- tion, and of course without transport of any description.
Their commander was Colonel Gerard Lake of the First Guards, and he was ordered on no account to move his men above twenty-four hours' distance from Helvoetsluis, so as to be able to return on the
March 1. shortest notice. By the mercy of Heaven these troops safely reached that port, narrowly escaping a gale which would probably have condemned them either to drowning or asphyxiation; and four days later they
March 5. proceeded to Dort to oppose Dumouriez's passage of the Hollandsdiep. About the same time a flotilla of Dutch gunboats arrived in the Meuse, many of them manned by British sailors and flying British colours. Auckland, by threatening to take command in Holland himself, had at last compelled the miserable Stadtholder to issue orders for the defence of his country.[1]
But the obstacles which were multiplying in Dumouriez's front were as nothing to the storm that
Feb. 20. suddenly broke upon his flank. Miranda had duly moved up to the siege of Maastricht with a force inadequate to the task and, moreover, dangerously dispersed; but the Austrians, declaring themselves too weak to move, still remained torpid in their cantonments, perhaps the more stubbornly because the Prussian Agent at the Austrian headquarters was perpetually urging them to action. At last, however,
Feb. 26. Coburg on the 26th began to concentrate his forty thousand men and to pass them in five columns across
March 1. the river; and on the 1st of March, to the great surprise of the French, he burst upon their cantonments on the Meuse, and for four days drove them in utter rout before him. Coburg himself and the left wing
- ↑ Lake to Dundas, 2nd March 1793. Lake's Instructions, 23rd February. Grenville to Auckland, 20th February 1793. F.O. Holland, Auckland to Grenville, 4th March 1793.
