Chapter II (1)

1701-1717.

MARLBOROUGH’S CAMPAIGNS IN THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION.

Almost before the troops from Flanders had shaken down into their winter quarters, the anti-military party in England raised the cry of “No standing army” with such vigour that Parliament insisted on the disbandment of many regiments; in each of the remainder three companies were entirely suppressed, and the others cut down to a strength of two sergeants, two corporals, a drummer, and thirty-four private soldiers, while officers at the rate of one for every ten men were allowed to remain with the Colours. In 1701 war again broke out on the Continent. This war, known as that of the Spanish Succession, was but a sequel to the conflict ended at Ryswick, and was again caused by Louis XIV.’s determination to conquer the best part of Europe. Without waiting for a formal declaration of hostilities, Louis struck hard and quick; and occupied the fortresses of Ostend, Nieuport, Oudenarde, Ath, Mons, Charleroi, Namur, and Luxemburg, and nearly all the strongholds on the Meuse from Namur to Venloo, thus threatening at once the southern border of Holland and the keys to its south-eastern frontier, the fortresses of Grave, Nimeguen, and Fort Schenk. The Allies again took up arms; in June the XVIIIth and eleven other regiments were sent off to Holland under Marlborough’s command; and Parliament decided that England should furnish a contingent of forty thousand men, of whom eighteen thousand were to be British and the remainder foreigners, taken temporarily into our pay.

Before the English troops settled down into their winter quarters, William III. reviewed the infantry, whose uniform was at that time both comfortable and picturesque. They wore loosely-fitting red coats, cut long enough to protect the thighs from wet and cold; waistcoats, visible when the skirts of the coat were buttoned back to allow the legs free play in marching; breeches with gaiters, buttoning high above the knee, and shoes. Their head-dress was a cocked-hat, like that of a Chelsea pensioner, and their hair was plaited in a pig-tail, which was plastered with powder and tied up with bows.

At the beginning of 1702, the Allies discovered that though Louis had echeloned considerable numbers of troops along the Rhine and the lower Scheldt, his immediate object was to gain possession of the fortresses of Grave, Nimeguen, and Fort Schenk: and a force of 25,000 men, among whom were the XVIIIth and most of the other British regiments, was assembled at Cranenburg, a few miles from Nimeguen, to watch a French army, 60,000 strong, encamped some twenty miles to the southwards. In the absence of Marlborough, who was detained at the Hague by diplomatic business, the army on the Meuse was under the Earl of Athlone, as Ginkell was now called: the French were commanded nominally by the Duke of Burgundy, but really by de Boufflers, who accompanied this royal prince as military adviser. The old Marshal had not forgotten his humiliation at Namur in 1695; and finding out that Athlone’s intelligence department and system of patrolling were equally bad, by a sudden swoop so nearly surprised his camp that his troops had to abandon their camp and baggage and hasten for shelter to Nimeguen, where their reception was the reverse of cordial. The Governor was indignant with the Dutch Government for having promoted Athlone over his head; he was suspected of having sold himself to the enemy, and either from treachery or from the wish to see his rival cut to pieces, shut the gates upon him as he approached the fortress,[26] and refused to take any measures for its defence. The civilian population, however, had no intention of surrendering; they broke open the stores, dragged guns to the ramparts, carried up powder and shot upon their backs, and opened so furious a fire that the French drew off in disgust.

Marlborough, whose recent appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the allied forces had created much ill-will among the Dutch generals, now joined the army, and concentrated 60,000 men, of whom 12,000 were British, in the neighbourhood of Nimeguen. Never was a general more sorely tried by incompetent and jealous subordinates than Marlborough in this campaign. He was comparatively an unknown man; he had never commanded a large army in the field; many of his colleagues distrusted him, and took every opportunity of thwarting his plans; and, above all, his footsteps were dogged by two Dutch civilian officials, styled Field Deputies, who had power to refuse him leave to employ the troops of Holland in operations of which they did not approve. Four times, by rapid marches and skilful strategy, he forced the French into positions where they could only fight at great disadvantage; and four times was victory snatched from him by the obstinacy of the Dutch leaders or the timidity of the Field Deputies. The campaign of 1702, however, was by no means barren of results, for Marlborough was allowed to recapture various fortresses on the Meuse. The first place to be invested was Venloo: the Germans sat down before the south and east of the town; to the Dutch and the British was allotted the attack on the north and west, and, after three weeks’ hard work, the British brigade, of which the XVIIIth formed part, sapped up to the foot of the glacis of Fort St Michael, a strong outwork of the main fortress. Prince Nassau, whom Marlborough had deputed to carry on the siege in his absence, then ordered a lodgment to be made on the top of the glacis as a preliminary to a future attack on the covered way. The whole of the XVIIIth moved into the trenches early in the morning: about midday they were joined by three companies of grenadiers and several hundred men from the other regiments in the brigade; and in the course of the afternoon Lord Cutts called the officers together, and, apparently on his own responsibility, enlarged the orders originally issued. The British were not to be satisfied with making a lodgment, but if they found the French “give way with precipitation, they were to jump into their works and follow them, let the consequence be what it would! ‘These were fine orders from a general,’ remarks Kane grimly, ‘but as inconsiderate as they were, we as inconsiderately and rashly followed them.’”

At four o’clock the explosion of a barrel of powder gave the signal for the assault; the artillery opened a heavy fire, and the British advanced. After a short resistance, the French ran back to the covered way, followed by the Royal Irish, who pursued them into a ravelin, where a captain and sixty men fought gallantly till nearly all were disabled. The survivors rushed towards a small wooden bridge, spanning a wet ditch eight or ten feet deep and a hundred feet in width. The end of this bridge was made of loose planks; and had the French done their duty when they crossed it, they would have tossed these planks into the ditch, and thus made a death-trap, into which the leading British soldiers as they followed them would have been thrust by their comrades in rear. But in their panic the French forgot to take this precaution; the XVIIIth got safely across, and chased the enemy to the foot of the wall of the main fortification. The men were wild with delight at their success, but the senior officers realised that the situation was a desperate one: a few hundred British troops were entangled among the unbreached works of a fort, whose garrison, though undoubtedly surprised, had suffered but little in the attack. To retire was out of the question, but to scale the wall looming high and grim above them appeared impossible, until the fugitives, whom the soldiers were chasing with their bayonets, solved the problem by darting to a part of the wall where much grass grew, and hauling themselves up from tuft to tuft. Where a Frenchman could climb an Irishman could follow, and after a desperate scramble, the red-coats began to mount the ramparts, when the enemy, utterly confounded by the unconventionality of the assault, hastily retired into the body of the fort, threw down their arms, and begged for quarter. Their lives were spared, and the booty given to the troops. This capture cost the British two hundred and ninety-seven killed and wounded.[27] The casualties among the XVIIIth are not recorded.

Two days later the siege came to an end in a very curious way. To celebrate a recent victory in another part of Europe, the Allies paraded all their troops and marched close up to the town to fire a _feu-de-joie_ into it with shotted guns and muskets. The inhabitants had suffered much from the bombardment, especially since the cannon of Fort St Michael had been turned against them, and when they saw the movement, feared that the walls were going to be stormed forthwith; some rushed to the Governor to urge him to surrender, while others flocked to the ramparts with white cloths in their hands, crying “Mercy, Mercy, Quarter, Quarter.” The Governor asked to be allowed to capitulate, and, says Parker, “as we had other sieges to carry on this season, the Prince allowed them honourable terms.”

Nassau next took the fortress of Ruremonde after a nine days’ siege, and then joined Marlborough’s main army near Liege, an open town commanded by a citadel and a smaller fort. When the French garrison heard that the Allies were advancing, they sorrowfully exchanged their comfortable billets in the houses of the burghers for the casemates of the forts; and as soon as the enemy had left the town, the inhabitants sent a deputation to Marlborough to offer him the city keys in token of submission, and to entreat him to preserve Liege as far as possible from the horrors of war. Cutts, with ten British regiments, was ordered to occupy the town, while the rest of the army began operations against the forts. The siege, which lasted eighteen days, ran its ordinary course: batteries were thrown up, trenches were dug, outworks were captured, and when the gunners had made a practicable breach the assault was delivered. Millner, in his quaint language, tells us that though the French fought very well,

“the Allies after one Hour’s very hot and sharp Dispute beat the
Enemy from off the Breach, and entered the Fort amongst them
with Sword in Hand, killing all before them; and had killed all
therein, had not the French instantly thrown down their arms, and
earnestly beg’d for Quarter, which our People soon after granted,
being always prone to give Mercy, when Need most requires....
Much of the Honour of this Action may be attributed to Lord
Cutts’ good Conduct, in sending up speedily an assistance of
Twelve Hundred Men from the ten Battalions in the Town, which
suddenly rushed in on the side of the Citadel next to the City,
in the very greatest heat of the action, before the Enemy was
aware thereof, contrary to their Expectation; the which did very
much surprize and daunt the Enemy, and made them quit the Breach
much sooner than could otherwise have been expected.”

Next day the smaller fort surrendered, and thus, on October 23, 1702, Liege was recovered from the French at a cost of about twelve hundred killed and wounded, of whom nearly half were British. Though none of the regimental historians mention any casualties in the XVIIIth, it by no means follows that there were none among the regiment, for Stearne and Kane, Parker and Millner were all such confirmed fire-eaters that, as a rule, they appeared to consider it beneath their dignity to mention any but very heavy losses. The fall of Liege marked the end of the campaign, and the British contingent marched back to Holland, where the XVIIIth again went into quarters at Huesdon, the town where they had spent the winter of 1701-2.

The year 1703 brought no laurels to the British in Flanders. Dutch incapacity and obstinacy again hampered Marlborough’s movements; he failed to bring the French to battle, and accomplished little beyond the retaking of a few small fortresses. At the sieges of two of these places, Huy and Limberg, the XVIIIth was present. The regiment spent the first part of the winter at Breda, then reinforced the garrison of Bergen-op-Zoom, and afterwards returned to Breda, whence it sent a strong detachment to Maestricht.

But if little of importance happened on the shores of the North Sea during this campaign, great events took place in the south of Germany, where the Elector of Bavaria had deserted the coalition and attached himself to the fortunes of Louis XIV. The Gallo-Bavarians, as the troops of the new alliance were called, captured several fortified towns belonging to the Emperor of Austria, and defeated the Imperialists at the battle of Hochstädt.[28] Encouraged by these successes, Louis evolved a plan of campaign almost Napoleonic in its grandeur. Its main object was the capture of Vienna. One army was to force its way from Italy through the Tyrol to Austria; another was to march from Strasburg on the Upper Rhine into South Germany, reinforce the 45,000 Gallo-Bavarians, and join hands with the troops from Italy; while to harass Austria from the rear a strong detachment was to be sent to Hungary to help the inhabitants in their chronic rebellion against the Emperor. In Flanders de Villeroi was to remain on the defensive, while on the Moselle 10,000 troops stood ready to reinforce either flank.

On his side Marlborough had also conceived a daring scheme. As a soldier, he saw clearly that a mere war of sieges would produce no decisive results; as a politician, he saw equally clearly that the coalition would go to pieces unless Austria was delivered from the Gallo-Bavarian peril,--and he decided that the best way of helping the Emperor was to leave to the Dutch the defence of the Low Countries, and to carry the war into the heart of Germany. As he knew that the Dutch would oppose his project to the uttermost, he took only two or three of his officers into his confidence; he wrung a reluctant consent from the Dutch Government to the withdrawal of troops from Holland by pretending that he was about to attack the French on the Moselle, and for several weeks after he had set his army in motion the troops had no idea to which part of the Continent they were heading.

On May 19, 1704, Marlborough began his celebrated march; his force included 16,000 British troops, among whom were the headquarter companies of the XVIIIth, joined a few days later by the detachment from Maestricht. Disregarding the protests of the Dutch and of the petty princelings whose territories were being threatened by the French, he pushed resolutely forward, and covering from twelve to fifteen miles a-day worked up the right bank of the Rhine from Coblentz.[29] As each of the French generals formed different theories to account for Marlborough’s unexpected movement, they failed to combine against him; on the 3rd of June he crossed the Necker, and then turned south-east towards Donauwörth, a town on the Danube, which he had decided to make his advanced base for the invasion of Bavaria.

On the 1st of July the Allies encamped at Amerdingen, and at three o’clock next morning Marlborough marched upon his objective, fifteen miles off. He rode with the advance-guard--thirty-five squadrons, three regiments of Austrian grenadiers, and six thousand Continental and British infantry, among the latter being a detachment of the XVIIIth, about a hundred and thirty of all ranks.[30] The main body of the army followed two hours later. Pushing on with an escort of cavalry the Duke began his personal reconnaissance about 9 A.M., and found that the town of Donauwörth lay in a valley on the north, or left bank of the Danube, and was commanded by a steep and flat-topped hill. This hill, the Schellenberg, was the key of the position: the Gallo-Bavarians had connected it with the town by field-works, and twenty-five hundred horse and ten thousand foot were encamped upon its summit. During the day Marlborough learned that Louis XIV. had ordered strong columns from Flanders and the Upper Rhine to move upon South Germany; and his keen eyes detected on the farther bank of the river preparations for the immediate reception of a large body of men. He accordingly decided to attack the hill at once, without waiting for the whole of his main body to come up: but owing to vile roads and broken bridges it was not until six o’clock that the troops were formed for battle at the foot of the slope, about five hundred yards in length, which led up to the works on the north-west side of the Schellenberg. The infantry of the advance-guard were drawn up in four lines, with the cavalry behind them in two lines; eight battalions were in support, and an equal number were in reserve. During the day the cavalry had made fascines, with which the enemy’s ditches were to be filled up, and as soon as these great bundles of faggots had been distributed among the infantry the advance began. Under a cross fire of artillery, the columns breasted the hill without stopping to fire a shot until they were within eighty yards of the entrenchments, when a sudden outburst of grape and musketry made havoc among the crowded ranks. For a moment the men recoiled before this hail of missiles; then recovering themselves, they pushed on until their leaders reached a hollow road, which in the excitement of the moment was mistaken for the ditch in front of the works they were to storm. Before the blunder was discovered the fascines had been thrown in, and consequently when the heads of the columns reached the real ditch they had no means of crossing it, and were exposed to such a hurricane of bullets and hand-grenades that when the enemy made a furious counter-attack with the bayonet some of the troops gave way. Three British regiments saved the situation;[31] they stood like rocks; the partially broken corps rallied on them, and then after a hard struggle drove back their gallant foes into their entrenchments.

A French officer who commanded one of the battalions that fought so stoutly on the 1st of July, 1704, has left a lurid picture of the combat.

“The English infantry led this attack with the greatest
intrepidity, right up to our parapet, but they were opposed with
a courage at least equal to their own. Rage, fury and desperation
were manifested by both sides, with the more obstinacy as the
assailants and the assailed were perhaps the bravest soldiers
in the world. The little parapet which separated the two forces
became the scene of the bloodiest struggle that could be
conceived.... It would be impossible to describe in words strong
enough the carnage that took place during the first attack,
which lasted a good hour or more. We were all fighting hand to
hand, hurling them back as they clutched at the parapet; men
were slaying, or tearing at the muzzles of guns and the bayonets
which pierced their entrails; crushing under their feet their
own wounded comrades, and even gouging out their opponents’ eyes
with their nails, when the grip was so close that neither could
make use of their weapons. I verily believe that it would have
been quite impossible to find a more terrible representation of
Hell itself than was shown in the savagery of both sides on this
occasion.”[32]

By dint of drawing men from the parts of the defences unthreatened by the Allies, the Gallo-Bavarians were able to keep the troops on the north-west of the hill at their full strength: and they repulsed the next assault so heavily that it was found necessary to bring a large number of British cavalry into the thick of the fire to support the shaken, though by no means beaten, infantry. Our enemies were beginning to congratulate themselves on their success, when the remainder of Marlborough’s main body came into action against the west of the hill, where the works had been almost denuded of their garrisons; they took these works with little loss, repulsed a charge of cavalry, and then struck the Gallo-Bavarians in flank. About this time the Allies made another attempt to carry the entrenchment, and were once more beaten back. So serious did things look that the Scots Greys were ordered to dismount and attack the works on foot; but maddened at the thought that cavalrymen were called in to do the work which foot soldiers had failed to accomplish, the infantry then made one final, desperate effort, and surged triumphantly over the parapet from which they had been repulsed so often. Now at length the French and the Bavarians, exhausted by their magnificent defence, driven from their works in front and hard pressed in flank, gave way; and their retreat soon degenerated into a rout, as they rushed towards the river with all the allied cavalry thundering after them. The victory was very complete: of the twelve thousand men who had watched the Allies form for the assault not more than three thousand rejoined their regiments; the remainder were killed, wounded, captured, or drowned in the waters of the Danube; and thirteen standards, fifteen guns, and all the stores at Donauwörth fell into the victors’ hands. But the success was dearly won, for though the engagement lasted less than two hours, it cost the Allies more than five thousand officers and men. The British, as usual, lost very heavily; 33 officers, among whom was a major-general, were killed, and 83 wounded; 420 “sergeants and sentinels” were killed, and 1001 wounded; in all 1537, or “probably more than 33 per cent of the number engaged.”[33] To this total the XVIIIth, out of its detachment of 130 officers and men, contributed 51, or nearly 40 per cent of its numbers. Captain M. Leathes, Ensigns J. Pinsent (or Pensant), S. Gilman, and E. Walsh were wounded; 1 sergeant and 11 men were killed; 3 sergeants and 32 men were wounded.[34]

After the loss of Donauwörth the Gallo-Bavarians fell back upon Augsburg, where they encamped under the guns of the fortress. Marlborough was not strong enough to attack them, and had to content himself with blockading the town while he opened communications with the Elector of Bavaria, to whom he offered tempting terms to abandon Louis and place his excellent troops once more at the disposal of the Allies. The Elector spun out the negotiations until he knew definitely that Marshal de Tallard was coming from the Rhine to his help; then he broke them off suddenly, sending word that he would sooner serve as a private soldier under the King of France than as a general in the Emperor of Austria’s army. As Marlborough now learned from Prince Eugene of Savoy, who commanded a detached force on the Danube, that the French were manœuvring to cut off the allied army from its base of supplies, he at once turned northward, and recrossing the Danube joined hands with Eugene near Donauwörth. The situation had become very serious, for though the immediate pressure on the Emperor of Austria was removed, and the French had made no attempt to invade his territories from Italy, it was essential to bring the Gallo-Bavarians to battle and defeat them before further reinforcements had increased their strength, already greater than that of the Allies. It was with much relief, therefore, that on the morning of the 12th of August Marlborough discovered that the French and Bavarians had moved down the left, or northern bank of the Danube, and were then encamped near the village of Hochstädt, a few miles up stream from his own camping-ground.[35] Their right flank was protected by the Danube, here an unfordable river, and by the village of Blenheim, standing two hundred yards from the water’s edge. The left rested on Lutzingen, a hamlet at the foot of a chain of broken and thickly wooded hills, which guaranteed it against a turning movement. Between these villages stretched a plateau, white with long lines of tents; and along the whole of its eastern front ran the shallow valley of a tributary of the Danube--the Nebel, a formidable obstacle, for though the stream in itself was insignificant the bogs and marshes through which it flowed were very difficult to cross, and the side of the valley rose so gently towards the camp that it formed a natural glacis, well suited to the movements of all arms. Between Blenheim and Lutzingen were two other villages--Unterglau, on the eastern or far side of the Nebel, was occupied as an advanced post; Oberglau, on the western or near side, was part of the main line of defence. To hold this very strong position, about four miles in length, de Tallard who commanded the Gallo-Bavarians could dispose of an army from 56,000 to 60,000 strong, and sixty guns.

Though de Tallard had risen to be a Marshal of France, he was by no means a clever man, and by his mistakes at Blenheim he played into Marlborough’s hands. He failed completely to fathom his adversary’s mind: because it was the object of the French to starve the allies out of South Germany rather than to expel them by force of arms, de Tallard did not want to fight a battle, and it did not occur to him that Marlborough, with his inferior force of 52,000 men and 52 guns, might take the offensive. Again, in the disposition of his troops he misinterpreted the military axiom of his period, which warned the chief of an army encamped on ground where it might possibly become engaged, to place his troops in the order in which they would be called upon to fight. In drawing up an army the infantry was usually posted in the centre of the line, with the cavalry on its flanks. To this normal or “sealed-pattern” formation Tallard blindly adhered; but by treating his wings as distinct units and not as part of a great army he produced much confusion; in the centre of the whole line the cavalry of both wings met, but without unity of command: and on each side of this mass of 10,000 horsemen were infantry, with more cavalry on their outer flanks.

As soon as Marlborough had reconnoitred the enemy’s position he returned to camp, and settled the outline of the plan of the battle which he intended to force upon the French and Bavarians next day. As their flanks were unassailable he decided to deliver a frontal attack along their whole line: Eugene, with the right wing, was to assail the Elector and Marshal de Marsin, who had made the villages of Lutzingen and Oberglau their respective headquarters; the Duke was to carry Blenheim, where de Tallard had established himself, and break through the enemy’s centre between that village and Oberglau. The night was spent in marshalling the troops into their places in the nine columns in which they were to move against the enemy, and at two o’clock on the morning of August 13, 1704, Marlborough began to advance. A thick white mist overhung the valley of the Danube, and though it delayed his march, concealed his movements so effectually that it was six o’clock before the French vedettes discovered that the Allies were upon them; and when an hour later the mist lifted, de Tallard to his astonishment saw a great army preparing to deploy on the far side of the Nebel, the cavalry in the centre, the infantry on the flanks. While Eugene was marching to the ground allotted to him, Marlborough’s troops took up their appointed places. Opposite Blenheim, on the extreme left, stood a column under General Cutts, consisting of fourteen British regiments and several German corps: and on Cutts’s right was the remainder of the left wing, drawn up in four lines, the first and fourth of cavalry, the second and third of infantry. The Gallo-Bavarians, as soon as they had recovered from their surprise, snatched up their arms and fell in before their tents; and when de Tallard saw a mass of dull red uniforms at the head of the column threatening Blenheim he realised that hard fighting was to be expected near the village, and crowded into it twenty-six regiments of his best infantry, who were so tightly packed that large numbers of the soldiers did not fire a shot throughout the battle. The French rapidly put Blenheim into a state of defence--the walls were loopholed, the garden fences (or palisades as they were called by the historians of the time) were strengthened; the entrances were barricaded with carts, gates, furniture from the houses; while twelve squadrons of cavalry, sent to hold the two hundred yards of ground between the village and the Danube, entrenched themselves behind a “laager” of waggons. Between Blenheim and Oberglau de Tallard drew up his cavalry in two lines, with a third line in support, composed partly of horsemen, partly of nine battalions of infantry whose steadiness was doubtful. Some French writers say that these shaky troops were Piedmontese, taken prisoners in Italy and forced to join Louis XIV.’s service.[36] In the centre de Marsin occupied Oberglau with a strong detachment; behind the hamlet were posted his infantry and that of the Elector, and in front of Lutzingen stood a strong body of cavalry.

While his troops were marching into their places the French Commander-in-Chief added to his many mistakes that of abandoning to the Allies the natural glacis already mentioned, and thus giving them a foothold on which to re-form after they had crossed the Nebel. Parker shall tell the story in his own words. While the Allies were preparing to deploy,

“the Elector, Tallard and Marsin went to the top of the steeple
of Blenheim, from whence they had a fair view of their army: the
Elector and Marsin were for drawing the Army, as close to the
marshy Ground they had in their Front as possible, and not suffer
a man over but on the Points of their Bayonets; but Tallard (a
haughty proud Frenchman) was on a different Opinion, and said,
that would be no more than making a drawn Battle of it: that the
only way to get a compleat Victory would be to draw up their army
at some small Distance from the Morass, and suffer us to come
over, and the more there came over the more they were sure to
kill. Neither the Elector nor Marsin could persuade him out of
this Notion; they both were very much dissatisfied, and dreading
the consequence, left him, and went to their Posts.”[37]

Marlborough had formed for battle long before Eugene was able to do so, for bad roads, broken ground, and many unexpected difficulties greatly retarded the march of the right wing towards the left of the French line. Until Eugene was prepared to attack, Marlborough could not advance without running the risk of being crushed by vastly superior forces; and for several hours his horse and foot were condemned to inactivity while his guns hotly engaged those of the French, which were brought forward towards the Nebel, and fired at every target within their range. The XVIIIth, as usual, must have been well to the front, for Parker mentions that the first cannon-ball “was aimed at our regiment, but it fell short; the second killed one man, which was the first blood drawn that day.” After the Duke had carefully inspected his batteries, he ordered the chaplains to read prayers at the head of every regiment, and as soon as the Service was over, to satisfy himself that all was well with his troops and to steady them under the enemy’s bombardment, he rode slowly along the whole length of his line, exposing himself with perfect calmness to the projectiles of the French. His extraordinary talents, his charm of manner, his unfailing courtesy, his absolute indifference to danger had already endeared him to the strangely mixed body of soldiery under his command; and when by a miracle he escaped all injury from a cannon-ball which struck the ground between his horse’s legs, a great sigh of relief went up from the hearts of Britons and Danes, Germans and Dutch.

It was not until twelve o’clock, four hours after the artillery duel had begun, that an aide-de-camp galloped up to tell Marlborough that Eugene was ready. Then the signal was given, and Cutts, on the extreme left of the line, moved forward to the attack of Blenheim. Under a sharp artillery fire, two of his brigades--one of British, under Row, the other of Hessians--succeeded in crossing the Nebel near the village, and halted under cover to re-form their ranks; then leaving the Hessians in support behind the bank of the stream, Row’s five regiments advanced to the assault of a position held by the cream of the French infantry. Until our leading ranks were within thirty paces of the enemy not a shot was fired on either side. The British had been ordered to carry Blenheim with the bayonet if possible, and in no case to burn a cartridge until their General could actually touch the palisades. The French waited till their assailants were so close to them that the worst shot could not fail to bring down his man. Then so tremendous a burst of musketry fell upon the head of the column that the French expected to see the red-coats break and flee; but our men rushed forward through the smoke, cheered on by Row, who succeeded in striking a palisade with his sword before he fell mortally wounded. The British gave one volley, and then attempted to storm--some tried to scale the palisades, others to pull them down, while others again lunged fiercely through the loopholes at the French marksmen, who fired so fast and straight that in a few minutes a third of the brigade was killed or wounded, and the remainder were in retreat, hotly pursued by a body of cavalry. Now followed some wild fighting. The Hessians struck in with great gallantry, and recaptured Colours which had been lost in the _mêlée_; five British squadrons floundered over the Nebel to the rescue of the infantry, and beat back the French horsemen; but pursuing with more ardour than judgment, they were decoyed under the fire of the infantry in Blenheim and suffered severely. The French followed up their success by bringing up more batteries to sweep the crossing of the Nebel by which the British had advanced; but Cutts soon drove away this audacious artillery and, returning to the charge, delivered a series of desperate but ineffectual assaults upon the village until Marlborough ordered him to make no further efforts to storm it, but to fire volleys into it so continuously that the French would be pinned to their defences, and therefore unable to reinforce their right centre, which he was himself attacking. Parker gives a quaint account of this phase of the battle. After describing a gallant but fruitless assault, he says--

“The rest of the Foot coming up, they renewed the charge; and
those that had been repulsed, having soon rallied, returned
to the charge, and drove the enemy from the skirts of the
village, into the very heart of it. Here they had thrown up
an intrenchment, within which they were pent up in so narrow
a compass, that they had not room to draw up in any manner of
order, or even to make use of their arms. Thereupon we drew up in
great order about 80 paces from them, from which we made several
vain attempts to break in upon them, in which many brave men were
lost to no purpose; and after all, we were obliged to remain
where we first drew up. The enemy also made several attempts
to come out upon us: but as they were necessarily thrown into
confusion in getting over their trenches, so before they could
form into any order for attacking us, we mowed them down with
our platoons in such numbers, that they were always obliged to
retire with great loss; and it was not possible for them to rush
out upon us in a disorderly manner, without running upon the very
points of our Bayonets.”

While this fierce combat was raging at Blenheim, Marlborough had succeeded, though slowly and with great difficulty, in throwing a considerable number of troops over the Nebel near Oberglau. In the morning the French generals had sneered at the Duke for placing great bodies of infantry between his first and second lines of horse; in the afternoon they discovered that there was method in the Englishman’s madness. Foreseeing that the cavalry would arrive on the far side of the stream with their horses blown and their ranks broken, he sent a large number of battalions to lead the way, with orders to push far enough up the enemy’s side of the valley to leave room for the allied cavalry to re-form behind their fire. The French horsemen charged down upon the disordered squadrons, but even where momentarily successful they were forced ultimately to retire by the musketry of the infantry, and failed to prevent Marlborough’s second line of cavalry from crossing the Nebel. During this stage of the battle, eleven battalions of Hanoverians attempted to capture the village of Oberglau, but were met by a magnificent counter-attack of the Irish Brigade--the men who after the surrender at Limerick had joined the army of the King of France. The Irishmen annihilated two battalions, and smashed through the remainder of the column; but then dashing on too far, were thrown into confusion by a charge of cavalry, and finally driven back with great loss by the fire of three fresh battalions which Marlborough threw against their flank.

On the right, meanwhile, things were not going well for the Allies. The Elector, disregarding de Tallard’s order to keep the troops high up on the slope, had moved his infantry right down to the edge of the broken ground near the Nebel, and thus met Eugene’s men while they were scattered and exhausted by the difficulties of the crossing; thrice did the Prince of Savoy make a formidable attack upon the Bavarians, and thrice was he beaten back. On the left, however, Cutts was fulfilling his mission admirably, for his rolling musketry detained within the entrenchments of Blenheim the enormous mass of infantry, whose presence on other parts of the field might have turned the scale in favour of the French. But the fate of the battle was to be decided in the centre, where Marlborough had now succeeded in placing eight thousand cavalry in two long lines on the lower slope of the natural glacis which de Tallard had abandoned so unaccountably to his enemy. To meet this danger, the French Commander-in-Chief called up the nine battalions which in the morning he had considered unfit to use in the forefront of the battle, and posted them level with the first line of his cavalry. The Duke met this move by bringing to his front a battery and three battalions of Hanoverians, who engaged the French infantry at short range, and so greatly shook them that they were unable to withstand a charge of cavalry which swept them away, leaving a huge gap in de Tallard’s line. That general now had to pay for the vicious dispositions by which the cavalry in his centre had been posted without proper arrangements for combined action. The horsemen of de Marsin’s right wing played, not for the safety of the whole French army, but for that of their own commander, and instead of flinging themselves into the breach and presenting an unbroken front to Marlborough, wheeled backwards in order to protect the flank of the column to which they belonged. De Marsin had his hands too full to be able to spare a man to help de Tallard, and before any of the infantry from Blenheim could come to the rescue the Duke’s eight thousand troopers were charging up the slope; for a moment the French cavalry stood, then seized with a mad panic they wheeled about and galloped furiously for the river, riding down everything they met in their haste to escape from the German horsemen, who sabred hundreds of them and drove hundreds more into the Danube.

De Marsin and the Elector were in no condition to continue the battle after the rout of Tallard’s wing; they retired in fair order, pursued by Eugene’s troops. To turn their retreat into a rout Marlborough called off his Germans from the congenial task of cutting their enemies to pieces, and sent them to fall upon de Marsin’s flank: but it was now late in the evening; the Germans overtook not de Marsin’s column but Eugene’s; in the growing darkness each side thought the other was the enemy and halted to prepare to fight, and by the time that the mistake had been discovered and mutual apologies presented and accepted the Gallo-Bavarians’ right wing had gained so long a start that further pursuit was hopeless. The battalions in Blenheim were less fortunate, for the Allies blocked every egress with cavalry, and called up infantry to storm the village, when the luckless Frenchmen reluctantly agreed to surrender, and twenty-four battalions of infantry and four regiments of dragoons laid down their arms, and filing through a double line of troops were guarded throughout the night by the British regiments.

History records few defeats more crushing than that of the French and Bavarians at Blenheim. On the morning of the 13th of August Tallard commanded about 60,000 troops, of whom not more than 20,000 ever found their way back to the armies of France or of Bavaria. The carnage in the battle itself was very great, and in the flight large numbers of the French were drowned in the Danube or murdered by the peasants, who, with many old scores to settle, showed no mercy to small parties of disbanded soldiers unable to protect themselves. Among the 11,000 prisoners was Marshal de Tallard; and many guns and mortars, 171 standards, 129 pairs of colours, much bullion, hundreds of pack animals, and the whole of the camp equipage fell into the hands of the conquerors. The victory, however, cost the Allies about 12,500 officers and men, or roughly twenty-four per cent of the force with which Marlborough began the battle. The British casualties, according to Millner’s return,[38] amounted to two thousand three hundred and twenty-four of all ranks.

As a bounty was granted to those who took part in the battle the names of the officers present have been preserved. The Colonel, Frederick Hamilton, was in charge of a brigade, and drew £72. The regiment was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel R. Stearne, and the Major was Richard Kane: the former received £51, and the latter £90. To each of the Captains--John Moyle, Peter d’Offranville, Jos. Stroud, F. de la Penotière, N. Hussey, Henry Browne, A. Rolleston, and W. Vaughan (or Vauclin), £30 was paid. The Captain-Lieutenant, Thos. Laughlin, and the Lieutenants--George Hall, James Lilly, Robert Parker, Wm. Leathes, Ben. Smith, Wm. Blakeney, W. Weddall (or Weddell), Saml. Roberts, and John Harvey, drew £14 a head; while £11 was the sum awarded to each of the Ensigns--John Blakeney, Henry Walsh, John Cherry, W. Rolleston, Samuel Smith, R. Tripp, Edward Walsh, and W. Moyle. The Quartermaster, Edm. Arwater, was rated as a lieutenant, and the Adjutant, W. Blakeney, at £2 less; the Surgeon, R. Weldon, received £12; his mate, R. Taylor, was considered only worth £7, 10s.; and as the Chaplain, the Reverend Henry Reynolds, drew £20, or rather more than the combined bounties of both doctors, it would seem that in Marlborough’s army the care of the soul was better paid than that of the body. There were a hundred and sixty-six casualties in the XVIIIth, or about thirty per cent of those present. Among the officers Captains H. Browne and A. Rolleston and Ensign W. Moyle were killed: Captain W. Vaughan (or Vauclin) was mortally wounded: Major R. Kane, Captains F. de la Penotière and N. Hussey, Lieutenants W. Weddall (or Weddell), S. Roberts, J. Harvey, B. Smith, W. Blakeney, and Ensign R. Tripp were wounded. In the other ranks five sergeants were killed and nine wounded; fifty-two private soldiers were killed and eighty-seven wounded.[39]

The morning after the battle Marlborough marched a few miles up the river, and then encamped for four days to rest his weary troops, to set his hospitals in order, and to dispose of his prisoners, of whom Millner speaks as “a luggage that retarded our progress.” During this respite from organised pursuit the French hurried back to the Rhine, whither they were followed by the Allies, who laid siege to the fortress of Landau. The XVIIIth was employed in the covering army, and in the middle of October, a few weeks before the place was taken, all the British infantry were embarked on river boats and floated down the Rhine to Nimeguen, where after a ten days’ voyage they disembarked, so greatly reduced by their losses in the campaign that for administrative purposes the fourteen regiments were treated as seven provisional battalions. The troops marched to their winter quarters to enjoy a well-earned rest and to discipline the recruits who joined them from home. While the XVIIIth was at Ruremonde, where it spent several months, Brigadier Frederick Hamilton retired from the service,[40] and was succeeded as Colonel by Lieutenant-General R. Ingoldsby, from the 23rd regiment of Foot.

The year 1705 afforded the XVIIIth no opportunities of adding to its laurels, for as far as the regiment was concerned the campaign was one of hard marching, great fatigue, and no fighting. Marlborough had planned an invasion of France, and again entrusting to the Dutch the defence of the Low Countries led his British contingent and a large number of their Continental Allies towards the Moselle, whence he hoped to overrun Lorraine and then carry the war into the enemy’s country. He expected to be joined by a strong body of Germans under the Prince of Baden, a general from whose jealousy and stupidity he had suffered acutely in the operations of 1704; but after waiting many weeks for reinforcements which never came, Marlborough determined to return to Flanders, where the enemy had begun to show alarming signs of activity. Though Marshal de Villars, one of the best soldiers of France, was watching his movements closely, Marlborough broke up his camp and slipped away unmolested by the French, who were nearly double his strength. With the elaborate politeness of the time, he wrote to de Villars to apologise for retreating without giving battle. “Do me the justice,” said he, “to believe that my defeat is entirely owing to the failure of the Prince of Baden, but that my esteem for you is still greater than my resentment for his conduct.”[41]

When de Villeroi, who commanded the French in Flanders, heard that Marlborough was coming back from the Moselle, he hastily retired to a series of fortified lines stretching from Namur to Antwerp. These lines the Duke determined to force, and by a series of brilliant manœuvres and rapid marches succeeded in driving de Villeroi from them, with much loss to the French and little to the Allies. But to inflict a decisive blow upon the enemy a great battle was necessary. Marlborough twice placed the French in situations where they would have to fight at a disadvantage, and twice the Dutch generals, in their insane jealousy of the British Commander-in-Chief, forbade the action by refusing to allow their soldiers to engage. The XVIIIth appears to have spent much of the campaign in levelling the captured lines, and when the work was finished, wintered at Worcom, where in January, 1706, Lieutenant-Colonel Stearne received his brevet of Colonel.

The opening of the campaign of 1706 found Marlborough more determined than ever to defeat de Villeroi in a pitched battle; and in order to draw the French general from his fortified lines on the river Dyle, he gave him to understand through a secret agent that, as the Allies realised the Marshal was afraid of them, they were about to besiege Namur, one of the fortresses of which Louis had repossessed himself by his vigorous action in 1701. The bait took. Stung by this insult, de Villeroi quitted the shelter of his fortifications and marched to Tirlemont, apparently heading for Namur. When Marlborough heard the welcome news, he pushed south-west from Maestricht, with an army little inferior in numbers to de Villeroi’s 60,000 troops, and on the 22nd of May encamped at Coswaren, where he learned that de Villeroi was moving upon Judoigne. The Duke decided to attack the French there, and at 1 A.M. on Whitsunday, May 23, 1706, he sent an advance party under his Quartermaster-General, Cadogan, to select a camping-ground near the village of Ramillies, which lies on the eastern edge of the highest table-land in this part of Belgium.[42] Owing to a heavy mist, it was not until eight o’clock that Cadogan discovered that there were hostile troops upon the plateau. Two hours later the sun came out, and revealed to each army the presence of the other, the French moving eastward across the plateau, the Allies advancing from the opposite direction.

The main body of Marlborough’s troops had marched two hours after the Quartermaster-General’s detachment, but the Duke had overtaken Cadogan early in the day, and began to array his eight columns for battle. De Villeroi, who had the advantage of a thorough knowledge of the ground, took up a defensive position, marked on the right by the village of Taviers, in the centre by Ramillies and Offuz, and on the left by a hamlet known as Autre-Eglise or Anderkirche. A few hundred yards to the south of Taviers the river Mehaigne ran from west to east through bogs and marshes; from Taviers northwards to Ramillies, a distance of about a mile and a half, the soil was firm and well suited for cavalry, but along the remainder of the French line, about a mile and a quarter in length, the Little Geete meandered in a shallow valley through morasses which opposite Autre-Eglise were almost impassable. These villages were strongly held by infantry and artillery, twenty battalions and twenty-four guns being allotted to the defence of Ramillies alone. On the extreme left, between Autre-Eglise and Offuz, were infantry supported by cavalry; from Offuz to Ramillies the line was composed of infantry, while a hundred and twenty squadrons, “interlaced” with a few battalions, were massed between that village and Taviers.

Marlborough decided to attack the French right, between Ramillies and the Mehaigne; and as his reconnaissance showed him that de Villeroi had concentrated the greater part of his force upon this part of his line, he determined, by demonstrating against the Marshal’s left, to induce him to send reinforcements to that flank, and thus weaken the remainder of his position. An imposing number of battalions accordingly marched towards the Little Geete, descended into the valley opposite Autre-Eglise and Offuz, and made ostentatious preparations for throwing pontoon bridges over the stream. On the extreme right of the allied infantry were several British regiments, which the French staff easily identified by their uniforms and their Colours; and when the Marshal heard that the soldiers whom he so greatly feared were facing the left of his line, he drew largely from his right and centre to strengthen the threatened spot. The Duke had successfully “bluffed” de Villeroi; it now remained for him to transfer the greater part of the infantry employed in this demonstration to the points where they were really wanted. On the eastern side of the valley of the Little Geete are hillocks, high enough to conceal the ground beyond them from observers on the plateau; and over these hillocks the leading battalions retired gradually; disappeared, and once out of the enemy’s sight, hastened to the centre of the line. The British brought up the rear, but were ordered to halt at the top, turn about and face the enemy: and there throughout the battle several regiments remained, not firing a shot, but by their mere presence immobilising the French left wing, and effectually preventing it from giving the help urgently needed elsewhere.