recapture of Valenciennes, Condé, Landrecies, and Quesnoy should take precedence of any further operations; and accordingly the army in Belgium had been weakened to provide for this service. This was the work of Robespierre, who at the time was inclined towards peace; and indeed peace appears to have been a common topic of conversation between the French and Austrian outposts from the beginning of July.[1] Thirty thousand French soldiers were accordingly withdrawn to Valenciennes, as many more were wasted in occupying ports of embarkation for England, and the remainder were ordered to push the Allies completely out of Belgium, and then to occupy a cordon from Antwerp to Namur. Pichegru, therefore, took command
July 12. in person of the left wing, and on the 12th moved with eighteen thousand men against Malines, while Jourdan on the right simultaneously advanced against Louvain, Jodoigne, and Huy on the Meuse. On the evening of the 12th Pichegru drove the Duke of York's advanced posts into Malines, where they were promptly reinforced; but the fortifications of the town were in
July 15. ruins, and, on renewing the attack on the 15th, the French captured the place with little difficulty. The troops charged with the defence were Hessians and Dutch; and it appears certain that the conduct of one or the other of them was not irreproachable, though there are indications also that the Duke himself was partly responsible for the mishap.
The Duke then threw his left back along the line of the Nethe from Lierre to Duffel; but meanwhile
July 15. Jourdan had on the same day mastered Louvain, and in the course of the two following days Jodoigne and Namur also. The Dutch troops about Louvain, upon the loss of that town, fell back northward across the
- ↑ Sybel, iii. 150-152, 171. Craig to Nepean, 4th July 1794.
