Prussians did not exhibit the activity necessary for success. They spent eight days uselessly in camp at Kons. If they had anticipated Dumouriez at the Little Islands, or had even made a more serious effort to drive him from them, they would still have had all the advantage of a concentrated force against several scattered divisions, and could have prevented their junction and overthrown them separately. Frederick the Great would have justified the remark of Dumouriez at Grandpré,—that, if his antagonist had been the great king, he (Dumouriez) would already have been driven behind Châlons.
The Austrians in this campaign proved that they were still imbued with the false system of Daun and Lascy, of covering every point in order to guard every point.
The fact of having twenty thousand men in Brisgau while the Moselle and Sarre were uncovered, shows the fear they had of losing a village, and how their system led to large detachments, which are frequently the ruin of armies.
Forgetting that the surest hope of victory lies in presenting the strongest force, they thought it necessary to occupy the whole length of a frontier to prevent invasion,—which was exactly the means of rendering invasion upon every point feasible.
I will further observe that, in thin campaign, Dumouriez foolishly abandoned the pursuit of the allies in order to transfer the theater from the center to the extreme left of the general field. Moreover, he was unable to perceive the great results rendered possible by this movement, but attacked the army of the Duke of Saxe-Teschen in front, while by descending the Meuse to Namur he might have thrown it back upon the North Sea toward Meuport or Ostend, and have destroyed it entirely in a more successful battle than that of Jemmapes.
The campaign of 1793 affords a new instance of the effect of a faulty direction of operations. The Austrians were victorious, and recovered