Authors: Richard Holmes
As the year went on it became evident that missed and irregular periods denoted, not the chance of giving birth to another son, but the menopause. Jealous (and unfounded) suspicion that the queen was herself pregnant may have contributed to Sarah’s refusal to return to London to visit Anne early in 1703, although in fairness she was so deeply distressed at the time that she would not even see her daughters. Early in 1704 her relationship with Marlborough was to break down almost completely. She accused him of infidelity, and he repeatedly wrote to ask what cause she had to treat him as badly as she did. This is creaky ice for a male historian to wander out on, but some comfort may be taken from the fact that Iris Butler suggests, in
Rule of Three
, that sexual jealousy and suspicion of a much-loved partner are common symptoms of women in menopausal age.
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All this did not simply affect Sarah’s dealings with her husband, but with Queen Anne too. Sarah spent much of 1703 at Holywell or at Windsor Lodge in the Great Park, and did not even appear at court during Prince George’s illness that autumn. She deluged the queen with what Gregg calls ‘long epistles packed with her own political views’, and in May that year ostentatiously called the queen ‘your Majesty’ in a letter provoking Anne to ask her if anything was wrong. However, Anne still gave her right of refusal when the employment of a maid of honour was being considered. Later that month, when Marlborough, stuck fast in a campaign that was mired by political squabbles, and still conscious of the collapse of his dynastic hopes, first talked of resigning, Anne responded with a warm declaration of support.
The thoughts that both my dear Mrs Freeman & Mr Freeman seem to have of retiring give me no small uneasiness & therefore I must say something on the subject, it is no wonder at all people in your posts should be weary of the world … but give me leave to say, that you should at least consider your faithful friends and poor country, which must be ruined if you should ever put your melancholy thoughts in execution, as for your poor unfortunate Morley she could not bear it, for if you should forsake me, I would have nothing more to do with the world, but make another abdication, for what is a crown, when the support of it is gone. I will never forsake your dear self, Mr Freeman nor Mr Montgomery [Godolphin], but always be your constant faithful servant till death mows us down with his impartial hand.
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Anne prorogued her first Parliament at the end of February 1703, and then promoted the Marquess of Normanby (who made his first appearance in these pages as Earl Mulgrave, James II’s lord chamberlain) to be Duke of Buckingham, and created four new Tory peers to give their party a working majority in the Lords. She also yielded to Sarah’s request to make the Whig John Hervey a baron, the only time, so Sarah claimed, that a peer was created simply to please her. Sarah’s letters returned to their familiar theme: that the Tories were simply closet Jacobites. Anne replied, on 11 June, with a measured defence of the Tory role in the Glorious Revolution and the Act of Settlement, and although she admitted that some High Tories were undoubtedly Jacobites, the same could not be said for most of them. Sarah intensified her attack on the Tories in general and Buckingham in particular, and tried to enlist the support of both Godolphin and her husband.
Sarah tried to get Anne to take action over the allegedly incorrect boundaries of the new house Buckingham was building, which was to become the nucleus of Buckingham Palace. She joined a royal visit to Bath rather late in proceedings, and was roundly rebuked by the queen when she complained about a new treaty of alliance with Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, who had once deserted William III. Parliament met again in early November, and there was more tension when the Tories made a second attempt to pass an Occasional Conformity Bill, which would have made life more difficult for those Dissenters who avoided legal discrimination by their ‘occasional conformity’ to the Church of England. Anne generally favoured the Bill, as she thought that it would strengthen the Church, though she supported her Lutheran husband’s right to oppose it. It was probably Prince George’s example that encouraged some wavering peers to stay away when the vote was taken. The Tories were furious with Anne, and could not understand how Prince George had absented himself without his wife’s support. Marlborough and Godolphin both voted for the Bill, for they could not afford to affront the moderate Tories, upon whose support they relied to secure subsidies with which to continue the war. Yet both were delighted to see it fail.
At home, then, the year 1703 had seen a shift in Sarah’s relationship with the queen, subtle, perhaps, but a portent of what was to come. It had also seen Sarah become increasingly extreme in her denunciation of the Tories despite specific warnings from Anne, a confirmed supporter of what she, devout as ever, saw as the Church party. Godolphin was still able to manage Parliament to his advantage, but the Tories had become noticeably stronger. These were gentle judders, not seismic shifts, and they might have been counteracted by a major success on the battlefield. Yet that is precisely what eluded Marlborough in the 1703 campaign.
The year began just as badly for the Grand Alliance as it did for the Churchill family. Maximilian Emmanuel, Elector of Bavaria and so ruler of the largest and best-armed state in southern Germany, had been a member of the Grand Alliance, and governor of the Spanish Netherlands on behalf of his father-in-law the emperor, in the previous war. However, he had now developed the idea of his own Wittelsbach family competing with the Hapsburgs for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, and decided to side with Louis XIV. His defection, accompanied by his
seizure of Ulm, opened up a new front deep in Germany, and encouraged Louis to make his main effort in the south that year. Marshal Villars was to besiege and capture Kehl, just across the Rhine from Strasbourg, with his manoeuvres covered from the Imperialists by another army under Marshal Tallard in the Lines of Stollhofen, field fortifications covering the gap between the middle Rhine and the Black Forest.
In the Low Countries, Villeroi now had about 60,000 men behind the River Mehaigne, threatening Maastricht, and more in a long line of field fortifications known as the Lines of Brabant, running all the way from Namur to Antwerp, making good use of the river systems, notably the Dyle as it curved between Leau and Tongres. Brigadier the comte de Mérode-Westerloo, who had been born in the Netherlands as a vassal of the Spanish crown and whose Walloon regiment now fought for the French, described the Lines as being
of prodigious extent, stretching all the way from the Meuse to the Scheldt and thence to the sea, [and] were to my way of thinking more profitable to the purses of the engineers who built them than for the country they were supposed to protect; they really represented a scarecrow for little birds, providing a pretext for those who wished to halt and do nothing. How could anyone guard such an extended system of defences?
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Marlborough, on his way back home the previous year, had told Godolphin that the Dutch and British needed to raise another 20,000 men between them, and this was indeed the total agreed in a treaty signed at The Hague the following March. Parliament consented to bear its share of the augmentation only if the Dutch agreed to give up trade with France. Marlborough told Heinsius that he wished ‘the troops had been given without any condition’, but begged him to persuade the Estates- General to comply, as ‘I tremble to think of the consequences that may happen, if this should occasion any coldness between England and Holland.’
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In practice the troops, four-fifths of them hired from German states, had been obtained before the Dutch actually agreed to suspend trade for a year. In April Marlborough lamented that the French success in southern Germany meant that ‘You can have no troops from any prince in Germany but by paying dearly for them, and that they at the same time expect to be protected by your army.’
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The Allies met at Wesel, on the Rhine, to discuss strategy in early March. Marlborough had not yet arrived from England, and was
represented by Lieutenant General Cutts. Anthonie Heinsius told Marlborough that Cutts would be able to fill in the plan’s detail, but briefed him on its outlines. The Allies would besiege Bonn, where Prince Louis of Baden already commanded an Allied detachment, and then do something unspecified in Flanders or Brabant. He added that the effort would demand all the British and Dutch troops that could be made available. The scheme was fleshed out after Marlborough arrived: the capture of Bonn would be followed by a large-scale attempt on Antwerp.
It is clear from this that the general scheme was not Marlborough’s, as Winston S. Churchill suggests, but it is perfectly possible that its refinement into the Antwerp design was. He certainly did not favour the attack on Bonn, but told Godolphin that the Allies had made ‘so much noise’ about it that ‘I think it would be scandalous to avoid the making of it now.’
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On 27 April he wrote from the Allied siege lines before Bonn, where he had taken personal charge of operations, to tell Heinsius ‘that Antwerp is a greater security to the States than any other conquest that might be made’. However, he prefaced this with the warning that news from Paris suggested that the French saw Bonn as ‘but a feint’ and were taking steps to reinforce Antwerp. If they applied their whole strength to the place it might be impossible for him to take it.
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Marlborough hoped to be master of Bonn by the end of May, before the French were in the field, though a strong covering force under the Dutch field marshal Hendrik van Nassau, Heer van Ouwerkerk (‘Overkirk’ to his British allies) had been pushed forward between Liège and Maastricht in case Villeroi stirred early.
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Villeroi, his army far bigger than Overkirk’s, did indeed move sooner than expected, falling on two Allied battalions, one British and one Dutch, at Tongres on 8 May. This little garrison held out for a day before being forced to surrender, but the defence of Tongres gave Overkirk time to concentrate under the guns of Maastricht, ‘where he entrenched himself’, as Robert Parker tells us.
Notwithstanding this Villeroi advanced to attack us, and began to cannonade us with great fury; but the cannon of the town, of our camp, and of the Fort of Petersburg, soon made him weary of that work, and obliged him to retire; and upon hearing of the approach of the Duke, he made what haste he could to get within his lines.
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Marlborough offered good terms to the garrison of Bonn to ensure its surrender on 15 May, and then marched to join Overkirk, compelling Villeroi to scuttle away.
The fall of Bonn and the relief of Overkirk’s force left the Allies free to embark upon their Great Design against Antwerp. Marlborough would certainly have agreed with Mérode-Westerloo’s assessment of the Lines of Brabant. The French were not powerful enough to be strong everywhere, and the key to Allied success would lie in concentrating against a chosen point, in this case Antwerp, while manoeuvring elsewhere to prevent the French from reacting to the real threat. This use of manoeuvre in order to unbalance the enemy was an important ingredient of Marlborough’s battlefield tactics, with Ramillies as the outstanding example of its success. The method’s execution on a large scale, however, hinged on the prompt and unquestioning obedience of orders which must inevitably travel by courier, allowing Marlborough little opportunity for personal intervention with Allied generals who had not yet come to trust him. Moreover, the Allies had to communicate via exterior lines stretched around the great bend of the Dyle, while the French could use interior lines to move directly to any point.
The French defenders of the Lines of Brabant consisted of Villeroi and Boufflers, with sixty battalions and 110 squadrons, in the west, and Count Bedmar, with fifty battalions and ten squadrons, most of them Spanish and spread out in small garrisons, in the east: a small force covered the centre of the Lines. The Allied plan was certainly bold. The attack on Antwerp would be carried out by General Jacob van Wassenaer, Heer von Wassenaer en Obdam (‘Opdam’ to the British), an experienced Dutch officer who had been promoted full general the previous year. His force would be strengthened by fourteen battalions, released by the fall of Bonn, which would travel by river round to Bergen op Zoom, while another six battalions and fourteen squadrons marched by land. Dutch garrisons in the east would be reduced to strengthen Opdam still further. On 19 May Marlborough wrote to Opdam from Maastricht, saying that he had done his best to ensure that The Hague understood the need to send as many troops as possible to Bergen op Zoom, and begging him to apply pressure of his own.
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While the Allied field army under Marlborough, with sixty battalions and 130 squadrons, fixed Villeroi in the east so as to prevent him from helping Bedmar, the venerable siege expert Menno van Coehoorn was to move along the Flanders coast to besiege Ostend, presenting Bedmar with a conflict of priorities. On 23 May, with Villeroi duly fixed near Hannef, Marlborough wrote a long and diplomatic letter to Coehoorn, assuring him that ‘I know your experience, your zeal and your good judgement too well not to trust it entirely,’ but stressing that the siege of
Antwerp could not begin until Coehoorn had first attacked Ostend.
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However, he informed Godolphin that he was very worried that Coehoorn would not in fact besiege Ostend as agreed, but would instead make a ‘diversion’ in Flanders ‘which will not oblige them [the French] to make any great detachment’. He believed that Coehoorn simply hoped to force the northern end of the Lines to raise money, ‘for as he is the governor of Dutch Flanders he has the tenth of all the contributions’.
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This was not an unreasonable view, for the Dutch themselves were concerned at Coehoorn’s attitude. On 25 June Jacob Hop, the Dutch treasurer general, warned that ‘It seems that we cannot justify the conduct of M. Coehoorn, if he pretends to dispute the command of the army in Flanders with his superior [Opdam],’ though he agreed that ‘It would be irritating enough for a governor of Flanders … to have the honour and profit’ of the operation taken from him.
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