The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714)

by James Falkner

  On 22 June Marlborough and Baden combined forces and could between them now deploy some 60,000 troops in addition to those commanded by Eugene on the Rhine. Marshal Marsin and the elector with a combined strength of just 40,000, could not risk an engagement in the open, and went into an entrenched camp at Dillingen on the north bank of the Danube, just downstream from the free city of Ulm which had been occupied by the Bavarians the previous year.

  Marlborough could not conduct an effective campaign in Bavaria unless he had a good forward base and could force the passage of the Danube to operate south of the river. Nordlingen was fairly free of the danger of French attack and sat astride a good old Roman road leading northwards to Nuremburg which was the duke’s main supply base. However, Nordlingen was too far away from the Danube to be suitable once the river was crossed. In addition, the Elector of Bavaria was a sound tactician, whatever shortcomings he may have had as a statesman, and could be counted on to manoeuvre to defend the line of the Danube as firmly as possible. If he should succeed in this, then Marlborough and Baden would be left stranded, almost, north of the river, while the French and Bavarian threat to Vienna developed with the additional reinforcement that Louis XIV was likely to send to bolster the campaign in southern Germany.

  The small town of Donauwörth, sitting at the confluence of the Danube and the river Wornitz, some twenty miles south of Nordlingen, appeared to offer everything that the Allied commanders needed as a forward base. It was easily defensible to any threat from the south, and had a good bridge over the Danube. The town also had capacious storehouses and magazines to receive the supplies that the allied campaign would require. The difficulty was that these advantages were also very evident to the elector, and he had established a good garrison in the town, commanded by a French Colonel DuBordet, and the nearby Schellenberg hill, which dominated the place, was being put into a state of defence by a 12,000-strong French and Bavarian corps backed by artillery, under the command of a very capable Piedmontese officer, Comte Jean d’Arco.

  The options open to Marlborough and Baden were limited. Any attack on the Schellenberg was likely to be an expensive business, as d’Arco had a good reputation as a fighter, and would exact a high price for any ground given up. However, the narrow frontage leading to the hill made manoeuvring the defenders out of position a difficult and time-consuming prospect, with no guarantee at all of easy or early success, while the elector would be certain to reinforce d’Arco once the intention to seize Donauwörth was recognised. The allied commanders could move down the Danube towards Ingolstadt and attempt to force a crossing there, but the town also had a stout Bavarian garrison and any such movement would lay open Marlborough’s line of supply and communication northwards to Nordlingen and Nuremburg open to attack. The Margrave of Baden, used to campaigning in a rather measured way, was reluctant to attack the Schellenberg directly, but Marlborough pressed the merits of early action and got his way. Deserters confirmed that the defences on the hill were incomplete, and the duke’s decision in this was strengthened when it was learned that Tallard had evaded Prince Eugene at the Lines of Stollhofen and was making his way through the Black Forest with a fresh French army to reinforce Marsin and the elector in pushing forward their campaign against Vienna.10 With time pressing hard on the allied commanders, on 2 July 1704 they struck at d’Arco on the Schellenberg, and in the course of a bitterly-fought action, during which the defenders put in one very smart counter-attack, the French and Bavarians were driven off the hill and to destruction in the wide waters of the Danube behind them. Colonel Jean-Martin de la Colonie recalled the ferocity of the fighting:

  The enemy’s battery opened fire upon us and raked us through and through … so accurate was the fire that each discharge of the cannon stretched some of my men on the ground. I suffered agonies at seeing those brave fellows perish.11

  The cost in obtaining success was heavy: some 5,000 Allied troops were killed and wounded (amongst them the Margrave of Baden, who was shot in the foot, and General van Goor who was killed) but the Duke now had his forward base and a good crossing over the Danube; Bavaria lay open to the attentions of the allied army. Of d’Arco’s excellent corps, only about 3,000 men escaped to rally to the elector for the coming campaign. The sorry list of those allied troops who had fallen were recounted in the duke’s letter to the States-General written the day after the battle:

  We have lost many brave officers, and we cannot enough bewail the loss of Sieurs Goor and Beinheim who were killed in this action. The Prince of Baden and General Thungen are slightly wounded. Count Styrum has received a wound across his body, but it is hoped he will recover. The Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Cassel, and the Count de Horne, Lieutenant-General, Major General Wood and [Brigadier-General] Van Pallandt have also been wounded.12

  Marlborough was heavily criticised for the losses sustained – ‘What was the sense of capturing a hill in the heart of Germany at such heavy loss,’ one of his critics in London asked, adding not surprisingly ‘were there not many such hills?’13 Despite such comments and reservations, the duke could now move across the Danube and interpose the allied army between the French and Bavarians and the emperor in Vienna. In so doing, he had achieved the principal aim of his whole campaign. Unless the Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Marsin came out into the open to fight, and this was unlikely as they were even more outnumbered now, for the time being they no longer posed a threat to the security of Vienna. Emperor Leopold was sure of the value of what had been achieved, and he wrote in warm tones and in his own handwriting (a most unusual honour) to Marlborough with congratulations at the success on the Schellenberg:

  My generals themselves, and my ministers declare that this success (which is most gratifying and at the present time more opportune than almost anything else that could befall me) is principally due to your judgement, foresight, execution and also to the wonderful ardour and constancy of the forces under your command.14

  Others were not so sanguine at what had been achieved and at such heavy cost, and Sophia, the elderly Electress of Hanover, whose regiments had suffered heavily in the fighting wrote in waspish tones that ‘The Elector [her son, George] is saddened at the loss of so many brave subjects in consequence of the mistakes made by the great general Marlborough. He says that the Margrave of Baden did very much better.’15 The electress was also affronted that the reports of the battle gave insufficient credit to the Hanoverian troops involved. Baden, it is true, had made a very neat flanking attack to complete the success of the day, and the States-General in The Hague had a medal minted to commemorate the victory, but it featured the margrave, not the duke. That Marlborough had been the driving force behind the operation, and the principal guiding hand in the attack on the Schellenberg itself, seemed to have been overlooked. The heavy casualties had, however, been an undoubted shock and this coloured attitudes.

  Louis XIV, however, was in no doubt about what had been achieved for the allied cause:

  Nothing can now prevent the Emperor from making himself master of Munich, taking the Electress and her children prisoners and all that the Elector regards as most precious. I would like to believe that we could have prevented this passage.16

  Marlborough and Baden crossed over the Danube, partly using the captured Bavarian pontoon train, and entered Bavaria. The duke wrote to London on 6 July, ‘We are now preparing to pass the Lech, which I hope to do tomorrow or Tuesday, and then we shall be in the heart of Bavaria.’17 The duke successfully laid siege to the small fortress of Rain, despite a lack of heavy guns that Baden had promised but failed to provide; had matters been left to the margrave, it seems likely that the allies would not have established themselves south of the river until Eugene arrived some weeks later.

  Negotiations with the elector to persuade him to abandon his alliance with Louis XIV failed, despite the electress urging her husband to come to terms with the allies. ‘You see to what extremities the Elector my spouse has reduced his dominions. I have done all that I am abl
e to keep the war from so fine a country.’18 Unable to negotiate satisfactorily with the elector, Marlborough let loose his cavalry on a campaign of destruction across the rich countryside, burning and looting at will, although the elector’s own estates were ordered not to be touched. Many Bavarian troops were deployed to protect the elector’s property all the same, diminishing the strength of the Franco-Bavarian field army in consequence, to the indignation of Marshal Marsin at such a wasteful dispersal of effort. The Margrave of Baden protested at the campaign as being too savage but Marlborough ignored him, having however to write to London to assure his wife that British troops were not engaged in the burnings – this was not true. On 29 July the duke wrote of:

  The Comte de la Tour being gone out this morning with a strong detachment of horse and dragoons to destroy and burn the country about Munich, as I fear we shall be forced to do in other parts, to deprive the enemy as well of present subsistence as future support on this side [of the Danube].19

  Reports of the extent of this notorious campaign to harry the Bavarian countryside seem to have been exaggerated, and Colonel de la Colonie wrote that: ‘I followed a route through several villages said to have been reduced to cinders, and although I certainly found a few burnt houses, still the damage was as nothing compared with the reports current throughout the country.’20 Ruthless harrying of the countryside had a dual purpose – it was hoped that the pressure exerted would induce the elector to come to terms, but if not, then Bavaria was to be ruined as a base from which an army could operate throughout the coming months of winter. The common people would starve also, of course, but that was what happened in war and was just unfortunate.

  Despite the destruction, to whatever extent, the elector held firmly to his alliance with the French, and General Legall was sent to his camp by the French king with assurances that a major reinforcement of troops under Tallard was on the road to the Danube. The successful arrival in Bavaria on 6 August of the marshal with a fresh French army to support the campaign against Vienna appeared to have checked Marlborough’s campaign. No longer did the allies have a significant superiority in numbers and as the cool months of autumn approached, it seemed that the duke would soon have to withdraw into central Germany, to sustain his troops by drawing on his own depots and magazines established around Nuremburg. Once he had done so, and with the summer campaign on the Danube only partially successful and achieved with a heavy cost in effort, treasure and blood, it was likely that the States-General would demand his return to the Low Countries in the spring. In all likelihood, therefore, Vienna would be laid open to attack once more in 1705, and Marlborough would have to explain to Parliament in London why he had taken their army so far away and to so little benefit.

  Prince Eugene had not been able to prevent Tallard’s march through the Black Forest, despite the marshal wasting several days trying to take the minor fortress of Villingen. Shadowing the French march through the difficult wooded country, the prince kept Tallard under observation, but had prudently not ventured so close as to bring on a general engagement., By 6 August Eugene had encamped with his force of 18,000 troops on the north bank of the Danube, near to the village of Höchstädt. Marlborough and Baden with their larger army were some twenty-four miles away to the south-east at Rain. The three commanders met to agree their next moves, and it was agreed that Baden would take his own 15,000 troops to lay siege to the Bavarian-held fortress of Ingolstadt, which would provide the allies with another convenient crossing-point over the Danube in case Donauwörth should at some point become untenable. However, for Marlborough to move immediately to combine forces with Eugene would be premature at this time. If this took place south of the river then the Franco-Bavarian army might then be able to move northwards to intercept Marlborough’s lines of supply to Nordlingen and Nuremburg. If, on the other hand, the allied concentration was north of the Danube, then the line of approach towards Vienna might be laid open once more and Baden exposed to attack while engaged at Ingolstadt. The danger in the meantime was that Tallard, Marsin and the elector might move out from their entrenched camp at Dillingen and attack Eugene while he was still separated from Marlborough.

  That is just what they tried to do, crossing over pontoon bridges to the north bank of the Danube on 10 August to confront Eugene. The prince drew his troops back towards the small village of Münster, close to Donauwörth, thereby distancing himself from imminent attack while making a combination with Marlborough easier to achieve. He wrote to the duke, who was still at Rain, with an urgent summons, heavy with significance and committing the allies to fighting a battle north of the Danube:

  Monsieur, The enemy have marched. It is almost certain that the whole army is passing the Danube at Lauingen. They have pushed a Lieutenant-Colonel whom I sent to reconnoitre back to Höchstädt. The plain of Dillingen is crowded with troops. I have held on all day here; but with eighteen battalions I dare not risk staying the night. I quit however with much regret [the position] being good and if he takes it, it will cost us much to get it back. I am therefore marching the infantry and part of the cavalry to a camp I have had marked out before Donauwörth. I shall stay here as long as I can with the cavalry … Everything, milord, consists in speed and that you put yourself forthwith in motion to join me tomorrow, without which I fear it will be too late … While I was writing sure news has reached me that the whole army has crossed. Thus there is not a moment to lose and I think you might risk making a march by the [river] Lech and the Danube. That will shorten it a good deal, and the road is better. I await your answer, milord, to make my dispositions.21

  Marlborough needed little urging now that Tallard and his fellow commanders had committed themselves by crossing to the north bank of the river. Twenty-seven squadrons of cavalry were straight away sent to support Eugene and the main army was put on the road, marching at a good pace and covering the intervening miles in less than 24 hours. By the evening of 11 August the allied armies had successfully combined at Münster, and the immediate danger of either being isolated and defeated in detail had passed.

  The opposing commanders had now at last each effected their combination of forces, but having detached Baden to Ingolstadt, the allies had give up a precious superiority in numbers by so doing. The Franco-Bavarian army occupied a sound defensive position on the wide plain of Höchstädt; time might be said to be on their side, as the likelihood was that the allies could not push their campaign on the Danube to a decisive point before autumn came. Secure in their encampment, with flanks anchored on the Danube and the wooded hills of the Swabia Jura, the marshals and the elector could wait for events to unfold, and perhaps look to fall on Marlborough’s marching columns if, as they expected, he had to withdraw towards central Germany to find winter quarters for his troops.

  Everything changed on 13 August 1704, when Marlborough and Eugene surprised and attacked the French and Bavarians in their camp. The narrow defile at Schwenningen which might have been easily held was left unguarded and gave the allied army uncontested access to the plain of Höchstädt; the surprise that the allied commanders sprang upon their opponents was complete. Prince Eugene on the allied right was tasked to attack and tie down the troops commanded by Marshal Marsin and the Elector of Bavaria, while Marlborough used his powerful cavalry on the left against Marshal Tallard and his forces next to Blindheim (Blenheim) village. In the course of a very hard-fought day, the allies were eventually triumphant, destroying Tallard’s cavalry, inflicting 20,000 casualties and taking 13,000 unwounded prisoners, mostly French infantry packed uselessly into Blindheim where they were unable to use their muskets to any real effect. The Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Marsin managed to hold their positions fairly well until the evening, but at heavy cost, and then got their own battered troops off the field of battle as night fell.

  Tallard and many of his senior officers were among the prisoners taken. The Franco-Bavarian campaign was in ruins, and so too was Louis XIV’s main strategic effort to win the war. ‘We are in t
errible consternation’ a French officer wrote ‘We have only 250 officers in all our armies who are not wounded or killed.’22 The news of the allied victory was greeted with astonishment and jubilation in Holland and England. So much had been feared, and so little expected, that the magnitude of France’s losses was seen as the wonder of the age, and men remembered that the excitement was such that sleep was impossible. Surely, it was felt, the war would now spin quickly to an advantageous conclusion for the Grand Alliance. Emperor Leopold in Vienna, often so swift to cavil and carp, was fulsome in the praise that he sent to Marlborough:

  These victories are so great, especially that near Höchstädt, over the French, which no ages can parallel, that we not only congratulate you on having broken the pride of France, defeated their pernicious attempts, and settled again the affairs of Germany, or rather of all of Europe, after so great shock; but have hopes of seeing the full and entire liberty of Europe in a short time happily restored from the power of France.23

  The court in Versailles had been celebrating the birth on 25 June of a son to the Duc and Duchesse de Bourgogne. ‘This event caused great joy to the King and the Court. The town shared their delight, and carried their enthusiasm almost to madness by the excess of their demonstration and their fêtes.’24 But, the rejoicing was cut short in the most stark way when ‘News reached us which spread consternation in every family’. The Duc de St Simon recalled the distress and utter bewilderment at Versailles as the news of the catastrophe on the banks of the Danube emerged, piece by bitter piece:

  For six days the King remained in uncertainty as to the real losses that had been sustained. Everybody was afraid to write bad news; all the letters which from time to time arrived, gave, therefore, but an unsatisfactory account of what had taken place. The King used every means in his power to obtain some news. Every post that came in was examined by him, but there was little found to satisfy him. Neither the King nor anybody else could understand, from what had reached them, how it was that an entire army had been placed inside a village, and had surrendered itself by a signed capitulation. It puzzled every brain.25