Blenheim: Battle for Europe

BLENHEIM: BATTLE FOR EUROPE

How Two Men Stopped the French Conquest of Europe

Charles Spencer

Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2020

This edition first published by Endeavour Press Ltd. in 2014

First published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2004

Copyright © Charles Spencer, 2004

Cover image © Getty Images

Charles Spencer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Ebook Edition © September 2020 ISBN: 9780008373207

Version: 2020-07-30

Dedication

For Ned

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

Preface

Prologue

Part One – Louis’s Europe

Chapter One – A Rod for his Own Back

Chapter Two – An Island No More

Chapter Three – John Churchill

Chapter Four – France Feels the Strain

Chapter Five – The Spanish Succession

Part Two – The War

Chapter Six – Taking Sides

Chapter Seven – The War in Flanders

Chapter Eight – Friends Like These

Chapter Nine – Closing In

Part Three – The Campaign

Chapter Ten – Cutting the Gordian Knot

Chapter Eleven – Prince Eugène

Chapter Twelve – Combined Forces

Chapter Thirteen – The Storming of the Schellenberg

Chapter Fourteen – Looking to Louis

Chapter Fifteen – Laying Waste to Bavaria

Chapter Sixteen – Battle Looms

Part Four – The Battle

Chapter Seventeen – Battle Joined

Chapter Eighteen – Blenheim Village

Chapter Nineteen – General Engagement

Chapter Twenty – Cavalry Charge

Chapter Twenty-One – Victory

Part Five – The Aftermath

Chapter Twenty-Two – ‘Que Dira Le Roi?’

Chapter Twenty-Three – Vindication

Chapter Twenty-Four – Lessons Learned

Appendix A – The Senior Officers of the Army of the Grand Alliance at Blenheim

Appendix B – British and Irish Regiments who fought at Blenheim, with their later names

Appendix C – The regiments brought into Bavaria by Marshal Tallard

Footnotes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Author’s Note

Dates: At the time of Blenheim, England used the Old Style of dates, whereas the rest of Europe used the Gregorian Calendar. The Old Style was ten days behind the New. To avoid confusion, I have used the New Style throughout.

Spelling: This was not standardised. At the risk of being accused of meddling, I have modified spelling in diaries and letters that may confuse the general, modern, reader.

Preface

If it were not for the vast and impressive palace of the same name, it’s doubtful whether many people outside the academic world would be aware of the Battle of Blenheim. Agincourt and Waterloo still have a distant and satisfying echo in the modern British psyche, but Blenheim, where the British helped win a victory that changed the course of history, is all but forgotten. Historians have breathed life into the reign of Queen Anne, and written biographies of John and Sarah Marlborough, yet the battle itself seems to have slunk off into the background, overtaken by the more glamorous exploits of Napoleon and the large-scale carnage of the twentieth century’s wars.

Ironically, Napoleon believed that his contemporaries undervalued Marlborough’s generalship, and he commissioned authors to make good the neglect. But still in Europe you find the battle, most frequently referred to as Höchstädt, as a mere footnote, even though so many different nationalities took part. Austrians, Belgians, British, Danes, Dutch, French, Irish, Swiss, and many different German states all contributed soldiers to this, one of the greatest battles in Europe’s history.

When I went to see the battle site, in the spring of 2003, I could find only one specific memorial in the village of Blindheim, whose Anglicised name has given the engagement its identity. A small plaque in the ground gives a few basic details. Wandering the lines where the Irish ‘Wild Geese’ nearly turned the battle in favour of their master, King Louis XIV; where the French generals were stunned to see the elite horsemen of their Gendarmerie utterly defeated by British cavalry, there is little to see except neat dormitory communities surrounded by sweeping fields of highly mechanised agriculture. I had assumed that the churchyard at Blenheim, where some of the most intense fighting took place, would have gravestones pockmarked by musket balls: instead, I was confronted by the shininess of modern tombstones that had seen no battle, and witnessed no war. I found it immensely sad that the sacrifice of so many men on the surrounding battlefield could be distilled down into a marble tablet, and nothing more.

The tercentenary of Blenheim seems set to return the battle to its rightful prominence. The Bavarian state government, previously reluctant to remember a crushing defeat of its army on home turf, has chosen to honour the event with an exhibition. This will be in nearby Höchstädt Castle and is intended to be permanent. It will show how Louis XIV’s overweening ambition drove neighbouring countries to form a coalition that was at last strong enough to check the mighty army of the ‘Sun King’.

The exhibition at Höchstädt Castle will mirror the message of this book: that the Battle of Blenheim ended King Louis’s plans to dominate Europe, and to extend his brand of absolute royal power from Spain to the Low Countries, and from Germany to Italy. The battle took place as a mighty transition was underway in Europe. France, Austria and an enfeebled Spain were still major powers in European affairs; Sweden and the Netherlands, giants of the seventeenth century, were slipping towards secondary status; Prussia’s gathering strength hinted at its dramatic future.

British soldiers made up only a fifth of the victorious allied army at Blenheim, but their contribution was decisive. They shrugged off a reputation for idle incompetence and showed uncommon ability and bravery. In the wake of Blenheim, the greatest land victory won under an English commander on foreign soil since Henry V’s Agincourt, the British took their first faltering steps towards empire.

This tale unfolds at a time when the Age of Reason combined with increasingly lethal weaponry to produce a unique period of military history: one when heavy bloodshed was shunned. The violent excesses of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) were still fresh in the memory, and the increased reliability and rate of fire of muskets and cannon ensured that casualties were extraordinarily high if armies met head-on. Monarchs and generals shrank from the cost of defeat and preferred wars of manoeuvre and sieges where the stakes were relatively low. Only the boldest commanders were prepared to gamble everything in open battle.

Blenheim left some 40,000 men dead or wounded. The consequences of this bloody battle were far-reaching: Southey wrote a poem decrying the futility of war, arguing that the bloodshed of 13 August 1704 settled nothing. However, the nineteenth-century historian Sir Edward Creasy included Blenheim in his magnum opus, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, alongside such pivotal actions as Marathon, Hastings and Saratoga. The reason for this was the effect that the battle had on Louis XIV’s ambitions: ‘Blenheim had dissipated for ever his once proud visions of almost universal conquest.’ Winston S. Churchill believed Blenheim was an event that ‘changed the political axis of the world’. Placing the battle in a wider context, he wrote: ‘The destruction of the Armada had preserved the life of Britain: the charge at Blenheim opened to her the gateways of the modern world.’

Such assessments provide, I hope, justification enough for returning to the background and the expression of a dynamic moment in Europe’s history, three hundred years ago, when the hitherto invincible army of a monstrous tyrant was destroyed in an afternoon.

Prologue

Picture the prince at the peak of his power.

He has, in the course of an already monumental reign, transformed his nation’s status from one of fragile potential to that of feared military juggernaut. For France, for Louis XIV, the future looks not only secure; it also holds the promise of even greater glory. It seems certain that the empire historically at the heart of Europe will, within days, be superseded by his own Gallic hegemony. Louis knows that his armies are closing in on Vienna, poised to deliver the final blow to the Habsburgs and their decrepit Holy Roman Empire. Once the sword arm of Catholic Europe, the Empire had lost most of its power and survived only by default. The imminent French victory will compel all Europe to accept that Louis XIV holds the true imperial power and his Bourbon dynasty reigns supreme. This summer of 1704 is a glorious time indeed, for a third generation of heirs now stands in the direct line: after his son the Dauphin, then his grandson the Duke of Burgundy, there is now the reassuring consolidation of a great-grandson, the newborn Duke of Brittany.

To Louis, ‘the Catholic King’, this continuation of his seed is a clear demonstration of divine support for him and the Bourbon line. With confidence Louis writes that this latest royal birth ‘… is one of the most visible signs that I have yet received of [God’s] protection. I am aware that such is without example in any of my regal predecessors’ reigns, and that this long succession of Kings assures the perpetuation of the good fortune of my lands.’[fn1] He asks for the Te Deum to be sung across France in acknowledgement of the divine blessing afforded his family and nation.

With the boy’s June birth, Louis has declared the summer of 1704 a season of general celebration. The Duke of Saint Simon, courtier and diarist, records disapprovingly in his secret journal: ‘This event caused great joy to the King and the Court. The town [of Paris] shared their delight, and carried their enthusiasm almost to madness, by the excess of their demonstration, and their festivities.’[fn2]

It is at Versailles, where Saint Simon is one of the myriad drones in attendance on the Sun King, that the festivities reach their zenith. The day there habitually culminates in colourful evening amusements — balls, concerts, operas — but this being summer, it is the season for Louis’s beloved outdoor ‘fêtes’. A keen and accomplished actor in his youth, when an addiction to amateur theatricals was formed, Louis still basks in the opulence of such displays: they allow him to reclaim the thespian limelight, without demeaning his regal status. The fête, like so much at Versailles, is part play-acting, part propaganda, and wholly for Louis’s pleasure.

Most of the fêtes take place outdoors, in the regimented grounds. The water bobs with tributes from across Europe, some from countries that are now France’s bitterest enemies: ‘On the mile-long cross-shaped grand canal glided a hundred swans from Denmark, two little yachts from England, carved and gilded galleys decked with red and white streamers and hangings fringed with gold, a small warship and a fleet of gondolas, manned by fourteen Venetian gondoliers.’[fn3]

Tonight, see Louis sitting in customary splendour above the courtiers on his royal dais, a periwig on his head, modish high heels on his feet. A classically based triumph is accorded him, led by Mars. The God of War is atop a chariot, drawn forward by soldiers. Fawning nymphs are in attendance, testimony to Mars’ military virility. Louis takes the salute with studied precision. He may never have led his troops into battle, his wartime experience confined to observing sieges, but that is of no matter. He has been the figurehead through decades of glory.

After the triumphal procession there follows an allegory, further pandering to the royal ego. It is a representation of how Europe — in French eyes — is currently arranged. In a position of unquestioned dominance stands the Seine, the main artery of Paris and, here, the symbol of France. The river expects and receives cowered homage from six major waterways: the Thames, the Meuse, the Neckar, the Scheldt, the Rhine, and the Danube. The Danube has a central role in our tale, far removed from further French triumphalism. Tonight, though, the prospect beckons of domination of the continent that is criss-crossed by these rivers.

For Louis, this was an evening that he would look back on as a watershed in his reign. Before it stood years of victorious wars, and mounting dynastic solidity. After it came repeated hammer-blows of disappointment, both military and familial. Our eyewitness Saint Simon marked the moment everything changed: ‘Even while these rejoicings were being celebrated, news reached us which spread consternation in every family, and cast a gloom over the whole city.’[fn4] The first reports of Blenheim were reaching Paris.

Part One – Louis’s Europe

Chapter One – A Rod for his Own Back

That spirit of infatuation and error

The fatal avant-courier of the fall of kings.

From Racine’s Athalie

Louis XIV bestrode the end of the seventeenth and the opening of the eighteenth centuries with a mixture of menace and panache. He was as dominating a figure then as Napoleon was to be a hundred years later. Like Bonaparte, Louis relied on military might to impose his will; at home and abroad, he cajoled the unwilling and crushed the openly hostile. However, whereas Napoleon’s control was limited to less than twenty years, Louis’s pungent brand of autocracy wafted through seven decades of European history.

France had twenty million inhabitants: three times the population of Spain, four times that of England, and nine times that of the Netherlands. Louis harnessed this numerical advantage, building a huge, efficient, army. In a ferocious quest for personal glory and national security, he unleashed it on France’s neighbours one after another.

Louis was the insecure and poorly educated son of an unremarkable king. His inadequate childhood tutoring left him with an outlook that was underpinned by two intertwined prejudices: a passionate belief in the divine right of kings, and a violent abhorrence of Protestantism. His historical knowledge, which might have lent context to his reign, was limited. He was proud to be a grandson of Henry IV, one of France’s greatest rulers. He was also aware that his father had yielded much respect and power during a disappointing 23-year reign. He wanted to emulate his grandfather, and put right his father’s failings. Louis’s life’s aim was to create a homogenous force in the centre of Europe, which he could lead with distinction.

The instinct for greatness was evident early in Louis’s rule. In September 1651, the thirteen-year-old boy-king gamely announced to Parlement that he was assuming his place as active head of state. However, this was a case of premature posturing, for the real power still resided with Cardinal Mazarin, Louis’s first minister. This Macchiavellian cleric remained the de facto ruler of France until his death in 1661. Only then did Louis wrest the power that his self-esteem so craved. Confident in his regal status, the king informed his politicians: ‘You will assist me with your advice when I ask for it.’ This was to be less often than they could possibly have envisaged.

It was the start of an autocratic reign that led Winston S. Churchill to accord Louis a unique place in historical infamy: ‘No worse enemy of human freedom has ever appeared in the trappings of polite civilisation. Insatiable appetite, cold, calculating ruthlessness, monumental conceit, presented themselves armed with fire and sword.’[fn1] The year he assumed real power, the twenty-three-year-old king married Maria Theresa, a daughter of King Philip IV of Spain. The dynastic potential of this union between Bourbon and Habsburg, the two most powerful dynasties of Western Europe, was enormous, but he could not capitalise on the match straightaway. As he explained in his Mémoires, Louis’s domestic problems came first: in his kingdom ‘disorder reigned everywhere’.[fn2] Indeed, at the time of the wedding, international pressure persuaded Louis to renounce any future rights to the Spanish throne. The concession was accepted — Louis had no alternative — on condition that France receive the compensation of a sizeable dowry. This was not paid.

To the rest of Europe, this was a mere detail — an unfortunate reflection of Spain’s parlous finances, which had brought bread riots to her cities and creeping paralysis to her industry. However, to Louis, the non-payment constituted a clear breach of contract. It kept alive his hopes that, in the right circumstances, he could lop off various branches of the huge Spanish empire for French consumption.

His opportunity came in 1665 when Philip IV of Spain died, leaving the throne to four-year-old Carlos II, a sickly boy not expected to see adulthood. Better yet, Carlos had no obvious heir — although Philip had fathered more than thirty illegitimate children, neither of his two queens had been able to provide him with another son. Louis decided that the Spanish Netherlands (roughly equating to modern-day Belgium) would be fitting compensation for the unpaid dowry. The region had been the springboard for Spanish invasions during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so its annexation would solve a long-standing strategic problem for France. Louis informed his mother-in-law, the Queen Regent of Spain, and negotiations began. They ended in 1667 when Louis ordered his army to attack.

Marshal Turenne, perhaps Louis’s most able commander, led 50,000 French troops on campaign, accompanied by his king. Thirsting to be in at the kill, Louis travelled in characteristic style, accompanied by his queen and two of his mistresses. Turenne captured half-a-dozen towns before laying siege to the city of Lille. Vauban, the king’s renowned siege expert, cracked the Spanish defences within a month. The keys of the city were presented to Louis in a ceremony that emphasised his role as all-conquering king.

Louis had expected support from the Dutch United Provinces, whose savage and protracted war of liberation from Spanish control had made them instinctive opponents of the Habsburgs. Only five years previously they had signed a treaty with France, guaranteeing mutual armed assistance in attack or defence for the next twenty-five years. However, the Dutch had since realised that Spanish power was fading. Their international trading network reported Spanish ships rotting at anchor, while the garrisons were unpaid, under-equipped and sometimes only partially clothed. The Dutch had signed the treaty with France without realising the intensity of Louis’s ambitions. Now, many men of influence in the United Provinces pointed to the unprecedented increase in the size of the French army. Instead of joining Louis in the invasion, the Dutch reneged on the treaty.

The United Provinces sought help from two fellow Protestant nations, England and Sweden. The union with the English was surprising, since the two nations had recently been at war — Dutch warships had stormed up the Thames to burn a British fleet at anchor. Nevertheless, this new confederacy, the ‘Triple Alliance’, informed Louis that it would take up arms against him unless he withdrew from the Spanish Netherlands forthwith.

Louis was outraged by this betrayal, but he had no choice but to cease hostilities. France emerged from the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in possession of a handful of towns and cities, including Tournai, Oudenarde and Lille. However, Louis was convinced that the perfidy of the Dutch had denied him the lordship of the whole of the Spanish Netherlands. He swore revenge.

Louis eschewed renewed armed conflict, instead plotting his vengeance through sinuous diplomacy. First, he exploited his ties with Charles II of England. The two kings were first cousins and Charles, albeit secretly, shared Louis’s Catholic faith. Charles’s sister Henrietta was married to Louis’s brother, the Duke of Orléans, and she acted as the conduit between the two Courts, in negotiations that led to the secret Treaty of Dover in May 1670. England and France agreed ‘their joint resolution to humble the pride of the States-General [the Dutch Parliament], and to destroy the power of a people which has … shown ingratitude to those who have helped to create its republic.’[fn3] The alliance was cemented by massive bribery: Louis paid Charles a secret pension of £225,000 a year for the duration of the war. Charles’s chief minister, the Earl of Sunderland, also pocketed vast sums. Louis insisted on a clause that committed Charles to re-establishing Catholicism in Britain — promising further payments and the provision of 6,000 French troops if it met with resistance. Charles II took the money, but shrank from challenging the staunch Protestantism of his people.

Sweden proved equally receptive to French gold. For years the Protestant champion of Europe, the Swedes were beginning to place territorial ambition over religious solidarity. Already in control of Finland, Estonia, Livonia and West Pomerania, Swedish ambitions now extended to Denmark and Poland. The Dutch could fend for themselves.

Having torn the wings off the triple alliance, Louis entrusted his most seasoned and dynamic marshals with the avenging invasion. In 1672 Turenne and Condé marched through the Bishopric of Liège with 120,000 troops, before advancing along the Rhine on separate banks. Facing just 25,000 Dutch soldiers, the French swarmed over the southern areas of the United Provinces. Louis ordered a war of dark aggression: ‘Go, my children,’ Marshal Luxembourg exhorted his men, ‘plunder, murder, destroy — and if it be possible to commit yet greater cruelties, be not negligent therein. Let me see that I am not deceived in my choice of the flower of the King’s troops.’[fn4]

The Dutch took desperate measures. In coastal Holland the dykes’ sluice gates were opened, flooding the low-lying land to form the defensive Water Line. With their fields and roads submerged, the peasants retreated out of reach of the invader, behind fortified town walls. This held the French back through the autumn, but in late December winter frosts turned the expanses of water into walkways of ice. Marshal Luxembourg issued skates to his foot soldiers, so they could speed across the frozen flats. French soldiers raped the women of Bodegraven and Zwammerdam before herding them into their homes with their families. They then set the buildings alight, razing both towns to the ground, and burning alive many of their inhabitants. Louvois, the leading French military administrator of the age, recorded with relish his part in such an atrocity: ‘We lit the town and grilled all the Hollanders in it.’[fn5]