At all events, it seemed sufficiently evident to the jealous and excitable French that the allies were no longer true to the interests of the fallen Bourbons; and equally so that it was not to restore them the Austrians at least made war. It was in _his own name_--not that of Louis XVII., king of France and Navarre--their emperor took possession of those fortified places and provinces which his armies overran; and after he became master of Condé and Valenciennes, he no longer cared to define or form a frontier for those districts of the Netherlands which once he proposed to cede to the Prussians; but which Thugut now wished to preserve to the descendants of Rudolph of Hapsburg.
At the same time the Duke of York, who from his own cabinet had received orders and instructions similar to those given to the Prince of Coburg, in the name of George III., resolved to seize upon Dunkerque, which the English had coveted of old; but he did not wait for the departure of a British fleet prepared for this object. The naval squadron was delayed, and in the meantime the duke deliberated with the Austrian general under the ramparts of Valenciennes, to learn if, before engaging in new sieges, they might not give to the French army a final blow which would deprive Kilmaine of all power of interrupting their combined operations.
This was a very simple question, yet they were fourteen days in coming to a conclusion. Though Valenciennes, as already stated, had capitulated on the 28th of July, it was not until the 8th of August that the Austro-British army was in motion, and its advance guard beheld the camp of Cæsar; this on the very day after Kilmaine had wisely evacuated the fortifications and retreated southwards.
It is said that he fully anticipated the march of the combined armies; and this was sufficiently probable, for we know that the committees of the National Convention had mysterious means of procuring secret intelligence, not only from the cabinets of the allies, but from the staff officers of the German troops!
Kilmaine in retiring only obeyed the dictates of wisdom and necessity, and quitted a position which he could not defend, as his army was reduced by defeat and desertion, mutinous, or as the French style it, _demoralized_.