Walcheren Campaign

• 1. Introduction

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  The Walcheren Campaign of 1809 killed more than 4,000 British soldiers in the Netherlands, and only 106 of those men died in combat. The rest fell to fever in the marshes of a river delta no one had properly reconnoitered before the army arrived.

  Britain committed 39,000 troops to this expedition, along with field artillery, two siege trains, and a fleet of 37 warships. It was the largest British expedition of that year, outstripping even the force then fighting Napoleon in the Iberian Peninsula. Yet within months the troops were in retreat, the strategic objectives were unmet, and nearly £8 million of public funds had been spent.

  How does the most powerful navy in the world, commanding an army of that size, achieve so little? And why, at the moment when French forces had been organized to repel the invasion, did Napoleon dismiss the general responsible?

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• 2. Strategic Miscalculation

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  The Battle of Wagram had already ended before a single British soldier crossed the North Sea. Austria, which Britain had hoped to relieve by opening a new front against France, had effectively lost the war. The expedition's strategic rationale was hollow before the fleet set sail.

  In July 1809, the British decided to seal the estuary of the Scheldt. The aim was to destroy the French fleet thought to be in Flushing. Seizing Antwerp would also deny Napoleon a major port on the Scheldt. Sir Richard Strachan commanded the naval force for the expedition; John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, commanded the army.

  The Scheldt blockade was declared on the 14th of May 1809. Yet no reconnaissance or sounding of the entrance fairways had been carried out before the campaign began. Britain was sending its largest expedition of the year into an estuary its navy had never mapped.

  Flushing held 4,000 French garrison troops at the time of the British landings; Antwerp held just 2,400. Many units in the Low Countries were assembled from soldiers drawn across occupied Europe. Several formations were staffed in part by men the training depots had deemed least fit for frontline service. On paper, those numbers gave Britain a decisive opening advantage.

  That initial advantage required speed to exploit. The pace of the campaign was Chatham's to set.

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• 3. Walcheren Fever

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  Within a month of seizing Walcheren Island, the British army recorded more than 8,000 fever cases. The illness went by the name Walcheren fever, and it was most likely a combination of malaria, typhus, typhoid, and dysentery. The saturated terrain of the Scheldt delta was ideal ground for all of them.

  Reports available before the campaign had already confirmed that a French occupying force in the same region had lost 80% of its numbers to disease. That evidence did not translate into adequate medical provisions for the expedition.

  By October 1809, around 12,000 troops remained on Walcheren Island, but only 5,500 were fit for duty. The garrison that had landed in full strength three months earlier had been hollowed out. The fever had done far more damage than the French ever managed.

  When survivors were eventually sent to join Wellington's forces in the Peninsular War, they carried the sickness with them. The sick lists in that campaign permanently doubled as a result.

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• 4. Chatham's Paralysis

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  The expeditionary force landed at Walcheren on the 30th of July and split into three columns. The Walcheren Column moved toward Flushing. The Schouwen Column landed at Wemeldinge on the 1st of August and took the Bath fortification without a fight the next day. The Cadzand Column, through a misunderstanding, landed on South Beveland instead of its intended position.

  The French reinforced Flushing via a pontoon bridge between Walcheren and Cadzand until the 8th of August. Lord Chatham had a full squadron available and did not break that connection in time.

  With Bath captured, the British opened a route to Antwerp through the eastern arm of the Scheldt, accessible to small frigates and gunboats. Chatham did not take it. He spent two weeks besieging Flushing instead, leaving a 21,000-man force sitting idle at Bath.

  By the 15th of August, Flushing had fallen after a ferocious bombardment and the surrounding towns followed. Two weeks of inaction had handed the French the time they needed. Chatham then bombarded Cadzand and Fort Terneuzen, but no advance followed.

  A rapid and decisive movement toward Antwerp might still have saved the expedition. Chatham did not make one. France, meanwhile, had a solution to its disorganized defense that was already on its way from Paris.

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• 5. Bernadotte Takes Command

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  On the 10th of August 1809, Napoleon approved the appointment of Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte to command all French forces in the invasion zone. Bernadotte, the Prince of Ponte Corvo, had recently resigned his command after incurring Napoleon's displeasure at the Battle of Wagram. He was recalled from Paris and sent to the Netherlands.

  Before Bernadotte's arrival, French forces in the region were divided among multiple commanders, without unified direction. He brought with him a recognized talent for organization and training.

  The French fleet was his first priority. Bernadotte ordered it to Antwerp immediately. He then placed the main forts of the Upper Scheldt into a defensible condition. He concentrated up to 40,000 men in Antwerp, closing off any British path to the city.

  At Chatham's council of war on the 26th of August, it became clear that an advance on Antwerp was impossible. The French had by that point concentrated nearly 100,000 men there. The British began a staged withdrawal to Walcheren. The expedition was called off in early September.

  Bernadotte had secured the Netherlands. Napoleon would remove him within weeks.

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• 6. Napoleon's Suspicion

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  Napoleon dispatched General Reille to monitor Bernadotte in Antwerp, fearing a conspiracy between the marshal and Fouché. No conspiracy was found. Napoleon's distrust of Bernadotte, however, ran deeper than any evidence could resolve.

  The pretext for dismissal came from an Order of the Day. Bernadotte issued it to raise his troops' morale. In it, he declared that his 15,000 men would be enough to repel any British force. Napoleon read this as a dangerous disclosure of the army's actual strength to the enemy.

  Napoleon's response was explicit: "This is the first occasion on which a General has been known to betray his position by an excess of vanity." He relieved Bernadotte on the 11th of September 1809. Marshal Bessières, whom Napoleon considered stolid and reliable, took command in his place.

  Bessières oversaw the British garrison's slow dissolution on Walcheren through December. On the 24th of December, the remnants of Chatham's army destroyed the port facilities of Flushing and boarded ships for England.

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• 7. The Irish Legion

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  The 1st Battalion of the Irish Legion had been raised by France for an invasion of Ireland that never materialized. By August 1809 it was stationed in Flushing, and the British assault on that city gave the battalion its first experience of combat.

  The battalion fought for several days inside Flushing, holding positions in a series of rear guard actions. It was almost completely captured when the city fell. As the French garrison surrendered and marched out of the town, the Legion's brass band and the Irish battalion led the column.

  A small party of Irishmen escaped capture, taking the battalion's cherished imperial eagle into hiding with them. After a few days they crossed the Scheldt River to safety.

  Commandant Lawless was afterward presented to Napoleon. He and Captain O'Reilly both received the Légion d'honneur in recognition of the battalion's conduct at Flushing.

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• 8. The Reckoning

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  Peter Finnerty, a former United Irishman, traveled to Walcheren as a special correspondent for The Morning Chronicle at the invitation of Sir Home Popham. He directed much of the blame for the campaign's failure at Lord Castlereagh, and the campaign became a source of lasting political embarrassment in Britain.

  Franco-Dutch forces defending against the British expedition lost 4,000 men dead, wounded, or captured across the campaign. For an operation involving little pitched battle, that was a significant toll on the defenders as well.

  Almost 12,000 British soldiers were still ill as late as February 1810, months after the army had withdrawn. Many others were permanently weakened. The campaign's most unexpected mark on British soil was botanical. The plant known as Thanet cress arrived in Britain in the bedding of sick soldiers and established itself there.

  Marshal Bernadotte, dismissed by Napoleon for vanity, outlasted the emperor who dismissed him. He eventually became Crown Prince of Sweden and later its king. The general Napoleon had called vain founded a royal dynasty that has endured ever since.

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