During the early hours of 23 May – Whitsunday – 1706, a large body of men rode out of the Allied camp around the village of Corswarem. Commanded by Marlborough’s Quartermaster General, William Cadogan, and comprising the regimental quartermasters escorted by 600 men of the ‘day guard’, their task was routine – to scout ahead of the army and reconnoitre a suitable campsite for the end of the day’s march, one which would take the Duke’s forces to within striking distance of the Franco-Spanish forces under Villeroi, who were known to be holding a position on the line of the Dyle around the town of Jodoignes.
Although Cadogan’s scout was in theory an easy one – westwards by road towards Jandrenouille and the plateau to which the village gave its name and then following the line of the Petite Gheete towards Ramillies, and thence west onto the plateau of Mont St André – the practicalities of the route were far from easy, the torrential rain of the preceding days having turned the terrain into a quagmire which forced the column to remain on the roads, and then, as the sun rose, a heavy fog began to settle, obscuring visibility in all directions.
Onwards the small column pressed until about 8.00am when they reached the hamlet of Merdorp on the plateau of Jandrenouille. After a short pause to allow the tail end of the formation to catch up, the troopers set off again towards the south-west and as they ascended to the higher ground, it was a case of the utmost good luck that they were to make out the shadowy outline of horsemen to their front, men who could belong only to the enemy army. A brief but ineffective exchange of fire saw the shadows disperse, but to Cadogan the situation was clear – Villeroi had not remained on the Dyle and was evidently a lot closer to the Allied Army than anyone had anticipated.
The starting point – the view southwards from the Plateau of Jandrenouille following Marlborough’s line of advance, before the army began its deployment for battle around Foulx. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
The valley of the Mehaigne, as seen from Taviers churchyard. At the time of the battle much of this ground would have been waterlogged and heavy going for both armies. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Reining in, and deciding that little would be served if he were to blunder into overwhelming numbers of the enemy, Cadogan immediately sent an aide galloping back to Marlborough’s headquarters to inform the Duke of this latest intelligence and then took station in anticipation that the fog would rise; with the improved visibility he would be able to provide his commanding officer with a more accurate appraisal of the situation.
The courier found Marlborough with the leading elements of the army which had halted in order that the rearward columns could close up with the main body, and, as soon as he had digested the intelligence report, he gave orders that the closest cavalry formations should be rushed forward to Cadogan’s position. Then, flanked by a number of senior officers and his headquarters staff, the Duke put spurs to horse to join the Quartermaster General and see the situation for himself.
Marlborough’s party joined Cadogan’s force a little before 10.00am, and after a hurried conference the Irishman began to outline to his commander the enemy positions on the Mont St André on the opposite side of the valley of the Petite Gheete. Unsure of the enemy’s numbers or intentions, Marlborough now decided to force the issue by sending a strong cavalry force forward to sweep them from the eminence. It was now that the fog finally began to clear and, as it did so, the Allied commander was granted the view of not just a detachment of Villeroi’s force but also of the whole Army of the Two Crowns, deploying for battle on the terrain that he himself had intended to occupy that evening.
It is unclear how much of a shock the enemy presence was to Marlborough, but any such surprise was soon subordinated by the activities of a professional soldier engaged in his métier. Couriers were soon beating their way back along the line of march to hurry the troops forward and a messenger was also dispatched to the Duke of Württemberg-Neustadt, in command of the Danish contingent, who still had to effect a junction with the main body of the army, requesting him to make the best possible time. In any event, it had been Marlborough’s intention to force a battle wherever the enemy should be found and, with the initial preparations to consolidate the army now under way, he began to outline his intentions to his principal subordinates. Many of these officers had implicit trust in their commander and listened attentively as he outlined his plans, but inevitably there was a voice of dissent, that of Sicco van Goslinga, one of the Dutch ‘field deputies’ attached to the army as a political liaison between the Dutch Government and the army. As far as the Dutchman could see, ‘The enemy’s left could not be attacked with a prospect of success; for the hedges, ditches and marshes were a complete barrier to both sides; that therefore the whole of our cavalry should be massed on our left, even if they had to be three or four lines deep there.’
In a similar vein, Goslinga continued to opine that the Allied Army was now dangerously exposed, with its commander at the tip of the spearhead and the main body strung out on a series of roads of dubious quality and that all it would take would be an aggressive move from Villeroi towards the plateau of Jandrenouille to scatter the marching columns and defeat the Allies in detail. Marlborough listened politely as such pessimistic advice was delivered and then promptly chose to ignore it; after all if – as Goslinga had eloquently stated – the terrain was disadvantageous to both armies, then Villeroi would himself surely be courting disaster if he were now to come off the ridgeline and attempt to force a passage eastwards. In effect, by adopting the position that he had, the French commander had committed himself to a defensive engagement; the only question which remained was whether it would be based on the position that he now held, or one intended to cover a retreat to the Dyle.
Although modern drainage has altered its profile, this close-up of the Fagneton stream gives a good impression of the obstacle it posed to the infantry under Orkney’s command. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Across the valley of the Gheete, Villeroi was also reaching a decision about the impending engagement. Having received the reports from the picquets that had encountered Cadogan on the plateau of Jandrenouille, he could not fail to realize that the opening stages of the battle that he had so openly sought were unfolding before his very eyes and yet his co-commander Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria, was absent from the army, having spent the previous evening attending a Pentecost celebration in Brussels. Deciding to fight a defensive battle, Villeroi chose to anchor his left flank upon the hamlets of Offus and Autre-Église on the Plateau de Mont St André in the north and his centre upon the village of Ramillies in the valley of the Petite Gheete, with his right flank resting on the rising ground between Ramillies and the river Mehaigne to the south. Having made his dispositions and as the troops moved forward into position, a courier was sent to Brussels to hasten the Elector to the battlefield.
Despite later critiques, the position was relatively strong, and easily given over to defence – the settlements were studded with solidly built farmhouses, typical of the region, such as the Haute Cense and Basse Cense around Ramillies, which could easily be fortified as redoubts, as would be their near neighbours Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte almost a century later. In the north, the approaches to Autre-Église were shielded by no less than four waterways – the Communes, Fagneton, Frambais and the Petite Gheete, each of which, whilst normally only a stream a yard or two across, combined with the recent heavy rainfall to provide the hamlet with a watery shield, which attacking troops would find difficult indeed, if not impossible, to pentrate. To its front, Offus was similarly protected by the Petite Gheete, whilst its northern and southern approaches were screened by the Fagneton and the Offus brook respectively. At Ramillies itself, the Petite Gheete swung behind the village and forked, close to the hedged fields, and, whilst this would hamper an immediate reinforcement in the event of the village needing to be urgently reinforced, it would also serve to bolster the defences should the garrison be surrounded, similar to Clérambault’s force at Blindheim two years previously.
This 19th-century plan of the battle of Ramillies clearly shows how misconceptions regarding the armies’ deployments have become part of the literary canon. Here both Taviers and Franquenée are shown as being to the south-west of the village of Ramillies rather than to the south-east as they actually are. (Author’s collection)
To the south of Ramillies and in seeming contradiction to most published maps, the terrain – whilst less undulating – rises sharply before descending slightly into the valley of the Mehaigne and its tributaries. It is an area, which, far from being the ‘perfect cavalry terrain’ as described by a number of modern authors, nonetheless remains the only area of the battlefield bereft of water features, and it was inevitable that this would be where each commander would deploy the majority of his mounted troops.
The extreme left flank was commanded by Christian II von Wittelsbach, Graf von Birkenfeld-Zweibrücken, and consisted of a mixed Franco-Spanish brigade of four battalions, which occupied Autre-Église supported by the four-battalion Régiment du Roi, the colonel of which was King Louis XIV himself. To Birkenfeld’s right and extending the line through to Offus, stood two brigades of foot under the command of the Marquis d’Antin (six battalions of Swiss under Pfeiffer and three Spanish under Antonio Ceva di Grimaldi) with four brigades of mounted troops (three of horse and one of dragoons) totalling 29 squadrons, in support, these last being eminently placed to sweep into the flank of any enemy attack on either hamlet.
Offus, the junction between the left flank and the centre, was held by two French brigades, those of Isenghien and La Marck, with the three-battalion French regiment of Castellas to their rear in direct support; to their right and continuing the line southwards towards Ramillies stood the nine battalions of the combined Gardes Françaises and Gardes Suisses under the Marquis de Montpesat. Two small – predominantly Spanish – brigades, those of St Pierre and Lede were posted to the rear of Montpesat’s formation in support.
This close-up of the fortified gateway of the Cense de la Tour in Offus shows exactly what a tough proposition these buildings would pose to attackers, exactly as Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte would pose to the French at Waterloo, a century later. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
The key to the French line was inevitably based upon Ramillies, a village of fewer than 200 inhabitants, the defence of which was placed under the overall command of Pierre, Comte d’Artagnan. To the north of the village stood the units of the Bourbon ‘right centre’ which consisted of the four battalions of the French ‘Alsace’ regiment, under Steckenberg vice its colonel, Birkenfeld, who commanded at Autre-Église, the formation being supported by the small brigades of the Marcello Ceva di Grimaldi and Francisco de Nassau, each comprising two battalions of French and Spanish troops respectively. Adjacent to ‘Alsace’ stood two brigades under the command of Charles O’Brien, Viscount Clare. The first brigade, consisting of Clare’s own regiment and that of ‘Picardie’ – the senior ‘line’ formation of the French infantry – was under the direct command of the Comte Seluc, and extended the army’s front into the northern part of Ramillies. To Seluc’s rear stood Clare’s second brigade consisting of three French battalions under Albergotti. The southern part of the village was commanded by the Marchese di Maffei, an Italian officer in Bavarian service, who commanded the Leibregimente zu Fuß of the Bavarian Elector and his brother, the exiled Archbishop of Cologne.
In support of his infantry, d’Artagnan deployed three groups of cavalry disposing a total of 29 squadrons. In the front line were the brigades of Beringhen and Costa commanding Franco-Spanish and Bavarian-Cologne horse regiments respectively, whilst the formation’s third line was formed from Cologne’s Chassonville dragoons paired with the French Bretagne regiment.
Contemporary print showing Marlborough and his headquarters staff as the battle rages around them. Ramillies church can be clearly made out in the centre of the image, with Offus on a high ridge to the right, looming over Autre-Église. The cavalry mêlée continues to the left of the image. (Courtesy and copyright of la Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
View looking northwards from the Tomb of Ottomond across the deployment area of the Bourbon right flank. The steeple of Ramillies church can be seen towards the centre-left of the image. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Given the relatively open terrain – and in anticipation that his opponent would do the same – Villeroi deployed the bulk of his cavalry to cover the army’s ‘open’ right flank, entrusting the command of this vital sector to Lt. Gen. the Marquis de Guiscard.
Suitably enough, the position of honour at the head of the Bourbon left flank was given over to the proud horsemen of the Maison du Roi, the French king’s household troops, who were flanked by the regiments of ‘Tarente’ and ‘Courcillion’. Directly behind, the Prince de Chimay led a further two brigades of horse – one French and one Spanish – bringing the first line up to a total strength of 36 squadrons.
Supporting Guiscard, the second line of cavalry was commanded by the Comte de Gassion directly commanding five regiments of Franco-Spanish horse, attached to which were the Verseilles Hussars, a colourful unit originally formed in 1692 but whose members had – until recently – been distributed amongst several regiments of horse until it was decided that their scouting capabilities would be of significant use in the field. To the rear of Gassion’s command stood a further three brigades of Franco-Spanish horse led by the Comte de Roussy, comprising a further six regiments. All told, a further 28 squadrons formed up under Gassion’s command.
The definition of the third and final line of mounted troops on the Bourbon right flank is one that causes significant confusion in many narratives of the battle. Consisting of three regiments of French, three of Spanish and one of Cologne dragoons, conventional doctrine stated that these troops would not be deployed against enemy cavalry but rather to hold terrain features and generally support the front-line troops. As such, their commander the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot was obliged to deploy two of his regiments to hold the forward position around the farm of Franquenée, whilst the remaining units – some 14 squadrons – were held as an ultimate flank reserve, for deployment as circumstances dictated.
La Ferme de la Château, between Taviers and Franquenée, one of the potential ‘choke points’ that Marlborough feared would hinder the advance of his left wing, hence his decision to send Werdmüller to sweep the Mehaigne Valley clear of enemy troops. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
With the final approach of his marching columns, and their gradual movement into line of battle, Marlborough decided to secure his left flank by detaching a brigade of troops to clear any enemy forces from the settlements in the Mehaigne Valley and thus facilitate the eventual deployment of his left-wing cavalry. As a signal honour to his Dutch allies, he gave the task to Hans Felix Werdmüller, colonel of the Albemarle regiment of foot. An experienced officer, the Swiss had begun his career as an officer in a French cavalry regiment in 1676, transferring into the Gardes Suisses three years later. In 1688 he was obliged to quit French service when the cantonal government of Zurich enacted a law which prevented its citizens from serving Louis XIV. Five years later he entered Dutch service as a major in a Swiss subsidy regiment, eventually being promoted to Colonel-Commandant of the Albemarle regiment, later serving at the sieges of Bonn and Trarbach and the battles of Blenheim and the Schellenberg.
To accomplish the task, Werdmüller was given three regiments of foot: the two-battalion ‘Oranje Friesland’ and the single-battalion ‘Salisch’ and ‘Slangenberg’ regiments, to which were added two light guns for direct support. Marching south from Jandrenouille to the Mehaigne, Werdmüller first secured Branchon and then Boneffe, dominated by the remains of its 13th-century abbey. However, as the column continued farther along the valley, the advance was brought to an abrupt halt by an eruption of musketry from the walls and hedges that lined the farmhouse at Franquenée, occupied by dragoons of the ‘Pignatelli’ and ‘Rohan-Chabot’ regiments who had been placed there to give advance warning of any Allied attempt to force the Mehaigne. Deploying off the road, the Dutch infantry began to advance towards the enemy position, pausing on the word of command to fire rippling volleys in the direction of the concealed enemy. The firefight was short and one sided as the Bourbons were greatly outnumbered with nothing that could answer Werdmüller’s artillery detachment, and as riders were dispatched to the Comte de Guiscard, commanding the right-flank cavalry, the Bourbon troops withdrew towards Taviers. This was the next settlement on the enemy’s line of march and one that – according to Villeroi’s plan of battle – should already be held in sufficient numbers to blunt the Allies’ advance.
Taviers, standing above the confluence of the Mehaigne and the Vissoule stream, was the key to the Bourbon right flank. Situated on the northern slopes of the river valley, it consisted of a dozen or so buildings congregated around the parish church. With this higher area surrounded by hedged fields, in contrast to the river valley that was a sodden morass, it was a natural bottleneck that could choke Marlborough’s flanking manoeuvre before it could even develop. But as the dragoons withdrew from their advanced position and instead of the three veteran battalions that Villeroi had earmarked for the defence of the village – the other two battalions remained in position behind Ramillies – they found but one company, not more than 200 men, of the third battalion of the Swiss ‘Greder’ regiment. The remaining companies, under the command of Brigadier La Motte, were engaged some distance to the west in an attempt to destroy the stone bridge across the Vissoule and prevent the enemy from turning the army’s extreme right flank. In his own later account La Motte stated his intention to pull his whole command across the waterway and thereby ‘place the stream of Tavier, an impassable approach for cavalry, between them and us’. Given that La Motte had, by this early stage of the battle, yet to see an Allied cavalryman, it is clear that his account is more of an attempt to divert royal displeasure rather than an exact account of what had happened. Nonetheless, and reinforced by the dragoon outpost from Franquenée, even with a single battalion, he could easily have brought Taviers into a reasonable state of defence and made the Allies fight for every yard, but the bulk of his troops were too far away from the village and Werdmüller’s Dutchmen were soon engaged with the paltry garrison blocking their path.
View looking directly eastwards from the Tomb of Ottomond towards Taviers and the Allied approach routes. The Bourbon right flank would have been deployed to the left of the image. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Once the outer defences had been given up, the succession of walls and hedges soon negated the advantages that Werdmüller derived from his light guns, but the fighting for Taviers was not about tactical finesse, but about using a hammer to crack a walnut. The Swiss held their ground, but not for long, and as the threat of encirclement became a reality, they pulled back from the buildings, hastened by enemy fire, withdrawing to their parent battalion.
In the interim, with the couriers having reached his command position, Guiscard immediately ordered his third line of troops under the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot to advance as quickly as possible towards Taviers and reinforce the defence of the village or, in the event that it had already fallen, to support a local counter-attack. With five regiments of dragoons, de Rohan spurred forward, even as his commander was taking further action and committed the two brigades of infantry that had been deployed to support the cavalry and act as a rallying point into the attack. Two battalions of French foot – ‘Provence’ and ‘Bassigny’ – and three of German troops, the Cologne ‘Wolfskehl’ battalion and the Bavarian ‘Kurprinz’ regiment were now soon under way to the crucial sector. A number of commentators have criticized Guiscard and – by extension – Villeroi, for what to modern eyes was a rather haphazard and uncoordinated attempt to stabilize the situation around Taviers. However, the simple fact is that in an era in which battlefield cartography was almost non-existent, to reach a destination that was initially out of sight, the troops would need to move by road; unfortunately, given their initial relative positions, the three formations would be travelling along different routes. In addition, the situation in which La Motte found himself, was unclear indeed.
Looking north towards the site of the cavalry mêlée. The downward slope that gave the French an initial advantage is clearly discernible. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
With the Taviers garrison falling back onto his position, La Motte gave up his attempt to destroy the bridge and withdrew westwards onto some rising ground that would give him an advantage against the enemy who, by now, had come through the village and were now re-forming into battle lines to his front.
Advancing to within musket range, Werdmüller gave his men the order to halt and present arms, and then as the company officers began to take over, the sound of discharging muskets began to ripple along the front of his leading battalions, punctuated by the report of the light guns. Atop the hill, the Swiss replied as best they could, but outnumbered and suffering under the relentless, continual discharge of the Dutch platoon fire as casualties mounted, they visibly began to give ground. For almost a quarter of an hour they took this punishment, returning the enemy fire as best they could. Then a runner reached La Motte’s position – de Rohan had reached the morass and, having dismounted his troops on the far side, was now hurrying them to his aid, pushing them forward without any consideration of formation or precedence, the sole priority being to shore up the line.
Many dragoons now fell as they rushed into the gauntlet of enemy fire – the Seigneur d’Aubigné was killed at the head of his regiment, whilst both Weißenstein, commander of the Cologne Leibdragoner, and Rohan-Chabot himself had to be dragged to the rear after having been hit by enemy fire. Slowly the Swiss and their reinforcement conceded more ground, but then to the north, the battalions of ‘Provence’ and ‘Bassigny’ under the Marquis de Nonant began to arrive – fortuitously enough – behind Werdmüller’s right flank, in a position from which they could take the Dutch troops in enfilade. For some minutes it looked as if the tide had at least been halted and the line stabilized, but the French ranks were filled with many for whom this was a baptism of fire and when Werdmüller calmly realigned his flanking battalion to meet the new threat, the newcomers were subject to no less effective a fire as had met ‘Greder’ at the beginning of the engagement.
The only option was to close with the enemy and, as Nonant attempted to find a way across the morass, he was captured by a party of Dutch troops. Seeing their commander literally hors de combat, his brigade withdrew onto the higher ground north of the Vissoule and the opening act of the battle moved inexorably towards its climax with the arrival at the confluence of the German brigade under Wolfskehl. Halting his brigade at the edge of the flooded terrain, the colonel rode forward alone in an attempt to find a route across the waterlogged ground but, as with Nonant, he became bogged down in the marsh and was rescued, but only by the men who would also take him prisoner.
Pair of flintlock cavalry pistols made in Vienna by the master gunsmith Simon Penzneter. Weapons of such quality were generally privately purchased and were highly prized owing to their reliability in close combat. (Copyright and courtesy of the Royal Armouries, Leeds)
Command now devolved upon a French officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean de la Colonie, who was serving as commander of a body of expatriate Frenchmen attached to the ‘Kürprinz’ regiment. Moving westwards, de la Colonie soon found a route across but disaster struck as he stopped to re-form his troops on the near bank when ‘Greder’ finally broke in the face of the enemy fire and, dragging the dragoons with it, of fled straight through the newly arrived reinforcements: ‘we crossed fairly easily on foot, though in some parts we were over knee-deep in water. Scarcely had my troops gotten over when the dragoons and the Swiss who had preceded us came tumbling down upon my troops in full flight, just at the time as I was re-forming my men after the crossing and a number of my men turned and fled with them.’
‘CLEARING THE WAY’, WEST OF TAVIERS, c.1300HRS (PP. 50–51)
Having easily swept aside the Bourbon outposts in Franquenée and Taviers, Werdmüller’s ad hoc brigade has continued its advance to the confluence of the Mehaigne and the Vissoule (1) only to find its way barred by the remaining companies of the 3rd Battalion of the Greder (Suisse) regiment (2) which have deployed on some rising ground shielded by both waterways.
Here, Werdmüller (3) is marshalling his forces, the Oranje-Friesland regiment (4) engaging the enemy troops to their front whilst the battalions of Salisch and Slangenberg (5) repulse a turning movement by which two French infantry regiments – Provence and Bassigny (6) – after attempting to enfilade the Dutch line were caught in an unequal firefight and thrown back in disarray, disordering further units that were being rushed forward to bolster the Bourbon right flank. Behind the rising ground shelter the remnants of Rohan-Chabot’s dragoon brigade (7) which, having been rushed forward in dismounted order so as to better negotiate the marshy terrain, lost a number of senior officers almost immediately upon coming into action.
By attacking without support and in isolation, the Bourbon commanders were unable to bring their superior numbers to bear and, as such, Werdmüller was able to defeat them in detail and thus facilitate the massing of the Allied cavalry against the Bourbon right flank without any fear of interference from the Mehaigne valley whose occupants were now reduced to the role of spectators as the focus of the combat switched to the north, and the village of Ramillies itself.
Having passed the Petite Gheete, and then the Fagneton without cavalry support, Orkney’s troops would have to face the French troops waiting on the high ground above them. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
The situation was critical as, unbeknownst to Villeroi or even Guiscard, the Bourbon extreme right was teetering on the edge of total collapse, this final reinforcement shattered by the flight of those they had come to support. Standing with a group of bewildered officers, de la Colonie drew his sword and, lashing out at the runaways with the flat of the blade, grabbed hold of the regimental colours and screaming at his men to halt and re-form:
I cried out in French and German as if possessed, shouting every epithet I could think of to my grenadiers; I seized the colonel’s colour, planted it by me, and by the loudness of my cries I at last attracted the attention of some few of them. The officers who had stood by me rushed after the fugitives, also shouting and pointing to the colonel’s colour that I still kept in my hands, and at last they checked the stampede.
Slowly de la Colonie was able to bring order out of the chaos and he cobbled together four small units – in his account of the battle he refers to them as ‘battalions’ and this is undoubtedly a description of function rather than size – which, taking advantage of the undulating terrain, he pulled back into the protection of some dead ground from where he could observe and, depending on circumstance, interdict the Allied flank attack. Eventually la Motte was also able to rally some survivors and bring them into line behind the German troops, but the damage had been done: Taviers and the road were firmly in enemy hands and, casualties notwithstanding, with the majority of their picketed horses scattered during the flight, Rohan-Chabot’s dragoon brigade had ceased to exist as a fighting formation, whilst the remnants of the infantry brigades assigned to support and cover the right-wing cavalry were now reduced to the role of spectators. The door was now open for Marlborough to launch his left wing into the attack.
Like the ‘sown men’ of Thebes, at the shouted order of command, rank upon rank of red-coated infantry rose from the folds of the ground surrounding the hamlet of Foulx. The men had lain there for some hours, resting from the morning’s march and sheltering from the impact of cannon balls, which crossed the skies above their heads. It was approaching 2.30pm and their commanding general, George Hamilton, Earl of Orkney, now gave the order for the leading battalions to form up and begin the assault which would secure the villages of Offus and Autre-Église, smashing the enemy’s left flank and threatening his line of retreat.
This close-up of one of the tracks leading northwards into Autre-Église clearly shows how the waterlogged fields would have hindered the Allied advance. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
A veteran soldier in every sense of the word, Orkney had used the previous hours to send forward parties of pioneers whose task was to ease the crossing of the Petite Gheete, the first of the watery obstacles his battalions would have to face. With the Communes, Fagneton and Frambais too close to the enemy lines, he knew that the more men he could successfully get across this first hurdle, then the greater would be his chance of successfully achieving his objectives, and in his mind he knew that the French had no troops on the battlefield that could stop his brigades from planting their flags in either of the two villages. Called together by their officers and shoved into position by their NCOs, the scarlet ranks slowly formed – the 1st Battalion, the Foot Guards, whose colonel was the Captain-General, Marlborough himself, the 1st battalion of Orkney’s own regiment, then that of the Earl of Stair, more commonly known as the ‘Cameronians’ and finally those of Godfrey and de Lalo, of Sabine and Webb. And so with their bright colours snapping in the wind, and to the staccato beat of the drum, a line of almost 5,000 men began their march into Villeroi’s killing ground.
Across the valley, the French marshal, seeing the enemy advance, nodded knowingly to his staff. The perceived wisdom from Versailles had been that the target of Marlborough’s main attack would be where he deployed his own countrymen and the sight of the English battalions moving to threaten the twin villages reaffirmed Villeroi’s own belief in the rectitude of his deployment – after all, both settlements were occupied in force and with sufficient supports that could be speedily redeployed in order to deal with any tactical necessity. Slowed down by the marshy terrain, the much-vaunted redcoats would firstly be galled by the musketry of the detachments thrown out to harry their advance and then, disordered and demoralized, they would be shot down before the fortified villages, before being crushed by the Bourbon cavalry coming in from their flank in a scripted victory that would once and for all show that the reputation of Marlborough’s infantry was false and inflated.
To Orkney’s left stood firstly a brigade of six British battalions under the Irishman George Macartney (‘Churchill’, ‘Mordaunt’, ‘Evans’, ‘Macartney’, ‘Stringer’ and ‘Howe’), itself flanked by a Danish brigade under Philipp von Donop (‘Garde til Fods’, ‘Prinz Karl’, ‘Sjaelland’ and ‘Oldenburg’) and as the troops moved forward, the terrain meant that they began to gravitate northwards, imperceptibly opening a gap between themselves and the brigades that were earmarked to assault the enemy centre, the hinge between the formations being covered by Churchill’s and Mordaunt’s battalions positioned on Macartney’s extreme right.
This profile image of the terrain north of the Fagneton clearly disproves the impression given in many works that the Bourbon deployment was on relatively flat terrain. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Naturally, modern drainage has had an effect upon the three waterways that the French battalions contested in the face of the Allied advance, but a brief description of one of them as it appears in modern times will serve to give an indication of the obstacles faced by the British troops. The Fagneton is about five feet across, with a depth of about three feet to the waterline which is itself a foot or so in depth, with a muddy bed of several inches. On either side of the stream, the ground slopes down to the bank for a distance of around 50 feet, ground which in May 1706 would have been waterlogged by the previous days’ heavy rainfall, the dirt tracks becoming ever more treacherous with the passage of the troops – Orkney himself stated that his brigades took a considerable amount of time to negotiate the obstacles and form up for the attack. In short, it would have been a difficult proposition for an encumbered man to make his way with ease, let alone several thousand attempting to keep formation in the face of a determined enemy defence.
View from Offus looking northeast towards Autre-Église – the position was occupied by a number of Bourbon cavalry brigades who remained largely inactive throughout the battle, their presence dictated by Orkney’s movements when they may have been of better use in support of the centre and right flank. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
As the three brigades moved off, their place on the heights above Foulx was taken by six battalions (‘Ingoldsby’, 2nd Bn ‘Orkney’, ‘Farrington’, ‘Meredith’, ‘Tatton’ and ‘Lord North & Grey’) under Lt. Gen. Richard Ingoldsby, who held his troops ready to reinforce a successful attack or – in the worst of eventualities – cover a retreat.
Harassed by enemy fire they sprang into the stream bed, using the pioneers’ fascines, the dead, the dying and the wounded as stepping stones to continue the advance, with the Bourbon sharpshooters gradually giving way before them as they continued upslope to the next series of obstacles, officers and NCOs pushing them ever forward. Soon both lines of troops became intermingled, the sole objective being to close with the enemy and throw him out of the villages ahead.
Believing that Marlborough was unaware of the tactical situation around Autre-Église, Orkney ignored a series of ADCs sent with instructions for him to withdraw and adopt an offensive posture that would convince Villeroi that the main Allied attack would still fall on his left flank. In exasperation, the Duke finally sent his Quartermaster General, William Cadogan, to ensure that his orders were complied with. At first, Cadogan too, was disbelieved, but eventually Orkney was persuaded to pull his regiments back to their start positions. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Although his unit would not see action until later in the battle, Thomas Kitcher, a member of Meredith’s regiment, gives a vivid account of the fighting around Autre-Église. In a memoir that he dictated in later life, he recalled seeing a body being thrown into the stream by pioneers for use as a ‘stepping stone’, which, having been revived by the cold water after swooning from injuries, sat up and proceeded to let fly a torrent of invective at the hapless soldiers.
Having negotiated the first obstacle under enemy musketry and long-range artillery fire, the Allied troops began to realign their formations for the first phase of Orkney’s attack – to seize Autre-Église and then take up a position athwart the Offus–Autre-Église road which would force Villeroi to divert more resources to cover both his open left flank and – just as importantly – his line of retreat towards Louvain.
The attack got into difficulty almost before it started, with the brigades having to constrict their lines and cross on a two-battalion frontage, creating a log jam, which took some time to sort out before the troops could continue their advance. At their head, and disdaining to ride whilst his command marched into the enemy fire, Orkney dismounted and, sword in hand, joined the first of the red-coated ranks to cross the Petite Gheete, urging his men ever onward as they neared the enemy positions. Gradually more and more infantry made it across and the right of the line slowly pivoted towards Autre-Église whilst the left held position on the stream in order to present a forward facing in the event of an enemy counter-attack. At some time between 3.30pm and 4.00pm, Orkney felt that his troops were ready and gave the order for the attack.
Above them, the village garrison – the German musketeers of the Régiment ‘Sparre’ and their comrades of the Walloon regiments ‘Courrières’ and ‘Zuniga’ – confidently poured fire into the Allied ranks but as the enemy numbers increased, they soon found themselves in danger of being outflanked by Churchill’s and Mordaunt’s Foot who were leading Macartney’s brigade. As the redcoats reached the Fagneton, Birkenfeld – a cousin of the Bavarian Elector – in command of the extreme Bourbon left flank ordered the Régiment du Roi forward to plug the gap and in a limited counter-attack – remembered by the modern street known as La Mêlée – the four French battalions threw the two British battalions back before withdrawing uphill once more and adopting a position to screen the south-eastern approach to the village.
For Orkney this was no more than a minor setback; casualties were still light, and he believed that his command still had sufficient numbers and momentum to carry the enemy position and thus facilitate the turning of their flank and so, once again, he exhorted the men around him into another attack. As the English battalions again surged forward, the first of a number of ADCs sent from Marlborough’s headquarters arrived on the right flank and, having located the general in the scrum, passed on the Duke’s instructions for him to call off the attack and withdraw to his original positions.
There is some dispute in modern accounts about the target of Orkney’s attack. Was it the village of Autre-Église? Or was it the village of Offus, which lay at the centre of the Bourbon position, or indeed both? The Earl’s own dispatch leaves no room for doubt, when he writes:
Where I was with most of the English foot, there was a morass and roisseau before us, which they said was impossible to pass over. But however we tryd, and, after some difficulty, got over with ten or twelve battalions; and Mr Lumley brought over some squadrons of horse with very great difficulty; and I endeavoured to possess myself of a village, which the French brought down a good part of their line to take possession of, and they were on one side of ye village, and I on the other; but they always retired as we advanced. As I was going to take possession, I had ten aid-de-camps to me to come off, for the horse could not sustain me. We had a great deal of fire at this, both musquetry and canon; and indeed I think I never had more shot about my ears; and I confess it vexed me to retire. However we did it very well and in good order, and, whenever the French pressed upon us, with the battalion of guards and my own, I was always able to make them stand and retire.
If we examine the Earl’s own words, there are several facts that we can deduce. Firstly, that the initial obstacle his troops had to face was a morass, an area of waterlogged ground, and if we study both the modern 1:50,000 map and the historical map from 1777 provided by Belgium’s Institut Géographique National, we can see that the only area along the Petite Gheete to which this description can be applied lies downhill from and directly to the west of Foulx. Secondly, Orkney stated that the enemy ‘brought down a good part of their line’, which can be seen to describe the advance of the four-battalion Régiment du Roi to support the garrison of Autre-Église and stabilize the left flank, and likewise the Earl’s complaint that the enemy continually retired in the face of his advance perfectly describes the harassing fire laid down by the enemy picquets as the British battalions scrambled their way uphill. Thirdly, we have Orkney’s own description of how – when he finally acceded to Marlborough’s orders to withdraw – he was able to deter the enemy from being too adventurous in any pursuit by redeploying his own regiment’s 1st Battalion and that of the Foot Guards, something that would have been relatively straightforward for two veteran and disciplined units if the odds were not stacked too greatly against them. Offus would be attacked but only later during the day; once Autre-Église had already fallen, the Bourbon line had already begun to collapse, and – perhaps most importantly – Henry Lumley had been able to negotiate the Petite Gheete with his mixed brigade of horse and dragoons.
With no sign of Orkney following the instructions that had been relayed by the chain of messengers, Marlborough then sent William Cadogan, his trusted Quartermaster General, to find that officer and ensure his compliance with the commanding general’s orders. Many felt that either Marlborough had been misled, that he was ordering the withdrawal without a true appreciation of the situation around Autre-Église, or that Cadogan was simply acting on his own initiative and it was only after a heated discussion that the Earl conceded, giving the orders for his brigades to begin a staged withdrawal to their start lines.
Much ink has been spilled in describing the initial Allied attack on the Bourbon left flank as being a masterstroke of deception that persuaded Villeroi that a tangible threat existed where none existed at all. As G. M. Trevelyan wrote in his three-volume history England under Queen Anne:
The manoeuvre of the false attack, by which the enemy was deceived, sounds a simple device. A schoolboy might think of it. But it required a great general and a fine army to carry it out. The honours must be divided between Marlborough and his men. Orkney, in particular must be praised for keeping his head and temper at a moment of confusion, peril and sharp disappointment when some of his subordinates were so angry that they swore Cadogan had invented the orders to retreat.
In a number of accounts we have Orkney’s troops re-ascending the slopes towards Foulx with some of their number jeering the French whilst the remainder begin a circuitous march via concealed roads in order to shock the enemy even further by appearing as if from nowhere before joining in the attack on Ramillies itself. But the fact is that Marlborough, having secured Taviers, was now preparing simultaneously to launch the bulk of his cavalry against the Bourbon right flank and columns of infantry against the village of Ramillies.
Having dispatched Cadogan to recall the attack by the right wing, Marlborough now moved his field headquarters south-west, from where he could not only maintain communications with Ouwerkerk, whose cavalry squadrons were by now passing to the south of Ramillies, but also more closely control the Allied infantry columns spearheaded by Karl Wilhelm von Sparre and Willem van Soutlande, which were assembling under cover of the artillery bombardment for an assault on the village.
Under the Captain-General’s watchful eye, three infantry brigades – each of six battalions – deployed into three lines of attack: the first brigade, under Major-General Walter Colyear, a Dutch officer of Scottish descent, consisted of one Dutch, one Swedish and two Swiss battalions, supported by two Brandenburg regiments serving on the English establishment; the second brigade, led by the Prussian officer Johann von Ziethen, comprised one Walloon, one Hessian, one Brandenburg and three Hanoverian regiments all in Dutch service; the third assault brigade under Cornelis van Nassau-Woudenburg (vice Soutelande) was formed from one Brandenburg, two Swiss and three Dutch battalions. Slightly to the rear, two further brigades stood ready to support the effort – the Dutch Gardes te Voet and the Dutch-Scots Brigade, which consisted of four Scots battalions whose service on the Dutch establishment dated back over four decades. Although other formations were being marshalled into positions from which they could sustain the advance, these units would be the spearhead of the main Allied attack, and their success – or failure – would contribute greatly to the outcome of the battle.
The Chaussée Romaine looking westwards towards the Tomb of Ottomond. Again the rising ground towards the site of the cavalry mêlée can be clearly discerned. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
As the infantry mustered, Field Marshal Ouwerkerk began to assemble his own forces for the inevitable combat against the Bourbon cavalry, arrayed slightly to the rear of Ramillies village.
His first line, consisting of 26 cavalry squadrons, was commanded by the 37-year-old Friedrich Ulrich Cirksena, Graaf in Oostfriesland, a veteran officer and cousin of the reigning Count, whose career had been assured when he had saved the life of William III at Neerwinden in 1693. Under his command, Cirksena had three brigades of troops – the first, commanded by Frédéric-Maurice de la Tour d’Auvergne, nephew of the great Turenne, consisted of three regiments of Dutch horse and one of Hanoverian cuirassiers. The second, under Maurits Lodewijk, Graaf van Nassau-La Lecq en Bewerweerd, was made up of four regiments of Dutch horse, whilst the third, led by Daniel Wolfgang, Baron van Dopff, consisted of the cream of the Dutch ‘Arme Blanche’: two squadrons of the Gardes te Paard and four squadrons each of the Carabiniers and the van Dopff dragoons.
Ouwerkerk’s second line was led by Reinhart Vincent, Baron van Hompesch, a 46-year-old officer who had led his troops with great distinction at Blenheim and who had – as a result – become one of Marlborough’s most trusted subordinates within the Dutch military hierarchy. Hompesch’s command was slightly smaller than that of Cirksena, with three brigades totalling 22 squadrons. The first of these, commanded by Amaury de Farcy, Sieur de St Laurent, a Breton noble who had quit France in 1672 and taken up service with the Duke of Celle, was formed from two regiments of Dutch horse and St Laurent’s own regiment of Hanoverians. The second was commanded by the 38-year-old Frederik Sirtema van Grovestins in Westfriesland and comprised four regiments of Dutch horse, whilst the third brigade under Portail contained two regiments of dragoons, each containing four squadrons, from Brandenburg and Holstein-Gottorp respectively.
The third line of the Allied left flank was commanded by Karl Rudolf von Württemberg-Neustadt, a 39-year-old veteran of both the Austro-Turkish Wars, and the Williamite War in Ireland, where he had served under his elder brother Ferdinand Wilhelm as part of the Danish subsidy force and then in the Ukraine where he fought against the Swedes of Charles XII. In similar fashion to the preceding formation, Württemberg’s troops were formed into two brigades, each of four regiments of Danish horse, commanded by Johann von Rantzau and Detlev von Brockdorff, respectively, and the five-squadron Württemberg-Oels dragoon regiment under Jakob-Peter von Bonar.
Possibly the largest cavalry engagement in modern history. This contemporary print evokes the scale and emotion of over 18,000 cavalrymen fighting in the fields south-west of Ramillies village. (Courtesy and copyright of la Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
All told, Ouwerkerk now had over half of the army’s mounted troops – some 69 squadrons – under his direct command and, from his new command position in the central part of the Allied line, Marlborough gave instructions for Lt. Gen. Matthias Hoeufft, Heer van Oyen, to move with his 21 squadrons of combined horse and dragoons from his position at the rear of the right wing to the left wing, where he would form a fourth rank of cavalry to support Ouwerkerk’s attack. The move would give the Dutchman numerical superiority over his opposite number, the Marquis de Guiscard, but – and this must be stressed – merely parity should the mounted troops held as a central reserve be committed to the Bourbon right flank.
From Marlborough’s field headquarters a constant stream of couriers now began to cross the battlefield moving the formations into position and then, as one, the Allied left and centre began their inexorable advance to contact.
Advancing at the walk, Ouwerkerk’s horsemen began to veer southwards in order to avoid the enfilade fire that was coming from the southern face of Ramillies, the lines of white- and blue-coated horsemen gradually ascending the heights above the village in order to come to grips with the red-coated troopers impassively waiting for them. And then, at a signal from Guiscard, the chevaliers of France rose to meet the challenge. Spurring their mounts forward, the Maison du Roi – King Louis’s household troops, and a microcosm of the French nobility – began to advance, quickly reaching a brisk trot as they moved downhill towards the enemy brigades.
Once the Frenchmen had begun to move from their position, Cirksena gave the signal for his regiments to close up their ranks, his intent being to present the enemy with a single, solid rank of horsemen which would enable him to take advantage of the gaps between the enemy units and, as they gradually began to increase their own speed, the Allied troopers presented a shimmering line of drawn swords, pointing at the advancing foe.
The two lines collided at a fast trot, and initially it seemed as if Cirksena’s tactic had backfired, with the first Dutch line thrown back in disorder by the deeper formations of the French Guardsmen, who – in many places – now cut their way through d’Auvergne’s brigade and into the regiments of La Leck and Dopff who were advancing to their support. With the elite French cavalry preventing Cirksena’s second and third lines from supporting his first, the Prince de Chimay now led a further dozen Franco-Spanish regiments into d’Auvergne’s battered troopers, who broke under the pressure and scattered towards the open ground south of Ramillies.
With increasing numbers joining the combat on both sides – historians would later refer to it as the largest cavalry engagement in modern history – the mêlée soon stagnated into a scrum, with the Gendarmerie de la Garde commanded by Henri de Rohan, Prince de Maubuisson, and flanked by the famed mousquetaires fighting their way through the Allied lines and into the open ground beyond. Ordering the line regiments of ‘Courcillion’ and ‘Tarente’ to use the cover afforded by the fire from Ramillies village and demonstrate against the Allied right, Guiscard left the direction of the combat to Chimay and the Marquis de Puyguion whilst he brought up the regiments of Gassion’s second line in order to throw them into the fray, aware that even as he did so, Ouwerkerk was deploying Hompesch’s fresh brigades to succour Cirksena’s battered troopers and try to regain the initiative on the Allied left, aware that if the reinforcement failed he would be forced to commit Württemberg’s Danes, his final reserves before Oyen’s brigades had completed their transit from the right flank.
Throughout the morning, Marlborough’s artillery had bombarded the enemy lines, and although the Bourbon cannon had reciprocated as best they could, the heavier Allied guns soon began to take their toll on the enemy – an early casualty being the steeple of Ramillies church itself. And now with the cavalry engaged and the infantry columns ready for the assault, the gunfire slackened as the drumbeat intensified signalling the advance.
Sparre’s two brigades, under Colyear and Ziethen, stepped off quickly, the troops marching with shouldered arms in order to inhibit the men from firing early and thus reducing the effect of their initial volley. But as they advanced across the fields they soon began to attract the attention of Maffei’s Bavarian troops lining the village and were subjected to a largely ineffective fire which served to divert the German battalions’ attention from Ouwerkerk’s beleaguered troopers, and with the enemy now engaged from the Mehaigne north to Ramillies, Marlborough began to redeploy his formations for the next phase of his plan.
As planned, and preparing to act as a second wave of the attack on Ramillies, Soutelande had deployed his command on a four-brigade frontage, the intent being that the outer formations would effectively flank the village, entering from the north and south, whilst the remaining brigades would pass through Sparre’s brigades and defeat an already-exhausted enemy.
Marlborough now brought up two brigades under Bengt Bengtsson Oxenstierna, third son of the Swedish Chancellor, who was to command the column that would push through Ramillies and into the enemy rear. Oxenstierna’s first brigade was commanded by Maj. Gen. Steven-Adriaan van Welderen and consisted of one Brandenburg, one Ansbach and four Dutch regiments, whilst the second – two Hanoverian, one Swiss and three Dutch battalions – was led by the Hanoverian Barthold Heinrich von Bernstorff. To complete the move and with Oyen’s troopers still en route from the right flank, Marlborough now brought up two further brigades (Keppel and Murray) under the overall command of Anton Günther, Prinz von Holstein-Beck to extend the attack farther to the south, a manoeuvre which would not only return Werdmüller’s detachment to its rightful place within the army’s command structure, but more importantly provide a solid line of foot, upon which Ouwerkerk could rally his cavalrymen, and thereby ‘free up’ Württemberg’s Danish brigades for combat, these units being committed immediately to stabilize the line.
Having ridden from his command in order to rally a number of broken squadrons that had quit the developing mêlée south of Ramillies, Marlborough soon found himself isolated and the target of a number of French cavalrymen who had cut their way through the Allied horse. As it turned away from the threat, Marlborough’s mount lost its footing and threw its rider who hit the ground hard. Momentarily dazed, the Duke cleared his head and got to his feet, running towards the nearest Allied formation – Albemarle’s Swiss foot – with the enemy troopers in close pursuit. Thanks to the suppleness of the leather gaiters that he preferred to riding boots, Marlborough was able to run relatively unhindered and luckily reached safety a few strides ahead of his pursuers who were deterred from closing by the steady ranks of Swiss bayonets. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Defended by the Cologne Leibregiment, as the southern part of the Ramillies defences crumbled, the Grande Cense was another substantial farmhouse, the occupation of which by the Bourbons gave the hand-to-hand fighting an almost Vaubanesque quality, in that the Allies could not afford to bypass them. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán of Ó’Brógáín)
Even as he issued these orders, Marlborough could see that Oyen would arrive far too late to influence the collapse of Ouwerkerk’s first line of cavalry and, sending a courier to Nicolaas de Dompré, the Dutch officer commanding the remaining Allied cavalry on the right flank, to bring his command across to support Ouwerkerk, he spurred forward with his headquarters staff in an attempt to rally the fleeing horse, and avert the looming disaster.
Successfully rallying a number of Dutch squadrons, Marlborough led them back into the combat, but in the fluid environment of the cavalry mêlée his suite was scattered when ridden through by other recoiling units and, recognizing the lone red-coated horseman for a senior officer, a group of French cavalrymen gave chase. Dragging his horse’s head around, the Duke spurred his mount towards the nearest Allied troops – two battalions of the Swiss regiment ‘Albemarle’ that held the end of Holstein-Beck’s line. As he set his mount against a drainage ditch, the animal baulked and threw its rider, who lay dazed on the ground for several moments and was in danger of being ridden over by a number of Cirksena’s men who had by now given up all semblance of order.
Scrambling to his feet, Marlborough began to run towards the Swiss foot, not daring to look behind, and painfully aware that a man on foot was decidedly slower than a man on horse. Seeing his commanding general’s predicament, Maj. Gen. Robert Murray ordered his battalions forward at the double, narrowly beating the enemy to the prize, the contest being so close that a number of French troopers, unable to turn their mounts in time, ended up driving them onto the Swiss bayonets.
Newly mounted on a borrowed horse, the Captain-General now began to reassume direction of the battle, when his second charger was brought up by Major James Bringfield of the Life Guards, acting as equerry to the Duke. Alighting from his borrowed mount, Marlborough swung up into his own saddle, and as he did so a round-shot fired from Ramillies passed under his leg and decapitated the unfortunate Bringfield who had been holding the horse steady.
Slowly, superior numbers began to tell and, with neither reserves to sustain them nor a line of infantry supports – these had all been detached to reinforce La Motte at Taviers – behind which they could rally and re-form, the French cavalry began to give ground. The arrival of almost 40 fresh squadrons under Oyen and Dompré tipped the balance, and gradually the exhausted and bloodied Franco-Spanish regiments were forced back uphill, opening up a gap from which the southern approaches to Ramillies could be attacked by the extended line under Holstein-Beck.
The focal point of Marlborough’s attack was the small hamlet of Ramillies, a settlement of around 200 people situated on the slopes above the head of the Petite Gheete and which itself – ironically enough given the sustained bombardment that it was about to suffer – was sheltered by a curving ridgeline known locally as the Trou aux Renards: the Foxhole. Typical for the region, the centre of the village was the parish church, a brick-built eminence, surrounded by a gated stone wall, and contemporary maps show us a series of dwellings surrounded by hedged orchards and fields punctuated by two enclosed farms – the Haute Cense and the Basse Cense – both of which are natural defensive positions. Initially, the Bourbon garrison consisted of three battalions of Bavarian troops and two from Cologne, under the Marchese Alessandro de Maffei, a general of Veronese extraction, who had served as the Bavarian second in command at the battle of the Schellenberg in July 1704.
Divining how crucial the defence of the village would be to the integrity of the whole battle line, the Comte d’Artagnan – commanding the Bourbon centre – divided the village into two distinct defensive perimeters and ordered Charles O’Brien, Viscount Clare, to bring forward part of his command to occupy the northern part of Ramillies whilst Maffei’s five battalions were to cover the southern sector of the defences and screen the right flank of Guiscard’s cavalry brigades. Regrettably we have no concrete narrative of the Bourbon dispositions but, judging from how the fighting for the village would develop, it would seem reasonable to assume that in the south Maffei deployed the three battalions of the Bavarian Leibregiment (two of musketeers and one of grenadiers) together with some light artillery on the south-facing ridge above the Foxhole, whilst the two battalions of the Cologne ‘Kurfürst’ regiment occupied a perimeter within the village itself. Likewise, and in the other sector, O’Brien deployed the three battalions of the French regiment ‘Picardie’ in a state of defence whilst his own regiment of Irish émigrés stood ready as an immediate reserve, with a further three battalions of French foot under Albergotti to their rear. With Ramillies now occupied by several thousand infantry supported by a number of artillery batteries, the men now began to prepare in earnest for a protracted defence and even as the Allied cannon fired on the village, roads were being barricaded, buildings loopholed and trenches dug. If the enemy were fated to take Ramillies, d’Artagnan was determined that it would be at great cost.
Charles O’Brien, 5th Viscount Clare (1673–1706). Having gone into exile with the defeated Jacobite forces after the Treaty of Limerick in 1691, O’Brien was appointed colonel of the Queen’s Dismounted Dragoons, as part of the Jacobite Army in Exile, serving at Marsaglia in 1693 where his brother the 4th Viscount was killed. In the succeeding years O’Brien served in both Germany and Flanders, participating in all of the major actions, being promoted to brigadier in 1704 and maréchal de camp the following year. Commanding the French units defending the centre of the village, O’Brien was wounded several times at Ramillies, refusing all entreaties for him to withdraw from the battle for medical assistance, and he succumbed to his injuries three days after the battle. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
To the east, Sparre’s brigades began their ponderous advance upon the Bourbon strongpoint, the undulating terrain alternately concealing and revealing their position, causing the French gunners problems as they tried to find targets in the oncoming ranks. Eventually the Allied foot debouched onto relatively level ground, but their advance ground to a halt in the face of the enemy works as they erupted in a crescendo of gunfire. The Germans, Swiss and Swedes were unable to make much progress as much in the face of the French artillery – which included a number of experimental three-barrelled cannon – as with the implied threat of the Bavarian foot above them and to their flank. Eventually the line thickened as other battalions added their numbers to the front line, and the attacking columns devolved into a reinforced line. For some time the situation remained in a stalemate – the key to the position being the Bavarian battalions dug in on the higher ground whose mere presence prevented the Allied foot from advancing, whilst the flanking elements of the command were able to pour fire into Ouwerkerk’s squadrons and disrupt the Allied cavalry in their attempt to overthrow Guiscard’s troopers on the Bourbon right flank.
View from the Chaussée Romaine looking north-east towards the Allied infantry’s line of advance towards Ramillies village. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
The attack was in danger of grinding to a halt owing to a lack of room to manoeuvre, and as Soutelande’s two central brigades halted some distance behind Sparre’s men, he threw out his two flanking formations – the Dutch Gardes te Voet and the Dutch Scots Brigade – to extend the line to the south and north of Ramillies respectively in order to stretch the defenders and break the impasse.
Continuing the flanking move, the Dutch guardsmen began to fan out below their Bavarian counterparts and, at the word of command, began a steady advance upslope, pausing only to dress ranks and return the enemy fire that tore into their ranks. Slowly but inexorably the advance continued until, halting one last time, the Blauwe Gardes gave one last volley and then charged the Bavarian works. The attack was never pressed home, as the German foot recoiled and fled downhill to the safety of the village, leaving their dead and wounded as well as their cannon and a number of regimental colours to the victorious Dutchmen. Although inconsequential in the whole drama of the battle, this small local victory was perhaps more than anything else the foundation upon which Marlborough’s victory would be built. At a stroke, the pressure on the left-wing cavalry had been removed but, that aside, the Allied foot were now in a position from which they could not only attack the southern approaches to Ramillies, but they could also follow the Foxhole westwards and from there attack the vulnerable and relatively undefended western side of the village.
View of Ramillies village from the Chaussée Romaine. The roof and steeple of the village church can be clearly seen. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Likewise, with the central columns needing to regain their cohesion before continuing the attack, the Scots Brigade under the command of the Duke of Argyll – the famed Red John of the Battles – attacked from the north-east, intent on driving towards the village church and splitting the defence. Sword in hand and with Borthwick’s regiment in the van, Argyll led his men along the narrow lanes and through the gardens that dotted the village, the other battalions now fanning out to the left as the enemy regiments of ‘Gondrin’ and ‘Royal-Italien’, the remaining units of Clare’s command, were thrown forward to bolster the defences.
An attacker’s-eye view: Ramillies as seen from the left flank of Marlborough’s attacking columns. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Before the red-coated infantry could reach their objective, the church walls erupted with gunfire, the defending musketeers of ‘Picardie’ signalling that this would be no easy contest for the Scots battalions.
Pausing to take stock of the situation, Colonel William Borthwick saw that the only way successfully to carry the position would be to break into the church precincts, and that to do that he would need to smash down the churchyard gate. A plan was quickly formulated whereby the grenadier company – using their hatchets – would assault the gate, whilst a number of musketeer companies would lay down a suppressing fire and then, once the gate had fallen, the battalion would storm the French position.
Taking a firm hold on the regimental colour, the 19-year-old Ensign James Gardiner waited with the grenadiers and, as the men broke into a run, sprinting for the church wall, he ran with them, the white saltire on blue fluttering defiantly in the wind. Suddenly the young officer was thrown back, dropping the flag as he fell to the ground. A bullet fired from the French position had struck him in the mouth and, spiralling downward, had exited through the back of his neck. Fearing the wound to be fatal, two of the grenadiers took him under his arms and dragged his body to the lee of the wall, where they felt that he could spend his final moments in relative peace.
Gardiner’s fall seemed to take the wind out of the Scots’ attack, and as the men re-formed themselves in preparation for another attack, Viscount Clare emerged from one of the side streets and charged into their ranks at the head of his battalion of expatriate Irishmen, all of whom were eager to avenge themselves for the defeats of Aughrim and the Boyne. Amidst a cloud of musket smoke the units mingled with each other, the men laying about each other with musket butt and bayonet. The fact that both regiments wore red coats with yellow facings only added to the confusion, the usual field signs of a white cockade or a sprig of green being largely ignored in the mêlée. And there, in the chaos, both sides fought over Borthwick’s fallen colour – both sides maintaining that the flag was captured and re-captured during the violent and bloody combat. With the remainder of their brigade having to contest elsewhere with ‘Gondrin’ and ‘Royal-Italien’, the odds were against the Scotsmen, and soon William Borthwick lay dead on the roadside, having been shot in the head by an enemy musketeer, his cousin Henry, a captain in the regiment, then being fatally wounded as he ran to his relative’s aid. Despite the initial success of Clare’s attack, the casualties amongst the Irishmen were also high, with a large number of officers falling as they led by example, from the front. The most prominent of these was Lord Clare himself, who was wounded several times and then taken by his men to Brussels where he would die some days after the battle.
A closer view of Ramillies, as seen from the attackers’ perspective. Note that visibility has actually worsened because of the undulating terrain, the ridgeline of the Foxhole being easily made out. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
‘THE STRUGGLE FOR RAMILLIES’, THE CHURCH PRECINCTS, c.1600HRS (PP. 68–69)
Occupying the left of the Argyll’s Scots’ Brigade, Borthwick’s regiment (1) drives directly into the centre of Ramillies, with the intent of splitting the defenders in two and seizing the church and its grounds (2) that had been fortified and occupied by a battalion of the French ‘Picardie’ regiment.
Unable to make headway against the defences, Borthwick orders his Grenadier Company (3) to assault the gatehouse with hatchets, and force an entry into the church precincts. Leading the attack, Ensign James Gardiner (4) is badly wounded and left for dead in the lee of the church wall as the fighting rages around him, and whilst Borthwick himself (5) is marshalling his remaining companies to continue the assault, they are attacked by Charles, Viscount Clare (6), at the head of a regiment of Irish emigrés in French service.
Shrouded in musket smoke, the fierce hand-to-hand combat is even more confusing due to the fact that both Borthwick’s and Clare’s regiments wear almost identical uniforms, but as more French troops rush forward the Allied troops are forced out of the village, the Scots colonel being killed at the height of the fighting, whilst his Irish counterpart was mortally wounded, being carried from the field to die three days later. Gardiner would lie propped up against the church wall, to be found by his comrades when the Bourbon troops were finally driven from the village. He rose to the rank of colonel and was killed in action at Prestonpans in September 1745.
With the village church acting as the focal point of the battle, this contemporary print again conveys the scale of the fighting, with the Allied infantry advancing stoically from the centre right of the image into the carnage that is the street fighting in Ramillies. (Bibliothèque Nationale de France (btv1b8407820r.f1))
Borthwick’s final staging position before the attack on Ramillies village church. The hedgerows and narrow lanes meant that the regiment was committed by detachments, the target point being the church itself. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Having seen Ensign Gardiner being badly wounded, two of Borthwick’s grenadiers laid the officer in the lee of the churchyard wall, in the hope that, as his life ebbed away, the young officer would enjoy a few moments of peace. Bleeding profusely, Gardiner lay there – being ignored by French soldiers looting the dead – for a number of hours, before the victorious Allied infantry overran the centre of the village and he was able to receive medical treatment. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Later accounts of the mêlée vary greatly. That in O’Callaghan’s History of the Irish Brigades in the Service of France depicts a fierce engagement with both sides suffering almost prohibitive losses and lay the foundation for the tradition that a captioned ‘English’ colour was taken by the men of Clare’s regiment and presented to an Irish convent at Ypres, where it remained on display for almost two centuries before being taken to the Abbey of Kylemore in Ireland, shortly before the outbreak of World War I. Allied accounts seem to mix this, Marlborough’s first attempt to take the village, with the later – and successful – assault. However, perhaps the most balanced account of the situation lies in the account of Ensign Gardiner himself who, though badly wounded, would survive the battle and have a successful career in the British Army before falling at Prestonpans in 1745:
Our young officer was of a party in the forlorn hope, and was commanded on what seemed almost a desperate service, to dispossess the French of the church-yard at Ramillies, where a considerable number of them were posted to remarkable advantage… Accordingly he had planted his colours on an advanced ground; and while he was calling to his men, he received into his mouth a shot, which, without beating out of any of his teeth, or touching the fore part of his tongue, went through his neck, and came out about an inch and a half on the left side of the vertebrae. Not feeling at first the pain of the stroke, he wondered what was become of the ball, and in the wildness of his surprise began to suspect he had swallowed it; but falling soon after, he traced the passage of it by his finger, when he could discover it in no other way; which I mention as one circumstance, among many which occur, to make it probable that the greater part of those who fall in battle by these instruments of death, feel very little anguish from the most mortal wounds.
This accident happened about five or six in the evening, on the 23d of May, 1706; and the army, pursuing its advantages against the French, without ever regarding the wounded, our young officer lay all night on the field, agitated, as may well be supposed, with a great variety of thoughts… But, expecting to recover, his mind was taken up with contrivances to secure his gold, of which he had a good deal about him; and he had recourse to a very odd expedient, which proved successful. Expecting to be stripped, he first took out a handful of that clotted gore of which he was frequently obliged to clear his mouth, or he would have been choked; and putting it into his left hand, he took out his money, which I think was about 19 pistoles, and shutting his hand, and besmearing the back part of it with blood, he kept in this position till the blood dried in such a manner that his hand could not easily fall open, though any sudden surprise should happen, in which he might lose the presence of mind which that concealment otherwise would have required.
An attacker’s-eye view: Ramillies as seen from the centre of Marlborough’s attacking columns. Again, and as per the view from the left flank, the confusing nature of the terrain clearly shows that closeness to the objective does not necessarily guarantee better visibility. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Closing to contact. Perhaps the final view that Marlborough’s infantry would have had prior to throwing themselves into hand-to-hand combat in the streets and alleyways of Ramillies village, unaware of the exact enemy positions. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
View from the Chaussée Romaine looking northwards to the site of the second cavalry mêlée. The Bourbon rear and encampment lie just over the ridgeline. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Later accounts and maps of the battle notwithstanding, the situation at this point seemed to favour the defenders and both Villeroi and the Elector had ample reason to feel happy with their situation. Whilst it was true that the loss of Taviers and the opening of the Mehaigne Valley had caused problems, these were qualified by the fact that the defence of the village and the farm of Franquenée before it had been intended only as a delaying action. Elsewhere, Orkney’s attack on Autre-Église had been called off, and on the left flank Ouwerkerk’s cavalry had been halted and pushed back by the French right wing, whilst the infantry assault on the village of Ramillies itself had been beaten off with some loss to the attackers.
But this was precisely the moment when Marlborough’s tactical skill came to the fore, eloquently demonstrating the difference between the Duke and his opponents. The Bourbon commanders were more than happy to see no farther than their initial deployments, certain that they had catered for every contingency, yet Marlborough – as a leader of men in battle – never subscribed to the mistaken belief that a battle plan was ‘carved in stone’, and even as his troops had begun their advance several hours before, he had immediately begun tailoring his plans and dispositions in the light of the ever-changing battlefield situation.
Taken from near the battlefield monument, this view of the sunken roadway clearly shows the level of the track in comparison with the surrounding fields and gives some idea of the visual impediment to the defending forces. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
The myths of Marlborough launching dummy, holding attacks, cleverly using concealed roadways to manoeuvre his army out of sight of the enemy, or even deploying regimental colour parties to deceive the Bourbon commanders about his numbers are all simply that.
Orkney’s attack on Autre-Église was withdrawn because of the time it had taken him actually to reach the objective and the exponential fact that any reinforcements sent to join the attack would inevitably suffer the same delays. Likewise, Lumley’s own reconnaissance had shown the Allied commander that Orkney was unlikely to receive any tangible support from any of the three cavalry brigades under Tilly’s command. Unable to advance, both Oyen and Dompré were performing no real function, and their transfer from one flank to another gave Marlborough the numerical advantage that he needed to deal quickly with Guiscard and the Bourbon right flank before Villeroi and the Elector could ignite any spark of initiative. Likewise and correctly reasoning that any enemy force seeking to attack across the Petite Gheete would suffer the same delays that had earlier plagued Orkney, Marlborough simply extended his right flank closer toward the centre in order to plug the inevitable gap that would develop once Sparre and Soutelande had begun their advance up Ramillies.
It would be these qualities and this willingness to improvise that would allow Marlborough to reassess the problems that he faced and using them, redevelop his position and then take the tactical initiative from the enemy and forge a stunning victory from an impasse.
It was now around 5.30pm, several hours after the initial cannonade had begun and now, with the threat to his flank removed by the Gardes te Voet, and the news that a number of additional cavalry brigades were on their way to reinforce his command, Ouwerkerk no longer needed to husband his forces. As a result, when Württemberg’s 4,000 fresh Danes were committed to the fight the result was electric.
Up until now, the Bourbon horse had not only managed to hold their own, but had also thrown back the initial Allied attacks in disorder, but the addition of almost 4,000 fresh cavalrymen to the mêlée tipped the balance too far in the enemy’s favour for Guiscard to counter successfully and, in order to salvage what he could from the rapidly deteriorating position, he angrily gave the order to disengage, fuelled by the mistaken belief that Gassion and Roussy, the commanders of the second line of troops, had failed to support him as well as they ought.
The initial success of Guiscard’s cavalrymen had sown the seeds of their ultimate defeat. Spearheaded by the Garde du Corps and the Maison Rouge, they had enjoyed the advantages of terrain, numerical superiority and arguably quality, but taken in combination these had still been insufficient to crush Cirksena’s troops, who had admittedly buckled under the pressure but who had refused to break in the face of the French charge.
A second view of the sunken road taken from Ramillies itself strengthens the impression of how close the Allied foot could get to the village in relative concealment from the defences. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
Having by now cut through the leading enemy ranks, the French general was unable to see that his subordinates had indeed followed their orders, but the terrain no longer favoured the necessary cavalry manoeuvres and the commitment of extra troops by both sides became simply an exercise in maintaining pressure on the foe, an exercise in which the commander whose reserves lasted longest would almost certainly emerge the victor. Up until the point that Ouwerkerk was able to commit the Danish cavalry freely, the battle on the Bourbon right hung on a knife edge – with 8,000 of his horsemen engaged against 10,000 of the enemy and, with the continued threat of enfilade fire from the Ramillies defences, it was all that the Dutch commander could do to hold his own and hope to win by attrition, for one enemy regiment to break and recoil, and thereby for the rot to set in. A number of commentators have suggested that, had the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot been kept in reserve, instead of being committed to the abortive attempt to reinforce Taviers, things could have turned out very differently, but this ignores French tactical doctrine and, in reality, the only mounted troops which could have contributed to the mêlée were the brigades of Beringhen and Costa, at that time deployed in support of d’Artagnan’s central position. Although these would have added only some 2,000 sabres to the equation, it would have still given Guiscard numerical parity with his opponent and given him at least a fighting chance of victory.
Forced back by the arrival of Württemberg’s Danes, the approach of Oyen’s command demonstrated to Guiscard that victory on the right flank was no longer feasible, and he reluctantly gave the order to withdraw back uphill in order to seek a friendly position from where he could rally his battered command. Moving directly away from the enemy threat, the Franco-Spanish cavalry initially headed westwards towards the tumulus known locally as La Tombe d’Ottomond and then, as soon as it was clear that the disengagement had been successful, Guiscard led his racing columns northwards to the centre of the battle line where he hoped to reform his regiments under the protection of the Marquis d’Artagnan. Needless to say, the withdrawal was a messy affair and, whilst the majority of his command followed Guiscard’s lead, large numbers of men used the opportunity to escape the battle by riding past Ottomond, whilst others saw a crossing of the Vissoule as their only avenue of escape and blundered into the morass that sheltered the stragglers from Taviers, pursued by the Dutch cavalry.
The northern approaches to Ramillies, showing the relatively flat terrain that the majority of Argyll’s brigade had to cross before coming to close quarters with the men of ‘Gondrin’ and ‘Royal-Italien’. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
This latter route almost became a death trap for the fleeing riders as their mounts became bogged down in the morass. As a result, many simply abandoned their horses and floundered through the mud as best they could in the hope that they could outdistance any pursuit. From his position south of the stream, de la Colonie threw a company-sized detachment forward to cover their comrades and a series of well-timed volleys soon discouraged further pursuit.
The collapse of the enemy right wing now being clear, and with his command now swelled to over 18,000 sabres, Ouwerkerk drew his men up into position on the plateau between Ramillies and Ottomond, allowing them to rest, and reorganized his brigades. Some distance to his front, Guiscard tried frenetically to rally his disorganized command, whilst to his right, having been reinforced by the commands of Oxenstierna and Holstein-Beck, Sparre and Soutlande were now marshalling their forces for a decisive attack, which would carry the village of Ramillies and bring the Allied infantry crashing into the centre of the enemy line.
Despite having beaten off the initial Allied attacks, the garrison of Ramillies still numbered no more than 12 battalions – the Bavarian and Cologne Leibregimente under Maffei holding the exposed southern part of the defences; the three battalions of ‘Picardie’ and the Irishmen of ‘Clare’ holding the centre, owing to O’Brien’s wounds possibly now under the command of the Prince de Montbazon; and to the north the battalions of ‘Gondrin’ and ‘Royal-Italien’ under Albergotti. With the Allies victorious on the left, d’Artagnan had no option other than to order the Comte de Sézanne to redeploy his five battalions of the ‘Greder’ and ‘Villars’ regiments to form a southward-facing line, primarily as a rallying point for the troops of the collapsed right wing but also as a tangible reason for Ouwerkerk to refrain from making any rash moves from his current position.
At about 5.45pm, Soutelande ordered his brigades into the attack – the Gardes te Voet coming downhill and attacking the Grande Cense which had been occupied by a battalion of the Cologne Kurfürstengarde under their commander Colonel von Kleist, whilst in the centre the regiments under van Nassau-Woudenburg, supported by Oxenstierna’s command (Welderen and Bernstoff) launched a frontal attack against the village whilst the Duke of Argyll once more led his brigade of Scotsmen into the northern approaches to Ramillies.
Although better coordinated, this second Allied attack seemed to be going the same way as its predecessor, with the leading battalion of Dutch Guards being repulsed by the Cologne Guards, but then the remainder of the regiment came up and, with the Bavarian grenadiers wavering, part of Sézanne’s command was now committed to the defence of the village. Initially it looked as if the Blue Guards had been stopped dead in their tracks but as Woudenburg’s battalions began to make their presence felt, the Allied numbers began to tell, the rot beginning when one of the Swiss battalions recoiled from an enemy attack, and with each unit nervous about the integrity of its position, the line began to buckle and Maffei was forced to conduct a staged withdrawal in order to save his command from encirclement.
This contemporary German print shows the climax of the battle as the Allied troops begin to throw the Bourbon forces back in disarray, the slaughter of the initial fugitives being shown in the left foreground and the capture of the Bourbon camp in the centre left. (Courtesy and copyright of la Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
At first, all went to plan, the units firing and retiring in sequence to discourage any pursuit, but then seeing a stationary regiment of dragoons to the west of the village, he made his way over to them intending to request their support for his command. As he approached the horsemen, the chronically short-sighted Maffei failed to notice either the unit insignia or the green ‘field sign’ that the dragoons wore in their caps and, thus, as he delivered his request, he was taken prisoner by a Captain Faber of the Baudissin dragoons. Leaderless, the remainder of Maffei’s command began to pull back northwards, where ‘Picardie’ and ‘Clare’ were holding their positions as they had done all afternoon.
North of the village, Argyll seemed to bear a charmed life as he led his brigade against Albergotti’s command; his uniform coat showed later that it had been hit by a number of spent enemy rounds, none of which had caused any injury. Meeting the French units at bayonet point, the outcome hung in the balance for several minutes, whilst d’Artagnan threw in two single battalion regiments – ‘Nice’ and ‘St Segond’ – under Filippo Ceva Grimaldi, Duca de Telese, in an attempt to stabilize the line. However, the two largely under-strength regiments were shattered by the force of the Allied attack and for a short time it looked as if the Bourbon forces would lose control of the northern part of the village and consign ‘Picardie’ and ‘Clare’ to encirclement and capture. Riding to the head of the ‘Alsace’ regiment of foot, d’Artagnan assumed command from the acting brigadier, Henri de Steckenberg, and led the four French battalions forward with as many uncommitted units as he could muster to stabilize the situation. Fighting their way northwards, the remnants of ‘Greder’, ‘Villars’ and Maffei’s Bavarian and Cologne regiments passed through the centre of the village to re-form alongside ‘Clare’ and ‘Picardie’, who were holding their own in the face of the increasing numbers of enemy troops being thrown into the attack. Deceptively, it began to look as if – for the moment at least – the advantage lay with the defenders and, as the Allies pulled back once again d’Artagnan was able to redress his lines and prepare for the inevitable third attack. But now, in committing the remainder of his infantry to the defence of Ramillies itself, he had removed the very supports which the reconstituted cavalry brigades under Guiscard would need if they were to defy Ouwerkerk’s forces once more, and thus his flanking force was far more fragile than it outwardly seemed.
The attack, when it came, was not exactly as d’Artagnan had envisaged or had prepared for. Instead, whilst Sparre, Soutelande, Oxenstierna and Holstein-Beck all continued their inexorable advance upon the village, Charles Churchill – Marlborough’s younger brother and commander of the Allied centre – threw Macartney’s and Donop’s brigades across the Petite Gheete some distance to the north of Ramillies. Originally these troops were transferred from the Allied right flank, to cover a gap that had been developing between Tilly’s and Churchill’s commands, but now the intent was to hold a position on the Bourbon side of the stream and block any attempts by Villeroi to reinforce further the troops in the village. With Ouwerkerk’s brigades undoubtedly now ready to advance in support of their own infantry, d’Artagnan saw the ominous spectre of a repeat of the disaster at Blenheim two years before, when the Allies surrounded the village of Blindheim and captured some 27 battalions of foot and a number of dismounted dragoons.
Leaving his brigadiers to continue with the defensive preparations, d’Artagnan first sent a courier to Villeroi, reaffirming the collapse of the right flank and his own position, and then rode to the Marquis de Montpesat, whose Brigade de Gardes – six battalions of the Gardes Françaises and three of the Gardes Suisses – was the only formation close enough to dispute Macartney and Donop’s advance. The threat to the army was clear enough to Montpesat and wheeling his command to face the advancing redcoats he pointed his sword at the enemy and gave the order to advance. With parade ground precision, the pride of King Louis’s army marched towards the enemy, and as Macartney’s battalions were still negotiating the marshy obstacle, they slammed into Churchill’s and Mordaunt’s regiments, throwing the British troops back across the Petite Gheete but, instead of coming to a halt, they pursued the retreating enemy too far and, charging across the stream, almost came to grief at the hands of both Macartney’s rearmost battalions and Donop’s Danes as they came up in support.
Despite this local success, it was clear from d’Artagnan’s message that the army’s position could no longer be held, and so Villeroi and the Elector decided to hold a defensive line facing south and east – based at Offus – whilst the left flank would conduct a staged withdrawal back to the main body of the army which would then conduct a fighting retreat northwards to Louvain. To that extent, Birkenfeld was ordered to withdraw the Zuniga brigade from Autre-Église towards Offus, leapfrogging the unit with Barial and d’Antin’s commands, whilst Guiscard was ordered to bring the assimilated cavalry from both the centre and the right flank to a position just in front of Offus, from where the troops could be supported by the – as yet – unengaged infantry brigades deployed around the village.
In Ramillies itself, those troops that were able to were ordered to fight their way clear and, bypassing the army wagon train, which stood in ordered ranks behind the village, to rejoin the main body – all artillery and impedimenta to be abandoned for the sake of mobility. To support the retrograde movement and prevent the manoeuvre from disintegrating into chaos, Montpesat’s Brigade de Gardes was again thrown forward to screen and support the troops as they fought their way northwards. In the centre, the artillery deployed in the defence of Offus would continue to be served whilst those batteries that had earlier bombarded the Allied centre and right flanks would be limbered up and likewise withdrawn to the main body, their movement being covered by the battalion of the Bombardiers du Roi and their Spanish counterparts.
In normal circumstances, and in the style of warfare which the contending armies had previously been used to, the Bourbon forces would simply withdraw from battle and concede defeat by the simple expedient of quitting the field. However, they were opposed by a commander who had his own ideas about how victory should be measured and so, as the Dutch and Allied foot battered their way through the defences of Ramillies, Marlborough unleashed Ouwerkerk and the Dutch and Allied cavalry upon the rear of the Bourbon line, a wave of horsemen almost 18,000 strong that swept northwards, carrying all with it and sweeping over the wagon train, which acted as more of an interference than as the breakwater that Villeroi and the Elector may have hoped for.
From his vantage point above Foulx, Orkney could see the defenders of Autre-Église beginning to leave the village and, rightly discerning that this manoeuvre prefaced a general withdrawal, he gave orders for his command to advance and move against the enemy’s line of retreat. Once again the redcoats negotiated the swollen watercourses, but this time they were unopposed and were able to make good progress across the site of the earlier, heavy skirmishing. To their left Lumley’s seven regiments of British cavalry also made their way across the Petite Gheete and, with no formed enemy to their front, sought to vent their frustration at their forced inactivity. First blood went to Lord John Hay – second son of the Marquess of Tweeddale – whose brigade, consisting of his own regiment of Scots dragoons and the Irish dragoons of Charles Ross, thundered through the streets of Autre-Église at full gallop. They emerged on the other side, pitching into the battalions of the Régiment du Roi which, in preparation for withdrawal, had moved back to its initial position and where its men were busily collecting the packs and impedimenta that they had discarded before going into action earlier in the day: ‘At Ramillies with but three squadrons alone We captured two battalions o’ the French “King’s Own”; Their blasphemies were awful, but they went their ways in charge o’ sax-an’-twenty of the Lord John Hay’s, While the rest o’-the lads rode a huntin’ the foe a’ the moonlit, summer nicht wee big tally-ho.’
Hay’s troopers careered into the two rearmost of the French battalions, severely damaging them both and taking many prisoners before being driven off by disciplined volleys from the first and second battalions who, being farther away from the British charge, had been able to take up position in more defensible terrain and redeploy to cover their sister units. Many British commentators would later write of the perfidy of the French soldiers who initially threw their weapons on the ground asking for quarter and after this was given, calmly took up arms again, firing at the men to whom they had so recently given their parole.
The rest of Lumley’s command, consisting of five regiments of English horse (Lumley’s, Cadogan’s, Schomberg’s, Wyndham’s and Wood’s), followed the lesser path driving towards Offus with Orkney’s battalions trailing in their wake. Despite a number of clashes with Franco-Bavarian cavalry, which saw Wood’s regiment come tantalizingly close to a knot of senior enemy officers who could only have been Villeroi, the Elector and their staffs, and the detritus of combat, which included a large number of cannon, the enemy foot were able to maintain their formation and, without infantry support, Lumley was unable to engage. Again, the Earl of Orkney writes:
I don’t know myself what prisoners we have; I am told several major-generalls and others of less note. Lord John Hay’s dragoons and others got in upon the Regiment de Roy, which they beat intirely.
There is at least 7 or 800 of ’em prisoners, and everywhere you see colours and standards, and I hear there is at least 40 pieces of canon and a great deal of their baggage. For, whenever they saw that village forced, they immediately retired with such expedition that one could hardly think it possible. We pursued them till dark night, but their horse it was impossible to get at. Their foot Mr Lumley with severall English squadrons came nigh, but without foot it was impossible to attack them. He sent to me that, if I could come up with the foot, he did not doubt but we would take eight or nine batallions of ‘em that were in a body together. I marched I am sure as fast as it was possible for men to march, and ordered them to lose no time, and that I would ride up to Mr Lumley myself. I own it vexed me to see a great body of ’em going off, and not many horse with them; but, for my heart, I could not get up our foot in time; and they dispersed and got into strong ground where it was impossible to follow them.
‘ENEMY AT BAY’, WEST OF AUTRE-ÉGLISE, c.1800HRS (PP. 84–85)
With the Allied forces closing with the enemy all along the front line Lt. Gen. Lumley’s cavalry, on the Allied right, begins to negotiate its way across the Petite Gheete and the marshy terrain to the south and east of Autre-Église and, finding the village deserted, the frustrated troopers gallop westwards in an attempt to find and engage the enemy before the fighting draws to a close.
Thundering through a line of trees, Lord John Hay at the head of his own regiment of dragoons (1) – later the Scots Greys – and that of Charles Ross (2) – later the Royal Irish – bursts out into the midst of two battalions of the French Régiment du Roi (3) who are in the process of gathering their packs and knapsacks (4) discarded prior to being sent into action around Autre-Église.
Although small knots of men try to rally and hold off the marauding horsemen, many (5) simply turn and flee towards the other two battalions of the regiment which have formed up and present a line of loaded muskets at the British horsemen.
Nevertheless the damage has been done – the French regiment has been shattered, suffering a reputed 800 casualties, and now the remainder of Lumley’s command ranges over the northern sector of the battlefield, their presence hastening the disintegration of Villeroi’s planned withdrawal into an uncontrolled rout.
To the south, d’Artagnan’s beleaguered battalions were being squeezed out of the northern outskirts of Ramillies, their position being threatened by the inexorable Allied advance. The exhausted general attempted to keep order as best he could, basing his formation around the large French regiments of ‘Alsace’ and ‘Picardie’, which between them still numbered over 4,000 effectives, and Clare’s Irishmen, who still carried their mortally wounded commander within their ranks, refusing to leave him to the care of the enemy. But with lesser regiments now disintegrating and sowing the first seeds of a total collapse of discipline, even these units began to feel the mounting pressure, their officers unable to be everywhere at once.
Retreating gradually and harried by the enemy every step of the way, the Frenchmen buckled on a number of occasions but, refusing to break, continued towards the line of troops at Offus, whose glittering muskets seemed to promise a release from the stinging enemy attacks. Shielded by the guards brigade to the east, the blasted remnants of the Bourbon centre were now ordered to take position behind the regiments of ‘La Marck’ and ‘Montroux’, of ‘Isenghien’ and ‘St Sulpice’, all yet to fire a shot in anger but, once a retrograde movement begins, it is often difficult to stop and so was the case here. Realizing that there was no real possibility of his army being able to conduct a fighting retreat, Villeroi gave orders for a general disengagement, by which the various formations would attempt to quit the field as best they could and ultimately aim to re-form at Tirlemont on the Dyle.
Although modern research has shown that the Bourbon collapse was not as total as initially believed, this contemporary print evocatively conveys the image of an army on the brink of disaster. (Courtesy and copyright of la Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
That should have been the end of the battle, with the Bourbon forces conceding defeat – and the field – to the Allies, and so it should have been, at least to the retreating generals’ way of thinking. However, Villeroi had never commanded in the field against Marlborough and therefore lacked the appreciation of his opponent’s determination to win the war by smashing his opponent’s ability to wage further hostilities. He was thus totally wrong-footed when the Duke released his army in a general chase, in an attempt to cause as much physical and logistical damage to the enemy as possible before darkness fell. But this final attack should not be simply seen as the final ‘bludgeoning’ of a beaten enemy, for Marlborough was aware of one crucial factor that would determine not only the closing moments of the battle but also the 1706 campaign as a whole. This was simply that, in order to fill the ranks of his army with Allied Spanish forces, Villeroi had stripped many of Flanders’ fortresses totally bare of defenders and, thus, the key to many of these fortresses now lay in front of the Allied troops; all Marlborough had to do was to reach out and grab it.
The memorial plaque for the tercentenary of the battle of Ramillies that was unveiled on the battlefield following the 2006 celebrations. (Copyright and courtesy of Seán Ó’Brógáín)
With the Allied left and right wings now closing in on each other, the trap was almost complete and it was inevitable that cries of ‘sauve qui peut’ – let he save himself who can – began to be heard rising from the Franco-Spanish ranks. And whilst many Allied soldiers broke ranks to loot the enemy encampment and baggage train, many more were kept in hand to continue the bloody pursuit, smashing the remnants of Villeroi’s proud army as, depending upon the regiment and corps, they either fled in disorder or marched purposefully northwards, determined to reach the army’s rallying point at Tirlemont, their commanders unaware, as darkness fell, of exactly how dangerously dispersed Marlborough’s cavalrymen had become during the pursuit, being more than grateful to put the river between them and their enemy, hopeful of using the hours of night and the early morning dawn to try to salvage some order from the debacle.