MARLBOROUGH CATCHES THE

FRENCH SLEEPING AT THE

VILLAGE OF THE BLIND

1704

AS DAWN ROSE ON 13 AUGUST 1704 OVER the village of Blindheim in southern Germany, a French officer was horrified to wake and see the red and white uniforms of an English army advancing towards him in full battle array. Riding hell for leather back into the French camp, he found his troops in their tents fast asleep – they had all thought the English were miles away. The battle that followed at Blindheim (literally, ‘the home of the blind’) would rank as England’s greatest military triumph since Agincourt, and would make the reputation of the general who accomplished it – John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough.

Churchill specialised in dawn surprises. Early on 24 November 1688 he had led four hundred officers and men out of the camp of King James II on Salisbury Plain to join the invading army of William of Orange – it was the key defection in the Dutchman’s bloodless takeover. Rewarded with the earldom of Marlborough, Churchill would build a spectacular military career based on imagination, administrative ability and a willingness to lead from the front.

But Churchill’s bravery was matched by his arrogance, vanity and deviousness – for many years he maintained a secret correspondence with the exiled James II and in 1694 even betrayed the battle plans for a British naval attack on the French port of Brest. Churchill also played domestic politics with the help of his equally ambitious wife Sarah, who used her position as best friend and confidante of Queen Mary’s younger sister Anne to intrigue at court on her husband’s behalf.

Following the death of Mary in 1694 and then William in 1702, Anne became Queen in her own right, and the Churchills, John and Sarah, made full use of the wealth and influence that went with being the power-couple behind the throne. In 1702 Sarah controlled the three main jobs in the new Queen’s household – she was groom of the stole, mistress of the robes and keeper of the privy purse – while John, now Knight of the Garter, was ‘Captain-General of her Majesty’s land forces and Commander-in-Chief of forces to be employed in Holland in conjunction with troops of the allies’.

England was then at war with France, the so-called War of the Spanish Succession that followed the death of the mad and childless Carlos II of Spain. The conflict had been sparked in 1701 when Louis XIV backed his grandson Philip’s claim to the entire Spanish Empire that included large areas of Italy. Not content with that, he had recognised James II’s son, James Francis Edward Stuart (the child believed by Protestants to have been smuggled into the royal birthing bed in a warming pan), as ‘King James III’ of England. To resist the French King’s bid for a ‘universal monarchy’, England, the Netherlands and Austria had banded together in a ‘Grand Alliance’ – and the Earl of Marlborough was given command of the English and Dutch forces.

Marlborough’s problem was that Holland viewed its army primarily as a defence force. The Dutch did not want their soldiers deployed too far from home. So Marlborough did not tell his allies the full story as he headed south towards the River Mosel. Swinging eastwards, he made a series of forced marches, travelling from 3 to 9 a.m. in the morning in order to avoid the summer heat and the French spies. At every halt, masterly planning had fresh horses, food and clothing awaiting his troops – in Heidelberg there was a new pair of boots for every soldier. Meeting up with Prince Eugene, the Austrian commander, Marlborough went to view the enemy encampment at Blindheim from the top of a church tower on 12 August, and the two men agreed to make a surprise attack next day.

The allies were outnumbered by the Franco-Bavarian forces but they had surprise on their side, plus a disciplined aggression which Marlborough’s training had instilled into the formerly despised English soldiery. ‘The rapidity of their movements together with their loud yells, were truly alarming,’ recalled one French officer.

By the end of the day, the Franco-Bavarian army had suffered some 20,000 killed and wounded, compared to 12,000 on the allied side. As dusk fell, Marlborough scribbled a message to his wife on the back of a tavern bill: ‘I have not time to say more but to beg you will give my duty to the Queen and let her know her army has had a glorious victory.’

When the message reached London eight days later the capital went wild. It was a memorable victory, overturning the country’s reputation as an offshore also-ran. A service of thanksgiving was held in the newly built St Paul’s Cathedral, printers turned out copies of the tavern-bill note, and Parliament voted Marlborough a dukedom and a huge sum of money. The Queen gave her friend’s husband land from the old royal estate at Woodstock near Oxford, and on it the new Duke and Duchess of Marlborough would erect a magnificent palace named after the popular English rendering of Blindheim – Blenheim.

In the years that followed, Marlborough won victories at Ramillies (1706), Oudenarde (1708) and Malplaquet (1709). But the last of these cost thirty thousand allied lives – it was ‘a very murdring battel’, as Marlborough himself confessed, and English opinion began to turn against the war. The revelation that the great man had enriched himself from the sale of bread to his armies led to charges of embezzlement, and on New Year’s Eve 1711 he was sacked by his wife’s former best friend, Queen Anne.

Disabled by strokes, John Churchill died in 1722, pitifully broken in body and mind. But his palace at Blenheim remains a splendid memorial to a great general and an historic victory, and was to be the birthplace a century and a half later of another battling Churchill – Winston. Britain’s inspirational leader in the Second World War was a direct descendant of the first Duke of Marlborough.