Battle Story: Blenheim 1704

Battle Story: Blenheim 1704

by James Falkner
Battle Story: Blenheim 1704

Battle Story: Blenheim 1704

by James Falkner

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Overview

Blenheim has gone down in history as one of the turning points of the War of the Spanish Succession – and some would say in the history of conflict in Europe. The overwhelming Allied victory ensured the safety of Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army, thus preventing the collapse of the Grand Alliance. Bavaria was knocked out of the war, and Louis XIV's hopes for a quick victory came to an end. France suffered over 30,000 casualties. If you truly want to understand what happened and why – read Battle Story.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780750957830
Publisher: The History Press
Publication date: 09/01/2014
Series: Battle Story
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 128
File size: 6 MB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

James Falkner is a leading modern authority on 18th Century warfare, particularly the campaigns of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and the work of the celebrated French military engineer Marshal Vauban. He is the author of Marlborough's Sieges and Great and Glorious Days: Marlborough's Battles 1704-09.

Read an Excerpt

Blenheim 1704


By James Falkner

The History Press

Copyright © 2014 James Falkner
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5783-0



CHAPTER 1

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND


The War of the Spanish Succession was fought to determine who should sit on the throne in Madrid, once the semi-invalid King Carlos II had died in November 1700. That monarch had no obvious immediate successor, and in his will he named Philippe, Duc d'Anjou – the younger grandson of King Louis XIV of France – as his heir. The problem that this caused was obvious, as such an apparent extension of French influence over the wide and immensely wealthy Spanish Empire would alarm all other states in western Europe, many of whom had suffered at the hands of the Sun King and his military commanders over the preceding decades as the borders of France were extended and strengthened. An additional difficulty was that the younger son of the Emperor Leopold I in Vienna, the Archduke Charles, also had as good a claim to the throne as the young Frenchman.

The quandary for Louis XIV was that if the offer to his grandson was refused, it would then immediately be made to Archduke Charles who would almost certainly accept. In that case, the old French concern at the Habsburg encirclement (with potentially hostile armies to the south in the Iberian peninsula, to the eastwards across the Rhine where many German princes and Electors owed allegiance to the Emperor, and to the north from the populous and affluent Spanish Netherlands – today's Belgium and Luxembourg), would re-awaken. This could not be tolerated in Versailles, memories were long and it was less than fifty years or so ago that Spanish armies had come to within forty miles of the gates of Paris. In the genuine dilemma that he faced, the French king felt that he must allow his grandson to accept, while offering sufficient reassurance to his neighbours that their own interests would not be put in jeopardy. Compensation would be made to the Archduke Charles for any disappointed hopes of becoming king in Spain, with an important commitment that the thrones of France and Spain would always be kept separate, and commercial concessions in the Spanish Empire would be offered to England and Holland. With a little care, everyone should be able to be satisfied.

On 16 November 1700, Louis XIV announced that the offer of the throne of Spain was accepted by his grandson, and the Duc de St Simon remembered the dramatic and historic scene at Versailles, where the King addressed his courtiers:

Contrary to all precedent, the King caused the double doors of his cabinet [private chambers] to be thrown open, and ordered all the crowd assembled without to enter (it was a very full Court that day); then, glancing majestically over the numerous company, 'Gentlemen,' said he indicating the Duc d'Anjou 'this is the King of Spain'.


The Spanish envoy at Versailles was then invited to kneel and kiss the hand of his new King. With some neat diplomatic footwork all might have been well, and messages were sent to The Hague, Vienna and London with assurances that their interests were not now at risk, while territorial concessions in northern Italy were offered to Austria as compensation for the Archduke. Both William III of England and the States-General in The Hague accepted the assurances given, and acknowledged the Duc d'Anjou (Philip V) as King in Madrid, although Emperor Leopold remained reluctant to do so. Certainly no one on either side of the vexed question of the succession really sought renewed war after the conflicts and expenses of the previous decade (the Nine Years War), but, surprisingly for someone usually so politically sure-footed, Louis XIV now fumbled things badly and seemed incapable of avoiding meddling in Spanish affairs. In February 1701 he sent French troops into the Southern Netherlands to take possession of a number of important towns and fortresses. He clearly regarded this as simply protecting his grandson's inheritance with reliable French troops, but those same towns (Luxembourg, Mons, Namur, Oudenarde, Ath and Nieupoort) formed the cherished Barrier for the Dutch, agreed by solemn treaty, to protect against any future French aggression. There was no fighting or bloodshed, and the Elector of Bavaria, who was also the governor-general of the Spanish Netherlands, unwisely connived at the campaign of seizure, and in doing so openly allied himself to the French king. Only at Maastricht did the governor of the fortress, Johan Wigand van Goor, staunchly refuse the French summons. The Dutch garrisons were interned by the French, and the States-General had to humiliatingly negotiate their release.

It was becoming apparent that a joint effort to curb French pretensions and ambitions had to be made and to achieve this a Grand Alliance was formed between Holland, Austria and England, the terms of which were signed on 7 September 1701. John Churchill, the Earl of Marlborough, took a prominent part in the negotiations with the Dutch, as King William's III's, representative to agree the terms of the Alliance. (In time, both Portugal and the Duchy of Savoy would also join as allies). Matters very soon got even worse when, just six days later, Louis XIV went to St Germaine and acknowledged to his dying friend, the exiled King James II of England, that his own son (known in France as the Chevalier de St George), was regarded as the rightful heir to the throne in London when Queen Anne died. Even though it was generally understood that the King had been overcome and spoken incautiously in the emotion of the moment, this was a clear and gross interference in the internal affairs of England and Scotland, and yet another breach of treaty obligations. The French ambassador in London, the Comte de Tallard, who had striven hard to maintain good relations between the two countries, was promptly expelled. William III did not live to fight another war however, as he died from the effects of a fall from his horse early in March 1702 and his sister-in-law, Princess Anne (James II's youngest daughter), came to the throne in London.

Fighting was already taking place in northern Italy between French and Imperial Austrian forces, when the Grand Alliance formally declared war on France and the French claimant to the Spanish throne on 15 May 1702. The Earl of Marlborough, close friend and confidante of Queen Anne, was appointed to be her captain-general and it was soon agreed that he would command the Anglo-Dutch armies when on campaign. Some other generals, in particular the Dutch, might have felt that they had more experience than the Earl and therefore a better claim to the command, but in the interest of harmony within the Alliance they accepted his appointment, on the whole, with good grace.

In the meantime, Louis XIV had not been idle and 60,000 French troops, under command of Marshal Boufflers, advanced from the Spanish Netherlands towards the southern border of Holland. If the Dutch could be quickly knocked out of the war the Grand Alliance against France would fall apart without further ado. The allies were still gathering their army together and were clearly caught off guard by this rapid move: 'By daylight the enemy's Horse began to appear on both sides of us,' Captain Robert Parker of the Royal Irish Regiment remembered. The Dutch forces and those British troops that had arrived in the Low Countries so far were pinned against the lower Rhine near to Nijmegen, when Marlborough arrived to take over the command early in July 1702. In fact, despite the appearance of early success, the French commanders had over-extended themselves with few forward magazines and supply depots, and Boufflers was also obliged to divert troops to deal with an unexpected Dutch attack in Flanders. The French campaign as a result began to drag, and on 26 July Marlborough moved his army, which now just about matched the French in strength, to threaten Liege and the Marshal's lines of communication. Boufflers was obliged to hurriedly fall back from Cleves towards the River Meuse, but a promising chance for the Allies to maul the French army as it hurried southwards across the Heaths of Peer 'in the greatest confusion imaginable' was missed due to Dutch reluctance to attack. Marlborough, who would soon be made a duke in recognition of his successes in the Low Countries, was disappointed at such Dutch caution, but understood very well that successful alliance warfare was bound to require compromise. He wrote to a friend of his frustration: 'We ought not to have let them escape as we did, and we shall have reason, a long while, to blame ourselves for this neglect.' All the same, the pattern was set for the next eighteen months, and plans that Marlborough prepared to engage the French were frustrated by the Dutch on several occasions. He did however, manoeuvre his opponents well away from the Dutch border and the States-General minted a medal to acknowledge this in 1703, stirringly inscribed 'Victorious without Slaughter', which summed up very well their view on how the war was to be fought and what few risks were to be run.

Elsewhere, things were not going well for the Grand Alliance. French forces were making progress in northern Italy and on the upper Rhine, while Philip V (Anjou) had established himself in Madrid where he was generally making himself very popular. The ambitious Elector of Bavaria, Maximilien Wittelsbach, although technically owing allegiance to Emperor Leopold I in Vienna, had already allied himself to Louis XIV and now moved to threaten Vienna. The chance to drive Austria out of the Grand Alliance was naturally attractive and the main French military effort for the coming year was, in consequence, to be made in southern Germany. The Emperor already had to contend with revolt in Hungary, and simultaneous campaigns in the Tyrol and northern Italy, and if Vienna should fall to the Bavarians and French, even for a short time, then the political shock would be so severe that the alliance would fall apart just as surely as if the Dutch had been overwhelmed in 1702; Louis XIV and his grandson in Spain would in the process be triumphant. In March 1704, after a certain amount of plotting with the president of the Imperial War Council, Prince Eugene of Savoy and Count Wratislaw (the Austrian envoy in London) devised a plan with Marlborough to bring aid to Austria. In effect, the Duke would take those troops in the pay of Queen Anne away from the Low Countries and the cautious restraining hands of the Dutch, and march up the Rhine, combining with Imperial forces in southern Germany, to defeat the Elector and his French ally, Marshal Ferdinand Marsin. The Queen was persuaded and duly gave Marlborough an order to go to the assistance of Vienna 'if he saw fit'. The Dutch were understandably concerned on learning of this plan, which might take the Captain-General so far away from the borders of Holland, but Marlborough assured them that should the French move to attack, he would return quickly to their support. The Duke was, certainly, employing something of a deception on his allies in The Hague, and also more openly on his French opponents at the same time, writing to a friend on 29 April that:

My intentions are to march with all the English troops [those in the Queen's pay] to Coblenz and to declare that I intend to campaign on the Moselle, but when I get there to write to the States [-General] that I think it absolutely necessary for the saving of the Empire to march with all the troops under my command and to join with those that are in Germany in order to take measures with Prince Louis of Baden [the Austrian field commander] for the speedy reduction of the Elector of Bavaria.


Marlborough's calculation was that when he marched up the Rhine, such a pronounced shift in allied effort would demand that the French followed him, for fear of being outmatched in the Moselle or further south. They would, as a result, not be able to mount a serious threat to Holland, and the Duke made it plain that he intended to march whether he had the blessing of the Dutch or not. 'I have this afternoon declared to the deputies of the States my intention,' he wrote two days later, 'my resolution of going to the Moselle [...] If the French have joined any more troops to the Elector of Bavaria, I shall make no difficulty of marching to the Danube.' The Dutch made the best of things, and the States-General gave their consent, with some reluctance, to the Moselle project not fully knowing about a possible excursion to Bavaria far off in the south. They also agreed that a corps of their own troops already operating in conjunction with imperial forces on the upper Rhine, commanded by the highly capable Major-General Johan Wigand van Goor, should co-operate with Marlborough on his arrival there. This would suit all parties, as van Goor found it difficult to work harmoniously with the prickly Imperial field commander, the Margrave of Baden, who in turn resented that he could not give orders to the Dutch troops but, instead, had to request their co-operation. So, a major shift in the allied effort in the war was about to take place, full of possibilities and promise but fraught with risk and danger for all concerned.


THE TREATY OF THE GRAND ALLIANCE

The Treaty between England, the United Provinces of Holland and Austria, signed on 7 September 1701, had as its main provision that the Allies would seek to obtain, by negotiation or by war, that:

(i) Binding guarantees be given that the thrones of France and Spain would always remain separate (not that Philippe Duc d'Anjou, the French claimant, would necessarily have to vacate the throne in Madrid).

(ii) Emperor Leopold I would receive the Milanese region in northern Italy, Sicily, Naples, the Balearic Islands, the Spanish Netherlands and Luxemburg as compensation (for Anjou remaining in Madrid).

(iii) Holland to regain the barrier towns in the Spanish Netherlands, recently occupied by the French.

(iv) The Elector of Brandenburg to become King in Prussia in return for his support to the Grand Alliance.

(v) Financial subsidies to be paid to German Princes in return for their military support to the Grand Alliance.

(vi) England and Holland to have a free hand to trade in the West Indies.

(vii) No party of the Grand Alliance to make a separate peace without consultation with the others.

Clauses (ii) and (iii) are partly contradictory on the vexed issue of sovereignty over the Spanish (Southern) Netherlands, and this would give rise to difficulties once the region was safely in allied hands. No explicit mention is made of removing Philip V from the throne of Spain, both England and Holland having acknowledged his accession in 1701, and of course clause (ii) provided substantial compensation on this point anyway.

CHAPTER 2

THE ARMIES AT BLENHEIM


Overview

The army over which the Duke of Marlborough exercised overall command (a command he shared with Prince Eugene), was a confederate army, drawn as it was from Britain, Holland and Imperial Austria. The troops who marched up the length of the Rhine and over the hills to the Danube were almost all in the pay of Queen Anne but they were not all British, being in many cases drawn from Protestant German states (Hanover, Prussia, Hesse) and Denmark. These regiments were provided to the Grand Alliance by their princes in return for cash subsidies and were, in a sense, mercenary troops. However, they were of good quality and demonstrated their professional prowess with an ability to take heavy losses without flinching. Van Goor's Dutch troops which had been operating on the upper Rhine, including Protestant Swiss regiments in the pay of the States-General, were also put under Marlborough's command. The Austrian army was composed of large numbers of 'German' troops in the imperial service from such states as Swabia, Baden, Anhalt, Württemberg and Mecklenburg, and although their administrative arrangements and standards of training may not quite have matched those of Marlborough, their courage and resolve was not in doubt and on the whole they performed well.

Prince Eugene, in theory, was of equal rank to Marlborough, but he had the wisdom to recognise that Austria, at this point in the war, depended upon her allies to a greater extent than they depended on Austria. Accordingly he deferred to the Duke as the de facto commander-in-chief of the allied army in the campaign. The Duke had the good sense and the good manners to ensure that he treated Eugene will all due respect, and the troops saw this and no unhealthy rivalry or resentment occurred to hamper their efforts. The Margrave of Baden was less inclined to be so cooperative, and his departure to lay siege to Ingolstadt allowed Marlborough and Eugene, who had rapidly established a close rapport, to operate more freely together.

The Franco-Bavarian army presented an equally mixed picture, although they too did not lack courage and energy. The Elector of Bavaria's troops, the 'Blue army' whose name derived from the colour of their coats, were tough and well trained but few in number after the catastrophe suffered by D'Arco's corps at the Schellenberg fight in early July 1704. The subsequent campaign to devastate Bavaria forced the Elector to disperse his best regiments to protect his own estates. Marlborough had given instructions that those same estates were not to be ravaged, but the Elector presumably did not know this. Such a tactically wasteful dispersal of effort at a crucial time infuriated the French Marshals, but their protests were in vain, and the effect was that on the fateful day of Battle at Blenheim, only nine battalions of Bavarian infantry (some reports say five) were ready to fight alongside their French allies. They did, however, fight superbly well.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from Blenheim 1704 by James Falkner. Copyright © 2014 James Falkner. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Contents

Title,
Introduction,
Timeline,
Historical Background,
The Armies at Blenheim,
The Weeks Before the Battle,
The Battle of Blenheim: Wednesday 13 August 1704,
After the Battle,
Orders of Battle,
French Officers 'of note' Taken Prisoner at Blenheim,
Bibliography and Further Reading,
Copyright,

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