Numerically superior Habsburg Austrian, British and Hanoverian columns converged on the fortified French camp, but Kilmaine wisely decided to slip away toward Arras.

Adam Philippe, Comte de Custine, the previous commander of the Army of the North was ordered to Paris, where he was soon arrested and guillotined.

On 8 August, the Coalition trap snapped shut on only two battalions and even these got away when Kilmaine intervened with his massed cavalry.

Meanwhile, the French were defeated by the Sardinians at the Battle of Saorgio on 12 June and the War of the Pyrenees was going badly when a Spanish army invaded Roussillon.

The overthrow of the moderate Girondin faction in the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793 meant that the extreme Jacobins took control of the National Convention.

[3] The Minister of War Jean Baptiste Noël Bouchotte undermined Custine through his agents in the army.

Coburg did not like this strategy and submitted his own plan which was to advance southeast toward Maubeuge while the Prussian army thrust southwest from Mainz toward Saarlouis.

Johann Amadeus von Thugut, adviser to Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, wished for the Prussian army to cooperate with Austria in the conquest of Alsace, for Coburg to move against Le Quesnoy, and for York to operate against Dunkirk.

The northern side was protected by the Sensée River and coincided with Marshal Claude de Villars' famous lines of La Bassée from the War of the Spanish Succession.

Farther south, Colloredo passed through Naves[12] and reached the Scheldt, but neither column crossed the river that day.

York's column crossed the Scheldt at Crèvecœur and Masnières after a 12 mi (19 km) march[13] that took 11 hours to accomplish, so that the exhausted troops could go no farther.

[14] That day, Kilmaine formed a division of 3,000 French cavalry and used it to delay York's march by mounting feint attacks and forcing the Allies to deploy.

Representative on mission Pierre Delbrel urged that the French army should leave token forces to observe Clerfayt and Colloredo, and hurl itself on York's column.

Rather than falling back toward Paris, Kilmaine adopted a plan to retreat to the west and assume a new position behind the Scarpe River between Arras and Douai.

[19] When York arrived at Marquion, the French had set the buildings on fire and broken the bridge over the Agache in order to block Allied pursuit.

York, his orderly, and Louis Alexandre Andrault de Langeron galloped through the burning village and soon spied a formation of cavalry.

[15] According to Langeron, York returned to Bourlon where he got into an argument with Coburg's chief-of-staff Friedrich Wilhelm, Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Kirchberg, blaming him for the escape of the French.

Pulteney wrote this criticism of the operation, "We were not in force to attack the enemy, the duke's [York's] column was a long way from support, and between ourselves we were not sorry to see them go off.

The advance guard under Joseph de Hédouville was on the south bank of the Scarpe, covering the army.

Kilmaine vowed that he was true to the French Republic and claimed that he would make a good cavalry commander.

Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just denounced Kilmaine, and on 23 December 1793 he was arrested.

Kilmaine avoided the guillotine, was released after the fall of Robespierre, and served in Italy under Napoleon Bonaparte, who regarded him as a suitable commander for a detached corps.