at a distance; indeed it has been dis-quently received, to have thought it not tinctly proved, that under the cover of its impossible, that if rapidly approached it suburbs an attacking army would find might have been assaulted with success. shelter close to the body of the place, Now, let me ask what authority have the under the protection of which their opera- examinations of the Committee enabled the tions might be commenced without the ne- House to oppose to those to which I have cessity of breaking ground at a distance referred the single authority of sir Wiland advancing by more regular ap- liam Erskine; who, as far as he professes proaches. In addition to the general to speak from his own knowledge, founds weakness of the place, necessarily result- himself upon the recollection of what he ing from so extended a line of defence, long saw sixteen years ago, having looked at neglected and suffered to fall into decay, the works of Antwerp in 1794 from mogovernment had distinct information pre- tives of curiosity, when a very young man vious to the sailing of the Expedition, that and aide de camp to his father, the late the rampart and ditch were in such a defec- sir W. Erskine. With every respect tive state in particular places, as to hold out for that officer's judgment and character, I a prospect of being successfully escaladed. must be permitted to distrust the accuThis intelligence was received from va- racy of the opinion which he has given to rious persons, and particularly from one the Committee upon the defence of Antactually sent in the month of June for the werp, when I find it decidedly at variance purpose of reporting upon the state and with that of every other officer, who condition of Antwerp, a person of whose has spoken on the subject, with that of ability to form an accurate judgment, the sir David Dundas, of general Calvert, of members of the secret committee, who general Brownrigg, and of general Sonhad an opportunity of examining him, have tag. All these officers have described had the means of forming an opinion. Antwerp as surrounded by a rampart and Although not a scientific person he was as ditch, but by no means as a respectable competent to speak to facts of this descrip- fortification; sir William Erskine, on the tion, as if he had been an engineer. His contrary, has spoken of it, as only to be report of the numbers of the enemy's force approached by a siege in form. He has may be subject to doubt, and his intel- stated, that the attack must be carried on ligence on this head may partake of those regularly by three parallels, and he calerrors, to which all information with re- culates, that it would require 21 days from spect to numbers, which is not strictly the landing at Santvliet to put the army official, must necessarily be liable, but it in a condition to break ground, and 21 is impossible to suppose, that he could days more to obtain possession of the have been mistaken with respect to the town: and he has further stated, that he actual state of the fortifications of Ant- conceives the place might have been put werp, which he went purposely to view, in a state of complete defence in eight and upon his veracity his Majesty's days. In the time required to bring up government were justified in relying the means of breaking ground he is dinot only from the repeated proofs rectly contradicted by the evidence of which they had received of his fidelity lord Chatham, general Brownrigg, lord and accuracy, but from the inevitable de. Roslyn, general Macleod, and colonel tection which must have followed any at- Fyers. The probable time allowed by tempt on his part to practise deception in them for approaching Antwerp with the this instance. Upon the information so means of opening fire against the town is received it was not thought impossible 7 days instead of 21. General Brownthat the place might be found in a condi- rigg, general Macleod, and colonel Fyers tion to admit of its being taken by assault. speak to the practicability of establishing In forming this opinion his Majesty's mi- their batteries at once within 6 or 700 nisters proceeded not simply upon the yards of the place, without the necessity information thus recently obtained, but of regular approaches; the first distinctly also upon the knowledge of the place pos- states his opinion of the probability that a sessed by various officers who had exa- surrender might have been inforced within mined the works of Antwerp in the year three days by a bombardment: and the 1794. The quarter master general of two last are of opinion, that the town the army distinctly states himself, from must either have surrendered or been his recollection of its condition at that pe- destroyed. The same three officers have riod, coupled with information subse- also expressed their opinion, that even

what part of this force could have been opposed to us on the first arrival of the armament in the Scheldt, and at the intervening periods, before the enterprise was abandoned. And here it may not be undeserving of remark, that the enemy appears as far as we can judge to have been wholly unprepared upon our first arrival; and that the attack was as complete a surprise as can well occur when a large armament is known to be assembled in the ports of Great Britain. It is true that an apprehension of some design on our part prevailed in the month of April in Walcheren, and that additional defensive works were established on the side of Zoutland; but this alarm was occasion

previous to the surrender of the place, there was reason to expect, that the arsenal and the ships on the stocks might have been in a great measure destroyed by the bombardment, and involved in the general conflagration, to which the town must have been exposed; but that at all events upon the surrender of the town, notwithstanding the citadel should have remained in the possession of the enemy, it would have been practicable under the cover, which the town would have afforded, not only to destroy the arsenal and ships building, but possibly to attack with effect the enemy's ships afloat even though they should have taken an anchorage under the guns of the citadel. Such then being the information in proofed by a corps embarked under general of the weakness of the defences of Antwerp, let us see what contradictory information there is to shew, that its fortifications were in good repair, and had been put by the enemy in a state of complete defence. The first intelligence bearing upon this subject is that obtained by sir William Erskine, which describes the works as having been placed in a state of defence by the French, and this is said to be corroborated by a stone-mason residing at Bathz, who stated that he had been employed in their repair. That this person might have been employed upon the works is consistent with all the information received by government, as partial repairs particularly of the citadel were stated to have been made; but it is impossible to believe that a fortification of such great extent as Antwerp, so long neglected, could have undergone an effectual repair (if we consider the time and labour which the accomplishment of such an undertaking would have required) without the fact being notorious; whereas it appears, that the reverse was understood, and declared to be the case by the leading persons at Flushing and Middleburg, with whom general Sontag, colonel Mosheim and captain Puget communicated on this subject, and was distinctly stated in all the intelligence which government received, and particularly by the individual before referred to, who inspected the fortifications so late as the 17th of July. Having considered the nature of the place to be attacked, the means by which it was proposed to be assailed, and the limited force which the enemy were enabled to assemble for its defence, in the course of near a month, which they had for preparation, it is material to examine

Craufurd's orders for service in Portugal, and had subsided long previous to the sailing of the Expedition; I do not find that when we arrived off the Scheldt on the 28th of July, any extraordinary measures of defence had been taken at Walcheren; there is still less reason to believe that any had been adopted at Antwerp. My belief is, that the enemy supposed the armament to have been destined either for the Elbe and Weser, of for the peninsula, and that it was not until our fleet actually appeared off the Scheldt, and made dispositions for landing, that any steps were taken for collecting force, or placing the country in a better posture of defence to receive us. Nor is this view of the case at all shaken by the orders which the noble lord (Porchester) has read, dated at Paris on the 1st of August from the minister of war for the assembly of troops; the minister might have been apprised of the fact of our arrival in the Scheldt by telegraphi on the 29th; it is not therefore an extraordinary instance of vigour that his arrangements should have been made as early as the 1st, whilst the very few corps of which the order speaks as in march towards the Scheldt furnish the most conclusive proofs of the weakness of the enemy, and of the accuracy of the intelligence which government had received. But to return to the actual force, which the enemy had to oppose to us on our arrival in the Scheldt, the House must have observed from the report of the secret Committee, that by an official document which was taken upon the person of an officer in the French staff in Spain, government were acquainted with the actual position of every regiment in the French service on the 1st

feated that officer; that in the beginning of August the same corps was opposed to the duke of Brunswick on the banks of the Weser, and that it did not return to the camp at Naarden in North Holland till September. It is therefore evident that the true explanation of the difference, which seems at first sight to exist between the

in these facts, as will still more clearly appear from the concluding paragraph of the papers last referred to, which is to this effect. "From Naarden 200 Dutch troops had marched towards Aunch, and it seems almost all the Dutch troops in East Friesland and Groningen will march towards Bremen in a few days," which movement actually took place as I have before described.

Such was the state of the enemy's means of resistance when we arrived in the Scheldt. I should wish now to consider to what extent they had accumulated at subsequent dates, and particularly previous to the time at which Antwerp might, under favourable circumstances, have been actually attacked by our troops.

of December 1808. They consequently knew the utmost amount of force possessed by the enemy on the side of Flanders, and the coasts adjacent, at a period not more than six months antecedent to the determination to undertake the Expedition; at that time it did not exceed 21 battalions and a half of infantry, and 16 squadrons of cavalry, subsequently how-two sources of intelligence, is to be found ever to that date, viz. at the commencement of the war with Austria in March, many of these corps had been ordered to the Danube, and so hard pressed was the enemy for reinforcements for their grand army, so little had their attention been turned to the defences of the Scheldt, that even as late as the 22d of June, nearly the whole of the very few regular troops at Antwerp, with a proportion of the artificers, were ordered to the same destination; and at a date still later, the 48th regiment and two or three other corps, were actually on their march in the same direction, when they were brought back in waggons to Cadsand, in order to reinforce the garrison of Flushing. In the beginning of July the government had reason to believe, upon the faith of the intelligence received from the confidential person examined before the secret committce, that exclusive of the garrison of Flushing, consisting of from 3 to 4,000 men, the regular troops in Holland did not exceed 3,000 men, that the whole number of men in Antwerp, capable of bearing arms, did not exceed 2,400, of which the regular troops, invalids included, composed about 1,500, the rest were workmen and artificers, that the crews of the ships might amount to between 5 and 6,000, and that there were few troops in any of the garrison towns in Flanders. The correctness of this intelligence appears to have been doubted by a right hon. gent. (Mr. Ponsonby) if I may judge by the questions put to me by him in the Committee, with reference to the information received from a confidential person in June and July, and given in No. 44 of the Admiralty papers. The amount of troops in Holland, as reported in that document, exceeds 10,000, the distribution of which is specified. The right hon. gent. however, will be pleased to recollect, that subsequent to the period at which that report was made, a corps of 5 or 6,000 men under general Gratien, was ordered to march against general Schill in the north of Germany, and proceeded as far as Stralsund, where they de

It has been established that in case the armament had arrived at Santvliet, in divisions on the 1st 2nd and 3d of August, the troops might have been landed and advanced to assault the place (if the defects of its defences appeared upon examination to justify such a species of attack) as early as the 6th at night, but that if Antwerp had been found not to be assailable without heavy artillery, ample means for the bombardment and destruction of the town could have been brought up, the batteries completed, and fire opened against the place on the 10th.

What then do we find to be the course of the enemy's preparations? It appears that they shewed no troops on the opposite coast for several days after our being in possession of Bathz. It further appears that the ditch at Antwerp was not cleared out till the 10th, and was not filled with water till the 14th, before which dates our operations against the town might not only have been begun, but successfully terminated. We learn from intelligence procured by the earl of Roslyn, that a person employed by him, in the accuracy of whose report he places confidence, saw one side of the works of Antwerp, between the 9th and 13th of August, and that at that time, he did not observe any guns mounted. It was not till the 17th (as reported also to his lord

enemy's force to be 25,000 troops of the line at Antwerp and in the adjoining cantonments, all French at that date. Sir John Hope in his evidence before the Committee particularly refers to this communication as transmitted by him with the view of marking his disbelief that the enemy had any such force at that time, and of expressing his opinion that intelligence of numbers so procured ought always to be received with the utmost caution.

Having brought under the observation of the House the relative force and means of the contending parties at different periods during the month of August, I shall now consider what would have been the probable course of our operations, supposing the armament to have been assembled at Santvliet by the 3d. I allude to this date not because I conceive that any moderate delay to which the arrival of our force at that point might have been exposed from unfavourable circumstances of weather was likely to defeat its objects, and that success could only result from contigencies more favourable than ought perhaps in reason to have been counted upon, but I take that period as being that, within which, by the concurring judgment of all the professional men who have been examined, the fleet might have reached its destination, and upon which our reasoning and calculations of its ulterior movements must be framed in argument, it being impossible to make any precise supposition in respect to the length of contingent delays.

There were two distinct plans of operation upon which the army might have acted; the whole of the force might have been moved at once upon Antwerp, with a view to the immediate assault or bombardment of the town, passing by the lower defences of the river; or their operations might have been directed in the first instance against Lillo and Liefkenshoeik for the purpose of getting the complete command of the Scheldt, and of opening that river to the unfettered cooperation of the navy.

moved, the fort of Lillo being masked, the right bank of the river being also in our possession, which must have resulted from the advance of the main body of our army upon Antwerp, the corps employed in the reduction of Liefkenshoeik giving support on the left bank, the naval force might have passed up the Scheldt, and co-operated with the army against Anttwerp, notwithstanding the fire from Lillo. General Brownrigg in his evidence has stated, that without interfering with the movement of the army in force upon Antwerp, immediately on its debarkation a corps of 2,000 men might have been appropriated to the attack of Liefkenshoeik, which with the aid to be derived from the fleet, would in his judgment have secured the reduction of the place in less than ten days. The House will therefore see that we were not restricted in our operations against Antwerp to a simple military operation without the power of bringing our naval superiority to bear in the upper Scheldt, but that we had the prospect of effectually uniting the energies of both services in the prosecution of our ulterior object. I leave them then to judge whether the crews of the enemy's ships, menaced by an attack of this description, could have been available for land ser. vice, and without their aid, what would have been the enemy's means of defending Antwerp against our attack between the 10th and 15th August?

General Brownrigg has certainly stated, that ten days might possibly have been required to reduce Liefkenshoeik, but does it necessarily follow that a work which was not casemated would have resisted so long? We know that in the year 1747, Lillo, which is a more respectable fort, was taken in five days, and that the whole of the forts on the river, including Liefkenshoeik, were reduced in 11 days. Why are we then to assume, that the enemy would push their resistance to the utmost? the impediment that might have been occasioned, had the fort of Bathz resisted, instead of being evacuated, has been put forward, it has been proved Perhaps it would have been found most however, that this fort could not have reexpedient, in some measure to combine sisted with any effect; and why, if the both these plans. It has been stated in governor of Bathz thought fit to consult evidence by sir Richard Keats and com- his safety by flight, might not other garmodore Owen that if the fort of Liefken-risons and even that of Antwerp be intishoeik had been reduced, the boom established across the Scheidt must have fallen in our possession, and might have been destroyed. That this obstacle being re

midated into a surrender? Are we to deny ourselves all the chances of war? to assume that the enemy will in all instances effect prodigies, and that nothing shall be