Battle of Tourcoing, 1794: how the annihilation plan fell apart

In the spring of 1794, in the War of the First Coalition, the Allied armies on the Flanders border, with Emperor Francis II at their headquarters, took Landrecies on 30 April. At the western end of the front, however, the French had beaten General Clerfayt at Mouscron on 29 April and taken Menin and Courtrai. The Allies decided to concentrate in the west and destroy the French army in one blow.²

The annihilation plan

The plan was the work of the Austrian chief of staff, General Karl Mack, who, Fortescue writes, designed and even declared it to be "a plan of annihilation"; Jomini says it was called a "plan de destruction". Six columns would converge on the French between the Lys and the Scheldt. Clerfayt would cross the Lys at Wervicq and come down from the north; Bussche's Hanoverians would take Mouscron; Otto would march on Tourcoing and the Duke of York on Roubaix and Mouvaux; Kinsky and Archduke Charles would cross the Marque and join York.³

Fortescue describes troops dispersed "over a front of twenty miles in a blind and strongly enclosed country", where hedges and tree-lined roads made it hard to see anything at a distance. Jomini thought no movement had ever been more strangely combined: the Archduke Charles, starting from Saint-Amand, and Clerfayt, starting from Thielt twenty leagues away, were supposed to reach Tourcoing at the same moment. It seems to have occurred to none of the Austrian staff, Fortescue adds, that the plan positively invited the French to attack.⁴

17 May: four columns fall short

The plan began to unravel at once. Clerfayt reached the Lys at Wervicq only on the afternoon of 17 May, found the bridge defended and his pontoons left behind, and his corps did not cross in force until the next morning. Bussche took Mouscron and was thrown out again. Kinsky drove the French from Bouvines on the Marque but, in Fortescue's account, found the bridge broken and stayed on the far bank, and the Archduke Charles, whose men had been on foot for 22 hours in the heat, according to Fortescue, stopped at Lesquin, far short of his objective. Only Otto, who took Tourcoing, and York, whose Guards cleared Roubaix and pushed on to Mouvaux, reached their targets. York wanted to fall back to Lannoy for the night, but the Emperor ordered him on to Mouvaux and repeated the order over his protests, Fortescue writes.⁵

18 May: Souham strikes

The French commander, General Pichegru, was absent, so the decision fell to his generals. That evening at Menin Souham, Moreau, Macdonald and Reynier agreed a counterattack. Moreau would hold off Clerfayt in the north with Vandamme's brigade alone, while Souham and General Bonnaud would fall on the two exposed columns in the center. Fortescue counts sixty thousand men turned on the eighteen thousand under Otto and York; Jomini gives Souham 45,000 and Bonnaud 18,000, and speaks of a mass of 60,000 breaking the two central columns.⁶

The French moved off at three in the morning, attacked Tourcoing and drove Otto's men out. Between six and seven o'clock, in Fortescue's account, Bonnaud's two columns came up on Lannoy and Roubaix, and another brigade fell on Mouvaux. York's column was split in two. The Guards under Ralph Abercromby were cut off at Mouvaux and the line brigade under General Fox near Croix, while the duke himself, with a small escort of the 16th Light Dragoons, rode for Wattrelos to find Otto, found the French there instead and, as he frankly admitted, escaped only by the speed of his horse.⁷

Both brigades had to fight their way out. Fortescue writes that Fox's brigade, led across country by a French émigré serving in the ranks of the 14th Foot, reached Leers with the loss of nine officers and 525 men out of 1,120, and that the Guards made their way across country to Marquain, near Tournai, with 196 killed, wounded and missing. Meanwhile Kinsky and the Archduke Charles, who might have saved the center, stayed where they were. Kinsky told one of his officers that he was sick and no longer in command; the archduke received the order to march on Lannoy at five in the morning and did not move until noon, Fortescue writes, while Jomini notes that the two left-hand columns did not form up until about four in the afternoon. The French did not press their advantage, and at half past four the action came to an end.⁸

Counting the cost

Fortescue and Jomini both put the Allied loss at about 3,000 men. Fortescue gives the British loss as 930 of all ranks, besides 19 of their 28 guns. Pichegru, who had not been on the field, arrived the next day and, instead of exploiting his lieutenants' success, Jomini writes, stayed three days inactive.⁹

The road to Fleurus

On 22 May Pichegru attacked the Allied positions around Tournai and, after a long day's fighting, was driven back. Mack resigned as chief of staff on 23 May, Fortescue writes, and on 29 May the Allied camp learned that the Emperor was returning to Vienna; Jomini likewise records that the Emperor and Mack had left the army. Fortescue explains the decision by events in the east after the outbreak of the Kościuszko Uprising: the Austrian minister Thugut wanted Austria's strength turned toward Poland, and the defeat of 18 May helped him persuade the Emperor to abandon the Austrian Netherlands. A month later, on 26 June, Coburg attacked the French at Fleurus, failed and retreated toward Brussels, in Fortescue's account. Jomini thought that an army which had broken its enemy's center should have won more than "le stérile honneur du champ de bataille" ("the barren honor of the battlefield", our translation); Fortescue held that "the decisive battle of the campaign was lost by the deliberate design of the Imperial Generals".¹⁰