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

In the spring of 1794 the War of the First Coalition was in its third year. The Allied armies on the Flanders border, now nominally under the personal command of Emperor Francis II, had taken Landrecies, but at the western end of the front the French had beaten General Clerfayt at Mouscron on 29 April and retaken 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, given the grand name of Vernichtungsplan, or annihilation plan, is usually credited to the Austrian chief of staff, General Karl Mack. Six columns, about 73,000 men in the World History Encyclopedia's count, 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 south of Lille and join York.³

The front ran for well over 20 miles of difficult, enclosed country, where the columns could hardly communicate. The historian Stephen Brown, quoted by the World History Encyclopedia, worked out that the battlefield of Waterloo would fit inside it 75 times. As usual with Mack's plans, John Rickard notes, every column had to reach its objective for the plan to work, and little thought was given to what the French might do.⁴

17 May: four columns fall short

The plan began to unravel at once. Clerfayt reached the Lys at Wervicq only in the afternoon, found the bridge defended and did not cross until the next morning. Bussche took Mouscron and was thrown out again. Kinsky reached Bouvines on the Marque to find the bridge destroyed, and the Archduke Charles, whose men had been marching in the heat for 24 hours, 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 asked twice to pull back to a safer position and was ordered to stay.⁵

18 May: Souham strikes

The French commander, General Pichegru, was absent, so command fell to General Joseph Souham, who had been a general for less than a year. That night at Menin he and his fellow generals, Moreau, Macdonald and Reynier among them, agreed a counterattack. Moreau would hold off Clerfayt in the north, while Souham and General Bonnaud would fall on the two exposed columns in the center. The sources differ on the size of that blow: the World History Encyclopedia speaks of 40,000 men, Rickard of about 60,000 against some 18,000 Allies.⁶

At first light the French attacked Tourcoing and drove Otto out. By 7 a.m. Bonnaud's columns were at Roubaix and Lannoy, and other French troops were closing 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 part of the 16th Light Dragoons, tried to reach Otto at Wattrelos, found the French there instead and only narrowly escaped capture.⁷

Both brigades had to fight their way out. Fox reached safety at Leers with the help of a French royalist émigré, having lost 534 of his 1,120 men; the Guards broke across country to Marquain, near Tournai, with 196 casualties. A cavalry officer, Robert Wilson, left a terrible picture of the retreat, with camp followers caught in the grapeshot along with the soldiers. Meanwhile Kinsky and the Archduke Charles, who might have saved the center, barely moved; the archduke, 23 years old, was suffering an epileptic attack when Mack's courier arrived, and his column did not march until noon. At about 4.30 p.m. the French called off their attack.⁸

Counting the cost

Rickard gives Allied losses of between 3,000 and 5,500 men and 50 guns, with 930 of them British. The World History Encyclopedia counts about 4,000 Allied killed and wounded, 1,500 prisoners and 56 guns. Both put French losses at about 3,000. Pichegru, who had not been on the field, took the credit.⁹

The road to Fleurus

The French attacked the Allied headquarters at Tournai on 22 May and were beaten, but Tourcoing had done its work. On 30 May Francis II went home to Vienna and took Mack with him. Austria was now more interested in the east, where Russia and Prussia were preparing the third partition of Poland after the Kościuszko Uprising, and began drawing officers and troops away from Flanders. A month later the French won the decisive battle of Fleurus, after which, the World History Encyclopedia notes, they were consistently victorious until the war ended in 1797. Rickard warns against the old verdict that Tourcoing was inconclusive: the French missed the chance to destroy Otto and York, but the Allied plan had failed completely.¹⁰