#4 Addressed to Mr. Henry Hirst, Heptonstall near Halifax, Yorkshire, South Britain
Tournay 24th November 1793
Honour’d Father & Mother
This comes with my duty to you hoping this will find you in good health , but am sorry to acquaint you that I never have had my health since I left Ostend, lying in Camp does not agree with me
we left Ostend in August when I writ a letter to you but never received any answer, we have had nothing but Marching about the Country after the French ever since but our Regiment has not had much Fighting with them only at Dunkirk we was about 3 Weeks at Dunkirk and was Firing Night and Day, there all the time, but was Oblige to retreat at last, and after we left that place we was not above two or three days at a place but constant marching which flung me quiet [sic] down, I have been 6 Weeks in the General Hospital in this Town in the Fever and the Ague and am not quiet [sic] recovered yet
I have been 6 Weeks in the General Hospital in this Town in the Fever and the Ague and am not quiet [sic] recovered yet
William Hirst – 24 November 1793
but I hope in a few weeks please God Almighty I shall be as strong as ever, I heard from you by several different Letters but was not able to write before now myself, we have only been in Quarters here about 10 days and does not know whether we are to stay here the Winter or go to a Town called Ghant which is a very fine place.
This Town is very large but there are so many Troops laying here that it makes everything very Dear, all the British Troops entirely, are here except two Regiments both Horse and Foot, besides Dutch, Hessian, & Austrians, to the Number of nearly 20 Thousand Men all together, I dare say you can see in the Newspaper better than I can relate to you the different places that are took by the combined Armies The Imperial Army has took a place called Levy & another Town called I forget the name of and 400 pieces of Cannon which is a great downfall to the French, I do not know whether you have got this News or not, but all our Cannon and Infantry fired this Day on that Occasion, please to remember me to my Brothers and Sisters all relations and Inquiring Friends and let me know how my Brothers George and John goes on, and what my Brother Thomas Greenwood is doing and how my Brother James Armitage is and my Sisters and let me know how my Wife and Child is, I could wish to be settled in the Country again, for I am quiet [sic] tired of this way of Life I do assure you, I would give a Thousand Pound if I had it to be Free from the Army,
I could wish to be settled in the Country again, for I am quiet [sic] tired of this way of Life I do assure you, I would give a Thousand Pound if I had it to be Free from the Army
William Hirst – 29 November 1793
James Hepten as they call him in Heptonstall but James Greewood is his name desires to be remembered to his parents it is him that I heard from you by & there was one Henry Wilcock in the same Company that I am in that came from Mythom Goyd if you can find his Parents please to let them know that he Died of the Flue in the General Hospital in this Town on the 28th of October ————
Please to write as soon as you receive this letter and let me know if you received my letter in August and let me know how affairs are going on, please to Direct for me in Captain Erskines Company 37th Regiment Tournay in Flanders or elsewhere so no more at present from your Dutifull Son
Wm. Hirst
The William Hirst Letters 1787-1798 
With 20,000 men in one place it was likely difficult to physically distance! I wonder what passed for a “Hospital” in those days…
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Hoping to elaborate on this in the next post :D. Stay tuned …
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I find the details of the war fascinating—the French Revolutionary Army loosing 400 cannon would be a big loss—yet they would keep on holding all of Europe at bay till 1802! Doesn’t say much for the Allies!! 🙂 It’s also interesting to me that just before this time, William Wordsworth left France in great haste due precisely to these wars, and left behind a unmarried girlfriend and their infant daughter. He was in such distress when he returned to England (and anxiety lest he be picked up by the British as a traitor and a spy) that he retreated into Wales. Hence the opening lines of his famous poem “Tintern Abbey” written five years later in July 1798, “Five years have passed …” He goes on to say that he has “changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved.
——– It was the wars that Hirst is describing that he was dreading and flying from (not to mention the guilt of being a runaway dad).
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Thanks so much for sharing this, Rob. I had thought, mistakenly, that Wordsworth was more a man of the 19th century so this connection to “William Hirst’s War” is very interesting, especially leaving a woman and child behind. The capture of the 400 French cannon seems to have been a glitch in a rather chaotic war. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders_campaign. With so many countries involved on the anti-French side things never seem to have gone entirely smoothly – and then, of course, we see the rise of Napoleon starting about 1794 … https://www.history.com/topics/france/napoleon
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I love all the overlaps of ancestry and interest in the last two blog entries! So cool that your dad followed the same path, and then you. Goosebumps 🙂 And that Wordsworth was leaving behind an Almost Wife and Child in parallel to our sad protagonist.
Poor old blood-soaked Europe. All those countries jostling together for centuries, until friction turns inevitably to warfare… and young men put on clothes that are supposed to make them braver and have all their dreams end in a moment and fertilize the soil for the next hapless buggers to trod (and fall) upon. I’m beginning to think war is pointless or something.*
And – why won’t his parents write to him? Are they having to unwillingly support Wife and Child? Are they still peeved over the American fiasco? Just never liked him all that much? (Haha, just remembered Henry Fonda (father) saying to Jane Fonda (daughter) in “On Golden Pond”: “I didn’t think we were mad; I just thought we didn’t like each other.”)
*Re pointless war: If you haven’t seen it already, I recommend “Da 5 Bloods” (Spike Lee’s new movie on Netflix) It is really quite remarkable, following four black vets as they return to Viet Nam to honour a beloved fellow soldier and to look for treasure. It feels like an epic Shakespearean tragedy (Nelson Lindo’s descent to madness made all of us think of Lear) which echoes Apocalypse Now, and offers fresh insight into the “now” of war and race in both Viet Nam and the US. I thought about it for days afterward.
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Yes, yes, and yes. I will watch for this film, Val! Your discussion of movies also brought to mind Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjPSGuJskxM. The war depicted is, as I recall, the 7 Years War but the battle scenes probably show much the same slaughter as William Hirst would have seen.
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Oh – and about the letters – I think some went missing but the parents do seem to be trying to correspond with him. He writes a little later in the letter above “I heard from you by several different Letters but was not able to write before now myself”
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Yes… but I thought they were letters sent to friends, not to him. I think I must have misunderstood :0
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You might be right! My interpretation of the sentence may have been mistaken. As Doug Fyfe writes in the next post – “the twists and turns of trying to understand another’s motivations” – may apply equally to simply understanding their WORDS. Thanks for your continuing interest and support, Val 😀
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