ultimately
be able to take the offensive, to re-cross their frontiers, and to dictate
to their foes a triumphant peace.

As I have said, the great action from which history must date the long
series of French triumphs, bears the name of Fleurus; but before Fleurus
there came that considerable success which made Fleurus possible, to which
history gives the name of TOURCOING (from the town standing in the midst
of the very large and uncertain area over which the struggle was
maintained), and which provides the subject of these pages.

Fleurus was decided in June 1794. It was not a battle in which British
troops were concerned, and therefore can form no part of this series.
Tourcoing was decided in the preceding May, and though, I repeat, it
cannot be made the fixed and striking starting-point from which to date
the long years of the French advantages, yet it was, as it were, the seed
of those advantages, and it was Tourcoing, in its incomplete and
complicated success, which made possible all that was to follow.

Tourcoing, then, must be regarded as an unexpected, not wholly conclusive,
but none the less fundamental phase in the development of political forces
which led to the establishment of the modern world. Its immediate result,
though not decisive, was appreciable. To use a metaphor, it was felt in
Paris, and to a less extent in London, Berlin, and in Vienna, that the
door against which the French were desperately pushing, though not fully
open, was thrust ajar. The defeat of a portion of the allied forces in
this general action, the inefficacy of the rest, the heartening which it
put into the French defence, and the moral effect of such trophies gained,
and such a rout inflicted, were of capital import to the whole story of
the war.

This is the political aspect in which we must regard the Battle of
Tourcoing, but its chief interest by far lies in its purely military
aspect; in the indiscretion which so nearly led the French forces to
annihilation; in the plan which was laid to surround and to destroy those
forces by the convergence of the English, Prussian, and Austrian columns;
in the way in which that plan came to nothing, and resulted only in a
crushing disaster to one advanced portion of the forces so converging.

Tourcoing is rather a battle for military than for civilian historians,
but those who find recreation in military problems upon their own account,
apart from their political connection, will always