Authors: Richard Holmes
On 2 August Marlborough told Secretary of State Boyle that almost all the siege train had now reached Brussels, though he was still very concerned that it might be intercepted on its journey thence. A letter to Cadogan of the same date, in a clerkly hand, bears a concerned postscript in the duke’s: ‘For God’s sake be sure you do not risk the cannon, for I had rather come with the whole army than receive an affront.’
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Eugène’s army covered the first phase of the move from its base near Soignies, and the responsibility then passed to Marlborough’s men at
Helchin, as Eugène marched down to begin the investiture of Lille. The convoy was accompanied throughout its journey by the Prince of Hesse-Cassel, commanding an escort of sixteen squadrons and six battalions, and for the first day of its march from Brussels another six squadrons, based in the city, accompanied it. On 3 August Marlborough formally told Boyle that ‘the siege of Lille has been thought preferable to any other operation’ by unanimous vote of his council of war. The train, toiling along in two columns, covering thirty miles of road space between them, had crossed the Dender at Ath by the ninth, and was at Menin on the thirteenth, the very day that Eugène completed the encirclement of Lille.
Berwick had guessed that the convoy was actually heading for Mons, and so failed to intercept it, but as soon as he realised what was afoot he rushed a final reinforcement into the threatened city, bringing its garrison up to a total of twenty battalions, seven squadrons of dragoons and two hundred spare horses, all under the command of the squat and energetic Marshal Boufflers, hero of the defence of Namur in 1695: there were few more resolute or resourceful defenders. At his elbow was the engineer du Puy Vauban, whose distinguished uncle had built the place. Eugène was to conduct the siege with fifty battalions and ninety squadrons, most of them Dutch and Imperialist, though including one British brigade. Marlborough, with sixty-nine battalions and 140 squadrons, would cover the operation from Helchin, about twenty miles north-east of the city, against interference by French field armies. It seemed a textbook plan.
Careful reading of the documents shows, however, that the capture of Lille was not Marlborough’s immediate object. He hoped that the threat to this jewel in the crown of French fortification would force his opponents to offer battle, and on 16 August he outlined his plan in a letter to Eugène.
If the enemy comes into Brabant, as I believe they will, I must go at them head down. I hold myself ready to march to Ath, and as, without doubt, the Duke of Berwick will act in concert with them, and may even join them, I beg Your Highness to hold himself in readiness to execute what we are agreed upon. As soon as we march, four or five days will decide this whole affair by a battle.
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Ironically, it was Marlborough’s own nephew who warned a truculent Versailles not to rise to the bait and risk a battle which the French would
inevitably lose. ‘It is sad to see Lille taken,’ he told Chamillart, ‘but it is sadder still to lose the one army left to us, which can stop the enemy after the loss of Lille.’
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Uncle and nephew both recognised that a major French defeat would compromise the whole of the Flanders frontier. Without a surviving field army to protect them, the fortresses of the north must inevitably fall one after another, but the loss of Lille need not prove fatal in itself. Modern apostles of manoeuvre warfare argue that a general must ‘focus on the enemy, not on the ground’, and this is precisely what Marlborough did in the summer of 1708. It was his misfortune that the astute Berwick did precisely the same, and, despite Versailles’ urging the marshals to attack, Marlborough never got his battle. He later lamented to Godolphin: ‘We shall endeavour all we can to bring the French to a general engagement, but as that is what we shall desire, I take it for granted that is what they will avoid.’
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So the scene was set, not for the decisive battle that Marlborough sought, but for the most bloody and protracted siege of his career.
As Shakespeare’s Richard III cynically observed, short summers lightly have a forward spring. The siege seemed to begin well enough, with Eugène’s men breaking ground for their first parallel before the gates of Ste-Marie Madeleine and St-André on Lille’s northern front on 22 August. Marlborough told Boyle that this had been accomplished ‘with good success’, but he was anxious to hear what had become of Major General Earle’s embarked force, now that it was no longer making for Abbeville: it was imperative ‘to give the enemy a diversion and oblige them to detach that way’.
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Two weeks later he was vexed ‘to see so little prospect of success from our sea-expedition’, whose commanders, in another of those hand-wringing councils of war, had decided against a landing in the bay of La Hogue. However, he told Boyle that he had just visited Lille and had ridden out with Eugène to ‘mark the place for the field of battle, in case the enemy should … attempt to succour the town’. Even if he did not get the battle he hoped for, ‘Our siege is so far advanced that the engineers intend tomorrow in the afternoon to attack the counterscarp, wherein if we succeed the town must soon surrender.’
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Marlborough was quite wrong, and over the next few weeks the siege went badly. On the evening of 7 September the Allies exploded four mines under the counterscarp, and seized four of the salient angles of the covered way at the cost of 3,000 men, perhaps more than had fallen at Oudenarde and, in the awful way of sieges (the trench warfare of the eighteenth century), with a high proportion of killed to wounded.
Marlborough admitted to Galway that he had hoped that they would either have taken the town by this time, or fought a battle outside it. ‘We offered them battle twice but they declined it,’ he wrote, ‘and their design seems now chiefly to be to distress us for want of provisions, being at a great distance from our magazines … but I hope with the blessing of God we shall succeed.’
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He had assured Sarah that he had chosen such good positions that he was wholly confident of beating the French if they attacked, ‘Which makes me think they must be mad if they venture it,’ and added that although the enemy probably had more battalions than he did, his were better manned.
In early September the French did indeed conclude that they had no chance of raising the siege without risking a major battle, and thereupon occupied all the crossings of the Scheldt and attempted to make the siege logistically unsustainable, for their possession of Bruges and Ghent already prevented supplies coming in from the west. This, had they but known it, was Marlborough’s worst fear. On 17 September he assured Sarah:
I am so well entrenched that I no way fear their forcing us. But the siege goes on so very slowly, that I am in perpetual fear that it may continue so long, and consequently consume so much stores, that we may at last not have the wherewithal to finish, which would be very cruel. These are my fears, but I desire you will let nobody know them. I long extremely to have this campaign well ended, for of all the campaigns I have made, this has been the most painful. But I am in the galley, and must row as long as the war lasts.
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A second assault on the counterscarp was made on 12 September, and the Godfearing Major Blackader, detailed to command four hundred grenadiers, recorded his adventures in characteristic form.
I was easy and calm, committing myself to God … I take the order from him, and not the Brigade-Major … I went up and down to see where our attack was to be. Prince Alexander of Württemberg came in about four [p.m.], made the dispositions, and gave us our orders. When he posted me, he bade me speak to the grenadiers and tell them that the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugène expected that they would do as they had always done – chase the French, and that it was better to die than to make a false step. I answered ‘I hope we shall all do our duty’; so he shook hands with me, and went away.
Near seven, the signals being given by all our cannon and bombs going off together, I gave the word upon the right, ‘
Grenadiers, in the name of God attack!
’ Immediately they sprung over the trenches, and threw their grenades into the counterscarp, but they fell into some confusion. I then ordered out fifty more to sustain them, and went out myself, and in a little time got shot in the arm. I felt that the bone was not broken; and all the other officers being wounded, I thought it my duty to stay a while, and encourage the grenadiers to keep their warm post. About a quarter of an hour afterwards, the fire continuing very hot, I got another shot in the head. I then thought it time to come off … I had a great deal of trouble to get out of the trenches in three hours space …
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On 21 September a major assault by 15,000 men captured most of the ravelin between Bastions II and III, but Eugène himself, snicked above the left eye by a musketball, was among the 1,000 casualties. Marlborough had already confessed to Godolphin:
It is impossible for me to confess the uneasiness I suffer at the ill conduct of our engineers at the siege, where I think everything goes wrong. It would be a cruel thing if we have obliged the enemy to quit all thought of relieving the place by force, which they have done by repassing the Scheldt, we should fail to take it by the ignorance of our engineers, and the want of stores; for we have fired very nearly as much [ammunition] as was demanded for the taking [of] the town and the citadel, and as yet we are not entire masters of the counterscarp; so that to you I may own my despair of ending the campaign, so as in reason we might have expected.
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With Eugène wounded, Marlborough needed to attend the siege every day, ‘which with the vexation of it going so ill, I am almost dead’. To make matters worse, the Dutch commissaries had now formally told the deputies ‘that they have not sufficient stores for the taking of the town’.
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A letter to Heinsius, written the same day, ended crossly: ‘I have the spleen and say no more.’
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There was now a chance that Earle’s embarked force, unable to create a diversion by being landed on the Normandy coast, could help unlock the main theatre of operations, and on 10 September Marlborough told Boyle that he hoped it would be sent to Ostend. On 21 September Marlborough informed Earle that he knew he had now been ordered to
Ostend, and sent the letter by hand of a well-briefed staff officer, including some detailed instructions from Cadogan. These were amplified three days later, when Earle, now with around 7,000 men, was told to threaten Bruges as strongly as he could, and to ‘leave nothing unattempted that is possible to possess yourself of Plassendale’.
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The French cut the Nieuport canal in several places and flooded much of the surrounding countryside, and then, in the way of that curmudgeonly autumn, Earle was afflicted by gout. Marlborough, having told him what he hoped might be achieved, assured him, ‘You will be the best judge upon the spot of what can be effected,’ and wished him a speedy recovery.
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If the Allies were running short of ammunition outside Lille, Boufflers’ men, within its walls, were no better off. On the night of 28 August the chevalier de Luxembourg left Douai with 550 grenadiers and 2,000 troopers, each carrying fifty pounds of gunpowder. A few men were blown up in accidents on the way, but thanks to their Allied field-signs and some Dutch-speaking officers at the head of the column, the Frenchmen bluffed their way through the checkpoint of the Allied lines of circumvallation near Pont-à-Tressin. At that point an officer in the middle of the column unwisely ordered his men to close up in French – ‘
Serre, serre!
’ – and the guard, duly alerted, turned out and opened fire. There were more explosions, but Luxembourg reckoned that he got 40,000 pounds of much-needed powder through to Boufflers.
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The presence of Earle’s British battalions at Ostend encouraged Marlborough to try a similar venture on a far larger scale. Earle, undaunted by his gout, had managed to drain some of the inundations, bridge the canal at Leffinghe, and assemble a huge convoy of munitions which would go to Lille via Thourout and Roulers. Marlborough sent Cadogan with twenty-six squadrons and twelve battalions to meet him, ‘for should this not come safe, I am afraid that we must not flatter ourselves of hoping to get any other’.
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Hearing that Lamotte was being sent from Bruges to intercept the convoy, Marlborough quickly dispatched another eight battalions and some extra cavalry, but when Lamotte caught the convoy on the wooded heath at Wynendaele, just outside Thourout, on the morning of 28 September he outnumbered its escort by at least two to one. Cadogan had still not come up, and Major General John Webb, a vain and loquacious Tory MP but a brave and seasoned soldier, was in command.
Lamotte had been briefed by Vendôme that the capture of the convoy was absolutely critical to French fortunes, and that he was to ‘march on the enemy, strong or weak, and to attack them’. He drew up his infantry
in the space of perhaps 1,000 yards between two woods, facing the main road near Wynendaele château, and could clearly see the convoy making off behind Webb’s infantry, formed up in three lines ready to receive him. A long cannonade went well enough, although Webb wisely made his men lie down, so lost fewer men than he might. When Lamotte at last thrust forwards, his infantry promptly splintered in his hands. Most of his regiments were French-speaking Netherlanders who were now not sure where their real interests lay, and the repeated thump of the platoon volleys all along Webb’s line was too much for them.
Lamotte complained that they ‘behaved badly. Instead of charging with the bayonet as they had been ordered, they shot, and shot too soon.’ Then, ‘at the first discharge they made, our infantry began to fold by the left and fall back to the right, and all the lines were mixed up without it being possible to rally them for the whole of the action’. Lamotte paid handsome tribute to the fact that ‘I did the impossible to rally our infantry,’ and he was sure that ‘the enemy lost more men than us’.
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In fact Webb had lost about 1,000, most from the bombardment which preceded the attack, but perhaps 2,000 Frenchmen had been hit, and the convoy creaked its way to the safety of the besiegers’ camp. It is not too much to say that this encounter sealed the fate of Lille.