Battle of Blenheim

“ The year 1704 opened, therefore, with this double situation: to the south Austria had been saved for the moment, but was open to immediate attack in the campaign to come; meanwhile, the French had proved so solidly seated in the Spanish Netherlands (or Belgium) that repeated attacks on them in this quarter would in all probability prove barren.
It was under these circumstances that [Pg 29] Eugene of Savoy came to the great decision which marked the year of Blenheim. ”

“ They lay in heaps of dead or wounded, cut down with the sword, for the most part unbroken in formation, their feet eastward whence the charge had come, and their faces to the sky. Over and beyond those corpses rode the full weight of Marlborough’s cavalry, right through Tallard’s left, which was the centre of the French line, while Tallard vainly called for troops to come out of Blenheim and check the fury, and as vainly sent for reinforcements to come from Marcin on the left, which should try and dam the flood that was now pouring through the bulwark of his ranks. ”

“ Blenheim, in the issue, turned out to be a cavalry battle—a battle won by cavalry, and its effect clinched by cavalry. The poor rôle played by the guns and the inability of the French to make use of their numerical superiority in this arm was a characteristic of the time, which had not yet learnt to use the cannon as a mobile weapon.
A general action is best understood if the reader is first told the main event, and later observes how the details of its progress fit in with that chief character of it. ”

“ The succeeding campaign was splendid in glorious achievements. He led his [120] army from the ocean to the Danube; forced the heights of Schellenberg on the 2nd July, 1704, and compelled the enemy to take shelter behind the lines of Augsburg. New armies and new generals appeared, and their overthrow, at the decisive battle of Blenheim on the 13th of August, added new lustre to the reputation of the British commander: there the heaps of slain gave dreadful proofs of British valour, and whole legions of prisoners of their mercy. ”

“ It was in the nature of the move that a high hazard was involved in it. The general had calculated, as a general always must, the psychology of his opponent. If he were wrong in his calculation, the advance on the Danube could but lead to disaster. It was for him to judge whether the French were so nervous about the centre of their position upon the Rhine as to make them cling to it to the last moment, and tend to believe that it was either along the Moselle or (when he had left that behind) in Alsace that he intended to attack. ”

“ In such cases covers are only suitable for skirmishers and troops on the defensive.
It is generally quite important to defend villages on the front of a position, or to endeavor to take them when held by an enemy who is assailed; but their importance should not be overestimated; for we must never forget the noted battle of Blenheim, where Marlborough and Eugene, seeing the mass of the French infantry shut up in the villages, broke through the center and captured twenty-four battalions which were sacrificed in defending these posts. ”

“ Of the fifty odd thousand men and ninety guns that had marshalled twelve hours before along the bank of the Nebel, 12,000 men had fallen, 11,000 had surrendered, and one-third of the pieces were in the hands of the enemy.
The political consequences of this great day were more considerable by far than was even its character of a military success. It was the first great defeat which marked the turn of the tide against Louis XIV. It was the first great victory which stamped upon the conscience of Europe the genius of [Pg 144] Marlborough. ”

“ If they trotted it was as men trot in their boots, for they were on foot. The incident sufficiently proves the ravages which disease accompanying an insufficiently provided march had worked in Tallard’s cavalry.
[12] Nearly all the English authorities and many of the French authorities speak of the whole twenty-seven battalions out of Tallard’s thirty-six as being in Blenheim from the beginning of the action, and Mr Fortescue adds the picturesque, but erroneous, touch that “Marlborough” (before the action) “had probably counted every one of the twenty-seven battalions into it” (Blenheim) . ”

“ The battle was in fact won, no help could be sent to Tallard by the Elector, a decisive charge of cavalry drove the enemy's horse off the field, and the army fled in two bodies, one towards the river, the other towards Hochstädt. Both were hotly pursued, and of those who fled towards the river thousands perished in the stream. Blenheim still held out, but, cut off from all succour, surrounded by the whole English army, and threatened by the approaching artillery, the gallant garrison was compelled to capitulate, [887] and 11,000 men laid down their arms. ”

“ English from the palisades, the French volley crashed out. One man in three of the advancing line fell agonised or dead.
The British regiments, still obedient to Row’s instructions, reserved their fire until their leader touched the woodwork with his sword. Then they volleyed, and having fired, wrestled with the palisades as though to drag them down by sheer force. Perhaps some few parties here and there pressed in through a gap, but as the English soldiers struggled thus, gripped and checked by the obstacle, the French fire poured in again was deadly ”

“ Blindheim, or, as we always call it, Blenheim, lay, as we have seen, just above the bank of the Danube at the mouth of this stream. Following up the water (which is so insignificant that in most places a man can cross it unaided in summer) , at the distance of about one mile, is the village of Unterglauheim, lying above the left bank, as Blenheim does above the right. Further on, another three-quarters of a mile up the right bank, is the village of Oberglauheim ”

“ It is characteristic of his generalship that he risked an assault with this advance body of his without waiting for the main part of the army under the Duke of Baden to come up. With sixteen battalions only, of whom a third were British, he attempted to carry works behind which a force equal to his own in strength was posted. The risk was high, for he could hardly hope to carry the works with such a force, and all depended upon the main body coming up in time. ”

“ When we have seized the fact that Marlborough’s great march was but a general strategic movement of which the action at Blenheim was the happy but accidental close, we must next remark that the advance to the Danube was the more meritorious, and gives the higher lustre to Marlborough’s fame as a general, from the fact that it was an attempt involving a great military hazard, and that yet that attempt had to be made in the face of political difficulties of peculiar severity. ”

“ Marlborough’s cavalry managed to form, struggling beyond the brook, and the last final phase of the action was at hand—for Marlborough’s cavalry would reiterate that general lesson which the whole battle teaches, to wit, that the horse of the allies was not only far stronger numerically, but far better trained than the French cavalry before them, and, with equal chances, must destroy it. Tallard, by missing his moment, had permitted those equal chances to be restored. ”

“ The floor on which the Danube runs is still a mass of undergrowth and weeds and grass, which marks off the cultivated land on the south, as it has been limited since men first ploughed.
I have said that the little slow and muddy streamlet called the Nebel must particularly meet with our attention, because it formed at the beginning of the action of Blenheim a central line dividing the two hosts, and round its course may be grouped the features of the terrain upon which the battle was contested. ”

“ Crossing this plain transversely, on their way to the Danube, ooze and trickle rather than run certain insignificant streams; each rises in the wooded hills to the north, falls southward, and in the length of a very few miles reaches the main river. These streams are found, as one goes up the great valley, at every mile or so. With one, the Nebel, we shall be particularly concerned, for during the action at Blenheim it formed the only slight obstacle separating the two armies. ”

“ His arrival, if he came without loss, disease, or mishap, promised a complete superiority over the English and their allies, unless, indeed, by some accident or stroke of genius, reinforcement should reach them also before the day of the battle.
This reinforcement, in the event, Marlborough did receive. He owed it, as we shall see, to the high talents of Prince Eugene; and it is upon the successful march of this general, his junction with Marlborough, and the consequent success of Blenheim, that the rest of the campaign turns. ”

“ It is the characteristic of great captains that they live by and appreciate the heavy risk of war.
When they suffer defeat, history—which soldiers and those who love soldiers so rarely write—contemns the hardiness of their dispositions. When victory, that capricious gift, is granted them, history is but too prone to fall into an opposite error, and to see in their hardihood all of the calculating genius and none of the determined gambler. ”

“ Similarly, the reputation justly earned by Marlborough when he brought his troops from the Rhine to the Danube must be kept distinct from his tactical successes in the field at the conclusion of the effort. He was to run a grave risk at Donauwörth, he was to blunder badly in attacking the village of Blenheim, he was to be in grave peril even in the last phase of the battle, when Eugene just saved the centre with his cavalry. ”

“ The French order of battle is no longer to be found in the archives, though we can reconstruct it fairly enough, and in parts quite accurately, from the separate accounts of the action given by Tallard, by Marcin himself, by Eugene, and from English sources. The line of battle of the allies we possess in detail ”

“ He conceived the plan of marching a great force from the Netherlands right down to the field of the Upper Danube. There could be checked the proposed march upon the heart of the coalition, which was Vienna. There, if fortune served the allies, they would by victory make all further chance of marching a Franco-Bavarian force down the Danube impossible; meanwhile, and at any rate, the new step would alarm all French effort towards the Upper Rhine, weaken the French organisation upon its northern frontier, and so permit of a return of the allies to an attack there at a later time. ”

“ It was a strange situation for a general to take up, who is master of a vast plain; and it became, as will be seen, a very sad one. At his extreme right was the large village of Blenheim, in which, by a blindness without example, he had placed twenty-six battalions of infantry, six regiments of dragoons, and a brigade of cavalry. It was an entire army merely for the purpose of holding this village, and supporting his right, and of course he had all these troops the less to aid him in the battle which took place. ”

“ In this capacity to appreciate exactly the ratio of his strength and resources to those of the enemy, he strongly resembles his great successor Wellington. Like him he never lost a battle, unlike him he never failed in a campaign. The same characteristics are observable in the battle-field. He had an extraordinarily quick eye for the weak point in an enemy’s position, and saw at once how best to utilise the opportunities which the ground afforded for attaining his object. At Blenheim and at Ramillies, it was his skilful use of difficult ground that mainly contributed to the victory. ”

“ Each is distant a mile or two from its next fellow. Thus, nearest Donauwörth we have Münster, upon which the left of the allied army reposed when it lay in camp before the battle. Next in order come Tapfheim and Schwenningen, through which that army marched to the field. Further up-stream another group stretches beyond the Nebel, the hamlet of Sonderheim, the little town of Hochstadt, the village of Steinheim, etc. ”

“ If it were possible for Marlborough to persuade Baden to go off on some little expedition of his own, withdrawing but a few soldiers, Marlborough would be well content, and Marlborough is by far the more formidable of the two men. But though the opportunity for such a riddance of divided command is open, for Prince Louis of Baden is anxious to besiege Ingolstadt, Marlborough dares not weaken the combined forces, even by a few battalions, now that Tallard has effected his junction with the Elector and with Marcin, and that a formidable force is opposed to him. ”

“ In order to be able to form his cavalry beyond the Nebel, Marlborough wanted to have a clear right flank, and with that object he had launched from 6000 to 7000 Hanoverians against Oberglauheim. The excellent infantry of Blainville, less in numbers, emerged from the village, threw the Hanoverians into gross disorder, and captured their commander. At this point there was beginning to be a rout. This new French success, properly followed up, would again have had a chance to break the allied centre at its [Pg 138] weakest point, just at the link where Marlborough joined on to Eugene. ”

“ As in the case of Marlborough’s march to the Danube, Eugene was led by a just instinct to gamble on the chance of the French army in Alsace not noting his move, and of the few troops he left opposite them upon the Rhine sufficing to screen his movements and to give the effect of much larger numbers. ”