Authors: Richard Holmes
The French position was strong, but Marlborough could see serious flaws in it, and pointed these out to Overkirk, who ‘perfectly coincided in his opinion’. The field deputies, however, demanded time to consult their generals, and when Marlborough formally asked his council of war, at about three on the afternoon of 18 August, to support his decision to attack, Slangenburg exclaimed: ‘Since I have been led to this place without previous communication of the design, I will give no other opinion than that the passage at Over-Ische is impracticable. However, I am ready to obey the orders which I may receive.’ After a lengthy debate the field deputies decided that the suggested attack would not work, but admitted that it might be wise to look elsewhere. ‘This survey,’ writes Coxe, ‘provided a new source of cavils and objections. Every post occupied by the enemy was deemed too strong to be forced; the river was declared not fordable; and the most trifling elevation was declared inaccessible to cavalry.’
Perhaps we should not let a private soldier speak at this council of war, but, interestingly, John Marshall Deane might have voted with the Dutch, for he did not like the look of the French position: ‘It appeared impossible for us to pretend to get at the enemy, for their army lay just
beyond the pass where it was thought ten thousand men to be sufficient to prevent an army of 100 thousand men from getting over.’
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Consideration was eventually interrupted by nightfall, and Marlborough observed bitterly: ‘I am at this moment
ten
years older than I was four days ago.’
Marlborough, angry before, was now positively furious. On 19 August he told Godolphin:
You will see by the enclosed to the States that after four days march I found the enemy encamped as I expected, so that I thought we should have had a very glorious day. But as the deputies would not consent without first consulting their generals, who were all against it except Monsieur Overkirk, so that we have been obliged to retire from the enemy, notwithstanding we were at least one third stronger than they, which I take to be very prejudicial to the common cause, and scandalous for the army …
The last action of the Dutch generals has given me very great mortification, for the enemy will see very plainly that they have nothing to fear on this side. Nor can I serve with them without losing the little reputation [I have], for in most countries they think I have power in this army to do what I please.
I beg you will give my duty to the Queen, and assure her that if I had the same power I had last year I should have had a greater victory than that of Blenheim in my opinion, for the French were so posted that if we had beaten them they could not have got to Brussels.
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A few days later he added that prisoners and deserters all confirmed that Villeroi had been in a hopeless position. It was a missed opportunity of staggering proportions.
Marlborough had been muttering about resigning for much of the year, and now acknowledged that he was finding it almost impossible to put up with the frustration of shackled command. He told Sarah that he had ‘a very great desire to have that work of Woodstock finished, and if I can be so happy as to live some years in quietness there with my dear soul, I shall think myself well recompensed for all the vexations and troubles I am now obliged to undergo’.
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To make matters worse, his eyes were very painful: he thought ‘the heat of my blood’ was to blame, and hoped to visit a spa when the pressure of campaigning eased.
Marlborough made no effort to conceal his annoyance with the Dutch, which was so serious that, even before this incident, old Portland,
William of Orange’s favourite and once a symbol of that Dutch influence Marlborough had so detested, wrote to warn him that leaving the army early would send the worst possible signal.
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Eugène wrote from Italy to agree that:
It is extremely cruel that opinions so weak and discordant should have obstructed the progress of your operations, when you had every reason to expect so glorious a result. I speak to you as a sincere friend. You will never be able to perform anything considerable with your army unless you are absolute, and I trust your highness will use your utmost efforts to gain that power in future. I am not less desirous than yourself to be once more united with you in command.
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The queen added her own support in a letter which nobly testifies to her ability to set her damaged relationship with Sarah on one side.
I am very sorry to find, by your letters to the Lord Treasurer, that you are so very much in the spleen. I own all the disagreeable things you have met with this summer are a very just cause for it, and I am very much concerned for the uneasiness you are under; but yet I cannot help hoping, that for the good of your country and the sake of your friends, who cannot support themselves without you, you will be persuaded to banish your melancholy thoughts.
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Marlborough’s official bulletin noted that the army had been ready to attack, ‘but the Deputies of the States, having consulted with their other generals, would not give their assent, and so the proposed attack was countermanded’.
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The States-General refused to print it, but Marlborough wrote letters condemning the Dutch to Wratislaw and Eugène amongst others, and told Heinsius in the bluntest terms that Slangenburg had deprived them all of a lasting peace. ‘I do before God declare to you, that I am persuaded that if Slangenburg had not been in the army, at this day we might have prescribed to France the peace we pleased,’ he wrote. Instead of the peace that they might have had, he now looked to a continuation of the war, because the French would not concede what he saw as each of the Allies’ minimum aims. For Britain, he suggested, this meant a Spain secured for Charles III, the Hapsburg claimant, and for Holland, a secure frontier with garrisons in Antwerp, Namur and Luxembourg. The Duke of Savoy must be kept secure and, with ‘the blessing of God we must do something for the Protestants [in the Cevennes]’.
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Marlborough blamed Slangenburg’s opposition on personal motives, arguing that as a Roman Catholic it was ‘his temper to hinder whatever may be designed’, while Robert Parker thought Slangenburg ‘so intolerably insolent, that there was no bearing him’.
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There had certainly been an ill-mannered confrontation on the unfought field of Waterloo. ‘Speaking forwardly and harshly to the Duke’, says chaplain Hare, he ‘was very noisy and cried out that it was sacrificing the army and an impracticable enterprise’.
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The formal Dutch report suggests that the road to this fatal dissension had been paved by Marlborough’s lack of consultation. Marlborough, argued the field deputies, had been authorised by the Estates-General, ‘without holding a council of war, to make two or three marches, for the execution of some design formed by his grace’. But he had gone well beyond this. The report concluded: ‘We cannot conceal from your high mightinesses that all the generals of our army think it very strange that they should not have the least notice of the said marches.’
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Marlborough, now ruefully convinced that all he could do in the remainder of the campaigning season was to take the fortress of Leau and level the Lines where he had overrun them, ordered Slangenburg to besiege Leau with fifteen battalions and fifteen squadrons. Slangenburg demanded twice the force, so Marlborough at once set Lieutenant General van Dedem, another Dutch officer, on to the task, and the place fell easily.
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The demolition of the Lines also went well once Marlborough was able to put his army to work on it. The
London Gazette
reported: ‘The peasants that were employed in demolishing the enemy’s Lines proceeding but slowly, 50 men out of every battalion in both armies were on the 8th Instant ordered for this service, in which this detachment soon made a considerable progress, being relieved every 48 hours.’
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Private Deane, who saw things from the business end of a shovel, reported that:
The line was of a most prodigious strength, being 18 foot deep and 16 foot broad. The bastions lying along the middle of it being 8 foot higher than the level or top of the entrenchments, & so thick throughout that 4 men might have walked abreast upon it & fired upon the enemy that should approach it. There were likewise counterscarps one by the side of another to withdraw in if an enemy should have got over. The front of this line being formed triangular, worming and running every way … the passage from one side of the line to the other being
all triangle work that a man could not see 6 yards before him, and barriered with trees very strongly.
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While ramparts were being levelled and ditches filled, the English and Dutch governments worked just as hard to repair the damage done to their alliance by the recent dissension. Slangenburg might have been a villain to the British, but he was a hero to some of his own countrymen, and there was a possibility that the peace party in the United Provinces, led by Pensionary Buys of Amsterdam, might gain ground on the back of a disappointing campaign and Slangenburg’s resolute opposition to the high-handed ways of a foreign general. That danger soon passed. The popular mood so turned against Slangenburg that when Shrewsbury passed through The Hague that winter he thought that if Slangenburg had shown himself in the street he would have been murdered like the de Witt brothers in 1672.
The general, pleading ill-health, retired first to Maastricht and then to Aachen. Charles Churchill heard that he had spoken ‘freely and disrespectfully’ of his brother, and sent Colonel Palmes to call upon him to request satisfaction if things were indeed as they had been reported. Slangenburg promptly denied disrespect, survived unchallenged, but never again held a command. Robert Parker was among those delighted to see the last of him, not least because his successor, Lieutenant General Salisch, was a bird of a very different feather.
He was born in Switzerland of a family of note, and upon some disgust he listed himself with a Dutch officer, who brought him a recruit to Breda, in the very regiment he is now colonel of. In this regiment he advanced himself by his personal bravery, without any interest or friends, but such as his merit had gained him: till from a private sentinel, he became colonel of the regiment, Governor of Breda, and General of the Dutch infantry; but it was yet more remarkable, that the officer who enlisted him, still continued a lieutenant when our regiment was quartered at Breda, and it was more than he deserved, for he was an old Geneva sot; however, the general, out of pure compassion to him, kept him constantly confined, where great care was taken of him, as long as he lived.
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The replacement of Slangenburg by Salisch did not end the matter. Cardonnel had drawn up a report for the
London Gazette
which reflected Marlborough’s view of the missed opportunity. The version that actually appeared was wholly emasculated:
The 18th the army decamped at three in the morning from Fischermont, and having passed several defiles, came through the wood of Soignies into a spacious plain, with only the Ische between us and the enemy, whom we found, according to expectation, in their former camp … In the afternoon the army encamped at Laisne, from when we marched on the 19th to the camp at Basse-Wavre … The 22nd the army under His Grace marched from Basse-Wavre to this camp.
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Not only was there no mention of the dispute, but the implication that he had deliberately avoided battle irritated Marlborough. He complained to Godolphin that he had been ‘used very hardly’, enclosing a copy of Cardonnel’s original dispatch so that Godolphin could see what had been left out, ‘which I think the writer of the Gazette would not have ventured to have done if he had not had orders for it’. He blamed the textual change on a desire not to offend Vryberg, the Dutch ambassador in London, adding that if the Dutch saw the
Gazette
they would have even less reason for yielding to his demands for greater authority. ‘I am very sure I must be madder than anybody in Bedlam,’ he concluded, ‘if I should be desirous of serving, when I am sure that my enemies seek my destruction, and that my friends sacrifice my honour to their wisdom.’
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Both Hedges and St John maintained that they had had nothing to do with it, blaming the slip on the ‘negligence or venality’ of the
Gazette
’s editor.
The government decided to send Lord Pembroke to the United Provinces to lodge a complaint, but Marlborough, fearing that the matter was now escalating beyond his control, and confident that Heinsius would achieve the desired result without formal intervention, managed to get the visit cancelled. On 14 September he told Heinsius that ‘whatever your deputies and generals shall propose I shall use my utmost endeavours that it may succeed’, adding, ‘Now that M. Slangenburg is gone if I see anything that I think feasible, I shall make no difficulty of proposing it to them.’
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Ten days later Marlborough assured Godolphin that although the cancellation of Pembroke’s visit might
make some noise in England, I think it is much wiser and honester, to let such as do not mean well to be angry, than to do that which must prejudice the public, as this journey of Lord Pembroke’s would certainly do. For Pensionary Buys has confirmed me in my opinion, that the constitution of the States is such, that they can’t take away the power that the deputies have had at all times in the army. For in the
King’s time they had the same authority, but he took care to choose such men as always agreed what he had a mind to. Now this may, if they please, be put again in practice, but that never can be done by a treaty. I have also underhand assurances that they will never employ Slangenburg in the army where I may be.
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