Grand Old Duke of York by Winterbottom Derek

Author:Winterbottom, Derek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Royalty
ISBN: 9781473845787
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2016-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

Pitt and Dundas had hoped that the Helder campaign would result in the capture of the Batavian fleet, the encouragement of a revolt by pro-Orangist Dutch against the French and the expulsion of French soldiers from the Low Countries. Moreover, it had been conceived as part of an attack on France on a number of fronts by the Prussians, Austrians and Russians. The Prussians had refused to take part and the Austrian and Russian campaign to strike at France through Switzerland came to nothing. York’s army had been unable to fight its way south of Amsterdam and it faced the serious danger of being trapped on a peninsula too small to provision it throughout the harsh winter months. Pitt and Dundas were probably over-optimistic about what might have been achieved and they were prepared to accept the verdict of an experienced campaigner such as Abercromby that, with the Batavian fleet captured and its ships destined to be valuable additions to the Royal Navy, evacuation was the best option. This was the only seasoned land force that Britain possessed and it might have been lost altogether. Its safe return to Britain provided the government with the option of using it for other projects, such as an attack on the French fleet in Brest. This is why ministers, on the whole, were grateful to York for bringing his army home under honourable conditions.

Yet no one could pretend that it was a glorious result and many felt that the duke had failed to make the best use of a great opportunity. Henry Bunbury, who, as the duke’s 21-year-old ADC, had carried many messages to and fro between York and Abercromby, wrote in his Narrative of the Campaign in Holland, published fifty years later, that, as he perceived it, York had faults as a commander:

Much as I loved the Duke personally, much as I felt many good and amiable qualities in his character, much as I owe to him in gratitude for long kindness to myself, I cannot but acknowledge that he was not qualified to be even the ostensible head of a great army on arduous service…. He was of cool courage: he would have stood all day to be shot at: but he had no active bravery. With a very fair understanding he had little quickness of apprehension, still less of sagacity in penetrating designs or forming large views: painstaking, yet devoid of resources, and easily disheartened by difficulties. (He could not bring himself to say no.) To these defects must be added habits of indulgence, and a looseness of talking about individuals after dinner which made him enemies, and which, in the unfortunate campaign, probably excited the rancour of the Russian generals.13

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