The final bout, winter fighting in Holland
December-February
Preparations
With Eugene entering negotiations for a pause in the fighting with the continental members of the fifth coalition the British would find themselves in a rather difficult position. They were still technically at war with France, who had not made any serious effort to include the British in the negotiations thus far, and they had little interest in participating in negotiations either until the country was freed from French control.
The French for their part considered peace with the British without maintaining their rule over the low countries to be unacceptable. Belgium had been among the first areas conquered in the first years of the revolution, and provided a useful buffer zone for France to its north, as well as a source of both manpower and money for fighting. They also viewed peace with the British generally as something of a mixed bag as it was seen as unlikely that any treaty would last, both powers being to suspicious of one another, as well as opposed on too many issues.
But time, for both powers, was an enemy. The longer the situation in Holland remained unresolved the more likely it would impact the negotiations between France, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and Austria. And in a way that could be bad for either power as well, the French not wanting fighting in Holland to lead to a collapse of the negotiations elsewhere, while the British did not want to be forced to negotiate without control of the low countries. And both sides considered fighting to be the only way to resolve things, if it could be quick.
Both sides had been frantically reinforcing their armies in the area even before Nijmegen, throwing their support behind their respective generals. Which were both in nearly their ideal circumstances. Wellesley being gifted at defensive battle in prepared positions, while Bernadotte was a master logistician and gifted tactician in his own right. Both generals had a nearly free hand, with only the poor winter weather placing much of a limit on their activities.
Wellesley would reinforce his frontier, using the river Waal as the primary line, only Nijmegen lying outside its path, the few bridges along the river being quickly captured and fortified by his men. At the same time Bernadotte began prodding attacks along the front to find the exact nature of how things stood between him and the British, also seeking out potential weaknesses aside from the obvious target of Nijmegen.
Oranjie Restoration
Bernadotte was caught by surprise when on the 3rd of December the prince of Oranjie Willem Frederik, arrived in the British controlled Netherlands and declared himself as king. Wellesley being caught equally as off-guard as he had not been informed of this event before hand. In fact the errant prince, who had been chased out of the Netherlands with his father several years before, had achieved this without the knowledge, nor approval, of his plans.
But Wellesley was quick to see the potential Willem represented and began to address the surprise guest at his camp as king, also asking for the British government to approve the decision and give him legitimacy, which they would do on the seventh. Putting Bernadotte in the sudden position of invading the lands of a foreign kingdom rather than putting down the rebellion of a local commander and the brother of the dead emperor.
On the ninth, simultaneous with a declaration of the sovereign status of his kingdom, as well as its claimed borders (the former Dutch Republic as well as the southern Netherlands under French occupation) Willem would dispatch representatives to marshal Bernadotte with a letter which announced he was within Dutch territory and asked him to leave, the letter concluding by making him aware that the British army was willing to push him out if he refused.
The first blows, second battle of Nijmegen
Bernadotte could not agree to leave Belgium, he was in the area as emperor Eugene's military representative, not his political and diplomatic envoy to a sovereign state. He did send a letter to the emperor asking him for orders, also suggesting that he declare Willem illegitimate and his kingom an unrecognized British pupped, but he did nothing further aside from prepare his troops for an offensive to once again attempt to retake Nijmegen.
Eugene had already received news of the development of a new kingdom in the Netherlands and sent orders to Eugene ordering him to retake the territory occupied by the British and also announcing that the new state was illegal under international law and custom and refused to recognize it. In a private letter going on to request that Bernadotte retake the area quickly and then join him in the Rhineland with what troops he could detach as negotiations were becoming tense. This letter reaching the marshal on the twelfth.
On the very next day Bernadotte launched his attack against a prepared and forewarned British line. French forces leading with an artillery barrage firing repeatedly into what was judged to be a British weak point before shock troops advanced into the presumably softened remaining troops.
While sound strategy in most circumstances this strategy failed to account for the extensive series of fallback positions already prepared by Wellesley, who called his troops back at the initial French barrage and thus preserved most of them to countercharge the French vanguard as it broke through.
Regardless Bernadotte scored significant early success through sheer weight of numbers initially, his assumption being correct in that he did in fact strike a weakpoint in the British army. His forces penetrating the outer British lines during the rest of the day despite stiff resistance at all points by staunch British defenders. But this progress would be slowed during the night as Wellesley got a firmer hand on the situation and funneled more troops into the area, also launching his own attack at Beneden-Leeuwen in the early evening which caught local French forces by surprise. Brutal night fighting would typify the night as both armies stalled.
The next day the British line broke and Wellesley was forced to retreat across the Waal, the French had captured Nijmegen.
Wellesley on the offensive
With his defenses breached after a hard day and nights battle, the defeat largely due to his inability to funnel fresh troops into the fighting leading to the exhausted survivors of the day breaking during the night, Wellesley would manage to destroyer the bridges over the Waal at Nijmegen, containing the French there for the moment less they wished to make a dangerous river crossing against his own guns on the opposite shore.
At the same time Wellesley reshifted his army to the west and raced to reinforce the troops which had crossed at Beneden-Leeuwen, a pair of towns lying at a shallow point in the river where boats could cross with some ease. At the same time Bernadotte would quickly determine that further progress north of Nijmegen was ill-advised for the moment and decide that the British penetration was a danger to his own forces and begin a race to beat them to reinforce his own troops in the area.
He lost this race and Wellesley quickly began a rapid advance south, crossing the Meuse at Appeltern and taking Oss on the 14th. Forcing Bernadotte to follow him in a lengthy chase. Eventually being caught and fighting an inconclusive battle at Beugt on the 17th which ended with the British escaping in a snowstorm and capturing neighboring Veghel. A revolt in Uden and Noordbrabant forcing Bernadotte to send forces away to deal with these issues. The time also allowing Wellesley to be reinforced.
The revolt in Noordbrabant had come about as a fruit of the labors of the new Dutch king, who had called for his fellow citizens to overthrow their French oppressors. And after Wellesley captured Eindhoven on the 18th the revolt would spread to Breda and Tilburg. All of which made Bernadotte's position untenable and forced him to fall back to Nijmegen while another French army approached from the south to attack the British lines on the 20th. The battle of Eindhoven ending in a brief British retreat followed by counterattack the next day which caused the French to route and their army to disintegrate.
With most of his earlier success now gone and western Belgium in British hands Bernadotte would swing his army to the south planning a final confrontation which would end the fighting once and for all.
The battle of Deurne
The small to mid sized city of Deurne would be the site of the final battle of the Holland campaign. With the French army capturing the city on the 19th of January 1809 after several weeks of bad weather and posturing by both sides. Both sides having been reinforced in the interim, with Wellesley receiving a small contingent of Swedes and a hastily formed Dutch contingent among other troops. While Bernadotte had been sent troops directly from Eugene's main army on the border with Germany while peace negotiations wore on.
Battle would begin on the 23rd of the month with Wellesley attempting a multi-pronged attack against the French positions in the outskirts of the town with the goal of achieving a breakthrough. These attempts however failed, possibly due to British hesitancy at fully committing as Wellesley didnt want to get involved in a protracted fight in the dead of winter. The weather having gotten steadily worse.
Some of this hesitancy can also be explained by the disparity between the two men. While Wellesley was hardly inexperienced, having fought in battles on multiple continents in a career of several decades and led many armies to victory, he was not a marshal of the French empire. One who had served alongside Napoleon himself during many of the most important battles of the last twenty years of fighting and had grown a significant legend around himself. It was not that Wellesley did not want to fight his French counterpart. But he wanted to have a firmer idea of just what exactly he was made of, his earlier bouts with him having been generally short affairs aside from the two battles of Nijmegen which had been rather brute force affairs for both armies.
Wellesley got his chance to see Bernadotte operate up close and personal on the 25th when he used his cavalry to shatter the British left flank and attempt to overrun the rest of the army. Wellesley narrowly managing to save the day by brutally effective use of cannon to obliterate the French horsemen with grapeshot at very close range. But the fight was enough to worry Wellesley, who drew his line tighter to Voort.
The move proved to be a prudent one as Bernadotte attacked on the 27th in a vicious wide arching assault which attempted to overwhelm his lines. A move which may have worked were the British lines not so concentrated. Wellesley advanced his men in a brutal snowstorm during the evening and managed to, thanks in part to snow drifts which choked the French rear and caused difficulty in both sides moving, smash the French right flank and cause serious damage to the center. Wellesley would then manage to actually win the battle when his still intact center advanced on the 29th and essentially eroded down the French lines into defeat.
Another battle would be fought on the 10th of February at Weert which resulted in a significant defeat of Wellesley, but by this time his troops had already retaken Nijmegen and forced the French to flee generally to the south, the battle being something of an accident as both sides blundered into eachother and not an attempt by either to actually destroy the other. Bernadotte would pull out of the town after its citizens refused his men lodgings and continue to the French border chased closely by the British, who stopped at the border to menace the French.
The Aachen agreement
April 3rd 1809
Following their conquest of Belgium the British would request to attend the negotiations between France and the continental members of the fifth coalition. Initially Eugene considered refusing as he was already preparing another army under Bernadotte to try again to conquer the low countries, but he consented after receiving reports of a Russian army advancing through Prussia. Though he insisted that the situation in the Netherlands would have to wait to be settled in a separate agreement, hoping to get at the least an independent Belgium under French control to act as a much needed buffer zone between France and her enemies.
The British agreed to this proposal and it was quickly agreed that the Belgian question could wait until a proper treaty was agreed upon, with London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna discussed as potential sites for this treaty. And the city of Aachen was quickly agreed on as the site of the third series of talks between France and the fifth coalition, the previous talks at Saarbrucken having established a general ceasfire, while the later talks at Metz had fallen apart due to the fighting in Holland.
The agreement eventually reached by the participating nations was that all powers would withdraw their forces from Germany, Illyria was ceded to Austria, with Prussia assuming control over the confederation of the Rhine, which would be reorganized in short order into the German confederation, at the same time the independence of Naples and the restoration of the Swiss confederation was agreed to by all powers. Aside from these agreements though many issues remained to be discussed at the next conference, which was agreed to take place in Vienna early the next year.
While this agreement was being signed though issues elsewhere would quickly draw everyone's attentions away. For Spain had collapsed into civil war and anarchy with king Carlos IV of Spain fighting his son Ferdinand for control over Spain and its empire in a conflict which threatened to draw the continent into war once more.
