The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714)

by James Falkner

  When the details were confirmed, St Simon went on, ‘There was scarcely an illustrious family that had not had one of its members killed, wounded, or taken prisoner … the public sorrow and indignation burst out without restraint.’

  The casualties suffered by Marlborough and Eugene in the battle were also severe, at some 12,000 killed and wounded, and their weary army could only follow up this success at a measured pace as a result. The small Bavarian garrison in Ulm submitted without resistance, and the two victorious commanders, having been joined again by the Margrave of Baden who had taken Ingolstadt in the meantime, pursued their defeated opponents on their sorry way to the Rhine. Marshal Villeroi in Alsace came forward to shepherd the defeated and dejected troops, who had been attacked repeatedly on the road by bands of outraged peasants, across the river to safety. He then conducted a cautiously effective defensive campaign to slow the allied advance. Eugene and Baden laid siege to Landau, while Marlborough marched his own troops across the difficult country of the Hunsruck to the Moselle valley where he laid siege to Trier and Trarbach. He was joined there by Overkirk, who had been summoned south with his Dutch corps to take part in the campaign. The likelihood of any attack on the southern borders of Holland was now very remote, and Overkirk had no hesitation in responding to the duke’s summons. The French garrison in Landau submitted at last on 29 November, after a very creditable defence led by the blind Marquis de Laubanie that had lasted for seventy days, slowing the progress of the allies to a crawl as the cold weather of winter set in. Although the campaign through the autumn had been, by comparison with the glories of the summer, a rather plodding affair, Marlborough had managed to secure the fortress of Landau in Alsace, and Trier and Trarbach in the Moselle valley, and in so doing breached the French strategic line of defence on the Rhine, ready for fresh efforts in the coming year.

  At the close of an exhausting but exhilarating campaign, Marlborough visited Berlin, Hanover, and The Hague to consult with his allies, and to receive their jubilant congratulations. He then travelled, to London accompanied by his distinguished prisoners, where his arrival was reminiscent of a Roman triumph, and the captured standards and colours from the Schellenberg and Blenheim were paraded through the streets and taken to be hung in Westminster Hall. Parliament did not stint in its praise when it presented the duke with an adulatory address on the successes that he had achieved that summer, in terms that reflected the general air of wonder at what had taken place:

  The happy success that has attended her Majesty’s arms under your Grace’s command in Germany the last campaign, is so truly great, so truly glorious, in all its circumstances, that few instances in the history of former ages can equal, much less excel the lustre of it. Your Grace has not overthrown young unskilful generals, raw and undisciplined troops; but your Grace has conquered the French and Bavarian armies; armies that were fully instructed in the arts of war, select veteran troops, flushed with former victories, and commanded by generals of great experience and bravery. The glorious victories your Grace has obtained at Schellenberg and Hochstadt, are very great, very illustrious in themselves; but they are greater still in their consequences to her Majesty and her allies.26

  Given the scale of what had been achieved by Marlborough and Eugene that summer, the laudatory language may be felt not to have been overdone, and funds were voted for the building of a great palace for the duke, which would be named, appropriately enough, Blenheim.27

  Chapter 6

  Enter the Duke of Berwick

  ‘For that purpose, an army was necessary’1

  Late in 1703 it had become apparent to Louis XIV that a substantial troop reinforcement was necessary to secure his grandson’s position in Madrid, and on 29 November James Fitzjames, the English-born Duke of Berwick, was appointed to command the eight regiments of French cavalry and dragoons and twenty battalions of infantry to be sent to Spain in the following February.2 Berwick was a highly capable soldier, although he had not previously acted as commander-in-chief of an army, so that he had the assistance of the equally gifted Jean-François de Chasteney, Marquis de Puységur (both men later to be made Marshals of France). However, the marquis soon quarrelled with Philip V’s financial adviser, Jean Orry, whom he suspected, and came close to accusing, of theft and embezzlement. ‘What was his surprise’ the Duc de St Simon wrote ‘when he found that from Madrid to the frontier not a single preparation had been made for the troops, and that in consequence all that Orry had shown him, drawn out upon paper, was utterly fictitious.’ The dispute between Puységur and Orry was able to be resolved, fortunately, as it had arisen from an obvious misunderstanding in the drafting of a message rather than anything more serious.3 Berwick entered Madrid in lavish state on 15 February, and was appointed the next day by Philip V to the command as Captain-General of the French and Spanish armies in the peninsula.

  Coalitions always have their strains, and never more so than when engaged in outright warfare. The difficulties that faced the allied commanders were no less severe for Berwick in attempting to pursue an effective campaign in Spain and Portugal. The Spanish soldiers were brave enough, as experience would show, but they were ill-equipped, poorly paid and their training was outdated. This could be corrected under the flinty eyes of a few good French drill sergeants, but the Spanish officers were resentful of French interference and influence, even though they had to have both in order to learn to campaign effectively. Rivalries between ambitious people at the court in Madrid added to Berwick’s difficulties, some wanting just to please Philip V with flattery and soft words, some hoping to please him and his grandfather, while others were only interested in what was thought in Versailles, and yet more thought the French in Madrid were just too numerous and insufferably presumptuous anyway. A good deal of diplomacy and patience was called for, as Berwick made preparations for the coming campaign. The duke remembered that:

  I would have nothing to do with their quarrels, and indeed I had business of too much consequence upon my hands to admit of my entering into discussions, so disagreeable, as they were useless to the affairs I was principally entrusted to conduct.4

  With typical energy and the application of a healthy amount of tact, Berwick and Puységur set about reforming, improving and training the Spanish troops under their command, and within a remarkably short space of time, could put a force of 40,000 reasonably well-equipped and trained men in the field, of whom some 10,000 were cavalry. The solid core of this army were still the 12,000 experienced soldiers that Berwick had brought south from the Spanish Netherlands, but the financial reforms that Orry had pushed through in Madrid enabled the soldiers to be regularly paid, which was something of an innovation in Spain at that time.

  King Pedro of Portugal had bowed to pressure and joined the Grand Alliance, and as agreed under the terms of the treaty Archduke Charles, accompanied by 4,000 British and Dutch troops, arrived in Lisbon on 6 March 1704, together with a powerful cruising squadron under Admiral George Rooke. The French ambassador, who had valiantly not ceased to try and persuade the king to return to his alliance with Louis XIV, hastily left Lisbon for Madrid (having bought up as many horses in the neighbourhood as he could, and sending them ahead to Spain). Charles entered the city and was greeted with great celebrations and acclamations, while Rooke took the bulk of his squadron to cruise in the Straits of Gibraltar. Pedro was ailing and unwell at this time, and preparations for the coming campaign slowed, men and supplies were not being forthcoming in the numbers and quantities agreed. The Dutch subsidies in cash agreed under treaty terms were, under an accounting sleight of hand, diverted to repay old debts owed by Portugal to Dutch traders rather than in funding the army, although Queen Anne’s treasury paid England’s share of the monies promptly.5 The commander of the troops provided by England, Meinhardt, Duke of Schomberg, failed to take a grip of the situation and much valuable time was lost and the patience of many of his officers tested. The equipping of the cavalry and dragoons proved particularly difficult, as ma
ny horses had been lost on the voyage from southern England and Holland, and the Portuguese had been used to getting many of their remounts from Spain, an option that was no longer open to them. The recent activities of the now departed French ambassador did not help at all. The difficulty was made worse because the allied commanders thought the tough local ponies, the Rosianates, to be unsuitable for the weight of their troopers, so drafts of horses had laboriously and expensively to be shipped to the Tagus, with many continuing to be lost on the way.

  Rooke managed to secure a number of French prizes on his cruise, and returned to Lisbon in mid-April. Just how flexible and far-reaching English policy could be, both on land and at sea, was seen in the further instructions that he had received and set out in detail when Queen Anne wrote to the Archduke on 16 May:

  My Admiral has my orders to co-operate with Your Majesty’s Forces [the queen now always referred to Charles as if he were already the king of Spain] in reducing your kingdom; and since he has sailed for the Mediterranean with the aim of aiding Nice and Ville Franche [Savoyard territories], he will go no further than the Catalonian coast unless he is assured that these two places are in danger, and he will be removed scarcely beyond the coats of Spain, having given a rendezvous to his ships in the Bay of Altea. The operations in Napes, Sicily and the Adriatic will be regulated by the circumstances.6

  Any project for operations in the distant Adriatic never came about, but there was clear concern that the French Mediterranean fleet might be reinforced, and attempt to combine with any residual Spanish squadron loyal to Philip V to bar the allied passage through the Straits of Gibraltar. In that case Savoy would be exposed and left without support, as would Charles’s hopes of establishing a presence in Naples:

  For some time he has been waiting to carry troops to Catalonia, but since they could not be expected within a certain time, and having received news of a French squadron coming from Brest to join another at Cadiz which was expected at Toulon, it seems that his resolve of putting to sea without delay and without weakening his fleet, should be approved; since he was in a condition and had sufficient time, to prevent the Count de Toulouse from passing the straits … I am not forgetting the safety of the port of Lisbon.7

  The admiral clearly had wide-ranging instructions, and he could offer assistance to the rebels in the Cevennes region of southern France if that was practical, and even try and influence the Moors in North Africa to openly declare support for the alliance. The lack of available troops to use as a landing force was regrettable, but ships swinging comfortably at anchor in harbour could not compare with an active fighting squadron at sea. King Pedro had promised two battalions of his own troops for this purpose, but time was pressing on Rooke and he would not delay while they marched from their inland camps. He set off to intercept the French ships coming from Brest, but proved unable to find them. He did, however, make the passage of the straits without difficulty. The admiral found, however, that a landing on the coast of Valencia was not practical at that time, particularly as he could not spare his marines ashore for very long, and so moved northwards to see what might be attempted in Catalonia.

  The Portuguese had watched the squadron sail away with some misgivings, for their own security had been assured under the terms of the treaty agreed with the alliance, and a major part of that security rested with the presence of allied warships off the Tagus. Those vessels had now gone on their way to the Mediterranean with Rooke, but John Methuen, adept diplomat that he was, assured King Pedro that the best way to guarantee safety was to seek out and engage the French fleet wherever it might be found. With some reluctance, and in order to ensure that a degree of harmony was maintained with an active campaign in preparation, the point was accepted by the king. This reassurance proved to be correct when the French squadron from Brest made no attempt to attack Portuguese ports or shipping on its way southwards. Lingering resentment was felt though, particularly when a squadron under the command of Sir Cloudesley Shovell put in to the Tagus, but then left again at the end of June refusing to leave a single guard-ship on post there.

  As a result of the growing threat from Portugal having joined the allies, the Duke of Berwick almost inevitably had to begin his campaign in an effort to drive Lisbon out of the war, and in May he sent five columns of French and Spanish troops across the border. He took command of the main force, 14,000 strong, as it moved down the right bank of the river Tagus to Villa Velha, intending to combine there with a detachment of 5,000 troops under command of the Prince de Tzerclaes Tilly who was to clear Portalegre on the left bank. Subsidiary columns were commanded by Don Franciso de Ronquillo who was to advance by Almeida in Beira, and also under the Duke of Hijar and the Marquis de Villadarias. In all Berwick, who was for the time being accompanied by Philip V, had some 28,000 troops in the field, the majority being French, in the various detachments deployed. Galway and the Portuguese general Antonio Luis de Souza, Marqués Das Minas, could only field some 21,000 men to oppose Berwick, but the commanders on both sides had problems with forage for their horses, scarcity of supplies and a steady trickle of deserters from the ranks. It was no simple thing therefore, for Berwick to deploy his numerical advantage to best effect.

  Baron Nicholas Fagel stood in the path of Berwick’s main advance, but with only some 2,500 Dutch troops under command he could do little to hinder the French and Spanish progress. The minor Portuguese fortresses of Salvatierra, Segura, Rosmarinos, Cabresos and Pena Garcia capitulated without too great a struggle, and Monsanto and Idanha-la-Vieilha were both stormed by the French. The terrain made close cooperation between the various French and Spanish columns difficult, though, and supplies came forward only slowly. Berwick’s advance was so successful however, that James, Earl Stanhope, serving with the British and Dutch troops in Portugal, wrote that ‘I see no human possibility of saving Lisbon, but by a treaty, if the enemies push their advantages’.8

  Despite the promising initial success of Berwick’s campaign, Das Minas advanced from Almeira in Beira with his Portuguese army, to which a few hundred Dutch troops had been added by a detachment sent by Fagel to ease his own lack of supplies. Orders came from Lisbon to turn away from Ciudad Rodrigo, the intended objective, and move to the Tagus to halt the French and Spanish advance there. Neither Schomberg. Das Minas or Fagel had pontoon bridging equipment, which meant that the Tagus kept them apart, unlike their opponents who could bridge the river at will. Tilly reached Portuguese-held Porto-Alegre, and the garrison was forced to submit, and on 27 May, the French general Thouy, commanding a detachment of 4,000 troops, forced two battalions of Dutch infantry to surrender at Zarceda. Berwick combined forces with Tilly at Porto-Alegre, although supplies were still hard to come by, and forage was scarce for the horses, with large numbers of the animals sick or dying. The initially promising campaign to dominate the border region was slowing noticeably.

  Das Minas meanwhile had approached Monsanto, and on 11 June was confronted by the French and Spanish force commanded by Don Ronquillo. The Portuguese cavalry were charged and forced to give way, but their infantry proved to be more robust and Ronquillo withdrew in some haste once artillery fire was opened on his troops. Das Minas went on the next day to capture the fort at Monsanto with the garrison of 120 French soldiers being taken as prisoners of war and the place thoroughly plundered. The marquès then advanced to the Ponsul river, but learning that Berwick was close by at Castel Branco, he fell back to Penamacor. The duke did not pursue Das Minas, and instead combined with Villadarias who had come north from Andalusia with a force of 4,000 troops. Berwick managed to secure the fortress of Castello de Vide, partly because the timid governor insisted on giving up as soon as he could. ‘Our cannon,’ Berwick remembered derisively, ‘having begun to scratch their walls, the Portuguese governor desired to capitulate.’9 The comments were a little unwarranted, as he had threatened to sack the town and put the inhabitants to the sword if the garrison did not submit without delay.

  A number of secondary P
ortuguese-held fortresses had been secured, and overall the scanty laurels in the campaign so far lay with Berwick, but not a great deal had been achieved. The operations came almost to a halt in the heat of summer, with a worsening lack of regular supplies, and an increased rash of guerrilla attacks on Berwick’s convoys and any lone stragglers; a defensive posture had to be adopted along the frontier with Portugal, where the allied commanders could still deploy over 20,000 troops. The condition of the French and Spanish cavalry mounts continued to deteriorate, and the duke wrote ruefully that he had ‘credited the people of the country, who assured us that it was absolutely necessary to give barley to the Spanish horses, without which they would perish … we were accustomed to feed the cavalry with such forage as we found.’10 On 1 July 1704, Berwick drew his troops back from the frontier, demolishing the defences of the places he had taken, with the exception of the forts at Segura, Marvão and Salvatierra, where garrisons were left. Philip V was unwell and not able to contribute very much to what remained of the campaign, so he went back to Madrid – Berwick took up a position at Salamanca and Villadarias returned to the south. ‘Thus ended this first campaign, the success of which ought to have been more considerable.’11 For the allies, the campaign had certainly seen very mixed fortunes, although to turn back the Franco-Spanish advance was recognised as an achievement, and the soldiers had on several occasions, as at Monsanto, fought well in unpromising circumstances. One benefit of the campaign for Berwick, however, was that he and his troops had eaten up the scanty supplies in the country along the Tagus, and the allied commanders, should they venture to advance into Spain, would find little to scavenge and have to bring their own provisions with them along the bad roads of the region. The soldiers on both sides were now in camp and quarters while the intense heat of the summer lasted, and preparations were made, with uneven success, to improve the supply arrangements for the renewal of activity in the autumn. The skills of the Duke of Schomberg had, however, been cast into doubt, as had his ability to cooperate effectively with his allies, and so he was soon to be replaced.