Chapter 7

Year of Miracles

‘I thought it was time to finish the war.’1

After the startling success for the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene at Blenheim in the summer of 1704, French armies could be rebuilt, given enough time, but this was a laborious and expensive process, while bruised morale was not so quickly rebuilt, and the whole process was overshadowed by the spectre of the immense and unexpected defeat at the hands of two commanders. Still, the following year proved to be something of a disappointment for the Grand Alliance. With the death of Emperor Leopold on 5 May 1705, there was a measure of uncertainty in Vienna, and Eugene was distracted from campaigning while providing reassurance to the princes and electors of the empire at a time of change. The late emperor’s eldest son, Joseph, ascended to the imperial throne as expected, for he was the King of the Romans and, as a result, did not have to submit to an election, but there was unavoidable delay in the process. On hearing the news of Leopold’s death from the Papal Nuncio, Louis XIV, the emperor’s old adversary, true to form, immediately put the French court into mourning as did his grandson in Madrid. Emperor Joseph was an admirer and supporter of Eugene, and the allied war effort benefitted from this confidence. The new emperor also trusted the Duke of Marlborough, and he wrote on 9 May 1705: ‘If my affairs permitted me, I would so myself the pleasure of joining you at the army, to testify in person the sentiments of my esteem and friendship. I have, nonetheless, ordered the Prince of Baden to act in concert with you on the Moselle.’²

After the reverses of the previous summer, Louis XIV and his grandson in Madrid had little option but to stand on the defensive for the time being, and surrender the initiative to their opponents. The observant Duc de St Simon grimly reflected with a striking element of prophesy on France’s position at this juncture:

I saw quite plainly towards what rock we were drifting. We had met losses at Höchstädt, Gibraltar, and Barcelona; Catalonia and the neighbouring countries were in revolt; Italy yielded us nothing but miserable successes; Spain exhausted; France failing in men and money, and with incapable generals, protected by the Court against their faults. I saw all these things so plainly. I thought that it was time to finish the war before we sank still lower, and that it might be finished by giving the Archduke what we could not defend and making a division of the rest.3

Map 4: France in the early eighteenth century.

This notion actually met the original aims of the Grand Alliance, as the intention had been to leave Philip V on the throne in Madrid, but to simultaneously divide the Spanish empire. In any case such ideas found no favour as too much would be given away, and the Minister for War, Michel de Chamillart, told St Simon that ‘the King would not give up a single mill of all the Spanish Succession’.⁴

Strenuous efforts were made to re-build France’s fighting capability, by means of drafts of recruits from the militia (a highly unpopular measure, much resented and technically not even legal), large-scale purchases of horses in Switzerland and increased taxation of all kinds. In consequence, Louis XIV could field three main armies in northern Europe. Marshal Villeroi commanded 60,000 men in the Spanish Netherlands, Marshal Villars had 50,000 in the Moselle valley, while Marshal Marsin was in Alsace with just over 30,000. In Brabant in particular the French had constructed lengthy lines of defence behind which they could manoeuvre to foil any Allied advance, while Villars was able to take up a strong defensive position astride the Moselle. A further 65,000 troops were under the command of the Duc de Vendôme in Italy, while Marshal Tessé held the ring for French interests in Spain and the Duke of Berwick was active with a small army in south-eastern France. The French commanders in the north and north-east were instructed to consider themselves to be operating as a single strategic unit, able and ready to reinforce each other as the threat from the allies developed. This admirable intention, however, was overly optimistic and hampered by the relatively slow means of communication available, and depended also on the allies not being innovative enough to strike at the French in several sensitive points at the same time.

Marshal Villars had arrived in Metz on 2 February 1705, to prepare a defence of the Moselle valley against any allied advance. He quickly established a line of fortified posts from the fortifications of Thionville to those of Saarlouis, and on inspecting the troops available to him found them to be well equipped and in good heart. Bad weather had set in, which prevented the marshal from making an attempt to attack the allied camp at Trier, and a projected advance across the Saar had to be abandoned in the third week of April because of heavy rain. Frustrated in his efforts to take the early initiative, the temperamentally aggressive Villars settled his troops into good defensive positions and waited to see what the allies would do.

The Duke of Marlborough, having gained ground in Alsace in the closing weeks of the previous year, had formed a scheme to thrust into France by way of the Moselle, in conjunction with an advance from Landau by imperial troops commanded by the Margrave of Baden; the new emperor’s assurance that he would co-operate was heartening. Such a combined operation should pin the French in the Moselle valley while simultaneously outflanking their position. The intention to use the Moselle valley as a route by which to enter France could not be concealed, as preparations had to be made well in advance. While Marlborough and Baden did so, Overkirk would hold the borders of Holland secure with his corps of Dutch troops. Nothing went to plan; by the time the duke had assembled his 60,000-strong army at Coblenz, sitting at the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle, it was clear that the margrave would not be ready to march to combine forces for some time. The duke was obliged to go to Rastadt in the third week in May, to confer with Baden on the future of the campaign. The margrave was not well, suffering still from the wound to his foot sustained at the Schellenberg in July the previous year, but he still had the firm instructions from Emperor Joseph to join Marlborough. The difficulty was that the imperial troops were ill-equipped and fewer in numbers than promised when the plan for the campaign was formed, numbering only some 15,000 rather than twice that number as Marlborough had expected. Vienna had diverted forces to campaign in Italy and to combat the lingering rebellion in Hungary, and the effort of the empire was diffused as a result. Despite this it was agreed that the rendezvous for the two commanders at Trier should take place on 12 June, with an advance up the line of the Moselle to take place as soon afterwards as could be done.

Marlborough could not maintain his army in camp at Trier while waiting for Baden to come, especially as the commissary officer appointed to gather the stores for the campaign embezzled the funds supplied and defected to the French to avoid punishment. So, on 3 June the duke advanced past Consarbrück to confront Marshal Villars at Sierck, but the French commander prudently refused to give battle. and Marlborough could not assault his strong defences with much hope of success. Forage was hard to come by, and the allied lines of communication and supply back to Trier and Coblenz were lengthy and lay along poor roads. ‘Send forward all possible grain and forage,’ Marlborough wrote, ‘also with the utmost diligence the biscuit to Treves [Trier], for I shall soon have need of it … for we are in a country where we find nothing.’5 It was also apparent that Villars was being reinforced by troops sent by Marsin on the upper Rhine, having now some 70,000 men under command, and the odds for success for Marlborough were lengthening by the day.

Meanwhile, Marshal Villeroi had unexpectedly taken the offensive in the Low Countries, and seized the allied-held fortress of Huy on the river Meuse on 13 June 1705. Overkirk, finding that he was outnumbered, fell back to the protection of an entrenched camp at Maastricht, and Villeroi was able to enter Liège and threaten the allied garrison in the citadel. The French commander had touched a very raw nerve indeed, as the Dutch could not summon sufficient strength to counter this new and very well-judged offensive. This was a critical moment for the alliance, and their commanders in the north were, in military terms, fixed and forced to react to what their opponents were doing. Whatever Marlborough might achieve in the Moselle valley, and the prospects for success had already dimmed, would be nothing if the Dutch lost the hard-won river lines in the Spanish Netherlands and their own border was threatened yet again; it was even possible that if the threat were not speedily countered, they might have to make a separate peace with France. Such an outcome would be extreme, but was by no means out of the question, and the clear likelihood is that Villeroi was directed to take action to cripple Marlborough’s own operations on the Moselle by adroitly applying pressure at a most sensitive point elsewhere. Messengers hurried from Maastricht to the duke’s headquarters on the Moselle, urging him to return with his army without delay, a plaintive summons that could hardly be ignored.

Marlborough was already at a standstill in front of Villars’ strong positions astride the Moselle, in the midst of a campaign that was languishing and likely to be abandoned before long. The duke was, accordingly, quite prepared to march northwards in response to the urgent summons from Overkirk; he now had a sound reason which brooked no argument for changing the course of his campaign for the year – virtue could be neatly made out of necessity with a healthy dash of prompt action. On 16 June 1705 he wrote:

This moment is come lieutenant-general van Hompesch, from Monsieur d’Overkirk, to let me know, that if I do not immediately help them they are undone, which only serves to shew the great apprehensions they are in; for it is impossible for me to send troops to them sooner than I have already resolved; but since they have so much fear at the army [at Maastricht], I dread the consequences at The Hague.6

In pouring rain, Marlborough’s army began to withdraw the next day down the Moselle, on the long road back to the Low Countries. The duke abandoned the campaign with some regret. ‘It is most certain,’ he wrote, ‘that the Moselle is the place where we might have done the French the most harm.’⁷ Given the strength of Villars’ position, however, and the skill with which the French commander could be relied upon to act, there was an element of wishful thinking in Marlborough’s judgement of what might have been achieved on the Moselle that year.

Leaving a stout garrison in Trier to guard the line of the river, Marlborough took his army over the rough country of the Eiffel at a good pace despite the unseasonably poor weather, so that by 27 June he reached Maastricht and combined forces with Overkirk five days later. The allied army was now some 60,000 strong, and Villeroi prudently lifted his siege of the Liège citadel and fell back behind his own defensive lines. Marlborough was, however, disappointed to learn that Triers had been abandoned with all its stores, even though the place had been under no French threat, and the allied garrison had withdrawn to Trarbach. So surprised was Marshal Villars at this, that he only occupied Trier four days after the allied rearguard he had left the place. His expectations of the distraction that Villeroi’s moves in the Low Countries would impose on allied intentions in the valley, had clearly been exceeded by their actual effect when put into practice.

With his Moselle campaign abandoned, and the French offensive in the Low Countries checked, Marlborough faced a difficult choice in achieving very much in the remainder of the summer. Huy was soon recovered, but the French field army could only be brought to battle if the 60-mile long Lines of Brabant, constructed with such cost and effort over the previous few years, were first crossed. Despite Dutch doubts at the wisdom of the project, this was achieved on 18 July with the lines breached and a strong French and Bavarian covering detachment severely mauled in battle at Elixheim, not far from Louvain. Marshal Villeroi had been badly wrong-footed, and might have suffered even more severely had the Dutch troops, tired after a long night march and then through the heat of the summer morning, got to the field of battle an hour or two sooner. The Elector of Bavaria, whose troops had taken part, and performed very well in the fighting at Elixheim, wrote with an explanation to Versailles that can have done little to cheer the king:

The enemy surprised the barrier between Wanghen [Wanghe] and Espen [Elixheim], and at four o’clock in the morning broke through. It was not discovered until five o’clock. When I was alerted, I went with Marshal de Villeroi with all diligence, but too late to remedy the situation, for we found a great number of the enemy army had passed through in spite of the charges that were made without success because the enemy forces were superior to those that we could oppose against them, The army was too spread out to attempt a general engagement.8

The whole French strategic posture in Brabant was now turned, and Villeroi fell back behind the river Dyle. Louis XIV wrote to him to express his concern at what had happened. ‘However much I am convinced of your vigilance and the care that you have taken to be alert to the movements of the enemy, it is nonetheless quite disagreeable to see them past the lines in the centre of the Netherlands, and at several important places.’⁹ With the marshal intent on covering the approaches to Louvain and Brussels, Marlborough managed to slip past and interpose himself between Villeroi and the border with France. Towns such as Mons and Oudenarde were exposed as a result, but Marlborough’s attempts over the next few weeks to engage Villeroi on the Dyle and then to the south of Brussels came to nothing, Dutch caution once more proved a hindrance, although one of the duke’s projects for an attack at the Yssche stream would have probably incurred heavy losses had it gone ahead; the unproductive campaign for the year stuttered to a close with the onset of the cold weather. Some satisfaction was felt in Versailles, for it seemed that Marlborough had certainly been foiled by his opponents.

While these events were taking place across the southern Netherlands, matters were not prospering for the Grand Alliance in Savoy and northern Italy. Vendôme had carried on a generally very successful campaign throughout 1705, and Turin was under constant threat. The reliable imperial field commander, Count Vaudemont, caught a fever and died, and his replacement, Graf Leopold Herberstein, proved less capable of dealing with the bruising tactics of Vendôme. Prince Eugene of Savoy, as President of the Imperial War Council, had Herberstein posted to a less demanding role elsewhere and took over the field command himself in April 1705. Neglect at army headquarters was evident, and his initial report to the emperor Leopold made sober reading:

I should be pressing forward with all speed, but with starving and half-naked soldiers, and without money, tents, bread, transport, or artillery, this is quite impossible … The troops are so starved that they are more like shadows than men, Up till now they have been patient, in the hope that I would bring substantial relief. But as I have been provided with very little I fear that my arrival will merely lead to despair. Desertions are daily increased to a rate of nearly fifty a day.10

Eugene’s arrival had a beneficial effect on the morale of the soldiers: officers and men alike had more reason to be hopeful, while the French immediately began to move with rather more caution and their campaign inevitably lost some of its sparkle. Vendôme intended to keep between the imperial army and Turin, and moved to confront the prince on the river Adda. A bitterly-fought battle at Cassano in mid-August was indecisive, but Eugene was prevented from getting his army across the river, and so Vendôme achieved his immediate objective. Dogged still by shortages of money, munitions and equipment, Eugene wrote that ‘The army still hangs together’.¹¹ Still, there was little choice but to pull back while the cold months of autumn came on, and the spirits of the troops sagged once more.

The disappointing battle at Cassano, however, had halted Vendôme for a time, while giving some relief to imperial Field-Marshal Guido von Starhemberg in Turin, and so was not entirely without benefit. Eugene described his strategic effort as ‘A war of diversion. This diversion already involves a heavy expenditure for the French in men and money. They have to keep 80,000 men in Italy, whereas the Allies only have 40,000 there.’12 Unable for the moment to maintain his army in the field, Eugene withdrew into Venetian territory, ignoring the perfectly natural complaints of that neutral state at the unwanted incursion. The imperial army could rest and recuperate to a certain degree, but the risk however was that if the allied campaign failed to make more progress than it had up to now, Venice, and possibly other Italian states, might make common cause with France if they were pushed too far.

Marlborough went to Vienna late in 1705 to confer with Emperor Joseph, and Eugene wrote to him with a frank account of his concerns at this precarious stage for the fortunes of the Grand Alliance:

My army is ruined, the horses worn out with past fatigues, no sure footing in this country, and the enemy re-assembling their forces in my front. Besides, the Venetians threaten to declare against us, if we do not quit their territory; the princes of Italy join in this declaration, and are inclined to form a league for their common defence … Succours of men and money should be prepared for this army, so that it be enabled to take the field, at the latest, towards the end of March, for which purpose the magazines should be established, the recruits and horses for remounting the cavalry at hand and the fleet ready to co-operate in the spring, either on the coast of Spain, or to invade Naples, which is without troops. I am much concerned that I cannot have the honour of joining your Highness at Vienna.¹³

Amongst the fruits of the duke’s timely visit to Vienna, where he was incapacitated with gout for a while, was the immediate provision on his own authority of 100,000 crowns for outstanding wages to be paid to the troops, and a further loan of £250,000 to buy supplies for Eugene’s army. The degree to which both men were quite convinced that the war for Spain could be lost or won in Italy, regardless of what happened in the Low Countries, was remarkable and shown in a comment made in a letter Eugene sent from Vienna to Marlborough a few weeks later:

No breach can be made in the Spanish Monarchy except through Italy. This fact is evident from the efforts of the King of France to support this war, and his comparative indifference in other quarters; for this [French] army has never diminished; but on the contrary, this moment is increasing with considerable reinforcements.14

The point was a good one in achieving a division of the empire, the aim as originally envisaged in 1701, but would do little to secure the throne in Madrid. That additional aspiration was still in the growing stage and had not yet transfixed the attention of the allies to the exclusion of almost anything else. The strong desire in Vienna to secure their gains in as much of Italy as possible was clear, but it was hard to dispassionately argue that gains in Italy were of more benefit to the Grand Alliance than those that might be achieved in Spain or in the wealthy Spanish Netherlands. At any rate, the loan arranged by Marlborough was paid directly to Eugene, through bankers in Venice, to avoid the almost inevitable siphoning off of funds that would happened if Vienna had been involved.

Although Catalonia had been taken and held for Archduke Charles, the general lack of progress for the Grand Alliance in 1705 inclined Louis XIV to look forward to the coming campaigns with renewed confidence. In particular, a feeling took hold that the earlier successes of the Duke of Marlborough in the Low Countries and southern Germany had been due to good fortune rather than to skill, and that Marshal Villeroi, having handled operations in the southern Netherlands rather well, should be able to continue to do so. The king’s grandson was in Madrid and securing his position satisfactorily, the treasury was under acute strain, however: tax revenue was insufficient to fund the war, and an end to that vast expense would be very welcome. It seemed in Versailles that the most propitious way to bring the allies to the negotiating table in the meekest frame of mind would be to attack them everywhere, and so demonstrate the continued vitality and strength of the French war effort. Instructions were sent out to French field commanders that they were to take the offensive on all fronts; reinforcements went to Marshal Tessé in Spain, Marshal Villars commanded energetically on the upper Rhine and achieved a success against imperial troops at Hagenau, while Marsin was active in the Moselle valley. Berwick had struck in the south, seizing Nice, while in northern Italy Vendôme achieved a victory over an imperial army on 19 April 1706. ‘He attacked the troops of Prince Eugene upon the heights of Calcinato, drove them before him, killed three thousand men, took twenty standards, ten pieces of cannon, and eight thousand prisoners.’15 Savoy, newest and most junior member of the Grand Alliance, was imperilled and isolated, ready to be picked off, so that the Duke of Marlborough, frustrated at the lack of progress in the Low Countries, even considered marching south to once more combine forces with Prince Eugene. ‘It seems to me,’ he wrote to Count Wratislaw, ‘high time to think seriously about this war in Italy. A war which employs so great a number of enemy troops, who would fall upon our backs everywhere.’¹⁶

It did not seem likely that the States-General would be at all enthusiastic over a proposal for Marlborough to go and campaign so far away as northern Italy. However, the defeat at Calcinato underlined the gravity of the imperial position in the region, and if the campaign in the Low Countries was to be just a repeat of the sterile events of 1705, and assuming that the Margrave of Baden would not throw off his inertia and move to threaten the French in the Moselle valley, then the far-off project was not so unrealistic as it might have appeared at first glance. The duke put the details to a few trusted confidantes at The Hague, but he wrote to Sidney Godolphin in London, ‘They are very positive, that they dare not consent to letting their own countrymen go.’¹⁷ There was no intention that Dutch troops would be expected to go so far away, so Marlborough was actually encouraged that the suggestion made was not immediately condemned out of hand. As it turned out, affairs would quicken dramatically in Brabant before very long and there would be no more talk of going to Italy with or without Eugene.

Marlborough was not at all optimistic of success in the Low Countries in the coming year, even though the States-General had given assurances that their generals would be more amenable to offensive action if the prospects for success were good. The allied army was still gathering for the coming campaign, and contingents of foreign troops – Hanoverian, Prussian and Danish – had yet to reach the appointed rendezvous, as their terms of service were still being discussed and alleged arrears of pay argued over. Queen Anne appealed to her brother-in-law the King of Denmark on 23 April 1706 that:

The Duke of Marlborough is projecting an important undertaking against the enemy, and the friendship which I have for you making me rely on your own, I hope that you will consent to allow Your Majesty’s troops now under the said General’s command, to march wherever he thinks best for the good of the service.18

The king was not immediately convinced, and the dispute over payment for the Danish troops rumbled on, even as the campaign opened.

In the meantime, Villeroi had received a number of letters from Louis XIV and the French Minister for War, urging him to get on with things and take the offensive against the allies. The Duc de St Simon wrote that:

The Marshal, piqued with these reiterated orders, which he considered as reflections upon his courage, determined to risk anything in order to satisfy the desire of the King. But the King did not wish this. At the same time that he wished for a battle in Flanders, he wished to place Villeroi in a state to fight it. He sent orders, therefore, to Marsin to take eighteen battalions and twenty squadrons of his army, to proceed to the Moselle, where he would find twenty others, and then to march with the whole into Flanders and join Marshal Villeroi.¹⁹

Louis XIV clearly understood that Villeroi needed this augmentation in bayonet strength before bringing on a general engagement; however, he also understood the rash bravery of a man of limited abilities anxious to prove his worth once more, and, St Simon went on: ‘He prohibited the latter from doing anything until this reinforcement reached him. Four couriers, one after the other, carried this prohibition to the Marshal; but he had determined to give battle without assistance, and he did so.’

Villeroi was concerned that Marlborough would move to attack the French-held fortress of Namur, and on 19 May 1706 he left his concentration area around Louvain and moved his 60,000-strong French, Walloon and Bavarian army to the southwards to take up a position on the low ridge-line near to the village of Ramillies. His march was reported to Marlborough almost immediately, and in response the allied commander brought his as yet still incomplete army south through Merdorp to take up a position on the same ridgeline. By doing so the duke expected to confront Vilereoi as he advanced, but the French commander got into position first. The march had been pressed at a good speed, although Villeroi made better time overall, but the duke delayed for a day to allow the Danish troops, both horse and foot, to come up from their cantonments, where they had orders not to join the campaign until their arrears of pay were settled. The valuable Prussian and Hanoverian contingents were still absent also, for disputes over the precise terms of their service remained unresolved.

On the morning of Sunday 23 May Marlborough with 62,000 troops found that Villeroi had established himself in a three-mile wide defensive position running from Taviers on the Mehaigne stream in the south to Autre-Église on the Petite Gheete stream in the north. ‘The position which he had taken up was one which was well known to be bad,’ St Simon remarked. ‘The late Marshal Luxembourg had declared it so, and had avoided it.’20 In fact, the ground chosen was both favourable and unfavourable whether for attack or defence, depending upon the way the battle was handled. The necessity to hold the outlying villages of Taviers and Autre-Église at either end of the ridge-line, extended the frontage Villeroi had to cover. However, the northern part of his position was marshy and difficult to cross which aided his defensive arrangements, while the wide open plain to the south of Ramillies village was ideal for the deployment of his numerous and well-equipped cavalry. On the other hand, as Marlborough approached from the east his flanks were at some risk of French envelopment from the troops in Taviers and Autre-Église, had Villeroi taken this bold course. Still, as he advanced on a narrower front the duke had the valuable ability of easily passing troops from one flank to another, ‘cutting across the chord of the arc’ as it were, while his opponent in responding would have to move troops the longer route around the outside of the curve. Marlborough was not discouraged by the marshy obstacles in the north of the field as he quite rightly saw that he would be able to pass infantry across them without too much difficulty. That confidence was in contradiction of earnest advice he had been given by his staff officers, but the duke had taken the chance to scout the ground the previous autumn, and as a result felt that the terrain was passable.

By early afternoon the armies were in place, and after a furious opening cannonade, Overkirk attacked with Dutch troops and secured Taviers in the south, while Marlborough pushed British and Danish infantry across the marshes of the Petite Gheete to the north. The fighting was heavy, but the Earl of Orkney managed to get his troops into the hamlet of Offuz to the north, before being recalled by Marlborough to support the attacks on Ramillies and the French cavalry to the south. Marshal Villeroi, however, was concerned at the risk posed by Orkney’s persistent attacks, and concentrated his attention and reserves in the northern part of the field, while his own cavalry to the south were being worn down by the repeated attacks of Dutch and Danish squadrons under the command of Overkirk. Too late Villeroi realised the danger, and as he attempted to re-deploy his reserves in the early evening to meet the escalating crisis on his right, the Danish cavalry put in a slashing flank attack that rolled up the opposing army from end to end. ‘The word sauve qui peut went through the great part [of the army],’ Irish soldier of fortune Peter Drake wrote, ‘and put all in confusion. Then might be seen whole brigades running in disorder.’21

Marshal Villeroi’s fine and well-equipped army was broken and trying only to find safety behind the shelter of the river Dyle. The beaten French and Bavarian commanders met by the light of flaming torches in the main square of Louvain that night, and all were agreed that after such a crushing defeat flight was the only course open to them. ‘We had the finest army in the world,’ the Elector of Bavaria wrote soon afterwards, ‘but the defeat is so great, and the terror that is in our troops so horrible, that I know not what the morrow will bring forth.’²² Huge quantities of stores and munitions were burned or dumped into the river Dyle, or abandoned to the pursing allied cavalry, and the defeated army, in little form or order, withdrew to the westwards as hastily as possible. Villeroi announced the defeat to Versailles in courtly terms: ‘I have the honour to inform your Majesty of the unlucky day of the 23rd … Our right wing had been absolutely defeated.’²³ The scale of the losses suffered, it was soon found, was simply staggering, both in terms of men, guns, stores, territory and, irretrievably, French prestige and morale. Marlborough wrote to his wife the next day to let her know of the victory, and in passing, of his remarkable escape when a French roundshot just missed him:

On Sunday last we fought, and that God Almighty has been pleased to give us a victory. I must leave the particulars to this bearer Colonel Richards, for having been on horseback all Sunday, and after the battle marching all night, my head aches to that degree, that it is very uneasy to me to write. Poor Bringfield, holding my stirrup for me, and helping me on horseback, was killed. I am told he leaves his wife and mother in a poor condition.24

Marlborough’s victorious troops were in close pursuit, and there was no chance for the French to recover their poise short of abandoning large areas of valuable territory, and important towns such as Louvain, Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges and (after a stiff fight and bombardment) the valuable port of Ostend. Overkirk’s notification of the success to the States-General ran, ‘It has pleased Almighty God to grant your Arms and those of your allies a complete and perfect victory over our enemies.’²⁵ It was commented that it seemed that the allied army had just thrown itself upon an unlatched door and simply fallen through. Marlborough was able to go on and lay siege to Menin, Ath and Dendermonde and soon his army stood on the very borders of northern France, having captured almost the whole of the immensely valuable Spanish Netherlands in a few short weeks. Major John Blackader, campaigning with his regiment in Flanders, wrote that ‘towns that we thought would have endured a long siege are giving up and yielding without a stroke … What the French got in a night by stealth at the King of Spain’s death they have lost again in a day.’²⁶ The speed and scale of Marlborough’s advance after the victory was breathtaking, and even the duke seemed to be astonished by its extent, writing on 31 May to the Duchess: ‘So many towns have submitted since the battle, that it really looks more like a dream than the truth.’²⁷

Understandably, Villeroi was held to blame for this disaster to both French interests in north-western Europe and to the French claimant in Madrid, who had now lost one of the most valuable parts of the Spanish empire with its vast tax revenues and recruiting potential. ‘In this way, with the exception of Namur, Mons and a very few other places, all the Spanish Low Countries were lost.’ St Simon recalled.28 In the face of such astonishing events, the civic authorities in the region promptly and prudently declared their allegiance to the Habsburg claimant, Archduke Charles. Despite such utter defeat, Villeroi proved reluctant to relinquish his command, and at last Louis XIV had to announce that his old friend had resigned. The marshal was kindly received on his return to Versailles, but was never entrusted with a field command again. ‘We have not been fortunate in Flanders’, the King wrote with masterly understatement to his grandson in Madrid.²⁹ Villeroi was replaced by the Duc de Vendôme, fresh from his successes in Italy. French troops were brought in from distant garrisons and far-off campaigns to make good the losses suffered at Ramillies, and Marshal Villars’ gains on the Rhine at Hagenau, attempts to recover Landau and operations in Italy were all abandoned or put at risk by this necessary diversion of effort. The psychological shock of such a defeat could not readily be made good, however, and the lasting effect of such complete and astonishing success as Marlborough had achieved was profound.

For the Dutch the victory at Ramillies gave them perhaps their most cherished aim, the restoration of the Barrier against the French – those towns so carelessly stripped away from them by Louis XIV five years earlier. For Archduke Charles, his prospects brightened immeasurably, and he could now look to establish his own administration in the southern Netherlands. This inevitably caused a degree of friction with the Dutch who, in addition to expecting to garrison their Barrier Towns once more, hoped to recoup some of the enormous cost of the war that they had incurred so far by taxing the populace. The archduke, understandably, saw those same tax revenues as belonging to him, and hoped to use those same monies raised to defray some of his own considerable expenses. Marlborough was also reluctant to see Ostend designated as a part of the Barrier, as this valuable port gave him direct access to southern England for both communication and supply, and he preferred to see the place firmly in the hands of British soldiers. In actual fact, had sober and well-measured counsels prevailed, it might now have been realised, that the parties to the Grand Alliance had attained what they set out to achieve. ‘The Treaty of Grand Alliance of September 1701 does not bind the allies to recover Spain and the Spanish Americas from Philip, but only to obtain security and compensation for his kingship.’30 How far four years of bitter war had carried the main parties forward in their intentions, with only one additional clause entered in 1703, that to ensure a Protestant succession to the throne in London. The treaty with Portugal, of course, had largely been based on the attempt to install Archduke Charles as the king in Madrid, but that arrangement was subsidiary to the aims of the main treaty of alliance. The aims had changed, to fit circumstances for the involvement of Portugal and the Protestant succession, and could presumably change again to mutual benefit. The key point seemed to go unnoticed, that the main aim of the alliance, to divide the Spanish empire, had now been achieved.

The destruction of one of Louis XIV’s main field armies at Blenheim in 1704 had stripped him of the ability to manoeuvre strategically, impose his will on others by force and win the war outright – such losses could not easily be made good. The subsequent destruction of another army, at Ramillies two years later, was nothing short of a catastrophe for the French cause, and in effect the king had lost the war – he could only now fight on the defensive, and hope for as good a peace as could be obtained by negotiation. To that end, he could still mount local offensive campaigns, but the empire that his grandson had inherited from Carlos II was now de facto divided and, barring some inexplicable and very unlikely error by the allies, likely to remain so. The archduke had possession of the southern Netherlands and much of Italy, the Dutch regained their Barrier, while British trade would benefit from the crippled state of the French and Spanish navies and the grip Queen Anne’s troops had on Gibraltar. Philip V would remain in Madrid, certainly, but his removal was not an aim of the alliance as originally agreed, and there was no realistic prospect of a union of the crowns of France and Spain, so that any lingering concern on that score was largely manufactured. Louis XIV had plenty of legitimate heirs without having to involve his second grandson. Any such a union would have been absurdly impracticable anyway. Madrid had no intention of being ruled from Versailles, even allowing for present French influence at the Spanish court, while there was no prospect that France would ever be subordinate to a king in Madrid.

A good peace, carefully negotiated and to mutual benefit, was surely at hand, but a measure of how far opinion had changed was seen in a letter sent by the Duke of Marlborough to Antonius Heinsius, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, on 10 September 1706:

I must be of the opinion of my country, that both by treaty and interest we are obliged to preserve the monarchy of Spain entire. At the same time, as a friend, I must acknowledge that I believe France can hardly be brought to a peace, unless something is given to the Duke of Anjou. (Author’s own italics)31

The duke was far from being alone in taking this line, but the whole approach, of imposing a settlement and perhaps scattering a few favours, was a significant error on the part of the Grand Alliance. This misjudgement of the nature of the French king, his robust people, and also his increasingly strong-willed grandson in Madrid would cost dearly.

With the opening of the campaign in Italy in April 1706, Prince Eugene had made his way from Vienna to join the army, only to learn that the Duc de Vendôme had inflicted a severe defeat on the troops commanded in his absence by Graf Reventlau, in a costly battle at Calcinato. With typical energy, Eugene drew his battered army together again and re-established order and discipline, managing to maintain his troops as effective in the field in a remarkably short time after the defeat. Of Reventlau’s failure on the day, the prince mildly commented that is showed that ‘not everyone can command an army’.³² Eugene was now to face two armies rather than just one, for Louis XIV had decided that Vendôme should keep Eugene at bay, while Marshal de la Feuillade (‘very young and inexperienced’ according to St Simon)³³ attacked Turin, defended by only the remnant of Victor-Amadeus’s army and some 7,000 Imperial troops commanded by Graf von Daun. By the second week in May 1706 the French investment of Turin was complete with formal lines of contravallation and circumvallation being constructed.³⁴ Victor-Amadeus had left the city with 6,000 Savoyard cavalry just before the investment was complete, and conducted a well-directed and skilful campaign with this small army to delay and frustrate the French operations. La Feuillade pursued the duke into the Luserna valley, neglecting to press forward the siege instead, but for all the marching and counter-marching that was involved could not bring him to battle.

Vendôme took up a defensive posture on the river Adige, constructing stout earthworks to improve his positions stretching south and eastwards from Verona, and there seemed little likelihood that Eugene would have the strength to break through to relieve Turin. At the end of May, however, news came in of the catastrophe for French arms at Ramillies in the southern Netherlands, and the wholesale destruction of Marshal Villeroi’s army at the hands of the Duke of Marlborough. An urgent command soon came from Versailles summoning Vendôme north, to take up the command in Flanders and to try and save something from the wreck in that region. The shocking defeat for France at Ramillies also steadied the nerves of Venice and other Italian states, who no longer saw any advantage in allying themselves to Louis XIV and his fading fortunes, or forming an armed league against the allies.

Map 5: Prince Eugene’s march to relieve Turin, May–September 1706.

With such distractions, and Vendôme’s mind perhaps elsewhere, the conduct of the French campaign in northern Italy sagged noticeably. Early in July Eugene got his 30,000-strong army across the Adige at Rovigo, a good forty miles downstream from Verona, and by crossing the river Po near to Ferrara neatly outflanked the waiting French army holding the line of the river. ‘Prince Eugene will not be able to disturb the siege of Turin,’ Vendôme wrote to Versailles with remarkably misplaced confidence, ‘we have too many positions in which to stop him, for his ever dreaming of bringing relief.’35 He now had to leave his army headquarters and hurry north to new responsibilities, and Marshal Ferdinand Marsin, who had fought so hard and so well at Blenheim two years earlier, came from the Moselle to assume the command of the French army covering the operations against Turin. He had to withdraw towards Cremona to avoid being outflanked by Eugene’s march. The progress of the imperial army was both rapid and impressive, given the general lack of supplies and money, and much of the marching was done at night to shield the toiling soldiers from exertions in the withering heat of an Italian summer. The prince kept to the south of the river Po, with that obstacle between his army and any attempt by the French to come and interrupt his progress. A chance to strike at the advance of Eugene’s army was missed, and the Duc de St Simon recalled that:

An intercepted letter, in cipher, from Prince Eugene to the Emperor, which fell into our hands proved, subsequently, that this course would have been the right one to adopt; but the proof came too late; the deciphering table having been forgotten at Versailles.³⁶

Frustrating as this may have been, whether the superficially useful information could have been gleaned and then passed on to Marshal Marsin to put into action before the Imperial army had moved on must be in some doubt. In any case, Reggio was passed by Eugene’s marching troops on 14 August, and Piacenza five days later, all without hindrance from Marsin, whose attention was distracted by the arrival at Verona of a 4,000-strong contingent of Hessian reinforcements for Eugene’s army. The river Tonora was crossed above Allessandia, and on 1 September 1706 Prince Eugene and Victor-Amadeus joined forces at Villa Stelloni about twenty miles to the south of the besieged city of Turin. This was a remarkable military achievement, likened to and ranking with Marlborough’s march to the Danube in 1704. It was accomplished by Prince Eugene with daring and skilful flair, in marching around the flank of a larger enemy army, keeping them at arm’s length along the route of a forced march some 150 miles long, with precarious supplies and no hope of assistance if the army was opposed by any substantial formed body of troops at any one point on the route. The initiative in the whole campaign in northern Italy now lay with the allies – a remarkable turn-around in fortune over the previous six months.

The young Duc d’Orleans, nephew of Louis XIV and therefore a Prince of the Blood, had arrived at Turin on 28 August to lend a hand in the siege. His presence, as on other notable occasions, was in fact a distraction, as there was nothing really for him to do but he was bound to be attended to on account of his rank and standing at Versailles. Orleans was nominally in command of the operations but the actual command lay with La Feuillade and Marsin, neither of whom seemed inclined to harken to his advice and comments nor really to each other. Given Orleans’ lack of military experience, despite his well-intentioned suggestions, this neglect to grip the command problem presented to the two marshals is not all that surprising. Despite their superior numbers, French operations were now dragging as the initiative was so clearly lost to them, and on the 4 September Eugene began to cross the river Po to take up a position near Pianezza; his forward troops were now less than three miles from the beleaguered defences of the city. Two days later the prince moved to threaten the portion of the French siege works, the outward-facing lines of circumvallation, that had still not been completed on the western side of Turin. The Duc d’Orleans urged that the siege be suspended so that the army could concentrate to meet Eugene’s advance, but Marsin brushed the comment aside, and pointedly reminded him that he had no authority over the conduct of the siege operations.

The most critical stage in a formal siege was now reached, a stage that should by any measure, and with a degree of careful planning, have been avoided. The army investing the fortress, and quite rightly directing its attentions to that onerous task, relied implicitly upon the covering army to keep any opposing force, whose intention must be to relieve the garrison in the fortress, firmly at a safe distance. The French commanders had failed to accomplish this essential task, Eugene was close at hand and the success of the siege, as a result, hung in the balance.

A general attack was ordered by the prince on 7 September 1706, and at a third attempt Prussian troops broke through the French position on the right. Eugene recalled that:

The right wing was at first repulsed, because it could not attack as soon as the left. Anhalt [Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau] set all to rights again with his brave Prussian infantry, and I at the head of some squadrons. For an hour and a half some advantages were gained on either side; it was a carnage but not a battle. Our troops at length leaped into the entrenchments of the French, but threw themselves into disorder in the pursuit … In rallying the latter, one of my pages and a valet de chamber were killed behind me, and my horse, wounded with a carbine shot, threw me into a ditch.37

Marsin was, as he had predicted, mortally wounded in the fighting, and Orleans was wounded in two places.³⁸ Eugene wrote that if the Marshal ‘had come out to the attack me first, and to turn [outflank] me, I should have been a good deal embarrassed’.³⁹ Count von Daun successfully sallied out from the defences to meet the relieving army, and in the process the siege was utterly broken. The Marquis de Langallerie, who fought under Eugene that day, recalled that:

By Noon the victory was entirely ours, and the city entirely delivered, for the Enemy abandoned the Attack, and all their Camp retired with the remains of their Army to the other side of the Po. The rest of the day was spent in taking several Cassines and Redoubts possessed by the Enemy, who all yielded themselves Prisoners of War, and his Royal Highness [Victor-Amadeus] entered triumphantly his Capital that evening.⁴⁰

Prince Eugene remembered the marquis well, describing him rather cuttingly as ‘imprudent, who turned out ill, but to whom I was then much attached for bravery and intelligence’.⁴¹

The day of battle had been costly, with some 9,000 French casualties, including many unwounded prisoners, and 5,000 allied killed and wounded. Marshal Marsin lay dying, and the Duc d’Orleans would have withdrawn towards Lombardy to draw support from the many French held fortresses in the region, but the road was barred. Instead the battered French army, its commanders despairing of continuing the struggle and leaving behind their valuable siege train, fell back towards the French frontier and effectively abandoned the campaign in Italy. An officer who took part in the flight of the French troops wrote to a friend of ‘the disorder in which they fought the battle of Turin, and the confusion that prevailed among us when we turned our backs on an army, which, even after the engagement, was greatly inferior to ours. I shall draw a veil over this disagreeable scene’.42

Prince Eugene elatedly remarked to Victor-Amadeus, on hearing the inexplicable direction that the French retreat took, that ‘Italy is ours, Cousin’.⁴³ The result of this remarkable campaign, the weight of which had mostly lain on the shoulders of the prince, was that Vienna was from that point onwards able to virtually ignore French and Spanish interests, and dictate affairs in Italy pretty well as it saw fit. Eugene, despite nursing a head wound and numerous grazes and bruises from his fall sustained during the battle, wrote to the Duke of Marlborough on the evening of the day of victory, giving due thanks for the financial support that he had obtained, and the influence used to ensure that reinforcements of German troops had been sent south to join the campaign in good time:

You have had so great a share of it by the succours you have procured, that you must permit me to thank you again. Marshal Marsin is taken prisoner and mortally wounded. The troops have greatly signalized themselves. In a few days I will send you a correct account; and in the meantime refer you to that which you will hear from the bearer of this letter [the Baron de Hohendorff], who is well informed, has seen everything, and is competent to give you an accurate relation.⁴⁴

The political impact for the allied cause of the twin victories in 1706 was profound. The loss of the southern Netherlands, with its large tax-gathering potential, and defeat in strategically important northern Italy, were a severe shock for Louis XIV and his grandson. The costs incurred by the king’s treasury in sustaining the war, both for France and in large measure for Spain were staggering, while the prospects for recovery in both theatres of war appeared very slim.

There had, however, been a corresponding lack of success for the alliance elsewhere, most particularly in Spain despite the successful holding of Valencia and Catalonia, but also on the Rhine where Villars had held firm, and in Hungary where rebellion against imperial authority smouldered on under the direction of Prince Rakoczy. This running sore in the side of the imperial war effort might have been settled, but the success at Ramillies in May 1706 had seemed to stiffen the resolve on the emperor’s advisers in Vienna, and Rakoczy wrote to the Duke of Marlborough that ‘we are affected here through the insupportable arrogance which your rapid conquests breed in the hearts of the imperial Ministers’.45 Emperor Joseph, however, would have none of this and declared that he would give up both Spain and Italy sooner than part with any part of Hungary or Transylvania. With so much achieved in the campaigns that year, and the southern Netherlands comfortably in allied hands, thoughts and concerns in Vienna turned to the east, and the attention of Austria from then onwards was never so devoted to the wider common cause of the Grand Alliance as before.

Holland had regained its Barrier against future French aggression, Austria had substantial gains in Italy and the Low Countries, and Savoy was secure, while Britain firmly held Gibraltar, and the allies were in possession of a large part of eastern Spain, with their cruising squadrons dominating much of the Mediterranean, so that the Maritime Powers could count expanded trade in the region amongst their rewards. The division of the old Spanish empire was in practice achieved, France was smitten, and French power and prestige demonstrably weakened by repeated failure on the field of battle – Louis XIV would not again be able to dominate affairs as he had been used to do. On the face of things, the Grand Alliance had won the war militarily, and now it just had to win the peace. In this task the allies proved incompetent; with so much gained, the argument ran, and France so apparently prostrated, nothing that was demanded would not be meekly delivered up by Louis XIV and his grandson. These were the fatal judgements of politicians and diplomats settled in comfortable chambers far removed from anything that reeked remotely of a field of battle. A gross miscalculation was made, that ensured that the war had to go on, when with judicious negotiation, it might have now been brought to a conclusion. This was a significant error, and what might have been had cheaply by judicious negotiation was instead arrogantly demanded and consequently thrown away.

Negotiations were opened confidentially to find a means to conclude a peace satisfactory to all parties, but these made little progress with the ambitions of the allies now so greatly inflated by their successes, even though the original aims of the Treaty of Grand Alliance were pretty well obtained. However, great success breeds exorbitant ambition, and the talk in Parliament in London was increasingly that there could be ‘No Peace without Spain’ and that Archduke Charles must be placed on the throne in Madrid, and Philip V deposed. Plainly this was only likely to be done if there was military success on the field in Spain, and so far the allies had found this to be elusive. This had not even been an objective of the Grand Alliance when it was formed, and proved to be a fatal and ultimately unattainable extension of war aims.