The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714)

by James Falkner

  Villars sent a message to Charles XII that he should bring his army, at that point still in Saxony, to jointly campaign in central Germany, but the Swedish king had other plans. Even so, the marshal still held the initiative, and could raid almost where he pleased, and so French cavalry crossed to the south bank of the Danube. The magistrates of Ulm were so alarmed that they implored Marlborough to come south once more, and take up the command of the allied campaign himself. This was not a realistic suggestion, with the summer campaign in Flanders still underway and not making very much progress. Instead, George, Elector of Hanover, was appointed; he was a good general, with enough authority to compel co-operation from fellow electors and princes. Saxon troops were diverted to the campaign against Villars, who found that his opponents were at last combining against him at Philippsburg, Saxons, Hanoverians, Prussians and Palatines, uncomfortably close to his own line of withdrawal to the Rhine and Alsace. The marshal, having done enough damage to the empire and achieved his own limited strategic aim, drew his troops back to a position at Durlach to the north of Rastadt; instructed by Louis XIV to re-cross the Rhine to winter his troops, he did so without interference at the end of October.16

  Duke Victor-Amadeus II of Savoy was concerned at imperial ambitions for southern Italy, for he had his own plans for the region, but it was at length agreed that, although Austrian troops would still move into Naples, Prince Eugene would combine forces with the duke to undertake the projected attack on Toulon. Command of the Mediterranean had long been an unspoken but widely understood goal for the Maritime Powers, and to seize Toulon and destroy the French fleet and its base would go a long way to achieve that purpose. Both Vienna and Turin were dependent upon the cash subsidies from London and The Hague, and the Maritime Powers wanted to attack the port and so it was to be done. The preparations for the campaign were delayed, and the open buying-up of stores in Genoa alerted the French ambassador there to what was being planned. Only at the end of June 1707 did Eugene and Victor-Amadeus move forward from their camps around Turin with 35,000 troops, on the road south towards Borgo on the river Sturo, and on across the Maritime Alps to Mentone on the coast, which was reached on 7 July. Marshal Tessé had covered the Dauphine against any possible direct threat, and now moved his own army through the heat of high summer to shadow the allied march.

  Eugene’s army met Admiral Shovell’s cruising squadron lying off Nice on 11 July, and in a well-handled combined operation the line of the river Var was crossed the next day. ‘You will be able to judge by our having set aside all difficulties,’ Eugene wrote to the Duke of Marlborough, ‘the eagerness of my zeal for the august desires of the Queen and for the good of the common cause.’17 With the availability of close naval support any concerns for lengthy lines of supply and communication for the allied army were allayed for the time being. The weary troops were allowed to rest, and after the commanders had conferred on board Shovell’s flagship, HMS Association, the march commenced again on 15 July and the river Argens was reached four days later. Desertions from the allied army, particularly amongst those French and Bavarians taken prisoner at Blenheim in 1704 and then pressed in to imperial service, increased at a marked rate as the march went on and Toulon came nearer.

  Marshal Tessé won the race to Toulon by a narrow head, and when Prince Eugene, Victor-Amadeus and Shovell arrived before the naval base on 26 July, they found French troops in large numbers securely in place in the fortifications and ready to receive them. Shovell pressed his colleagues to immediately storm the port, but Eugene sensibly would not do so, foreseeing heavy casualties and an uncertain outcome. The decision was a hard one, as French reinforcements were bound to be summoned from Spain and the Rhine frontier, and Tessé would probably soon be able to deploy superior numbers. Those imperial troops that might have bolstered the operations against Toulon had, of course, been sent with Graf von Daun to take possession of Naples instead. Despite the daunting prospect ahead, the allied commanders pressed on and an outwork called Fort St Catherine was stormed on 30 July, and Eugene wrote that, ‘The Duke of Savoy directed me to carry the heights of St Catherine where I posted the young Prince of Saxe-Gotha. The Duke promised him a reinforcement of four battalions, if he should he be attacked.’18

  Map 6: The march by Prince Eugene and Victor-Amadeus of Savoy to attack Toulon, July 1707.

  However, Tessé’s rapidly-growing army lay in an entrenched camp on St Anne’s hill just to the north of Toulon and the prince had doubts about the prospects for success; he wrote to the emperor in Vienna on 5 August that ‘in spite of the representations I have made to the Admiral, he absolutely insists upon carrying on with the attack’.19 The probing and skirmishing that had taken place so far only confirmed the robustness of the French dispositions, and the good morale of their soldiers. Shovell was forced to acknowledge that the opportunity to get Toulon quickly had passed by and he doubted that, even with the effort and expense of a formal siege, there was time enough to now succeed:

  Owing to the large number of cannons all round the city, to the powerful garrison within, and to the numerous earthworks encircling the place, Toulon has been turned into a very strong fortress under the enterprising command of Marshal Tessé. Moreover, the number of enemy forces has risen daily until they are by now nearly equal to our own. The success of our undertaking is therefore very doubtful.20

  Eugene was of exactly the same opinion, but understood that the admiral had strict instructions to see that Toulon was taken, and such instructions were not lightly to be put to one side.21

  Matters were resolved, after a fashion, on the night of 14/15 August when French troops recaptured St Catherine in a very well-handled attack. There was a stiff fight with the allied troops there under command of the Prince of Saxe-Gotha, who was mortally wounded by two musket balls. Desertions, sickness and a lack of ready provisions sapped the strength of the allied army, while Tessé grew stronger still as more French troops arrived in his camp. Probing attacks were made, and it would surely not be that long before the marshal mounted a major effort to throw the allied army back from Toulon. It had to be acknowledged that the operation had failed, and that Eugene and Victor-Amadeus should withdraw while their army was still in one piece, and in sufficient numbers to hold off any determined pursuit.

  A week after the loss of Fort St Catherine the decision was taken to withdraw, and having embarked the sick and wounded and many of their guns on Shovell’s ships, the allied army began the long march back out of French territory. Tessé let them go without serious interference, and despite the general disappointment for the allies in the enterprise, on the credit side it should be said that the French had burned or beached their own Mediterranean fleet to avoid it falling into their opponent’s hands, so the effort was not without some good results. Prince Eugene gave the French commander full credit for his successful defence of the port. ‘But for the bravery and talents of Tessé, and the unfortunate affair in which the prince of [Saxe] Gotha fell, we should have been successful.’22 Louis XIV had neither the time or money to refloat and refit his fleet, even if had chosen to try and challenge the Maritime Powers once more on the high seas. In addition, the overall benefit, at one remove, for the allied cause from the outward failure at Toulon, was that Marshal Berwick had been required to divert many of his own troops from Spain to reinforce Tessé in southern France. Accordingly, Berwick was unable to make quite as much from his recent victory at Almanza as might have been expected, and when they were eventually returned to Spain, the men were in a weak and ill-equipped condition. Eugene had also been able to add to the credit side at the end of September, the recapture the small town of Susa on the border between Savoy and France.

  Maritime strategy in the Mediterranean had evolved during the year, and a highly favourable treaty for future trade had been concluded between Great Britain and Archduke Charles, so that an Anglo-Spanish trading company would be established, once the war was over, with French traders excluded from the Indies. The war had
to be won first, of course, but with his fortunes at a low ebb after the defeat at Almanza, Charles was too dependent upon British gold and troops to say no to what was proposed; Holland was less pleased, as there was no provision for Dutch trade to benefit from the same agreement, which clearly cut across a clause in the Treaty of Grand Alliance that no ally should attempt to gain preferential terms to the exclusion of all or any of the others. All the same, sea power in the Mediterranean was largely exercised by the Royal Navy, and London had no compunction about taking advantage of that fact. In any case, Holland also tended to pick and choose which commitments it adhered to closely, as its lack of observance of the treaty agreement with Portugal had demonstrated.

  In Flanders, meanwhile, the immediate difficulty faced by the Duke of Marlborough was that the French army commander, the ever-dangerous Duc de Vendôme, had no intention of being caught and forced to fight in open battle. With imperial military activity concentrated in southern Europe for the time being, the French had a superiority in numbers in the north, but Louis XIV had given instructions that risks were not to be taken with the army, so that Vendôme set up a fortified camp at Gembloux, and sat down to watch what moves Marlborough would attempt to draw him out. The duke was also constrained: his lack of numbers made the chances of successfully laying siege to a French fortress unlikely, as he could not conduct such an operation and simultaneously prevent the larger French field army from interfering. Meanwhile the Dutch were reluctant to risk all that had been achieved in the previous year, and were busily counting their gains and laying out in their minds the extent and depth of an enlarged barrier for their future security. ‘Our friends will not venture,’ Marlborough wrote to Robert Harley, ‘unless we have an advantage which our enemies will be careful not to give.’23 Field Deputy Sicco van Goslinga recalled afterwards that, while the allied army lay inactive at Meldert in early June:

  We received in this camp positive orders from our masters [the Dutch States-General] to risk nothing. The reasons for these fine orders were the uncertain outcomes of the Toulon expedition and the superior strength of the enemy … We were ordered anew to avoid all occasions where there would be any risk of coming to an action, until the outcome of the Toulon enterprise was known or until the Duke of Vendôme had made a substantial detachment.24

  Marlborough was perceptive enough to see the wider picture, and to recognise the difficulties his opponents must also face, and he wrote to his wife on 13 June that ‘our affairs go very ill in Germany as well as Spain, and for my part, notwithstanding the noise the French have made, I think they would less care to venture a battle than our friends’.25 In effect, the French could play for time while the Grand Alliance fumbled. A situation close to stalemate had been reached in the Low Countries, neither side caring to risk open battle, while hoping both that affairs would prosper in other theatres of the war, and perhaps that their opponent would commit some serious error of which they might take advantage.

  As it happened, by the first week of August Louis XIV was sufficiently concerned by events in southern France to order a detachment of 10,000 troops from Vendôme’s army to be sent there. The French numerical superiority in Flanders was gone as a result, and taking advantage of this Marlborough moved against Vendôme’s lines of communications and supply, stretching back into the French fortress belt. Genappe was passed without difficulty, and the allied army reached Soignies three days later. The whole posture of Vendôme’s army at Gembloux was now untenable, and he fell back to reach Cambron the same day that Marlborough rode into Soignies; the opposing armies were marching on converging courses and at one point near Seneffe they had been only about three miles apart. The weather turned unseasonably foul, the pace of marching slowed and an attempt by Marlborough to overtake the French rearguard, and perhaps at last force a general action, miscarried when a wrong turning was taken and orders went astray in the gloomy darkness of a wet night. ‘It rained heavily, was pitch dark, and no house near, so that it was an hour before a light could be got.’26 Count Tilly eventually pushed his Danish cavalry squadrons forward, but Vendôme’s rearguard troops skilfully obstructed the road and managed to get away without serious harm, although the allies were able to take some hundreds of French stragglers as they overtook them on the line of march. Vendôme was not to be caught, and he took up a good new defensive position with his flanks anchored on the fortresses of Mons and Ath. Sombre news soon came to the allied camp of the failure of the campaign in southern France, and Marlborough wrote on 7 September: ‘We have learned from France that the Duke of Savoy has quitted the siege of Toulon and retreated.’27

  Despite the disappointment, Marlborough persisted in trying to pin Vendôme down and he crossed the Scheldt under the protection of the guns of the allied-held fortress of Oudenarde and took up a strong position between that river and the Lys. The French commander had no intention of attacking his opponent, and withdrew to the shelter of the river Marque near to Lille, inside the border of France itself. The weather was still bad, and Vendôme had eaten up the campaigning weeks of summer and autumn very well, so that after some ineffectual manoeuvring there was not much more to do but for the opposing army commanders to send their troops off to winter quarters to prepare for what might be achieved in the coming year. In all theatres of the war, the affairs of the Grand Alliance had certainly not prospered in 1707, while those of Philip V, now back in Madrid, had by comparison blossomed.

  With the opening of the new year, Louis XIV attempted to divert the attentions of his opponents, by means of a speculative raid into Great Britain, with the twenty-year-old James Stuart, the Jacobite Pretender to the throne in London, at its head. Men, guns and ships were assembled in Dunkirk, and the blessing of the Pope for the venture was secured, even though the young prince was recovering from a bout of the measles, an ailment that at the time often proved fatal. All the elaborate preparations could not be achieved in secret, and the port was blockaded at the end of February 1708 by a squadron of eighteen warships under the command of Admiral Byng. Queen Anne wrote to her Privy Council in Scotland on 8 March 1708:

  The pretended Prince of Wales is at Dunkirk with some battalions of French and Irish Papists, ready to embark for Scotland, and our Enemies give out that they have invitations from some of our Subjects there. We are very hopeful that this attempt will, by the blessing of God on our Arms and Councils, be disappointed and turned to the confusion of all concerned in it … We take this occasion to let you know that Our Fleet is now at sea and much increased since our last. The Dutch Fleet is in great forwardness, and both are so disposed that Our Enemies cannot reasonably hope to escape an Engagement … The Troops from England are also posted in the best way for the relief of Our people in Scotland if our enemies shall have the boldness to pursue their designs.28

  As a distraction to prevent the Grand Alliance from pursuing its aims, the highly speculative adventure to Scotland had obvious attractions, but in the event proved to be a complete disappointment, and overall probably more troublesome for the French than the British and their Dutch allies. Parliament in London declared to the Queen that:

  No attempts of this kind shall deter us from supporting Your Majesty in the vigorous prosecution of the present war against France until the monarchy of Spain be restored to the house of Austria, and Your Majesty shall have the glory to complete the restoration of the liberties of Europe.29

  Despite such stirring sentiments, the French Admiral Forbin was able to slip past the blockading squadron and with Byng in hot pursuit, made for the shores of the north of Scotland. It was all in vain, for when Forbin entered the Firth of Forth on 23 March, there was no one ready to welcome the Pretender and his landing party, while Byng was close behind, ready to blockade the close waters of the Firth. The French squadron managed to escape, with the loss in a running fight of only the Salisbury (50), which had been captured by the French in 1703. Forbin sailed on northwards, looking to land troops and capture Inverness, but ‘there arose a strong co
ntrary wind which continued the next day with violence’.30 The French admiral decide that the risks of pressing on were too great and turned for Dunkirk, much to James Stuart’s dismay. The troubles encountered during the three-week sea voyage so weakened the crews of the ships, and the soldiers that the transports carried, that when they put into harbour in France it was noted that they were in a miserable condition and looked more like drowned rats than men.

  The whole enterprise was a humiliating failure for the Jacobite cause. The Duke of Marlborough had been obliged to divert some troops from his campaign to bolster the strength of the army in England, but as soon as the threat passed they returned to Flanders. It had been a desperate venture, one in which Louis XIV perhaps did not place too much faith and much had depended upon the good fortune which enabled Forbin to get ahead of Byng on the passage north, thanks mainly to the cleaner condition of the hulls of the French ships which allowed them to make better speed through the water. Had a successful landing been achieved, and always assuming there was a popular rising of some magnitude in favour of the Jacobite Pretender, then the consequence for British involvement in the war for Spain could have been serious. The Duke of Marlborough might well have had to bring a large part of his army back to England to secure London, and even go and campaign himself in Scotland. As it was, the firm handling of the situation by Queen Anne’s ministers re-assured their partners in the Grand Alliance, and the campaign in Flanders could be pressed on as originally intended without too much distraction. Louis XIV learned from this sorry tale, and would not again try to impose a Jacobite on to the throne of Great Britain.