A painting by an artist of the sixteenth-century Spanish School shows the soldiers led by Hernán Cortés walled up in the royal palace of Tenochtitlán where they have kidnapped the Aztec king, Moctezuma II (1466–1520). The king was killed by a missile from one of his own warriors as he tried to address them, and Cortés escaped.
It was in the mountains that the Spanish leader decided to build a fleet of boats, concealed from the distant Aztecs, to be hauled down to the lake and used to launch a surprise attack on the city. Only one carpenter had survived the massacre. With the help of local labour, trees were cut, planks were hewn, and thirteen small boats, 13 metres (42 feet) long and 3 metres (9 feet) wide, known as ‘brigantines’, were constructed over the winter of 1520–21. They were built with flat bottoms to make it easier to navigate the lake. In the spring of 1521, the boats were hauled with considerable difficulty down to Lake Texcoco. By this time, Cortés had received military supplies and a small number of infantry and cavalry sent from Cuba. His total of 90 horsemen, 820 soldiers and 18 small cannon, supported by perhaps as many as 100,000 unreliable local allies, planned to defeat an Aztec army estimated at perhaps as many as 300,000.
The Aztec leaders were now certain that the Spaniards were not gods. During the fight in the city, Moctezuma had been killed by Aztec slingshots as he tried to calm his people. A new ‘chief speaker’, the eighteen-year-old Cuauhtémoc, was determined to eradicate the Spanish threat once and for all. Tenochtitlán had been ravaged by a smallpox epidemic during the winter, but the surviving warriors still constituted a formidable force. In late May, the main aqueduct into the city was cut by a Spanish posse. Cortés divided his small force into three and posted them at the entrance to each of the causeways into the city. Then at the beginning of June the brigantines, manned by 300 Spanish soldiers and a handful of cannon, were secretly launched onto the lake. The ships were something the Aztecs had never seen before and in the ensuing battle hundreds of Aztec canoes were destroyed or sunk. The ships remained throughout the ensuing siege, firing at the city in support of the forces trying to cross the causeways.
A Spanish panel painting by an unknown late seventeenth-century artist shows the capture of Tenochtitlán by the Spanish in August 1521. One of the armed boats built by the Spanish to surprise the Aztecs can be seen beneath the causeway.
The siege of Tenochtitlán lasted ninety-three days and was in truth an almost continuous and exhausting battle. Nearly every day the Spanish and their allies fought thousands of Aztec warriors who pressed forwards on each of the three causeways regardless of losses. Cortés himself was almost captured several times, and those Spaniards who fell into Aztec hands met a grisly end. They were stripped naked and taken to the sacrificial table of the Great Temple where the priests ripped open the victim’s chest with a stone dagger and plucked out the still pulsating heart. The soldiers besieging the city could see the sacrifice in the distance and hear their comrades’ screams. Hands and feet were severed and parts of the body eaten. The flayed skin of the dead Spaniards’ faces and chunks of their roasted flesh were thrown at the besieging forces to terrorize them. Many of the local allies who had joined Cortés melted away from the battle but enough stayed to impose on the Aztecs a level of attrition that in the end was unsustainable. Conditions on both sides deteriorated over the summer weeks as food shortages left both armies tired and emaciated. Slowly the causeways were cleared and building by building the Spanish destroyed the city to prevent the enemy from sustaining any form of urban guerrilla warfare.
Cortés appealed to Cuauhtémoc a number of times to abandon the struggle and avoid further death and destruction but the Aztec rulers now sought only death or victory. An estimated 40,000 died in the final defence of the city, though Cuauhtémoc finally chose to flee in a canoe across the lake. On 13 August, the Aztecs fought to a standstill, with women and children joining the struggle for the city, but most were too debilitated by starvation and disease to resist. The Spaniards and their allies fought across piles of bodies in the streets until the final massacre ended resistance. The din of Aztec kettledrums and trumpets and the yelling of Aztec commanders suddenly ceased after weeks of deafening battle. Cuauhtémoc was captured and begged to be killed, but Cortés spared him, impressed by his valiant defence of the city. The slaughter and destruction of the capital by Cortés’s conquistadores ended the 200 years of Aztec civilization and ushered in the age of the Spanish American Empire.
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No. 60 BATTLE OF BLENHEIM
13 August 1704
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Widely regarded as the most significant victory in English military history, the battle in and around the small Bavarian village of Blindheim (usually spelt Blenheim in English) had an English commander and a core of English soldiers and horsemen, but was a multi-national battle, as most early eighteenth-century battles were, in which more Germans, Dutch and Danes served than English. There is no doubt, however, that the English commander, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, was the inspiration behind the victory over a larger French and Bavarian army in what was one of the critical battles of the War of the Spanish Succession. It was a battle that might never have happened if Marlborough had not deceived his allies, his government and above all his enemies about his plans for an unexpected offensive campaign deep in the heart of Europe.
Marlborough was the commander of a confederate army of European states that objected to the decision by Louis XIV of France to support his grandson’s claim to the vacant throne of Spain following the death of the feeble-minded King Carlos II in 1700. The crisis in Europe developed slowly but in May 1702 an alliance of England, Holland (the United Provinces) and the Austrian Habsburg Empire declared war on France. The armies of Louis XIV had not been defeated in forty years and posed a formidable challenge to Marlborough. By the spring of 1704, it seemed likely that Vienna would be captured by the advancing armies of France and her ally, Maximilien Wittelsbach, the elector of Bavaria, a move that would bring about the collapse of the coalition. Marlborough was stuck in Holland because his Dutch allies were unwilling to send their home troops on so distant and dangerous a campaign, and a major crisis loomed.
The deception at the heart of the eventual triumph at Blindheim was simple but risky. Without telling anyone except his monarch, Queen Anne, Marlborough pretended that he was taking part of his coalition army of 70,000 men to campaign in the Moselle Valley, close enough to Holland if the Dutch needed protection. Two French armies were positioned opposite the frontiers and could threaten his line of march, so he needed to persuade them, too, that he was staying in the north rather than moving to the aid of distant Vienna. He left Holland on 19 May with his secret still safe, though he had already made careful preparations to keep his men supplied and provisioned as he began the 400-kilometre (250-mile) trek down the Rhine and into Bavaria as far as the River Danube. By the time the Dutch found out that he had marched beyond the Moselle it was too late. At Koblenz, he ordered his surprised army across to the eastern bank of the Rhine and after five weeks of slow progress, as fast as the vast baggage train would allow, he reached Bavaria. Halfway along he had tricked the French again by pretending to throw bridges across the river as if to attack through Alsace and threaten Strasbourg. Only when he had finally arrived on the Danube, now with a coalition army of 80,000, was his intention evident.
Marlborough captured Donauwörth on the Danube on 2 July 1704, despite taking heavy casualties. Placing his armies between the approaching French and Bavarians and Vienna, the imperial capital, Marlborough joined up with the 20,000 imperial troops under Eugene, Prince of Savoy, and another force led by the tetchy Louis-William, Margrave of Baden. Facing them were the 56,000 French and Bavarians. The French armies were commanded by the veteran Marshals Count Ferdinand de Marsin and Camille d’Huston, Duke de Tallard, who had brought his army through the Black Forest with great difficulty, and with the loss of one-third of the horses from an epidemic of glanders. The French chose to make camp on the
north bank of the Danube on the plain of Höchstädt, between the villages of Blindheim and Lutzingen, which was ideal ground for a major cavalry encounter, but also an ideal defensive position, protected in front by a small marshy river, the Nebel, and a slope difficult to assault against stiff resistance. Tallard was confident that his enemy would not risk battle.
Marlborough and Eugene camped further east along the river near Donauwörth. To get their awkward ally out of the way they dispatched the Margrave of Baden to capture Ingolstadt. Then they worked out how to deploy their 60 guns and 52,000 soldiers and cavalry to achieve victory. On the face of it, their prospects were not good. French forces occupied the Danube village of Blindheim on one flank and the village of Oberglau on the other. Any chance of encircling the enemy was nullified by the large Bavarian force stationed on the French left in Lutzingen and the surrounding woodland. Once again deception was to play a part. As Marlborough moved his army forwards towards the enemy on 12 August, he sent ahead men who would allow themselves to be taken by the French. The prisoners pretended that the coalition armies were moving north to protect their lines of communication. Since this was exactly what Tallard had expected – position, rather than actual battle, was everything in eighteenth-century warfare – the French and Bavarians slept soundly that night. Marlborough’s men did not sleep well. They were already moving into position ready to ford the Nebel and seek battle. Tallard’s camp was still asleep when the nine enemy columns converged on the plain.
An engraving published in the 1823 British Portraits Encyclopedia shows the victor of Blenheim, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. His success in deceiving the enemy of his intentions opened the way to a stunning victory over the French and Bavarians.
Marlborough’s plan for an offensive depended on the willingness of his men to accept a high level of sacrifice. The British left was to storm Blindheim, while the Germans and Danes on the right were to neutralize Oberglau, thus removing the threat from infantry on the flanks, while allowing Marlborough’s larger cavalry force, intermingled with infantry, to confront the concentration of French horsemen on the Höchstädt plain. Meanwhile Eugene was to move through the woods and streams on the far right to pin down Marsin and the elector around Lutzingen, leaving Tallard without reserves. The plan was even riskier than it seemed in the light of what actually happened. The attack was delayed because of Eugene’s difficulty in getting his men and guns in place over difficult ground, and the French and Bavarians, despite the initial surprise, were able to organize a coherent defensive line. Only at mid-day was it possible to start the battle with a fierce infantry assault against the fortified village of Blindheim. Deception had its limitations.
A painting of the battlefield of Blenheim by the British artist John Wooton (1682–c.1765), now hanging in the National Army Museum, London, shows the point towards the end of the afternoon when the French cavalry broke in the face of heavy fire from Marlborough’s platoons of infantry.
Marlborough was fortunate that the plan unfolded much as he had hoped. The attacks on Blindheim were repelled with heavy losses, but when the French army’s elite Gens d’Armes cavalry was sent in to finish off the attackers, they were hit by the sudden appearance of Hessian infantry, hidden in the marshy bank of the Nebel. The cavalry panicked and fled in disorder, creating a disturbing uncertainty throughout Tallard’s army. The French commander at Blindheim was so disconcerted that he gathered most of the French infantry into the village, leaving 12,000 soldiers to be bottled up by only 5,000 of Marlborough’s men. After savage hand-to-hand action against Irish soldiers fighting for France, Oberglau, too, was overrun after Marlborough’s prudent deployment of his cavalry reserves. Eugene’s imperial forces suffered heavy casualties on the right wing, but held Marsin and the Elector in place for the entire day.
By 5 p.m., with the French visibly tiring, Marlborough finally brought up his fresher lines of cavalry, supported by infantry four rows deep, firing by platoon rather than by line (a tactical innovation to ensure greater accuracy of fire), and launched them against the massed French cavalry. After a fierce engagement all along the line, the French cavalry broke, with many trying to cross the Danube where up to 3,000 are thought to have drowned. Tallard himself was captured by a Hessian trooper and invited to sit in Marlborough’s command coach. Marsin and the elector made their escape in good order, but the collapse left Blindheim isolated, and an hour later it surrendered, bringing 10,000 prisoners of war. The initial bluff had paid off handsomely. Some 100 guns and 14,000 prisoners were captured, as well as 129 infantry colours and 110 cavalry standards, a shameful loss for any eighteenth-century regiment. The cost, however, was high – 14,000 of the coalition side were killed or wounded, against French and Bavarian casualties estimated at 20,000. Tallard eked out his years as a prisoner in England, where he introduced celery to the English diet. Marlborough was fêted on his triumphal return to London in December 1704, but it was to be a further nine years before the long war had run its course.
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No. 61 BATTLE OF HOHENFRIEDBERG
4 June 1745
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Frederick II of Prussia – Frederick the Great after this battle – needed a victory in 1745 to stamp his authority on the Prussian army after the disastrous winter campaign of the Second Silesian War. The thirty-three-year-old king was unlike almost any of his European adversaries. Cultured, philosophically inclined and a noted flute player, the diminutive monarch was also fascinated by battle and an avid student of the wars of the past. The victory he sought against the vast military resources of the Habsburg Empire was made possible by the simplest of deceits: a forced march during the night to take the enemy camp by surprise at sunrise. For all the attention later lavished on Frederick’s operational genius, the simplicity of this stratagem was its most significant characteristic.
The war was fought between an upstart Prussia, a state carved out of northeastern Germany over the previous half-century, and the empire of Maria Theresa, whose claim to the Habsburg throne in 1740 had precipitated a general European conflagration against her. Frederick had used the opportunity to seize the Habsburg province of Silesia in southeastern Germany (now Poland) to mark his own accession to the throne. Maria Theresa bowed to reality in 1742 and acknowledged Frederick’s acquisition, but she was never reconciled to it and in 1744 war was resumed. Frederick raised a large army of 140,000 men, some conscripted from the Prussian cantons, others German mercenaries from the smaller German states, all led by a military aristocracy whose status owed more to battle competence than to land ownership or birth. Frederick marched them into Bohemia and occupied Prague, but no army came to engage him. Since winter was approaching and supplies from distant Prussia were difficult to maintain, he had no alternative but to retreat to his kingdom. His forces were demoralized, desertion was rife, and illness and cold depleted the remainder. This was why a victory was so important to him in 1745.
The army he raised for the next campaigning season was much smaller. It included some 42,000 foot soldiers and 17,000 cavalry. He was ready by late May, but he had to entice the enemy to fight rather than simply manoeuvre around him. ‘A battle,’ he concluded, ‘is my only option.’ A large Austrian and Saxon army was camped out in the Bohemian mountains, the Riesengebirge. It comprised around 60,000 men led by Prince Charles of Lorraine. Frederick’s use of deceit began early in June, when rumours and disinformation were spread, intended to reach the enemy camp. He wanted the enemy to believe that his forces were dispersed or even retreating so that they would come down from their secure positions in the heights onto the plain below, where Frederick’s army had more advantage. The Habsburg commanders took the bait and moved towards him. On 3 June 1745, they camped near the village of Hohenfriedberg in the Sudetenland, spread out along a small river. So confident were they that the Prussians were on the run that no temporary fortifications were thought necessary.
Frederick had achieved the surprise he needed. He drew his forces quickly
together and ordered a night march towards Hohenfriedberg. Camp fires were left burning in case any Austrian spies crept near to reconnoitre. The men were ordered to keep absolute silence and not to smoke. Discipline was harsh in the Prussian army so the men obeyed. The infantry crossed fields while the guns struggled along dirt roads, with the sound of their movements muffled as much as possible. They arrived in front of the enemy camp at sunrise. Surprise was almost complete, but the camp was much wider than Frederick had realized and his first units ran unexpectedly into enemy infantry. He ushered his cavalry forward, leading by example – the first time he had fought on the battlefield himself. A large force of Austrian and Saxon horsemen quickly found their mounts and met the Prussian charge. A fierce engagement followed in which Frederick had insisted that no quarter be given. The balance gradually turned in his favour. While the horsemen battled each other, the Saxon infantry, encamped on the Habsburg left, formed up and prepared to defend their position. Nine Prussian infantry battalions were ordered to shoulder their muskets and march straight at the fusillade of musket and cannon fire coming from the Saxon ranks. They did so keeping an extraordinary discipline, then at the last moment, only yards from the enemy, they fired their muskets. A confused battle ensued until the Saxons, hoping every minute for reinforcements from their Austrian allies that never came, finally broke at around 7 a.m.
A History of War in 100 Battles Page 27
