ival historians are too inclined to pretend, due to the fact
that among the forces that suffered disaster were present certain British
contingents.

Again, as will be seen in the sequel, the overwhelming of the Duke of
York's forces at Tourcoing, by numbers so enormously superior to his own,
was not due to any tactical fault of his, though it is possible that the
faulty plan of the whole action may in some measure be ascribed to him.

Now Tourcoing is a battle which Englishmen should know, both for its
importance in the military history of Europe, and for the not unworthy
demeanour which the British troops, though defeated, maintained upon its
field.

The true reason that Tourcoing is so little known in this country is to be
discovered in that other historical fact attaching to the battle, which I
have mentioned. It occupied but a confused and an uncertain place in the
general history of Europe; though perhaps, were its military significance
fully understood, it would stand out in sharper relief. For though the
Battle of Tourcoing was not the beginning of any great military series,
nor the end of one; though no very striking immediate political
consequence followed upon it, yet it was Tourcoing which made Fleurus
possible, and it was Fleurus that opened the victorious advancing march of
the French which, looked at as a whole, proceeded triumphantly
thenceforward for nearly eighteen years and achieved the transformation of
European society.

What, then, was the political circumstance under which this action was
fought?

The French Revolution, by the novelty of its doctrines, by the fierceness
and rapidity of its action, and by that military character in it which was
instinctively divined upon the part of its opponents, challenged, shortly
after its inception, the armed interference of those ancient traditional
governments, external to and neighbouring upon French territory, which
felt themselves threatened by the rapid advance of democracy.

With the steps that led from the first peril of conflict to its actual
outbreak, we are not concerned. That outbreak took place in April 1792,
almost exactly three years after the meeting of the first Revolutionary
Parliament in Versailles.

The first stages of the war (which was conducted by Austria and Prussia
upon the one side, against the French forces upon the other) were
singularly slow. No general action was engaged in until the month of
September, and even then the st