Authors: Richard Holmes
The achievement of Marlborough’s foot resonated down the ages, and a British officer writing in 1743 told how: ‘Our people imitated their predecessors in the late war gloriously, marching in close order, and still kept advancing; for when the smoke blew off a little, instead of being among their living we found the dead in heaps by us: and the second fire turned them to the right about, and upon a long trot.’
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Platoon firing was the business of Marlburian infantry, and one can almost see them now in the cornfields bordering the Danube, three ranks locked solid, silken colours catching the sun, with the first warning ruffle from the colonel’s drummer picked up by drummers along the line, and then those drawling voices, from Cork and Canterbury and Cumberland: ‘First firing, make ready. Present. Fire!’ Men were already beginning to speak of the canine courage of the British foot, cold resolution coupled with extraordinary ferocity, an impression heightened by their practice of barking out three sharp hurrahs before pressing in with bayonet and butt to take advantage of the damage done by their fire. Many opponents did not care to await their arrival.
If Marlborough believed that firepower was the essence of infantry, he argued that shock action was the soul of cavalry, and trained his horse to eschew squibbing off pistols or carbines before impact, but to charge home at the sort of ‘good round trot’ that Cromwell’s Ironsides had delivered. This was considerably slower than charges would be a century later, when they were delivered ‘at the utmost speed of the slowest horse’. Marlborough’s method, however, ensured a high degree of control, and at Blenheim Captain Parker and Marshal Tallard both watched, one with elation and the other with growing gloom, the flower of the
Maison du Roi
being seen off by British horse.
Cannon, such a nuisance on the line of march, were generally too cumbersome to move easily about the battlefield. They were usually sited where they could do most damage in the early stages, grouped in small batteries in the battle line. Knowing commanders might clump some of their guns on a suitable piece of high ground: a well-sited sixteen-gun Bavarian battery at Lutzingen helped prop up the Franco-Bavarian left flank at Blenheim. Roundshot, an iron cannonball which spread death and destruction by bounding through the enemy’s ranks, was the most common projectile, and there was widespread agreement that no cannon, whatever its calibre, could usefully be employed at a target more than a thousand yards away. Although there were by now a few howitzers about, which fired explosive shells, their primitive fuses and the unreliable casting of their shells meant that they were often rather patchy in their effect. Gunners who lobbed their shells over friendly units would tend to receive forcefully expressed suggestions that they should do something more harmful to the foe and less dangerous to their friends.
In contrast, canister, multiple shot loaded in box, bag or tin, or strapped to a wooden plug the size of the bore, was a real killer. Its range was limited, perhaps three hundred yards at the most, but it could do terrible damage to packed formations at this distance. Canister was the most effective projectile for ‘regimental pieces’, light guns which kept pace with the infantry, fired from the intervals between battalions and, in their noisy and destructive way, foreshadowed the use of machine-guns two centuries on.
If armies fought in line, they moved in column. The easiest way of deploying from the latter to the former was simply to march onto the field with units destined for the right of the line at the head of the column, to order a right wheel at some suitable point, and then, when the whole army had completed the wheel, to halt it, and order it to turn left into line: this was essentially what the French did at Ramillies. If this was the simplest method of deploying it was easily the least satisfactory, for it required sufficient space to form the whole army up in column of route, a suitable approach on one flank of the field, and time to complete the whole manoeuvre without interference.
We do not use the expression ‘give battle’ for nothing, for an army in column could usually move faster than an opponent in line. The surest way of avoiding contact with an enemy wheeling into line with all the martial glory of drum ruffles, officers shouting beautifully articulated orders and earnest but profane sergeants urging men to step very, very
short on the inner flank, was to march off apace, leaving a few dragoons to hold suitable defiles on the line of withdrawal. It was far better, if the terrain and one’s training permitted it, to enter the field in a number of parallel columns. These could still deploy into line by wheeling, but for the best-trained there were more complex procedures available, like the deployment
en tiroir
as units down the column slid out of it to one side or the other, like drawers being pulled out of a chest.
Moving from column into line was always a delicate business, especially if there was a natural obstacle in the way, and the problem for the Allies at Blenheim was that they would reach the Nebel in column and then deploy only after they had crossed it, at their most vulnerable at the very moment that they entered a plateau filled with foes. What Marlborough’s reconnaissance on 12 August had almost certainly revealed was that along much of Tallard’s front the Nebel was invisible from his campsites. Tallard was certainly right to tell Chamillart that pushing a battery forward to cover the main crossing would have been a good idea, and just as correct to admit that his main line of defence, between Blenheim and the Nebel, was too far back from the obstacle. On the Allied right Eugène was not as fortunate, and this simple piece of geography helped make the battle on his flank a good deal harder than it was for Marlborough on the left, and helps explain why, in essence, there was to be a fixing battle on the Allied right and a striking battle on the left.
The soldiers of the Allied army rose without beat of drum just after midnight on 13 August and, leaving their tents standing, moved out through the Schwenningen defile into the plain, fanning out into eight columns as they did so, with the brigade which had held Schwenningen overnight forming a ninth. Forty squadrons of cavalry screened the advance. Robert Parker recalled that the march started ‘by break of day’, and at about 6 a.m., well after first light, Marlborough held a brief conference with his generals near Schwenningen, and paid particular attention to the advice of Major General Dubislaw von Natzmer, a Prussian cavalry officer who had been with Count Styrum’s force when it was beaten at Höchstädt the previous year, and who knew the ground. Eugène’s wing, meanwhile, marched on, along the edge of the forest bordering the plain, while Marlborough’s approached the Nebel.
The comte de Mérode-Westerloo, in command of the right wing of Tallard’s second line, did not much like the Franco-Bavarian position. He thought that with its left on Lutzingen and its right on the Danube
it was far too wide: by pushing the whole line forward, so that the left was on the woods,
we could have held a far more compact position, with our right still on the Danube … and our centre more concentrated. There we could have drawn up three if not four lines of infantry, one behind the other, with our ninety-four guns to the fore, and three or four lines of cavalry to support them in the rear.
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However, on the night of the twelfth – thirteenth, Mérode-Westerloo ‘sat down to a good hot plate of soup in Blenheim with my generals and colonels’ and retired to his camp bed, which had been set up in a barn on the edge of the village, for a good night’s sleep.
He was awakened by his head groom at six in the morning.
The fellow, Lefranc, shook me awake and blurted out that the enemy were there. Thinking to mock him, I asked ‘Where? There?’ and he at once replied, ‘Yes – there – there!’ flinging wide as he spoke the door of the barn and drawing my bed-curtains. The door opened straight onto the fine, sunlit plain beyond – and the whole area appeared to be covered by enemy squadrons. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief, and then coolly remarked that the foe must at least give me time to take my morning cup of chocolate.
He rode out as soon as he could, accompanied by his two aides de camp and sixteen spare chargers, and went to the camp, where he found everyone asleep, ‘although the enemy was so close that their standards and colours could easily be counted. They were already pushing back our pickets, but nobody seemed worried about it.’ He got his regiments mounted as quickly as he could, and soon Tallard galloped by, congratulating him on being so beforehand, and ordered him to get the two cannon salvoes fired to recall the foragers. An aide duly galloped to a nearby battery, ‘got himself recognised and obeyed by the gunners, and we soon heard the 24-pounders fire two salvoes’. Across the whole of the Franco-Bavarian camp drums beat up the
générale
, an insistent flurry that their opponents recognised, infantry formed up in rank and file, troopers mounted, and gunners and their teams hauled their pieces forward. Tallard, prescient as ever, had just penned a note to Louis XIV saying that he thought the Allies were falling back on Nordlingen. Why else would they be about so early in the morning?
Chaplain Sandby heard how ‘the enemy beat to arms, and fired the signal for the foragers to come in’. He then saw the French and Bavarians
set fire to the villages of Berghausen, Weilheim and Unterglauheim, and to two mills and some other houses near the [mouth of the Nebel] rivulet. They likewise brought forth their cannon, and planted several batteries along the hill which formed their position.
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Tallard posted thirty-six battalions and his twelve squadrons of dismounted dragoons between the Danube and the plain north of Blenheim, and sent two battalions up to his left to support Marsin’s fourteen battalions around Oberglauheim. From there twelve more battalions took the line off towards Lutzingen, held by d’Arco and five Bavarian battalions, with another eleven French battalions continuing the line up to the hills on the extreme left. Tallard’s own sixty-four squadrons of cavalry were reinforced by sixteen slipped down by Marsin, and the remaining sixty-seven squadrons formed up between Oberglauheim and Lutzingen. At about ten o’clock the Elector and the two marshals met in Blenheim to discuss their plan. Marsin and the Elector resolved to hold as far forward as they could, on the Nebel itself, while Tallard determined to let the Allies cross and then to break them on the west bank. Tallard admitted that the lie of the land was unfortunate: ‘The village [Blenheim] was too far from the brook to defend the passage, and too close for us to deploy [all the infantry] in front of it and leave the village behind.’ However, he posted two brigades of cavalry with orders ‘to move quickly to the brook and charge the enemy before they were formed up’.
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The Franco-Bavarian plan was cobbled together at the last moment, but Marlborough’s was the result of careful thought and wholehearted agreement. Eugène’s wing would pin Marsin and the Elector to their positions, preventing them from helping Tallard. With the Franco-Bavarian left held in check, Marlborough would be free to defeat Tallard, making best use of his greater numbers of cavalry on ground ideal for their use. However, this meant that there could be no advance until Eugène was ready, and he had a good way to go, across the grain of the country, with numerous streams and ditches that made life especially difficult for his gunners, making extemporised bridges for their pieces.
By ten o’clock Marlborough’s infantry, under the overall command of
his brother Charles, was formed up east of the Nebel facing Blenheim and Unterglauheim. On his extreme left Salamander Cutts, with twenty battalions, faced Blenheim itself, with Major General Wood behind him with fifteen squadrons. Churchill’s infantry were interleaved with the Prince of Hesse’s horse, with a line of infantry in front, then two lines of cavalry, and then a second line of infantry. This would allow the first line of infantry to cross the Nebel ‘and to march as far in advance on the other side as could conveniently be done, and then to form and cover the passage of the horse, leaving intervals in the line of infantry large enough for the horse to pass over and take their post in front’. When the French guns had opened fire at about eight o’clock, Marlborough ordered Blood to reply, and ‘visited each battery, and stood by to observe the range of the guns and the effect of their fire’.
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The French guns could not engage the full line of the Nebel without being brought well forward of their cavalry, and the high corn obstructed the view on both sides, so they did less damage to Churchill’s infantry than we might expect. Mérode-Westerloo recorded that cavalry out in the open certainly suffered from artillery fire. ‘I was riding past Forsac’s regiment,’ he wrote, ‘when a shot carried away the head of my horse and killed two troopers.’ One roundshot hit the ground at the feet of Marlborough’s grey charger, covering horse and rider with dust, but he continued to visit his own gunners, and suggested that the infantry should lie down to avoid the fire and take some cover from what Mérode-Westerloo called ‘the brightest imaginable sun’. It was a Sunday, and chaplains conducted service under this desultory bombardment: Robert Parker heard that Marlborough took communion and then mounted, saying: ‘This day I conquer or die.’
Marlborough knew that Eugène would have to ‘fetch a compass’ to get into position, but towards midday he grew impatient and sent off Cadogan to find out what was happening. At about 12.30 one of Eugène’s aides de camp arrived to announce that all was ready: Marlborough ordered his brother to cross the Nebel, and sent word to Cutts to attack Blenheim. Pioneers had already done a good deal of work on the Nebel, piling fascines into it, making temporary bridges with wood from ruined houses, and even using some tin pontoons, and the infantry began to cross, forming up, as they had been told, on the far bank, but with enough space between themselves and the water for the cavalry to cross, form up and then move through the infantry.