Fortunately for himself the Duke of York was summoned home on the 27th of November to hold personal communication[1] with Ministers; and indeed it seemed as if the campaign were ended. Upon his departure he placed the British troops under Lieutenant-general Harcourt, and the foreign troops in British pay under Lieutenant-general Walmoden, apparently dividing the supreme command between the two. This arrangement was evidently due to the Duke's unwillingness to subject the British to the Hanoverian Walmoden, who was senior to Harcourt; but, even so, it seems to be absolutely indefensible. The French, being exhausted by the campaign, went into temporary cantonments, Moreau's division on the west bank of the Rhine over against the line from Wesel to Emmerick, Souham's in and about Nimeguen, Bonnaud's between the Meuse and the Waal, and the remainder about Bois-le-Duc and Grave. The Allies were distributed along the north bank of the Waal from Tiel eastward to the Pannarden Canal, which connects the Waal with the Leck (as the Rhine from Arnheim downward is called), the Dutch taking charge of the Bommeler Waert. Eastward from the Pannarden Canal to Wesel the Allied left was to be covered by thirty thousand Austrians under General Alvintzy, which Clerfaye, on the instance of Henry Dundas, agreed to furnish for a payment of one hundred thousand pounds a month.
The Allies' line of defence seems to have been wrongly chosen, for, owing to the Pannarden Canal, the mass of the waters of the Waal was returned into the Leck, from which cause the Leck was less liable
- ↑ Ditfurth, who never loses an opportunity of abusing the English, of course puts a discreditable construction upon the Duke's departure, not knowing that he was sent for by Ministers (ii. 313).
