J W Fortescue

British Campaigns in Flanders, 1690-1794 J W Fortescue

Publisher Marketing: PREFACE THIS volume consists simply of extracts reprinted from my History of the British Army. It is published in order that the troops at the front may, if they wish it, study the experiences of their foreruners in the Low Countries in a book which is fairly portable and fairly inexpensive, though neither so cheap nor so compendious as The British Soldeirs Guide to northern France and Flandes. Now to Flanders, which is about to become for the second time the training ground of the British Army. The judicious help sent by Lewis the Fourteenth to Ireland had practically diverted the entire strength of IVilliam to that quarter for two whole campaigns and though, as has been seen, there were English in Flanders in 1689 and 1690, the contingents which they furnished were too small and the operations too trifling to warrant descriptionin detail. After the battle of the Boyne the case was somewhat altered, for, though a large force was still required in Ireland for Ginkells final pacification of 1691, William was none the less at liberty to take the field in Flanders in person. AIoreover, Parliament with 1690. great good-mill had voted seventy thousand men for the October ensuing year, of which fully fifty thousand were British, l so that England was about to put forth her strength in Europe on a scale unknown since the loss of Calais. But first a short space must be devoted to the theatre of war, where England was to meet and break down the overweening power of France. Few studies are more difficult, even to the professed student, than that of the old campaigns in Flanders, and still fewer more hopeless of simplification to the ordinary reader. Nevertheless, however desperate the task, an effort l Four troops of life guards, ten regiments of horse, five of dragoons, forty-seven battalions of foot must be made once for all to give a broad idea of the scene of innuinerable great actions. Taking his stand on the northern frontier of France and looking northward, the reader will note three great rivers running through the country beforc liim in, roughly speaking, three parallel semicircles, from south-east to north-west. These are, from cast to west, the Rloselle, which is merged in the Rhine at Coblentz, the hleuse, and the Scheldt, all three of which discharge themselves into the great delta whereof the southern key is Antwerp. But for the present let the reader narrow the field from the RIeuse in the east to the sea in the west, and let him devote his attention first to the RIeuse..