July 7. the Meuse, ordered the whole of his army to retire upon Tirlemont.
The Duke meanwhile, since his left was uncovered by the retreat of the Austrians, withdrew, at Coburg's request, very slowly northward to Assche, and thence struck north-eastward to the Dyle, which he crossed at Malines, fixing his headquarters at Contich, some eight miles north of that city. A new line of defence was then taken up, which sufficiently showed the divided counsels of the Allies. On the right the
July. British contingent, now numbering some thirty thousand men, was posted on the Dyle from Antwerp to Malines. On its left the Prince of Orange with the Dutch troops and from two to three thousand Austrians covered the line from Malines to Louvain; and from Louvain the rest of the Austrian army, between forty-five and fifty thousand men, was extended in a southeasterly direction by Tirlemont, Landen, and Waremme to the Meuse, with a detachment of four thousand more on the eastern bank of that river, and between it and the Ourthe. Thus the British and Dutch, who desired to defend Holland, could be deserted at any moment which the Emperor should select for the pursuit of his own particular object, namely, to carry his army away to share the plunder of Poland. Craig, for his part, felt no doubt whatever that the British and Dutch would very soon be left to their own resources.[1]
The reader may have felt surprised that, with a force of nearly one hundred and fifty thousand men, the French should not have pressed the Allies harder, and made an end of them long before. The fact was that the Committee of Public Safety had interfered with the Generals on the 4th of July, by an order that the
- ↑ Coburg to York, 7th and 8th July; York to Coburg, 7th July; to Dundas, 7th and 10th July; Craig to Nepean, 11th July 1794.
