Authors: Richard Holmes
My Lord Marlborough in person was everywhere, and escaped very narrowly, for a squadron, which he was at the head of, gave ground a little, but soon came up again; and a fellow came up to him and thought to have sabred him to the ground, and struck him with that force, and, missing his stroke, he fell off his horse. I asked my Lord if it was so; he said it was absolutely so. See what a happy [e.g. fortunate] man he is.
45
The battle was really over before the infantry arrived. Blackader wrote that ‘our horse had some action with them, and beat them wherever they encountered them. Our foot had nothing to do, for the enemy fled before they came up.’
46
John Marshall Deane of 1st Foot Guards recalled a busier time:
our men were so eager upon the design that they jumped furiously upon the enemy into the trenches, the which they soon quitted, and then our men took the pass it being a pretty big river. Some of our regiments wading through it breast high; and afterwards engaged them with notable valour and broke their army most confusedly, giving the enemy a total rout.
47
So far, so good. The Lines were pierced on a wide front and the French counterattack was thoroughly beaten. Overkirk was on his way, though about two hours from Marlborough, who felt it rash to follow the retreating French infantry until he arrived. We now know, though Marlborough did not, that Villeroi did not in fact hear of his defeat till nine that morning, by which time Overkirk’s men had already started to cross the Geete. Marlborough could have taken the risk of pressing the Bavarian infantry, which had fallen back in good order, without any chance of Villeroi intervening. He did push on to Tirlemont, capturing a battalion there; and some dragoons, pursuing the survivors of the morning’s battle, overtook and seized part of Villeroi’s baggage train. When Marlborough wrote to Harley from Tirlemont that evening he reported the day’s events as a significant victory, and concluded that he hoped to advance on Louvain the following day.
Marlborough announced the capture of two lieutenant generals, the marquis d’Allègre and the comte de Hornes, two major generals, two brigadiers, ‘near fourscore other officers, with ten pieces of cannon and a great many standards and colours’, as well as over 2,000 men. On the following day his advanced squadrons caught Villeroi’s rearguard
crossing the Dyle, and took another fifteen hundred prisoners.
48
The captured guns were of an unusual type, designed to provide close support for horse and foot. Private Deane tells how
each piece having three bores … touching the match to one touch hole they fired out each piece 3 balls at once. These very murdering cannon were made the last year at the city of Brussels for the security of the line, but by the providence of God we secured them so that they did our army but little mischief.
49
Marlborough wrote to Sarah on the evening of the eighteenth. Knowing what we do of his headaches, we will not be surprised to hear that ‘my blood is so hot that I can hardly hold my pen, so that you will my dearest life excuse me if I do not say more’. He still paid tribute to the architects of his victory: ‘It is impossible to say too much good of the troops that were with me, for never men fought better.’ The battle was unquestionably a ‘good success’ – not Blenheim, to be sure, but a valuable victory in its own right and an earnest of what might come.
50
The ministry, anxious for something to celebrate, proclaimed a day of public thanksgiving for ‘having forced the French lines … [and obtained] a signal and glorious victory within those lines’. The mellifluous
Gazette
lovingly described the royal procession from St James’s to St Paul’s Cathedral to hear the Dean of Lincoln preach and join a thundering
Te Deum.
51
It may not have been Blenheim, but there was certainly a palpable feeling of unity of purpose linking Marlborough and his men that day. Lieutenant Colonel Cranstoun of the Cameronians wrote:
Those who know the army and what soldiers are know very well that upon occasions like this where even the common soldier is sensible of the reason of what he has to do, and especially of the joy and success of victory, soldiers with little entreaty will even outdo themselves, and march and fatigue double with cheerfulness what their officers would at other times compel them to do.
52
Men shouted, ‘Now, on to Louvain,’ and ‘Over the Dyle,’ and even the Dutch Lieutenant General Slangenburg, when he came up, told Marlborough: ‘This is nothing if we lie here. We should march on Louvain or Parc.’
53
Marlborough was touched by the noisy acclamations he received. He confessed to Sarah that ‘the kindness of the troops to me had transported me … to make me very kind expressions, even in
the heat of the action, which I own to you gives me very great pleasure, and makes me resolve to endure anything for their sakes’.
54
There was widespread recognition that by marching straight for Louvain on the eighteenth the Allies would have intercepted Villeroi, who had to swing through a quarter-circle to cross the river there. But Overkirk, usually so much in Marlborough’s mind, declared (not unreasonably, for they had marched twenty-six miles in thirty-one hours) that his soldiers were exhausted, and camped between Leau and Tirlemont. With the great opportunity missed, a smaller one, of crossing the Dyle to fight Villeroi on the far side, still remained. However, unseasonable rain flooded the water meadows, which the army needed to traverse to reach the river, and then the Dutch Council of War unanimously ‘declared the passage of the river to be of too dangerous a consequence’.
55
Marlborough was furious, but told Godolphin that he dared not show his resentment too much for fear of annoying the Dutch and encouraging the French. He did, however, privately acknowledge that he had not let Overkirk know what his plan really was (‘I was forced to cheat them into this action, for they did not believe I would attack the Lines’), which suggests that, for all Marlborough’s annoyance at the Dutch decision, his ally’s irritation was not without cause.
56
He told both Heinsius and Godolphin of his fear that the decision now gave the campaign ‘a very melancholy prospect’. Although he urged secrecy on his correspondents, it is clear that his frustrations were widely aired in Britain, probably because it suited the ministry to blame an ally, rather than its chosen commander, for what now looked very much like a missed opportunity: Blenheim had been such a stunning success that public expectations were unreasonably high.
Most historians believe that Marlborough was right to blame the Dutch, but Ivor Burton sounds a note of caution. There were fundamental differences within the alliance. The Dutch, engaged in a life-or-death struggle against France for the past three decades, never saw battle in the same light as Marlborough. Nor did they welcome his methods, which were, by the standards of the age, secretive. Much later in the war, Goslinga saw how, unusually, ‘Milord on his arrival had all the infantry and cavalry generals called to a sort of council of war. I must note that Milord never used these councils: he limited himself to the deputation, or [Dutch] general in chief assisted by the two quartermasters-general, Dopff and Cadogan.’ Marlborough went on to tell him: ‘I must teach you a general maxim; that is if you find yourself in a delicate situation, or need to decide on a battle or some great and hazardous enterprise,
if you are resolved to do it, neither consult your generals, nor call a great council.’
57
The three centuries since Blenheim emphasise that Marlborough was right to believe that ‘It is absolutely necessary that such a power be lodged with the general as may enable him to act as he thinks proper according to the best of his judgement, without being obliged either to communicate what he intends further than he thinks convenient.’
58
Yet it is no less evident that the issue of command goes to the very heart of coalition warfare, and he is a fortunate coalition commander who enjoys the undiluted authority that Marlborough sought.
Of course personal jealousies and ambitions amongst the Dutch generals played their part, just as they had in the squabble between Coehoorn and Slangenburg in 1703. Most of them were
petite noblesse
, gentlemen of ancient lineage but narrow acres, given to high words and long memories. Opdam, who refused to serve under Overkirk, who in turn blocked his promotion, had a remarkable thirty-two quarterings on his coat of arms, and was made a count by the Elector Palatine in 1711. Sicco van Goslinga declined a similar honour from the emperor: being a gentleman of Friesland was quite enough for him.
There were added layers of complexity in 1705. A French deputation was at The Hague, and although Marlborough assured Godolphin that the Dutch would not make a separate peace, there was always a risk that the French might attain, through a diplomatic master-stroke, what they had so far failed to achieve by battle. In the very same letter in which he warned Heinsius of the need for undivided command, Marlborough added an apparently harmless paragraph saying that the captured Lieutenant General d’Allègre, who ‘has a very good reputation’, had ‘pressed me for a pass for two months’. Marlborough was anxious to do this decent fellow ‘all the civilities I could’, but he just wanted to clear the matter with Heinsius first.
D’Allègre duly received his pass. Then, whether or not with Marlborough’s foreknowledge we cannot say, though the implications are obvious, he went straight to Versailles, where Louis XIV told him:
Until the present moment, the king believed that his honour demanded that he maintain his grandson the King in the possession of all the states which the late King of Spain left him … having defended him for five years, without deriving any advantage … it is now time that the King puts the interests of France above those of Spain.
Louis gave d’Allègre
plein pouvoir
to negotiate a settlement on his return to Holland, and urged him to get Marlborough firmly on side. The French king could not offer the duke ‘more dignities than he already possessed’, but a gift of two million livres ‘would solidly establish a fortune, always doubtful in England, if it was not supported by great wealth’. D’Allègre was also to pass on to Marlborough ‘sentiments full of respect and veneration’.
Marlborough asked d’Allègre to dinner soon after his return to The Hague on the expiry of his leave, but the marquis reported to Louis that: ‘As for Marlborough, while affecting a sincere inclination for peace, he claimed to defer entirely to the decisions of his sovereign and above all to the Estates-General.’ Nevertheless, they agreed that d’Allègre would ‘put himself in the position of being ill’ so as not to have to accompany Marlborough to England, so giving himself more time to talk to the Dutch. However, negotiations foundered, and eventually ‘nothing was left to d’Allègre but to board the yacht which had been put at his disposal to travel to England’.
59
It is clear from subsequent correspondence that Marlborough regarded the offer of two million livres as lasting beyond the immediate failure of the d’Allègre mission. Louis later suggested that the offer should be increased to four million if the peace terms were particularly attractive, proposing a menu of rewards related to specific points in any eventual treaty. However, Torcy, the French foreign minister, met Marlborough at The Hague in the spring of 1706, and ‘when I mentioned his private interests he blanched and seemed desirous of changing the topic of conversation’. In 1708, when the strategic situation was even more encouraging for the Allies, Marlborough told Berwick: ‘You may be sure that I shall be heartily in favour of peace, not doubting that I should find proof of the goodwill which was promised to me two years ago by the Marquis d’Allègre.’
60
The extant evidence does no more than identify key features, for it was in the nature of such discussions that little entered the written record. However, it is certain that the French ‘sweetener’ was no mere figment of anti-Marlborough propaganda, and that the duke’s desire to make money was so widely known that Louis XIV thought it worth appealing to his cupidity. It is no less clear that, while Marlborough was prepared to grasp the money if he could, he was not willing to let the prospect of such a substantial reward change his view on the conduct of the war. At the very time that he was considering the French
douceur
he was inflicting a series of substantial military defeats on his would-be
paymaster, which would be puzzling behaviour from a man who had been bought and sold. Conversely, Marlborough was sometimes accused (not least by Berwick and Goslinga) of prolonging the war for his own financial reward. This is not a view supported by his personal correspondence with Sarah and Godolphin, and it would indeed be an odd line to take given what we now know of his financial interest in
ending
the war.
The campaign of 1705 never really progressed beyond the sharp blow inter-Allied relations received in mid-July. The Allies crossed the Dyle south of Louvain at the end of the month, but Villeroi was there to oppose one of the crossings, and the Dutch demanded that Marlborough should honour an earlier agreement and not force the issue. In August Marlborough outnumbered Villeroi so significantly that Versailles ordered substantial detachments to be sent from the Rhine, where the Imperialists were not fixing the French as Marlborough had hoped, to the Brabant front. But before they could arrive Marlborough carried out a promising manoeuvre round the headwaters of the Dyle, feinting towards Brussels and so persuading Villeroi to move out of Louvain to face him. Marlborough then swung north, advancing upon the outnumbered Villeroi with every prospect of forcing him to fight a major battle on unfavourable terms, near what was to be the 1815 battlefield of Waterloo.