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Blenheim: Battle for Europe
Just before Christmas 1700, Count Tallard triumphantly reported to Louis that London and The Hague were prepared to recognise Anjou as king of Spain. This showed that the Dutch placed peace and trade above international politics. It was also proof that the English were prepared to believe Louis’s promise that France and Spain’s crowns would never be united. A Parliament composed of resentful Tories and assertive Whigs contemptuously ignored William’s warnings about French duplicity. Some of the more extreme Whigs even questioned the raison d’être of monarchy. By 1701, the relationship between king and Parliament was so strained that a French agent was able to report: ‘The Royal authority is so enfeebled that England cannot but be regarded as a Republic, and her king as an officer authorised to carry out what Parliament has ordered in the intervals between its sessions.’[fn12] William was no longer able to exert influence even in his own kingdom, let alone across Europe.
Anjou’s succession was recognised throughout the Continent except, predictably, in Vienna. The Holy Roman Emperor railed against the usurping of what he maintained was his son’s rightful inheritance. France had little to fear from Austria standing alone, though; such a conflict could only have one result. Austria would need allies. However, William, the wily enemy of French domination, could not rouse his peoples, let alone his confederates of old, to war.
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Louis’s hubris tore away the mantle of peace cast over most of Europe. Philip V was received in his new kingdom of Spain with genuine enthusiasm, but the well-meaning youth had no experience or training in statecraft. In 1701, the Spanish Regency Council asked Louis to guide him. It should have been clear that such an overt intermeshing of French and Spanish interests would alarm the rest of Europe, yet a flattered Louis was blind to the likely consequences and accepted the invitation.
With the same disregard for international opinion, Louis sent troops to the Barrier Fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands, claiming them on his grandson’s behalf. However, the 1678 Peace of Nijmegen stipulated that Dutch and Spanish forces should jointly garrison this score of important towns on the River Meuse. The arrangement had been made when the United Provinces and Spain were joined against France. Now the Spanish occupants of the Barrier Fortresses opened up town after town to their new allies, the French. Twenty-two battalions of Dutch troops — 15,000 men — meekly quit their postings, leaving the fortifications in Louis’s hands. Apart from the well-garrisoned Maastricht, all of the Meuse defences, including Mons, Namur and Venlo, surrendered. Within weeks, the fruits of William of Orange’s campaigns and diplomacy had been lost, without a shot being fired. He cried out in despair: ‘For twenty-eight years I have toiled unceasingly to preserve this barrier for the State and now I have to watch it swallowed up in one day without a single blow being struck.’[fn13]
There was further unease when the electorate of Cologne became a French puppet state. This shift in allegiance threatened lines of communications between the Dutch and the Emperor. The United Provinces realised that the loss of the Barrier Fortresses, added to Cologne’s position, was ominous. They prepared to defend themselves.
England was also forced to rethink its pacifism. There was fury, in mercantile circles, when France and Spain agreed that Louis’s ships should enjoy favourable trading rights in South America. The most contentious issue was the granting to the French of a monopoly of the ‘Assiento’, the trade in slaves. This brought to an immediate end the informal agreement that had allowed English and Dutch merchant ships to trade between Cadiz and Spanish America. Could this development be a precursor to something similarly damaging in the Mediterranean? If so, the merchant class thought, war would be a price worth paying.
Louis provoked his neighbours further by announcing that Anjou could remain in the French line of succession, despite ruling Spain. Louis, rejecting all that generations of diplomats had strived to achieve, proudly displayed the letters patent confirming his decision. Such arrogance lent credibility to William, who had predicted that Louis would renege on his word in this way. It seemed that those who had demonised William as a self-serving scaremonger had been a little hasty. He was now seen as the one man who had not been gulled by the manipulations of the Sun King.
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War was already probable, but Louis’s continued arrogance rendered it inevitable. The eleven-year-old Duke of Gloucester, Princess Anne’s last surviving child, died in July 1700. The boy had suffered from hydrocephalus — water on the brain. (Twelve of Anne’s seventeen children had miscarried, and the remaining five died young.) Gloucester was carried by servants, to protect him from bumps and falls. However, no one could protect him from a deadly attack of smallpox. After Gloucester’s death it was considered unlikely that the 35-year-old Anne would produce any more children, let alone healthy ones.
There were various candidates to succeed Anne, herself the heir to King William. Few Englishmen considered welcoming back the former James II, although a handful thought a return to the main line of the Stuarts was both possible and desirable. In Jacobite eyes the exiled king’s son, James Francis Edward, was the preferred future ruler. Might he not be raised by William as a Protestant prince, combining the true bloodline of England’s kings with the religion demanded by her people? However, most shrunk from this proposal, fearing a return of the discord that had marred earlier Stuart reigns. Foreign monarchs had a limited appeal, a fact underlined by William’s unpopularity, but there were no other credible English candidates, so it was necessary to look at overseas royal families with Stuart blood.
The dukes of Savoy had a strong claim, being descended from Charles I’s popular daughter, Minette. However, they were Catholic. They were also distrusted, because Savoy had deserted the Grand Alliance for Louis’s cause in the War of the League of Augsburg.
The house of Hanover presented a more attractive possibility. The Electress Sophia was a granddaughter of James I, giving her claim to the throne parity with Savoy’s. Furthermore, Sophia was staunchly Protestant. With more pragmatism than joy, Hanover was accepted as a sound solution to a delicate conundrum. In March 1701, the Act of Settlement was agreed: the crown of England would pass to Sophia and her descendants, if Princess Anne remained without her own, direct, heir.
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Six months after the English succession was agreed, the deposed James II collapsed while at prayer in his private chapel at St Germain. Louis was told to hurry to the bedside of his friend and beneficiary. He arrived to find James unconscious, surrounded by his court-in-exile. Louis had a residual affection for his deposed cousin, and reacted to the deathbed scene with pity. This, and his belief in the divine right of kings, prompted Louis to promise that he would help James’s son to regain the English throne. The gasps of gratitude from the ousted queen and her attendants were as nothing compared to the intake of breath that greeted Louis’s pledge, across the Channel.
The outrage that swept England surprised Louis. However, when his advisers suggested he recant his commitment to James’s son, he refused. The Peace of Ryswick specifically forbad Louis from aiding William’s enemies, while acknowledging the Dutchman as England’s lawful king. Despite that, Louis dared to assert his views in direct contravention to the will of the English people, as expressed by the recent Act of Settlement. Louis’s judgement that day at St Germain was appalling. Stanhope, England’s ambassador in Vienna, wrote of the French king’s folly: ‘Whom God designs to destroy he infatuates first, and makes them do their own business themselves.’[fn14]
At the end of 1701, a new Parliament met in London. Sir Edward Seymour, a Tory leader who had witheringly dismissed William’s calls against France in the past, now moved that a clause be added to the Grand Alliance’s stated aims. As a result it was agreed that the war would continue until Louis XIV recognised the Protestant succession in England. Louis’s arrogance and inflexibility had once again united disparate forces against him. Leading these foes, as ever, was the Prince of Orange.
Chapter Six – Taking Sides
France had never before found herself in such a favourable position for making war upon her enemies; not only could she count upon being able to keep Philip V upon his Spanish throne, but it seemed as if the stubbornness of the House of Austria would furnish her with the best of opportunities for fresh conquests.
Memoirs of Monsieur de la Colonie, detailed in The Chronicles of an Old Campaigner, 1692-1717
William maximised the moment. He terminated diplomatic relations between France and England, closing his embassy in Paris, and banishing Count Tallard from the Court of St James’s. Diplomacy continued elsewhere, however, with real urgency, as William contacted potential allies against France and Spain: the Empire, England and the United Provinces would head the second Grand Alliance; but support was also needed from as many of the German and Italian nations as possible. William secretly wrote to the Emperor Leopold, encouraging him to pursue Archduke Charles’s claims, and in particular: ‘to make an immediate effort in Italy, with the hope that a momentary success would encourage the well-intentioned, and rouse the European states, in defence of their independence’.[fn1]
The first Grand Alliance had been too weak to defeat Louis. Now Spain and other members of the former confederacy were on the French side. Versailles was confident that, despite Louis’s blundering into this war, there were enough allies to guarantee French victory. ‘The whole universe had borne witness to the power of France. This Monarchy had fought single-handed with almost the whole of Europe leagued against her, and had been victorious,’ wrote Monsieur de la Colonie, a French army officer: ‘I say this, as the whole Germanic body — [and] England, Holland, Spain, Portugal, and Savoy — had combined forces against Louis XIV, and this Prince had invariably defeated them. France now thus found herself in a very favourable position, for she had just added to her forces those of Spain, Portugal, [and] Savoy.’[fn2]
Since the second Grand Alliance was less numerous than its predecessor, it demanded greater contributions from its leading members. In particular, England could no longer act merely as an adjunct of the Dutch; she must now become a driving force within the confederacy. When the three main powers agreed their contributions to the Grand Alliance, the Emperor committed 82,000 and the Dutch 100,000 men. William watched with satisfaction as England promised 40,000 soldiers, and a similar number of sailors.
Aware of his ailing health, William looked for someone who would keep England in the coming war after his death. Despite concerns at Marlborough’s flirtation with Jacobitism, William recognised that here was the man to continue his crusade against Louis. The king knew Princess Anne’s succession would establish the Marlboroughs as the most powerful couple in the land, and in 1701 William passed on his mantle, promoting Marlborough to commander-in-chief of the English forces in Holland, and ambassador extraordinary to the United Provinces.
Marlborough’s experience as a general had been restricted by William’s distrust, both of him personally and of his compatriots in general. Only two of the six lieutenant-generals in the standing army of 1691 were native Englishmen. However, the few opportunities afforded him since Sedgemoor had confirmed that here was a soldier of special talent. Marlborough commanded the English sector of the Anglo-Dutch-Spanish army at the Battle of Walcourt in 1689. Waldeck, the allied commander-in-chief, had already seen Marlborough transform his unpromising detachment of Englishmen into ‘the finest in the Dutch army’, through assiduous training. During the battle, Marlborough headed the charge of the Household Cavalry in the decisive moment of the engagement. Waldeck reported to William: ‘the Earl of Marlborough is assuredly one of the most gallant men I know’.[fn3]
In Ireland the following year, after James II’s defeat by William at the Battle of the Boyne, Marlborough again showed exceptional skill. He led masterly attacks on the Irish ports of Cork and Kinsale, through which the French supplied James’s remaining supporters. Cork fell within a week, with Kinsale surrendering in the same month. This Irish campaign also demonstrated Marlborough’s diplomacy as leader of a multi-national force: his 5,000 men included Huguenot, Dutch and Danish troops. One of the foreign generals was the Duke of Württemberg, who expected his social superiority to give him supreme authority over the combined forces. Marlborough, however, was not prepared to lose his command. Neither did he want to upset his ally. He therefore proposed that he and Württemberg should lead the army on alternate days, and the duke accepted the compromise. This was an early example of Marlborough’s flair for diplomacy, a gift that was to prove invaluable during the Blenheim campaign.
The successes in Ireland won William’s strong approval. His view was that: ‘No officer living who has seen so little service as my Lord Marlborough is so fit for great commands’.[fn4] The Prince de Vaudemont reinforced the good impression, telling William in 1691 his estimation of England’s senior officers: ‘Kirke has fire, Lanier thought, Mackay skill, and Colchester bravery; but there is something inexpressible in the Earl of Marlborough. All their virtues seem to be united in this single person. I have lost my wonted skill in physiognomy, if any subject of your Majesty can ever attain such a height of military glory as that to which this combination of sublime perfections must raise him.’[fn5]
Despite his potential, Marlborough’s career had stalled. After his Irish successes, he had hoped to be created a Knight of the Garter. Instead, in 1692, he was relieved of all his offices, without explanation. John Evelyn wrote in his diary of the commonly believed reason behind the fall from grace: ‘The Lord of Marboro, L:Gen: of K.William’s Army in England, Gent. Of Bedchamber, etc. dismissed from all his Charges Military and other; & given to divers others: for his excessive taking bribes & Covetousness & Extortion upon all occasions from his inferior officers.’ Evelyn enjoyed the fall. ‘Note this was the Lord who being entirely advanced by K. James, the merit of his father being the prostitution of his Daughter (this Lord’s sister) to that King: is now disgraced; & by none pitied, being also the first who betrayed & forsook his Master K. James.’[fn6]
Marlborough was imprisoned in the Tower for treachery, in 1692. Although found innocent of the convoluted charges, Marlborough remained sidelined as a soldier for the rest of the War of the League of Augsburg. William had reason to be suspicious of Marlborough, however: like many powerful contemporaries, he communicated with James’s court-in-exile, insuring against a second Stuart Restoration. The most serious charge levelled against Marlborough was that he betrayed English plans for an ill-fated attack on the port of Brest in 1694. Although it was eventually established that the French already had this intelligence from another source, Marlborough was indeed guilty of giving the enemy secret information. He endeared himself to nobody by applying for the position left vacant by General George Tollemache, the Brest expedition’s commander, who died during the raid.
Marlborough’s questionable loyalty, both past and present, damaged his position. However, the prime reason for tension between the king and the earl was his wife’s hold over her mistress. William and Mary blamed the pronounced difficulties between their Court and that of Princess Anne on Sarah Marlborough’s manipulations. Mary demanded that her sister dismiss this disruptive influence, but Anne repeatedly refused. When Sarah offered her resignation, Anne declared she would ‘rather live in a cottage with you than reign Empress of the world without you’.[fn7]
Their relationship never graduated to the cordial, but William and Anne were brought closer by Queen Mary’s sudden death from smallpox in 1694. This gave closure to a bitter sisterly rivalry. Marlborough, however, remained in the wilderness during the remainder of the War of the League of Augsburg. Sarah heard of the high English casualties at William’s defeats, and gave thanks that her husband’s disgrace had kept him from the front line.
The king’s respect for Marlborough grew after the Peace of Ryswick. He was one of the few willing to listen to and agree with William’s fear of France. This reassured the king that Marlborough was sound. In the summer of 1698, William agreed to the earl’s appointment as governor to the Duke of Gloucester, Anne’s surviving son. ‘My Lord,’ said William, ‘teach him but to know what you are, and my nephew cannot want for accomplishments.’[fn8] At the same time, he restored Marlborough to his Court and army ranks. He had regained his position independent of aid from either political party. His subsequent command of the English army, and his ambassadorial status, put the seal on a remarkable comeback.
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Louis’s impetuosity had laid bare his continued threat to Protestant Europe, and to all the nations whose lands bordered French territory. The Dutch States-General welcomed Marlborough to The Hague, hoping that he would assemble an alliance strong enough to deter French aggression. If Louis could not be diverted from conflict, though, the United Provinces appreciated the need for a strong confederacy to stand against France. The Dutch installed Marlborough in the palatial Mauritshuis. This was the venue for intense diplomacy as the earl encouraged, cajoled and bribed potential signatories to join the second Grand Alliance. It was difficult and unpredictable work. Winston S. Churchill characterised this era in European history as a time of the most treacherous self-interest: ‘It was an epoch of divided loyalties, of criss-cross ties, of secret reserves and much dissembling.’[fn9]
Of no individual was this truer than the colourful Maximilian II Emmanuel, the Elector of Bavaria. Known as the White Knight, because of his personal valour, Maximilian had succeeded the Duke of Lorraine as Supreme Commander of the Imperial armies against the Turks in 1688. Success then had been followed by a leading role against the French in the War of the League of Augsburg: the Elector of Bavaria had been the Imperial commander who had helped William to capture Namur in 1695.
Maximilian Emmanuel’s proven abilities as a general and the strength of his army made Bavaria’s services desirable to Louis and the Grand Alliance. However, it was his nation’s location — his domain also included the dukedom of the Upper Palatinate, and the county of Palatine of the Rhine — that made him an ally of particular interest to France. The Elector’s compliance would give France a base deep inside the Empire, within striking range of the capital, Vienna. Louis sent one of his foremost diplomats, the Marquis de Ricous, to alert Maximilian Emmanuel to the many benefits that friendship with France could bring.
The Elector, was, by definition, one of the standard-bearers of the Holy Roman Empire. However, he contemplated an alliance with Louis because he believed France would win this war, and win it quickly. He had a matchless knowledge of the weakness of the Imperial forces, and he expected the Habsburg dynasty to fall during the conflict. The death of his young son before he could succeed Carlos II had deprived the Elector’s family of the Spanish Empire. However, maybe there was now a chance to secure another Imperial crown, albeit as the vassal of Louis XIV, by defeating and replacing Emperor Leopold and his line?
Maximilian had been created Viceroy of the Spanish Netherlands after the War of the League of Augsburg. The Emperor had welcomed the appointment, believing his able commander would help to control this sensitive area. However, when the French overwhelmed the Barrier Fortresses, Leopold discovered that Maximilian Emmanuel was in cahoots with the Franco-Spanish. Philip V had guaranteed the Elector’s continuance as viceroy, provided he allow the Barrier Fortresses to fall to Louis.
Many lesser German princes were reluctant to follow the Emperor into battle against the strength of France. They now looked to Maximilian Emmanuel to lead their cause. ‘Every day the highest dignitaries of the Empire besought him to return to his own territory, as he was regarded as a prince capable of leading those who were opposed to the violent policy with which Germany was threatened by the Court of Vienna, backed by England and Holland.’[fn10] Maximilian Emmanuel returned to Munich, the Bavarian capital, to hear these representations in person. However, it was soon evident that peace was not an option: the Emperor was determined on armed conflict to eject Philip V from Spain, in favour of Archduke Charles. Leopold secured the votes of the three bodies that constituted the Diet of Ratisbon — the seven electors; the hereditary Imperial princes; and the Free Cities of the Empire — then declared war against France.
Maximilian Emmanuel was now left with a stark choice: he could either support his nephew, the new king of Spain; or side with his father-in-law, Emperor Leopold. As he dithered, Louis’s envoy, the Marquis de Ricous, proposed a treaty that was temptingly generous to the Elector. In return for his generalship and 45,000 troops, France would share her Germanic acquisitions in the coming war equally with Bavaria. In the very unlikely circumstance that the Grand Alliance made territorial gains inside the electorate, Maximilian Emmanuel would be compensated with sovereignty elsewhere; either in Burgundy, or in the Spanish Netherlands. These terms were agreed but they were to remain secret: the Elector would only declare his hand once he could pretend that war had been forced upon him.
Unaware that a covert deal had been reached between Maximilian Emmanuel and Louis, the Grand Alliance offered Bavaria a selection of bribes and threats. So keen was the Emperor to secure the return of the Elector to his cause, that he offered him the Supreme Commander’s role in Italy. Maximilian Emmanuel pretended to be intrigued. William was unsettled by this inscrutability, declaring: ‘It is time that he lifts the mask and that he openly opposes liaisons so contrary to the good of the Empire of which he is a member.’[fn11]
Meanwhile Joseph Clement of Bavaria shared his electoral brother’s leanings. In 1688, he had been installed by the Emperor as the archbishop and elector of Cologne, to block Louis’s candidate, Cardinal von Fürstenberg. His strongholds on the Meuse and the Rhine were considerable: Bonn, Huy, Kaiserwerth, Liège, and Rheinberg. However, he felt no lasting gratitude for these acquisitions. Joseph Clement shared Maximilian Emmanuel’s view that France would win the conflict, and that further advancement lay in alliance with the victor. Self-interest held sway over historic ties to a notional overlord, whose days were surely numbered.
With the Bavarian princes failing to come to his colours, Marlborough worked harder to win over other potential allies in Germany. Each had a self-serving agenda. For the Elector of Brandenburg, the quid pro quo was enhanced status. He knew that the services of the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Hanover had been secured in the previous war, by making him the ninth Imperial Elector. Frederick of Brandenburg was a mediocrity figure whose obsession with pomp and ceremony made him an avid admirer of Louis XIV’s Court life. Contemporaries sneered at him as ‘Louis’s monkey’, and mocked him for his superficiality. However, he controlled a hardy and professional army of 43,000 men. When the price of his assistance was set at elevation from elector to king, Leopold reluctantly agreed to pay.
