Army was transformed into a well-led and efficient fighting force. The campaigns studied are York’s expedition to Flanders in 1793; the Anglo-Russian expedition to Holland in 1799; the expedition to the island of Walcheren in 1809; and Sir Thomas Graham’s expedition to Bergen-Op-Zoom in 1813-14. During the period 1793 to 1815 the protection of the Low Countries from France was the overriding objective of British foreign policy. This originated from the British fear of an invasion being launched from the Low Countries by an aggressive foreign power – as had happened in 1688.1 It led the British to intervene increasingly in the affairs of the Dutch and to the British-inspired creation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1814.2 The Low Countries played a dual role in British strategic thinking. On the one hand, the region was viewed as a staging area for a French invasion of the British Isles, whilst on the other it was seen as a potential springboard for British intervention in Europe.3 As J.E Cookson has argued, as far as the British were concerned “The most important constant in the strategic 1 See Steve Pincus, 1688, The First Modern Revolution (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009); Tim Harris, Revolution, The Great Crisis in the British Monarchy, 1685-1720 (London: Penguin, 2007); Peter Unwin, The Narrow Sea, Barrier, Bridge and Gateway to the World, The History of the English Channel (London: Headline, 2003), pp. 130-135. 2 G.J. Renier, Great Britain and the Establishment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands 1813-1815, A Study in British Foreign Policy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930), p. 1. 3 For an in-depth study of British society during this period see Mark Philip (ed), Resisting Napoleon, the British Response to the Threat of Invasion, 1797-1815 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). 1 situation from the defeat of the First Coalition until the Dutch revolt at the end of 1813 was the enemy’s control of the coast north of the Channel”.4 Throughout the eighteenth century the British had committed their military forces to safeguard their interests in the Low Countries and protect the region from French aggression; a prime example being the Duke of Marlborough’s campaigns in the Low Counties in 1705- 1708.5 During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars British strategists maintained this approach and instigated a number of significant British military interventions in the Low Countries. As Rory Muir has noted, the British government entered the war of the First Coalition in 1793 “For the most traditional of all reasons: the search for security in the face of French aggression in the Low Countries”.6 Naval considerations were also important and grew in strategic significance following the French conquest of the ports of Ostend, Flushing, Antwerp and the Helder on the Flanders and Dutch coasts. As Colin S. Gray has noted, in the seven wars fought between Britain and France in the period 1688 to 1815, “Each...was different, but virtually the same elements structured them all...For example, Britain was permanently sensitive to the issue of which state controlled the Low Countries in general and the mouth of the Scheldt...with the ports of Flushing and Antwerp in particular.”7 Invasion by France was the most important challenge to Britain during this period. If a French army had landed on the Kent or Suffolk coastline Britain’s very survival as an independent nation would have been under threat. At the same time, however, a successful British intervention in the Low Countries, with allied support, had the potential to threaten the foundations of French power in Northern Europe and the French frontier. 4 J.E Cookson, The British Armed Nation 1793-1815 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 38. 5 Richard Holmes, Marlborough, England’s Fragile Genius (London: Harper Press, 2008), pp. 324-406. 6Rory Muir, Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807-1815 (Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1996), p.1. 7 Colin S Gray, The Leverage of Sea Power, The Strategic Advantage of Navies in War (New York: The Free Press, 1992), p. 165. 2 Between 1793 and 1814 six major British expeditions were sent to the Low Countries but, despite high expectations of military success, each ended in disaster. Moreover, despite the fact that historians have agreed that the Low Countries were vital to British interests, none has sought to undertake a comparative study of these campaigns or to provide an explanation for the poor British military record during these years. This thesis sets out to redress this imbalance, provides a new evaluation of British strategic thinking regarding the Low Countries, and re-evaluates the fighting qualities of the British Army in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars with reference to its performance in the Low Countries between 1793 and 1814. Historiography The British Army in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars has always been a popular topic for historians. However, as Michael Howard has pointed out, wider changes in the nature of military history have altered how historians have written about the British Army.8 Gone are the days when to write about military history was to devote one’s time solely to the study of battles and the creation of heroic national myths. This parochial approach has been largely superseded by the ‘New Military History,’ with its increasingly inter-disciplinary perspective on ‘War and Society’ - encompassing international relations, the social sciences, anthropology, gender and media studies - as well as revising aspects of economic, political and constitutional history. Although these studies have added much needed diversity and breadth to the history of the British Army, exponents of this ‘New Military History’ have not sufficiently challenged the existing views of older generations of military historians. Furthermore, instead 8 Michael Howard, ‘Military history and the history of war’ in Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich (eds), The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp.12-20; Stephen Morillo with Michael F. Pavkovic, What is Military History? (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), p. 61. 3 of developing a unique approach of their own, advocates of the ‘New Military History’ have sought instead to borrow ideas and theories from other historical fields. As one historian has noted, “The Army”, has become, “a test subject for a variety of different theoretical schools”.9 This view is echoed by Joanna Bourke, who has suggested that military history has attracted the interests of a wide range of scholars from outside the traditional military history fraternity, “Much of what was identified as new military history was being written about outside of the historical discipline altogether.