Blenheim: Battle for Europe

This was why William of Orange turned to Churchill after his own invasion, three years later. William was reluctant to trust those who had deserted his father-in-law: the new king’s reliance on Churchill at this time was a typically pragmatic gesture, based on an appreciation of his martial skill. His enthusiasm for the gifted general was tempered by a conviction that Churchill was a man of flimsy moral fibre. How else to explain his desertion from a monarch who had raised him from poverty to significant military and courtier status?

Lord Feversham, by contrast, proved loyal to James II to the end. After the king’s flight, he disbanded the army rather than have it remain in good order, ready to serve the Dutch usurper. William needed someone to reconstitute his new kingdom’s scattered regiments. He ordered Churchill not only to regroup, but also to reorganise, the soldiers. Although William had a low regard for English troops — preferring Dutch soldiers, Dutch officers, and Dutch generals — he wanted them as auxiliaries in the impending war in mainland Europe. Churchill was charged with improving the English army so that it could stand against the seasoned troops of France. To encourage Churchill, and to lend him the necessary authority to oversee such changes, he was confirmed in the rank of lieutenant-general. In April 1689, at the time of the coronation of William and Mary, his role in the Glorious Revolution was recognised with his elevation to an earldom.

One month later John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, landed at Rotterdam with 8,000 men. His arrival on the Continent coincided with the declaration of war with France. His priority was to harmonise the training of the different English regiments and to coalesce with their principal allies. A letter from him while at Breda during this time shows him keen to find out which musket drill was to be adopted by his infantry: ‘I desire that you will know the King’s pleasure, whether he will have the Regiments of Foot learn the Dutch Exercise or else continue the English, for if he will I must have it translated into English.’[fn19] Marlborough wrote with urgency, shocked at the state of the troops he had found awaiting his command. He must forge them into a force that could compete with the French, the most feared enemy in Europe.

Many of the greatest improvements to the English army in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries date from this time, when William needed more and better troops, and Marlborough set about providing them. Marlborough would benefit from his hard work over the coming years; for, one day, these soldiers would be his to lead.

Chapter Four – France Feels the Strain

War, the mortality of 1693, the constant quarterings and movements of soldiery, military service, the heavy dues and the withdrawal of the Huguenots have ruined the country.

Report of the Superintendent of Rouen, 1697

The conflict that enveloped much of Europe in the closing decade of the seventeenth century was a new trial for France. Despite her manpower, her wealth, and the galvanising capabilities of her autocratic government, by immersing herself yet again in warfare, an already stretched France was now riven with fresh and undeniable tensions. It was a watershed in Louis’s reign: before the War of the League of Augsburg French victory had been expected; from this point on, the possibility of defeat became increasingly pronounced.

The breadth and strength of the forces arrayed against Louis were daunting. The war saw France confronted by a union of her two historic rivals, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, together with the United Provinces and Britain. These four powers were aided by several predominantly Protestant states of Germany, as well as by powerful, Catholic, Bavaria. The menace of Louis’s aggression had goaded these disparate interests into forming the Grand Alliance. This confederacy, if it could be held together, seemed to match — perhaps even to exceed — the might of France. It was testimony to Louis’s success that he had conjured up a polyglot opponent that, for all its internal tensions, was potentially so strong. However, France was not to thank her king for provoking such a powerful antagonist.

Since 1643, and Condé’s defeat of Spain at Rocroi, France had been the dominant military nation in Europe. With Louis’s encouragement, his father’s well-organised army had become an enormous force. Soon after the outbreak of the War of the League of Augsburg, Louis was able to call on a total of 420,000 troops; six times the size of the French army one hundred years earlier. By the end of the seventeenth century his command reached a peak of 450,000 soldiers; and a further 250,000 served in the local militia, in the navy, and in military support. This was the largest European army since the height of the Roman Empire, a millennium and a half earlier.

It was desperately difficult for a largely rural society with a rudimentary economy to sustain such a force. Even before the latest outbreak of hostilities, liberties had been taken with recruitment. Restrictions — of height, of capability, of background — were waived, as the rapacious military machine began to feed from hand to mouth. The diet was increasingly poor, for the newly enlisted could now be any males, provided they were ‘neither vagabonds, nor children, nor deformed’.[fn1] Now, with the enemy so numerous and varied, the consumption of men and money escalated. The strain on the community and on the nation’s coffers was unprecedented. Philippe Contamine, in his recent Histoire Militaire de France, has calculated that whereas 7 per cent of French government expenses in 1694 went to direct military costs, and 8 per cent to debt service, by 1697 the figures were 64 per cent and 23 per cent respectively. Louis had created a military state; but scrutiny of its long-term sustainability was overdue.

The growth of the French military can be linked directly to Louis’s desire for territorial expansion and to his own appetite for glory. However, these were notional aims that could only be achieved if the army was reordered into an efficient and disciplined force. While England persevered with a Secretary-at-War who was essentially a senior bureaucrat, Louis demanded a more assertive role from his Minister of War. The minister must report directly to the king; but he had powers to drive through measures himself.

The king needed to find men of quality to realise his military dreams. Even as a young man he had been adept at spotting potential in his subordinates, and then delegating. Sir Edward Creasy, the nineteenth-century historian, noted: ‘One of the surest proofs of the genius of Louis was his skill in finding out genius in others, and his promptness in calling it into action.’[fn2] In Michel Le Tellier and his son, François-Michel, Marquis de Louvois, Louis divined real talent. He relied on them with increasing confidence, which they repaid with dynamic and committed service. United by blood, they were also linked by their determination to root out the military abuses that were common to the age. In a tenure that, between them, lasted from 1643 to 1691, Le Tellier and Louvois transformed the soldiers of France. No longer would they tolerate a series of independent regiments, each with its own self-serving owner-commander. They demanded, instead, a unified royal army.

Louvois had encouraged the excesses of his troops in the Dutch War. He had also inflicted obscenities on his Huguenot compatriots during the dragonnades. In 1662, he was brought into the ministry to lend youthful vigour to his father’s efforts. Eight years later he assumed the dominant role in the partnership; although Le Tellier had instigated reforms and most of the changes had been agreed upon by the time he retired in 1677. It was Louvois, ‘haughty, brutal, coarse’,[fn3] who rammed the programme through to its conclusion. Louis XIV benefited handsomely from the focus that Le Tellier and Louvois brought to their task. Unleashed, the two uncompromising agents of the Royal Will gradually amassed the powers needed for wholesale structural change of the military system.

The Controller-General of Finance found many of his military duties taken from him. The Ministry of War was now the body that would oversee the victualling and quartering of troops; the care of the sick and wounded; the building and running of defensive fortifications. This transfer of responsibilities seems as logical to us now as it was revolutionary then. Such a radical change was only achievable with the full support of an absolutist monarch, who could choose to ignore the protests of the losers in this power struggle. Louis backed his reformers with the full might of his autocracy.

A novel layer of control was introduced through intermediary inspectors, known as intendants d’armée, commissaires de guerre, and côntroleurs des guerres. The intendants had limited spheres of duty, sometimes only being appointed for a year, or given responsibility for a single regiment or region. However, within that time, or locality, their power was enormous: they supervised every aspect of the raising and payment of soldiers. They also provided medical facilities for the troops, and organised their fortifications. The commissaires helped to oversee recruitment and logistics, while the côntroleurs were bureaucrats who checked and logged the minutiae of army life: to them fell the task of verifying officers’ claims for wages, so that non-existent soldiers did not swell the pay list. The first loyalty of intendant, commissaire and côntroleur was to the reforming ministry, and not to the military establishment. They were the conduits of the king’s power as he set about standardising the French military system.

Le Tellier and Louvois sought control over the army through conformity. What better way of achieving this than establishing a model unit, a paragon of excellence for all to aspire to? In 1663, the Régiment du Roi was formed under Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Martinet, an officer whose surname has remained a byword for military pedantry. There had previously been a veneration of the long-established units. Now the insistence that a totally new body was the crack regiment of the army made it clear that the old and complacent days were over. In 1667, this message was driven home when Martinet was promoted to become inspector-general for the entire infantry.

With Martinet came the standardisation of military life. The comprehensive overhaul addressed everything from firearms and uniforms, to discipline and methods of military encampment. Instead of haphazard camps, tents were to be erected in carefully ordered rows, away from the health hazards of human waste. In place of the white sash that had been the distinguishing feature of French troops in battle, regimental uniforms were ordered. Out went the cheap ragbag of firearms ordered by cost-cutting colonels, and in came standardised muskets: these were interchangeable, all subject to the same drill, all taking the same ammunition. As a result of the demands of the Ministry of War, military manuals became hugely popular: Mallet’s Les Travaux de Mars, first published in 1672, was required reading for officers keen to stay abreast of their new duties. It was reprinted many times; a sign that central control was recognised, even if there were difficulties in imposing it upon an army whose traditions were rooted in amateurism and corruption.

The French Ministers of War and their intermediaries were faced with problems familiar to their counterparts throughout Europe. Of these, one of the deepest-rooted was the granting of exaggerated military rank to men of high social standing, regardless of merit. Louvois wanted his professional troops led by the ablest, not merely the noblest, generals. Certainly, deference still had its place, in what was the king’s army — Princes of the Blood would continue to outrank marshals in the field — but aristocrats and well-connected soldier-courtiers would have to prove their worth. Nearly five hundred officers were cashiered for incompetence between 1686 and 1693. Louvois’s rebukes for those who failed to meet his standards were feared throughout the armed forces:

‘Sir,’ said Louvois one day to M. de Nogaret, ‘your company is in a very bad state.’

‘Sir,’ answered Nogaret, ‘I was not aware of it.’

‘You have to be aware,’ said M. de Louvois, ‘have you inspected it?’

‘No, sir,’ said Nogaret.

‘You ought to have inspected it, sir!’

‘Sir, I will give orders about it.’

‘You ought to have given them: a man ought to make up his mind, sir, either to openly profess himself a courtier or to devote himself to his duty when he is an officer.’ [fn4]

No longer was it enough to buy a junior rank and then inexorably percolate upwards to high command. It was possible, from this point, to purchase up to a colonelcy, no further. A new officer hierarchy was created, based on earned seniority and merit rather than the accident of birth. In the wake of these reforms Vauban and Catinat, neither of patrician background, but both immensely talented, received marshal’s batons. Lower down the scale, new ranks were introduced into the French army that were within reach of those of modest means. By 1667 it was possible to become a brigadier-general in the French army without the expense of first buying a colonelcy.

It was not just the professionalism of officers, but also the lot of the ordinary soldier that preoccupied Louis and his reforming ministers. The king felt bound by a two-way contract with his troops, writing: ‘Just as the soldier owes obedience and submission to those who command him, the commander owes his troops care for their subsistence.’[fn5] Louvois concurred and made the provision of food and other essentials for the troops a prime concern. Using the superbly constructed fortresses of Marshal Vauban as magazines, he supplied the armies of the 1670s and 1680s with all their needs.

Each soldier of France was entitled to a daily ration of 24oz of bread, 1 lb of meat and a pint of wine, beer or cider. In the field, cintres — easily assembled mobile ovens — were crucial parts of the baggage train. A French munitions expert at the end of the seventeenth century calculated that an army consuming 50,000 rations per day needed constant access to twenty cintres. The bread was transported from these to the soldiers in huge wagon-borne waterproof chests, each containing loaves for 800 men. The soldiers assembled to collect their ration every two to four days — more frequently in hot weather. The cavalry received their loaves first, at 8 a.m., then the dragoons two hours later, followed by the infantry at noon. It was a massive operation, day in, day out, to give the Leviathan its daily bread.

Louis and Louvois also combined to provide care for the wounded. Previously the view in the army had been, ‘When a soldier is once down, he never gets up again’. In 1670, twenty years before London’s Chelsea Hospital and thirty-five years before the Prussians introduced the Invalidenkasse pension for wounded servicemen, France built its Hôtel des Invalides. Louis’s words at the time show how he believed himself obliged to tend his nation’s injured warriors: ‘It were very reasonable that they who have freely exposed their lives and lavished their blood for the defence and maintenance of this monarchy, who have so materially contributed to the winning of the battles we have gained over our enemies and who have often reduced them to asking peace of us, should enjoy the repose they have secured for our subjects and should pass the remainder of their days in tranquillity.’[fn6] It was an example of enlightened kingship, from an autocrat whose ambitions depended on the fruits of war.

The expense of providing for the soldiers of a nation invariably at war grew, as France’s military commitments multiplied. Until the end of the 1680s Louis’s will, allied to Louvois’s flair, ensured that this massive exercise of supply and provision succeeded. After Louvois died, in 1691, France had to face mounting problems without her ablest military administrator. This when the army’s demands had already cut deep.

In 1693, for the first time in Louis’s campaigns, the forward supplies for French troops were not in place at the start of the season. Tellingly, this allowed the Grand Alliance to take the field before the French. With his diligent servant dead, and the multi-fronted conflict demanding gargantuan levels of provision, Louis faced unprecedented problems. No longer was he able to supply troops at the front as smoothly as he had in earlier wars.

*

It was the same with the army’s manpower: an initial ability to cope with recruitment was followed by a stretching of resources and eventual crisis. Louis believed that upstanding men should fill his ranks, whenever possible, and forbad prisoners from being pressed into service because he wanted it to be an honour, not a punishment, to fight for him and his nation. Most recruitment took place in the bigger towns and cities, and their immediate surroundings. Before the War of the League of Augsburg the majority of soldiers were from solid working-class and peasant stock.

During the glory days of Louis’s reign, there was a glamour attached to service in the all-conquering army. There was also an opportunity for self-enrichment from bounty and from pillaging, both of which were sanctioned as the fruits of victory. Furthermore, in the beginning and middle of Louis’s reign, registering for military service was not a long-term commitment. Demobilisation took place at the end of each war; and a discharge was attainable after four years’ service, a right supposedly rendered inalienable by legislation in the mid-1660s. This could make a spell in the army an attractive alternative to the drudgery and poor pay of peasant farming or artisan apprenticeship.

The turning point came after 1685, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes resulted in a haemorrhaging abroad of Huguenot soldiers, leaving a worrying void in the ranks. Louis’s devastation of the Palatinate made widespread war ever more likely, so Louvois’s concerns multiplied. How could he manage to inflate the army further, to meet the enemy confederacy that William of Orange was assembling? War in several areas — against the Dutch, the Spanish, the Imperialists, various German peoples, and now the English — demanded recruitment on an unprecedented scale. But, with traditional reserves of cannon fodder already empty, where could the extra troops be found?

Louvois met the problem with a typically far-reaching and bold plan. In 1688, he instigated a system of militia throughout France. Each parish was to provide, clothe and pay a fully equipped militiaman for two years’ service. The resulting levy of 25,000 men was formed into thirty regiments, which were subject to full military discipline. Louvois initially intended to use these men to free regular soldiers from duties that were keeping them from the front line —garrisoning fortresses, guarding towns, and other time-consuming chores that semi-professionals could manage. However, the militiaman’s duty broadened spectacularly as the War of the League of Augsburg sucked France dry.

We must look briefly at the chronology of the conflict, to see how the military machine envisaged by the Sun King quickly overstretched itself. There was the customary litany of French military success in the early years, thanks largely to the brilliance of Luxembourg, the sole survivor from the trio of great marshals who had been the architects of victory through the years of conquest. The campaigns of 1691-3 were triumphant. France gained Mons, captured the supposedly impregnable Namur, marginally defeated William of Orange at Steenkirk, and won the slaughterous battle of Landen. However, Luxembourg died in the winter of 1694, and with him went an age of victory that was not to return during Louis’s reign. 1695, as if to illustrate the turning of the tide, was remarkable for that most rare of military phenomena, a warrior triumph for William, when he recaptured Namur.

The results on the sea were more clear-cut, the damage done to France’s navy hamstringing her war efforts for a generation. In 1692, a forty-four-strong French fleet was given a severe drubbing by ninety-nine ships of the Anglo-Dutch navy, off Cape La Hogue. For five days the allies continued their pummelling, sinking enemy warships before pursuing the defeated remnants into their harbours, where the destruction continued. Until this great battle Louis had fostered hopes both of invading England, and of dominating the oceans. After it, such aspirations were dashed. Winston S. Churchill called La Hogue ‘the Trafalgar of the seventeenth century’:[fn7] it put the seal on British maritime supremacy over the French for a generation.

Louis was particularly aggrieved by the loss of his talismanic flagship, the 110-gun Soleil Royal, for which he had personally paid £200,000. With typically flamboyant arrogance, he had decorated the captain’s cabin of his ship with a portrait depicting himself with ‘several European Kings and princes in chains under his feet’.[fn8] After La Hogue it was clear that, if Louis was ever to achieve such a triumphant pose, it was not going to be through mastery of the sea.

From the 1690s onwards, France was unable to find the money to re-create a powerful fleet. Between 1695 and 1698, the Anglo-Dutch navy was boosted by sixty-six fresh ships of the line, whereas the French received just nineteen vessels of similar calibre. For the remainder of his reign, Louis’s regular maritime forces were negligible. The efforts of French privateers, especially those based in Dunkirk, provided a modicum of consolation during a period of relative impotence.

Even as the French navy lay in the doldrums, there was a diminishment in calibre of Louis’s senior servicemen. Used to a bank of exceptional talent to call upon, in all spheres of public life, the king was now left with thinner pickings. This happened at a time when the habit of absolute power had begun to dull Louis’s judgement and abilities. Guizot, a historian of France, recognised the passing of the great men, and the advent of lesser successors: ‘Louis XIV had lost Condé and Turenne, Luxembourg, Colbert, Louvois and Seignelay; with the exception of Vauban, he had exhausted the first rank; Catinat alone remained in the second; the king was about to be reduced to the third: sad fruits of a long reign, of an incessant and devouring activity, which had speedily used up men and was beginning to tire out fortune; grievous result of mistakes long hidden by glory.’[fn9] His very longevity ensured that Louis experienced the downside of earlier years of acquisition and glory. He was to learn the dependence a ruler has on the quality of his lieutenants.

Courtiers at Versailles began to focus on the problems facing France, with critics attributing them to their monarch’s unfettered powers. There was no authoritative representative body capable of putting their concerns to the king. As a result, more roundabout means were employed to bring grievances to the attention of the Grande Monarque. Fenelon chose to vent his fears via anonymous correspondence: ‘The whole of France is no longer anything but one vast hospital,’ he protested. ‘The people who so loved you are beginning to lose affection, confidence and even respect; the allies prefer carrying on war with loss to concluding a peace which would not be observed. Whilst you in some fierce conflict are taking the battle-field and the cannon of the enemy, whilst you are storming strong places, you do not reflect that you are fighting on ground which is sinking beneath your feet, and that you are about to have a fall in spite of your victories.’[fn10] It was strong criticism and it was fair; but its message was ignored.

Increasingly, the king took on the responsibilities of government and generalship himself, with unhappy results. He charged men with positions that their fathers had held; a comforting tactic for a monarch keen to recapture past triumphs, but — apart from the shining examples of Le Tellier and Louvois — not successful. The appointment of the mediocre François Villeroi, a royal favourite and the son of Louis’s childhood governor, to replace Marshal Luxembourg, was a downgrading of quality that delighted France’s enemies. Equally, the transfer of the Ministry of War to a third generation of the Le Tellier family, in the hope that genetics would provide Louis with a further brilliant military organiser from the same stock, was doomed.