HISTORY OF EUROPE. 
the retreat of the British troops. 
These maintained their ground till 
night, when they retired unpursued. 
But these occasional instances of 
courage and conduct could not pre- 
vail against the immense superiority 
of stréngth that continually over- 
whelmed all! resistance. The British 
army, exclusively of an open and 
successful enemy in the French, had 
a concealed one in every Dutch 
town and village through which 
they passed. No direct hostilities 
were committed; but every species 
of injury and disservice was done, 
that inveterate malice could suggest. 
Looking upon the English as the 
-radical cause of the calamities, in- 
fli@ed on their country by this ruin- 
ous war, the generality of the 
Dutch held them in abhorrence, 
and sought every occasion to add to 
their present distresses. While the 
inhabitants of the united provinces 
-manifested so inimical a disposition 
to his friends, it was in vain the 
Stadtholder issued proclamations,ex- 
horting them to rise in amass, for the 
protection of their country ; they 
answered him with the bitterest re- 
proaches, and publicly reviled him 
as the tool of the British govern- 
-mert, and the betrayer of the 
Dutch nation. 
* To the shattered remnant of the 
British army, surrounded in this 
. Manner, by open and secret ene. 
*mies, the only resource remaining 
was, to effect a total retreat from 
_ what might be justly considered as a 
m. Vor. XXXVII. 
[49 
hostile country. But this was no 
longer an eay task in the woeful 
situation to which it was now re- 
duced, by the base and flagitious 
negleét of those to whom the care 
of furnishing it with due requisites 
had been entrusted. The multitude 
of inferior agents, appointed for this 
purpose, had so grossly deceived 
their employers, that while these 
imagined that ample provision had 
been made of every article they 
had directed, the others had been 
guilty of either so much remissness 
or peculation, that the army now 
laboured under deficiencies of the 
most heinous nature. The suffer- 
ings of the sick and wounded sol- 
diers, in particular, excited the 
highest commiseration. ‘They were 
in the midst of this rigorous winter, 
removed in open waggons, exposed 
to the weather, and destitute of all 
comforts and accommodations.— 
Numbers were frozen to death, or 
perished through want; especially 
during the march on the sixteenth 
of January, a day for ever memora- 
ble on account of the hardships and 
distresses of every kind endured by 
the British army, in its retreat to. 
the city of Deventer. The recitals 
of them that have been published 
convey an idea of every species of 
misery that human nature can un- 
dergo, in one of the most lamentable 
situations to which men are liable, 
through the contingencies of war.* 
Another column of the British 
army had evacuated Utrecht in tl:e 
[E] evening 
* (Jan. 16.] “We marched at the appointed hour, and, after a very tedious 
~ journey, about three o’clock inthe afiernoon, reached the verge of an immense desert 
~ealled the Welaw, when, instead of having gained a resting place for the night, as 
~ we expected, we were informed that we had fifteen miles farther to go. 
©  Upor this information many began to be much dejected, and not without rea- 
' son; for several of us, besides suffering the severity of the weather, and fatigue of the 
» march, had neither eat nor drank any thing, except water, that day. 
: 
“ For the first three or four miles such a dismal prospectappeared, as none of us was 
ever witness to before; a bare sancy desert, with a tuft of withered grass, or solitary 
t 
shrub, 
