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It must be confessed that in this he was very unlike Jourdan, Hoche, Kleber, and Moreau, who were ever ready to acknowledge the services of those who had fought under their orders. Within two hours of the time when the divisions commanded by Desaix left San Giuliano I was joyfully surprised by the triumphant return of the army, whose fate, since the morning, had caused me so much anxiety.
It must be confessed that in this he was very unlike Jourdan, Hoche, Kleber, and Moreau, who were ever ready to acknowledge the services of those who had fought under their orders. Within two hours of the time when the divisions commanded by Desaix left San Giuliano I was joyfully surprised by the triumphant return of the army, whose fate, since the morning, had caused me so much anxiety.
Twelve days after the combat at Ballinamuck, while Humbert and his men were on their way through England to France, a new French fleet, under Admiral Bompart, consisting of one 74-gun ship, "the Hoche," eight frigates, and two smaller vessels, sailed from Brest. On board this fleet were embarked 3,000 men under General Hardi, the remnant of the army once menacing England.
Divided nominally into nine armies, instead of fourteen as first planned, there were in reality but seven; of these, four were of minor importance: a small, skeleton Army of the Interior, a force in the west under Hoche twice as large and with ranks better filled, a fairly strong army in the north under Macdonald, and a similar one in the Alps under Kellermann, with Berthier and Vaubois as lieutenants, which soon became a part of Bonaparte's force.
The people were savages serving God and the King after the fashion of Red Indians. To make this sketch of the struggle exact and true at all points, the historian must add that the moment Hoche had signed his peace the whole country subsided into smiles and friendliness. Families who were rending each other to pieces over night, were supping together without danger the next day.
When Buonaparte's name was as yet unknown, except in Corsica and Provence, France practically gained her "natural boundaries," the Rhine and the Alps. In the campaigns of 1793-4, the soldiers of Pichegru, Kléber, Hoche, and Moreau overran the whole of the Low Countries and chased the Germans beyond the Rhine; the Piedmontese were thrust behind the Alps; the Spaniards behind the Pyrenees.
Stofflet wished to raise the Vendean standard again on his territory; but it was given up to the republicans. These two chiefs, who had witnessed the beginning of the insurrection, were present at its close. They died courageously; Stofflet at Angers, Charette at Nantes, after having displayed character and talents worthy of a larger theatre. Hoche likewise tranquillized Brittany.
He so fired Carnot, one of the Directory, and still more General Hoche, with a belief of the feasibility of his scheme of descent, that, in December of the same year a French fleet of forty-three vessels containing fifteen thousand troops were actually despatched under Hoche's command, Wolfe Tone being on board of one of them, which vessels, slipping past the English fleet in the Channel, bore down upon the Irish coast, and suddenly appeared off Cape Clear.
On October 8, 1793, Lyons surrendered; on December 19, 1793, the English evacuated Toulon; and, on December 23, the insurrection in La Vendée received its death blow at Savenai. There had also been success on the frontiers. Carnot put Hoche in command in the Vosges.
In September this second detachment sailed, Wolfe Tone being on board the principal vessel called the Hoche. Outside Lough Swilly they were overtaken by an English squadron, and a desperate struggle ensued. The smaller French vessels escaped, but the Hoche was so riddled with shot and shell as to be forced to surrender, and was towed by the victors into Lough Swilly.
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