third, under Lord Cathcart, fetched a compass to close in upon the enemy from the west. Cathcart's column unfortunately found the roads impassable and never came into action; but Dundas nevertheless attacked without him, and drove the French, after a sharp fight, from their entrenchments and across the Waal, with the loss of four guns and many killed and wounded, while his own casualties did not exceed fifty. This checked the ardour of the enemy for the moment, and during a few days there was peace upon the Waal.[1]
Walmoden now reinforced his right about Tuil, for the news had reached him that the fortresses of Gertruydenburg
1795. and Heusden, on the extreme right of the
Jan. 3. Allied line, were in serious danger; and on the 3rd of January 1795 he shifted his quarters to Amerongen, due north of Tiel, and on the north bank of the Leck. Grave at this same time capitulated, and released a large number of French troops for the field. Moreau's division therefore took up cantonments over against Alvintzy's corps from Xanten down the Rhine to the Pannarden Canal. Souham's division, now transferred to Macdonald, occupied the space between the Meuse and Waal as far as the point opposite to Tiel; two more divisions were in the Bommeler Waert, and yet two more about Gertruydenburg and Breda. On the 3rd of January the weather again became intensely
Jan. 4. cold, and at noon on the 4th two French detachments from the Bommeler Waert marched over the ice, drove in the posts before Tuil and at Hesselt, a little to the east of it, after hard fighting, and thus gained a passage by which they could move westward on the north
- ↑ Dundas to Harcourt, 13th and 24th December; Harcourt to Dundas, 23rd December; to York, 25th and 29th December; Walmoden to York, 22nd, 25th, 29th December 1794, 1st January 1795. The regiments engaged in the action were the 19th, 33rd, 42nd, 78th, 80th.