Chapter Five

But Much is Yet to be Done – The Lines of Brabant, 1705

Emperor Leopold died in the spring of 1705, and he was succeeded by his son, Joseph. The new incumbent was an admirer of the Duke of Marlborough, but the resulting distraction and delay to the Imperial war effort that this event caused was unhelpful. The Duke had found himself incapable of making the most of his victory at Blenheim the previous year; the exhaustion of his army, and the dogged determination of the French in the face of catastrophe had foiled him. Now, once again, the Dutch were overly concerned with the close defence of their frontiers and the security of the territory gained so far, rather than wanting to move out to attack their enemy.

The French had now recovered their strategic poise after the disaster to Tallard’s army on the Danube. Their campaigns in northern Italy and in Spain were prospering, and their regiments were steadily being reinforced with fresh recruits, ardent efforts having been made to refill the depleted ranks. This was achieved with no little difficulty, and the Duc de St Simon wrote of the raising of fresh recruits that:

The losses in Germany and Italy, greater in the hospitals than on the field of battle, made the authorities resolve to increase each company by five men and to raise a levy of twenty-five thousand militiamen. The King was fooled into believing that the people were willing and eager to enlist by being shown a few hand-picked samples, two, four and five men, who he passed on the way to Marley [his chateau]. He was told stories of the men’s cheerfulness and valour. From my personal knowledge of my own estate and from what I heard the people say there, I knew the despair that this levy was causing, even to the point when men were mutilating themselves in order to gain exemption.

Despite such reservations the strength and morale of the French revived, although it suited them to play for time. As the rival armies gathered for the new campaign, and supply trains trundled along from depots to camps, John Deane recalled one skirmish in particular:

The 28th [April] a French party of horse fell upon the lieutenant-general [Henry Lumley]’s baggage and cut off about twenty-three of the wagon horses and carried them clear off, as they thought, and likewise took a shade [a small coach] very richly laden, but our army being upon the march, about a league behind, an express was sent immediately to the Lt. Genl. of what had happened. Whereupon the Lt. Genl. ordered the Scotch Dragoons [Greys] to pursue the French party. The which was done, and after hard riding for two or three hours our dragoons came up with the French party and fell upon them most furiously insomuch that they took and killed almost all of them.

The Duke of Marlborough’s hopes were for a major campaign in the Moselle valley, bypassing the massive fortress belt along the border with the Spanish Netherlands, which had been deferred with the onset of cold weather the previous autumn. In exasperation at the all too familiar attitude of his cautious allies, he wrote to Sidney Godolphin on 2 April:

[The Dutch] Generals’ desire of keeping 50 battalions and 90 squadrons on the Meuse is very unreasonable; for if this should be complied with, I should have on the Moselle but 60 battalions and 79 squadrons to act offensively; and at the same time they do not do so much pretend to act otherwise than on the defence. I am sure I shall never consent to what they desire; but how I shall be able to get the troops out of their country is the difficulty.

The Margrave of Baden and his Imperial army were to join Marlborough, while Prince Eugene, in the meantime, campaigned in northern Italy to tie down French forces there. When the Duke got to the valley in May, marching by easy stages to spare the soldiers, he found that the army contractor in Coblenz had embezzled the stores and defected to the French. Colonel Cranstoune, commanding the Cameronians, wrote of the sorry incident:

The States [General of Holland] had engaged to have a magazine both of meal for bread for the army and hay and oats at Treves sufficient to supply our whole army, when joined for four or five weeks, because it was foreseen that this being a mountainous bare country there could not be forage in the fields so early as to supply us. It is said the States really gave their orders for furnishing the magazines but the commissary employed there in chief to do it has either been in correspondence with France and treacherously neglected it, or else has spent the money and could not do it, so the magazines fall mightily short of what is necessary and the commissary for fear of punishment is deserted to the enemy.

It was not just officers charged with heavy responsibilities, such as the errant commissary, that were involved in mischief. The Duke wrote at this time to the Secretary of State, Robert Harley, in London:

The weather is extremely cold, that I attribute to it, in some measure, the desertion we have among us. The English have their share; and as it is likely those who can get their passes will endeavour to make the best of their way home, I wish some care might be taken, without making too much noise, to seize them in the sea-ports at their landing, and send them over in order to make examples of them, and prevent the like for the future.

On the Moselle, Marlborough had found that the depots were nearly empty, the rains heavy, and the promised contingents of Imperial German troops were slow in arriving at the rendezvous. The Margrave of Baden, suffering still from his wounded foot, sent his apologies (perhaps through necessity; he was very unwell). Despite this, the Duke could not delay while hunger gnawed at his troops, and he wrote to Godolphin on Tuesday, 27 May ‘For want of forage and provisions, I shall be necessitated to march before all these troops can join me so that I have sent orders to the several commanders to hasten their march all that is possible.’ Although short of supplies, the aggressive course Marlborough chose was to close with the French and try and force open battle; a risky strategy but one which promised high rewards.

So Marlborough advanced with his reduced army and confronted Marshal Villars, who had occupied a strong defensive position near to Sierck. The French commander could afford to wait, and presented a solid front to the approaching Allies; his cavalry having swept the region clear of provisions beforehand. Francis Hare was unimpressed by all that he saw on the march:

You never saw so wretched a country. The soil barren, mountainous, fruitful in nothing but iron, and the air strangely cold, as if it had been the midst of winter. The towns have all the marks of poverty that French oppression and government can give; and to make the little accommodation an army could meet with in so wretched a country still less, there was not a soul to be seen in the villages, the peasants flying as we came, either into places of defence or to the woods.

Marlborough, probably wisely, did not attempt what would be a fruitless frontal attack on Villars’ position. Despite his comment that ‘Here is a fine place to meet an enemy’ the French commander took no immediate action, thinking, with good cause, that for Marlborough’s army to starve would do well enough, without the risk of open battle. John Deane remembered that in the Moselle valley ‘Everything was very scarce, and the army gave it the name Hungry Hill.’ Marlborough wrote on 2 June 1705 that ‘We are much more afraid of starving than [of] the enemy, but we have yesterday sent expresses both to Coblenz and Mentz, to hasten with all speed corn and flour for one month.’ By 5 June the Duke had begun to receive the long-expected reinforcements, but urgent news came a week later, that the French commander in the Spanish Netherlands, Marshal Villeroi, had stirred himself and stormed the Allied held town of Huy on 10 June, and moved on to occupy the town and threaten the citadel of Liège. Veldt-Marshal Overkirk was badly outnumbered, took alarm, and called to Marlborough for assistance.

The French assault on Huy had, in fact, been a hotly contested affair. Jean-Martin De La Colonie took part with his Grenadiers Rouge, and wrote that: I had just time to join in the assault on an outwork belonging to the fortress of Huy, called the Red Fort, and commanded the grenadiers told off to carry it by storm. This assault was of a different character to which usually obtained in such cases, because it was necessary to employ escalading [scaling ladders], and I lost many men who were thrown from the tops of the ladders. A poor lad was shot while climbing the very ladder on which I was myself, and the ball entered the top of his breast and passed through the entrails. One could not believe his recovery possible, but the care taken of him, and the strength of his constitution pulled him through, so that his cure was regarded as a species of miracle. He was rewarded by promotion. The outwork carried, the town capitulated the next day, June 10th.

With such developments on the Meuse, the Duke had little alternative but to abandon his Moselle campaign and hurry northwards. Marlborough wrote to the Duchess on 16 June:

This moment is come Lieutenant-General Hompesch, from Marshal de Overkirk, to let me know that if I do not immediately help them they are undone, which only serves to show the great apprehension they are in; for it is impossible for me to send troops to them sooner than I have already resolved, but since they have so much fear at their army, I dread the consequences of it at the Hague.

The same day he wrote to Godolphin:

The deputies of the States in the army on the Meuse have sent an express to me to desire that 30 battalions of theirs may be immediately sent to them. This joined with the want of forage, and no hopes of having the horses and carts in less than six weeks for the drawing everything to the siege [Sierck], we have taken the resolution of leaving a sufficient number of troops at Treves, and marching with the rest to assist them on the Meuse.

In an uncharacteristically bitter tone, he added in his next letter to his friend the comment: ‘Nothing has been performed that was promised’.

The operation to break contact with the French was fraught with difficulty; Marshal Villars, a most dangerous opponent, could be counted on to harass any withdrawal by the Allied troops. The move was conducted in very good order, though ‘by marching all night’ as Robert Parker remembered, and Donald McBane, who was there with Orkney’s Regiment, wrote ‘The French at this time took Houie [Huy], the Duke then ordered all the grenadiers in the Army, and so many men of a company that could march well, we marched night and day until we came to the Dutch.’

On 29 June, Marlborough wrote to his wife from Maastricht: ‘I am extremely uneasy at the disappointments I have met with, for it is most certain the Moselle is the place where we might have done the French most hurt. I wish with all my heart that Prince Eugene were in Prince Louis’s employment [Baden’s post].’ Two days’ later, he added ‘I march tomorrow, and hope the cannon will go from hence the next day. When we have Huy, the Lord knows what we shall do next, for I am afraid the French will avoid all occasions of letting us be on the same side of the Lines with them.’

By 2 July 1705 Marlborough had rejoined Overkirk at Hanette, and Huy was recovered a week or so later. De La Colonie described the rapid moves taken by the Duke to recover the place:

Milord Marlborough struck his camp on the night of July 8th, marched his army in several columns, so that no one was able to divine his intentions, and appeared at break of day in front of the force under the lieutenant general posted on our left flank. Our patrols by this time had returned to camp, which was wrapped in slumber; consequently when he arrived in sight of our lines he could see that we were making no movement or attempt to defend them. He then ordered his infantry to advance, who immediately rushed two of the gates and broke down a length of parapet to allow his cavalry to enter before the lieutenantgeneral’s detachment had the chance of opposing them, or even warn the army to come to its help. So sudden was this action that the enemy were able to form up in our own lines before our people had left their camp, although immediately the news was brought to Monsieur de Villeroi he had the alarm beaten and marched to oppose them; but it was too late, the enemy had secured the position, and it would have been extremely rash to have attacked them as the flanking detachment, which was of considerable strength in itself, was in full retreat. We then occupied the camp at Lierre, a small town near Antwerp, and remained there while the enemy occupied Huy. Then, anxious for the town of Louvain, we marched to take up a position covering it.

Despite this skilful recovery of Huy on 11 July, with very little loss to his army, Marlborough’s Moselle campaign that year, with his hopes of a strategic thrust into the heart of France, was lost beyond hope of recovery. Count D’Aubach had been left in command of a detachment to cover Treves, but he took alarm at a renewed French advance, and abandoned the stores gathered there, on 27 June. Any fresh Allied operation in the Moselle valley would require a great deal of new and time-consuming preparations. The opportunity would never come again.

Meanwhile, Villeroi was not dissatisfied. He had drawn the allies away from the Moselle, and could now shelter behind the extensive Lines of Brabant, constructed the previous year, stretching in a seventy-mile arc from Antwerp past Louvain to Namur. He could also draw reinforcements from Villars in the Moselle valley. Unless Marlborough could entice the French commander out from the defences, or breach the lines himself, he faced a dismal prospect during the rest of the year’s campaign.

Marlborough now devised a subtle plan to snare his opponent. This project swung into progress when, on 17 July, Overkirk was marched with the Dutch corps, as if to threaten the French-held fortress of Namur. Allied pioneers laboured to bridge the Mehaigne river, and the French scouts could plainly see these operations, convincing Villeroi of the Allied threat in the south. The Marshal took the bait, and began to march his troops towards Merdorp and Namur. Meanwhile, Marlborough was hurrying his British, Danish and German troops through the night, heavy with mist and light rain, heading northwards across the old Landen battlefield to the Lines in the area of Elixheim. Here the water obstacles were less formidable than elsewhere, because of the local topography. By dawn on 18 July the grenadiers and pioneers of the Allied army were scrambling over the virtually deserted defences, while the French picquets in the area took themselves off to raise the alarm. Robert Parker remembered that: ‘The pioneers fell to work in levelling the lines; so that in short time the Duke with the horse, and the detachment [of foot] were within them.’ Marlborough’s corps was soon under threat however. Donald McBane wrote: ‘We marched in six lines making no noise, and attacked the Brabant Line, and took it about break of day, with little or no loss; when we were over on their side they attacked us.’

McBane’s dry comments disguise the fact that it was a powerful French and Bavarian corps under Count Caraman and the Marquis d’Alègre, which threw itself at Marlborough’s advanced guard with tremendous vigour as they crossed the obstacle belt. Kit Davies, still serving in Hay’s dragoons, recalled that: ‘Our horse and dragoons having openings to enter the lines, his grace led us on, and formed us to make head against the enemy; their corps nearest to the places of attack were in motion at the first alarm.’ A brawling battle spread out along the narrow sunken lanes in the area. Marlborough’s army actually outnumbered that of Caraman and d’Alègre, but Orkney wrote that the Allied troops had assembled in such haste that they were: ‘A good deal mixed and not in their proper place.’ The constricted lanes hampered a proper cavalry deployment; Marlborough was embroiled in the hacking close-quarter contest, and narrowly avoided being sabred by a Bavarian trooper. The man lost his balance and fell to the ground, and so the Duke’s life was narrowly spared.

Not far away, the exiled Irishman, Peter Drake, had tired of service with his regiment in Lorraine (particularly as the rates of pay were less than he had expected) and absconded. He was, that very same July day, making his leisurely way with a forged pass in his pocket to try and enlist with an Irish regiment [de Courière’s] in French service, who were quartered near to Louvain. The grenadier company of the unit was commanded by a namesake of his. Drake heard the sound of the battle at the Lines of Brabant, rolling across the fields in the early morning:

I heard a report among the country people that the Brabant lines were surprised and entered by the Duke of Marlborough, which I thought incredible, and went on. In less than half an hour after I heard a smart firing, and soon perceived some troops, whether friends or foes I could not distinguish, but plainly saw they were in quick motion; and drawing nearer. I discovered a horse in a field of corn bridled and saddled, whose rider I suppose had been killed. The creature did not stir, and I mounted him. By the furniture he must have been an officer’s. Some of these troops rode towards me, and I turning to make the best of my way to Louvain, several shots were discharged without effect on me, but the horse was destroyed.

Walking onwards in some haste, the adventurous Irishman at last came to the French camp and, after brandishing his passport, asked for an old acquaintance. ‘I took to inquire for de Courière’s regiment, and Captain Sheehy; and having found him, he received me with open arms, and took me to Baron Drake’s tent, introducing me to that gentleman.’ After a number of discreet enquiries into Drake’s background and military service so far in the war, the Baron enlisted him, once again, into the French army.

While Drake was arranging his affairs in this way, a few miles away Marlborough’s troops had repulsed the attempt to drive them back over the Lines. The French and Bavarian cavalry was dispersed, and d’Alègre was captured. Count Caraman led the Bavarian infantry in a highly disciplined withdrawal to the shelter of the Mehaigne river. Robert Parker wrote admiringly of this skilful rearward manoeuvre:

I must not omit taking notice of the gallant behaviour and good discipline of ten Bavarian battalions, who finding themselves abandoned by their horse, kept together, and observing that as we had marched all night, our foot was not able to come up with them, they formed themselves into a hollow square. In this form they marched, and notwithstanding that our right wing of horse and dragoons had surrounded them on all sides, yet they dared not venture within reach of their fire; for having divided their grenadiers into two bodies, which kept moving backward and forward to support the parts that were most in danger, the square kept marching on, driving the squadrons before them, out of their way, and so retreated safe to Louvain. This shows what the foot are capable of doing against the horse.

Marlborough did not pursue closely, a decision that attracted some criticism, but he had no way of knowing quite how close Marshal Villeroi was with his main army. The Duke wanted to combine his forces with those of Overkirk before moving forward. The Dutch corps was approaching, but was not yet on the field. Colonel Cranstoune wrote of the difficulty faced by Marlborough as the Bavarian infantry withdrew:

There was rising ground before him [Caraman], to which he was retreating and the Duke really neither did nor indeed could at that time know how near the Elector and Marshal Villeroi were with their whole army and M. d’Overkirk’s army were but marching up at distance and were not yet entered into the lines.

So, the Duke let the Bavarians go, and in the circumstances was right to do so. General Slangenberg, who galloped ahead of the toiling Dutch columns, was full of ardour however, and urged him to press on: ‘This is nothing if we lie still here.’ However, when Overkirk arrived, he was tired and ill-tempered after a long night-march, demanding that his troops be allowed to rest. The operation came to an end, although Marlborough’s cavalry did press forward to seize the town of Tirlemont and take prisoner the French Régiment de Montluc before nightfall (Parker says two entire regiments, and McBane four). However, Overkirk paid full tribute to the Duke in his own despatch to the States-General regarding the action:

I must do justice to the Duke of Marlborough, to give him all the honour of this enterprise, which he has carried on and supported, with a great deal of conduct and valour. We march again tomorrow. We made prisoners of war a regiment in Tirlemont.

Warm praise for a fair victory, and George Hamilton, 1st Earl Orkney, wrote afterwards of the Duke: ‘See what a happy man he is, I believe this pleases him as much as Hogstet (Höchstädt/Blenheim).’ Marlborough’s comment, when congratulated on the success by one of his officers, was typical, ‘All is well, but much is yet to be done.’ The Duke wrote to Sidney Godolphin: ‘I intend to march tomorrow towards Louvain, by which march I shall see what Monsieur de Villeroi will do.’ The French commander was too quick, however, and fell back behind the shelter of the River Dyle before the Duke could intercept him. Villeroi was, however, forced to abandon in his withdrawal some rather curious pieces of artillery, which John Deane described as:

Having three bores so that touching the match to one touch hole they fired out at each piece three balls at once. These murdering cannon were made the last year at the city of Brussels for the security of the line [Lines of Brabant], but by the providence of God we secured them so that they did our army but little mischief. At this time came many deserters from the enemy who declared that the enemy reckoned themselves twenty thousand men weaker than they were before we attacked them, for besides what was killed and taken, abundance run away from them to their own countries.

The Duke, with this neat operation, and with fairly modest loss, had burst through the vaunted Lines of Brabant, taken many prisoners, including their wounded commander, ten guns (some reports say eighteen), colours, standards and kettle-drums. He promptly put his soldiers to work at beginning to level the defences, so that never again could the French manoeuvre behind them and defy him with impunity. The chance was also taken by Marlborough to scout the surrounding countryside, making himself familiar with the very ground over which one of his greatest victories would be achieved before another twelve months had passed. Marshal Villeroi, his opponent on that occasion, had already done the same, both commanders appreciating the tactical importance and possibilities of the terrain. The Duke wrote to his wife after the battle:

I have this morning forced the enemy’s lines and beaten a good part of their army, taken their cannon, two lieutenant-generals, and two major-generals, and a great many of their officers, besides standards and colours, all of which I shall have a perfect account tomorrow. It is impossible to say too much good of the troops that were with me, for never men fought better. Having marched all night, and taken a good deal of pains this day, my blood is so hot that I can hardly hold my pen. The kindness of the troops has transported me, for I had none in this last action, but such as were with me last year … The troops with me make me very kind expressions even in the heat of the action, which I own to you give me great pleasure, and makes me resolve to endure everything for their sakes.

In London, the news of the victory was received with acclaim, and the Queen declared a Day of Thanksgiving, to be celebrated in August.

Despite such heartening success, Marlborough was unable to force a major battle on Villeroi during the remainder of 1705, the French commander clinging to the defence offered by the river lines. On those rare occasions when battle seemed imminent, the Dutch, as in previous years, intervened with cautious objections. The resulting delays allowed the French to escape from a tricky predicament on the Dyle river, where Marlborough had marched to outflank their position near Louvain. A strong detachment of English and Dutch infantry was put across the river on pontoon bridges at Neerysche, but a reluctance in the Dutch generals to engage enabled Villeroi to close up to the crossing place before the Allied advanced guard could be reinforced. Marlborough wrote to Godolphin on 29 July 1705:

It was unanimously resolved we should pass the Dyle, but that afternoon there fell so much rain as rendered it impracticable; but the fair weather this morning made me determine to attempt it. Upon this the deputies held a council with all the generals of Overkirk’s army, who have unanimously retracted their opinions, and declared the passage of the river too dangerous, which resolution, in my opinion, will ruin the whole campaign. They have, at the same time, proposed to me to attack the French on their left; but I know they will let that fall also, as soon as they see the ground. It is very mortifying to meet more obstruction from friends than from enemies; but that is now the case with me; yet I dare not show my resentment for fear of alarming the Dutch.

Chaplain Samuel Noyes, who took part in the operation with Orkney’s Regiment, wrote of the sorry incident a week or so later:

Our detachment came to the river, and under the cover of our cannon, which did great execution, laid six bridges. Colonel Godfrey with the grenadiers of the four English battalions passed over, as did also twelve of the Dutch battalions and beat all before them, cleared all the hedges and enclosed meadows and two villages, notwithstanding which Count Oxenstiern, who commanded all the detachments ordered the remainder of them to halt, and those who now passed to return, and the Duke commanded the copper boats [pontoon bridges] to be taken up again; the reason of which is variously reported. Some say the States refused to expose their army any further; others that the ground was so morassy [boggy] that our horse could never have got over; it is allowed they were morassy where the Dutch had made their four bridges, but very good hard ground where the English made their two. However, by this refusal of the Dutch General officers the whole thing fell to the ground.

Francis Hare’s wry comment on the disappointment was ‘Dyle, they say, in Scotch is Devil, as this paltry river has proved to be.’ Henry St John had written from London a day or two later to Thomas Erle, saying that a letter he had recently received had:

Found me rejoicing with my friends at the great and almost incredible success which my Lord Duke had in the affair of the lines, and I write this while I am cursing the stupidity, pique and cowardice of the Dutch officers and Deputies who labour all they can to make the advantage we have gained of no consequence. I hope Lord Marlborough will be able to cheat them into an engagement and when they are at the ball they must dance.

It was in vain. In mid-August, having loaded his wagons with bread, and cast loose from the formal supply lines for a week, Marlborough all but trapped the French on the Yssche river, just to the south of Brussels, as Deane put it ‘On the road towards Brussels and near Waterloo.’ Villeroi, who was still covering Louvain, was in great consternation, as the Duke’s rapid march put his army in a position to attack Namur, Charleroi, Brussels, and even Mons if he stretched out that far. Uncertain for a time quite where Marlborough’s blow would fall, the Marshal wrote to Versailles:

It is necessary to make up one’s mind to march to Brussels in order to save it, at the price of abandoning Louvain, it not being possible to defend them both. Supposing the enemy were to avail himself of the opportunity which we gave him by quitting our post in order to save Brussels, and made himself master of Louvain and after that the whole of Brabant, it still seemed to us that the loss of Brussels was yet more important.

Soon afterwards, Marlborough’s rapid approach through Genappes towards the forest of Soignies was detected. Knowing that the position he held was bad, and fearing a catastrophe, the Marquis de Grimaldi, commanding the French forces on that flank, prepared to get his cannon and baggage away. Villeroi wrote to the Elector of Bavaria on 17 August: ‘I believe that for centuries there has not been a more thorny hour.’

Instead of moving into the attack on 18 August, however, the Dutch insisted on holding a council of war. To makes matters worse still, General Slangenberg demanded precedence on the line of march for his personal coach and wagons, ahead of the slow-moving, but immeasurably more important, artillery train. Captain Parker wrote of this infamous conduct:

We were now drawing near the enemy, and his Grace had sent orders that the English train of artillery should make all possible haste up to him; but as they were just upon entering a narrow defile, Slangenberg came up to the head of them, and stopped them for some hours, until his baggage had passed on before them, a thing never known before.

Almost inevitably, the council of war decided after lengthy discussion that the enterprise was too risky. Even normally reliable Dutch officers such as Daniel Dopff were against an attack, apparently affronted that the Duke had not divulged his plans to them at an earlier point (not that they knew how to be discreet even when they were told these things). Marlborough appealed to the Dutch generals and deputies in impassioned tones:

I have reconnoitred the ground and made dispositions for an attack. I am convinced that conscientiously, and as men of honour, we cannot now retire without an action. Should we neglect this opportunity, we must be responsible before God and man. You see the confusion which pervades the ranks of the enemy, and their embarrassment at our manoeuvres. I leave you to judge whether we should attack to-day, or wait till to-morrow. It is indeed late, but you must consider that, by throwing up entrenchments during the night, the enemy will render their position far more difficult to force.

So it proved: they talked through the afternoon and evening. In the morning, Villeroi had closed his main force up to Grimaldi, and when the Allied generals viewed the French position, it had plainly been well fortified in the night. An attack could no longer be made except at long odds against an easy success. Marlborough wrote to Duchess Sarah that same day: ‘All the Dutch generals, except for M. Overkirk, were against it, so that the deputies would not consent to our engaging. We are now returning, for we cannot stay longer than the bread we have brought with us will give us leave.’

Justly indignant, Marlborough had to march his army off, reduced to overseeing the continued levelling of ten miles of the captured Lines of Brabant and looking to attack some minor fortresses. Louis XIV, almost fatally for his war effort, drew the wrong conclusions from all this, accepting Villeroi’s report that Marlborough had been outwitted on the Yssche: ‘The great noise that accompanied the Duke of Marlborough’s march has all been ended in a shameful retreat.’ So, the King learned to place less value in Marlborough’s abilities – ‘This mortified adventurer’ as Chamillart smugly described him – and this was very dangerous.

For Marlborough, however, things could not go on in this way; writing to the States-General in the Hague, he said that he would no longer serve under such intolerable restrictions: ‘I find my authority here to be much less than when I had the honour to command your troops, last year, in Germany.’ The field deputies, concerned at the Duke’s plain and furious impatience with them, also wrote to the Hague, attempting to excuse themselves:

We own that that my Lord Duke of Marlborough was of the opinion, as well as M. de Overkirk, that the attack was practicable, and might be attended with success. But we could not resolve to consent to a thing of so great importance contrary to the opinions of all the generals of that army, to which Your High Mightinesses have done us the honour to deputise us.

The States-General, in alarm that the Duke might resign his whole command, recalled Slangenberg and the more awkward of the field deputies, and promised full co-operation in future; Marlborough was to be allowed a much freer hand in the conduct of the operations. Henry St John commented on this in another letter sent to Thomas Erle at this time:

My Lord Duke has writ very plainly to the States [General] on this head by Monsieur Hompesch, and the letters from The Hague inform us the effect is that they have dispensed with his summoning councils of war and only expect he should advise with Monsieur d’Overkirk and the Deputies. He had ordered bread for twelve days and is now in action. God send us good news.

However, writing to Robert Harley on 10 September, Marlborough told him that ‘We have for these three days past employed upwards of three thousand soldiers to assist in demolishing the Lines.’ The Dutch had frustrated his attempts at anything greater for the time being. A few weeks later, as the work drew to a close, the Duke moved against the French held towns of Leau and Sandvliet, and he wrote again to Harley, on 20 October:

Tomorrow we intend to continue our march to Brecht and if the artillery and other preparations be ready to come up from Bergen Op Zoom, we shall make another motion the next day; in order to attack Sand Vliet, the taking of which place will be of good use to the States, for securing the navigation of the Scheldt up to Lillo, covering their frontiers, and will be a good curb to the garrison of Antwerp this winter.

The weather was worsening, Marlborough having written in late September ‘The ill season being come in, our troops begin to suffer very much.’ The condition of the horses, particularly those that laboured to drag along the artillery, concerned him: ‘We are losing great numbers every day by sickness.’ Despite this, both towns fell to the Allies without long resistance: ‘Our men never leaving off cannonading and bombarding them’ John Deane remembered, and the campaign began to draw to a close towards the end of October.

The Duke soon had to leave the army to go to Vienna for discussions with the new Emperor. But, before he went, there were many administrative matters claiming his attention. He wrote on 24 October to the Margrave of Baden with a recommendation for an Imperial cavalry officer, who had been on detached service with the army in the Low Countries:

Captain Panfi, who commanded a detachment of hussars in our army in the [recent] campaign, being sent to return with his men to rejoin their regiment, I do him the justice to assure your Excellency that we are very content with his conduct; he has comported himself with much bravery and zeal for the service, of a kind that causes me to recommend him as someone deserving of your favour.

Once in Vienna, Marlborough was presented with the Imperial dignity of the Prince of Mindleheim in recognition of his triumph the previous year on the banks of the Danube. Kit Davies, with evident relish, said that ‘This news was brought to us before we left Tirlemont [for winter quarters], we were regaled with liquor, and made great rejoicings.’ In the opposing army, Peter Drake was also now marching towards winter quarters also, where de Courière’s Régiment settled in rather well. He remembered:

Ghent fell to our lot [to find quarters], and thither we marched … there I had an elegant apartment, and a good table, and was shortly after furnished with a regimental suit like those worn by the officers. Being thus equipped and having the rank of cadet, I frequented the public places … and thus passed the winter agreeably.

Kit Davies went on to recall that the cold months passed quietly enough, and time was available for the campaign-weary regiments to recuperate and replenish their ranks:

Our recruits, and horses to remount those who had lost them, arrived in Holland the 3rd of April 1706, and the Duke of Marlborough, with a number of volunteers, landed there on the 25th. The enemy, in the interim, lost no time; they had wrought hard all the winter upon their entrenchments behind the Dyle and on the fortifying Louvain, where they had brought together such prodigious quantities of flour, hay, oats and all sorts of ammunition.

How much use the French were able to make of these admirably complete preparations for a defensive campaign in Brabant during the coming year will be seen. Marshal Villeroi could continue to manoeuvre in comparative safety behind the Dyle river, and Marlborough would be hard pressed to get at him. However, strategic considerations were coming into play. Louis XIV was anxious to impress his opponents with the vitality of the French war effort, and his army commander in the Low Countries would soon march out to give battle in the open.