Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 362, December 1845

MARLBOROUGH. No. II. 1

It might have been expected, that after the march into Bavaria had demonstrated the military genius of the Duke of Marlborough, and the battle of Blenheim had in so decisive a manner broken the enemy's power, the principal direction of military affairs would have been entrusted to that consummate commander; and that the Allied cabinets, without presuming to interfere in the management of the campaigns, would have turned all their efforts to place at his disposal forces adequate to carry into execution the mighty designs which he meditated, and had shown himself so well qualified to carry into execution. It was quite the reverse. The Allied cabinets did nothing. They did worse than nothing – they interfered only to do mischief. Their principal object after this appeared to be to cramp the efforts of this great general, to overrule his bold designs, to tie down his aspiring genius. Each looked only to his own separate objects, and nothing could make them see that they were to be gained only by promoting the general objects of the alliance. Relieved from the danger of instant subjugation by the victory of Blenheim, and the retreat of the French army across the Rhine, the German powers relapsed into their usual state of supineness, lukewarmness, and indifference. No efforts of Marlborough could induce the Dutch either to enlarge their contingent, or even render that already in the field fit for active service. The English force was not half of what the national strength was capable of sending forth. Parliament would not hear of any thing like an adequate expenditure. Thus the golden opportunity, never likely to be regained, of profiting by the consternation of the enemy after the battle of Blenheim, and their weakness after forty thousand of their best troops had been lost to their armies, was allowed to pass away; and the war was permitted to dwindle into one of posts and sieges, when, by a vigorous effort, it might have been concluded in the next campaign.2

It was not thus with the French. The same cause which had loosened the efforts of the confederates, had inspired unwonted vigour into their councils. The Rhine was crossed by the Allies; the French armies had been hurled with disgrace out of Germany; the territory of the Grand Monarque was threatened both from the side of Alsace and Flanders; and a formidable insurrection in the Cevennes both distracted the force and threatened the peace of the kingdom. But against all these evils Louis made head. Never had the superior vigour and perseverance of a monarchy over that of a confederacy been more clearly evinced. Marshal Villars had been employed in the close of the preceding year to appease the insurrection in the Cevennes, and his measures were at once so vigorous and conciliatory, that before the end of the following winter the disturbances were entirely appeased. In consequence of this, the forces employed in that quarter became disposable; and by this means, and the immense efforts made by the government over the whole kingdom, the armies on the frontier were so considerably augmented, that Villeroi and the Elector of Bavaria took the field in the Low Countries at the head of seventy-five thousand men, while Marshal Marsin on the Upper Rhine, covered Alsace with thirty thousand. Those armies were much larger than any which the Allies could bring against them; for although it had been calculated that Marlborough was to be at the head of ninety thousand men on the Moselle on the 1st May, yet such had been the dilatory conduct of the States-general and the German princes, that in the beginning of June there were scarcely thirty thousand men collected round his standards; and in Flanders and on the Upper Rhine the enemy's relative superiority was still greater.

The plan of the campaign of 1705, based on the supposition that these great forces were to be at his disposal, concerted between him and Prince Eugene, was in the highest degree bold and decisive. It was fixed that, early in spring, ninety thousand men should be assembled in the country between the Moselle and the Saar, and, after establishing their magazines and base of operations at Treves and Traerbach, they should penetrate, in two columns into Lorraine; that the column under Marlborough in person should advance along the course of Moselle, and the other, under the Margrave of Baden, by the valley of the Saar, and that Saar-Louis should be invested before the French army had time to take the field. In this way the whole fortresses of Flanders would be avoided, and the war, carried into the enemy's territory, would assail France on the side where her iron barrier was most easily pierced through. But the slowness of the Dutch, and backwardness of the Germans, rendered this well-conceived plan abortive, and doomed the English general, for the whole of a campaign which promised such important advantages, to little else but difficulty, delay, and vexation. Marlborough's enthusiasm, great as it was, nearly sank under the repeated disappointments which he experienced at this juncture; and, guarded as he was, it exhaled in several bitter complaints in his confidential correspondence.3 But, like a true patriot and man of perseverance, he did not give way to despair when he found nearly all that had been promised him awanting; but perceiving the greater designs impracticable, from the want of all the means by which they could be carried into execution, prepared to make the most of the diminutive force which alone was at his disposal.

At length, some of the German reinforcements having arrived, Marlborough, in the beginning of June, though still greatly inferior to the enemy, commenced operations. Such was the terror inspired by his name, and the tried valour of the English troops, that Villars remained on the defensive, and soon retreated. Without firing a shot, he evacuated a strong woody country which he occupied, and retired to a strong defensive position, extending from Haute Sirk on the right, to the Nivelles on the left, and communicating in the rear with Luxembourg, Thionville, and Saar-Louis. This position was so strong, that it was hopeless to attempt to force it without heavy cannon; and Marlborough's had not yet arrived, from the failure of the German princes to furnish the draught-horses they had promised. For nine weary days he remained in front of the French position, counting the hours till the guns and reinforcements came up; but such was the tardiness of the German powers, and the universal inefficiency of the inferior princes and potentates, that they never made their appearance. The English general was still anxiously awaiting the promised supplies, when intelligence arrived from the right of so alarming a character as at once changed the theatre of operations, and fixed him for the remainder of the campaign in the plains of Flanders.

It was the rapid progress which Marshal Villeroi and the Elector of Bavaria, at the head of seventy-five thousand men, were making in the heart of Flanders, which rendered this change necessary. General Overkirk was there entrusted with the army intended to cover Holland; but it was greatly inferior to the enemy in point of numerical amount, and still more so in the quality and composition of the troops of which it was composed. Aware of his superiority, and of the timid character of the government which was principally interested in that army, Villeroi pushed his advantages to the utmost. He advanced boldly upon the Meuse, carried by assault the fortress of Huys, and, marching upon Liege, occupied the town without much resistance, and laid siege to the citadel. Overkirk, in his lines before Maestricht, was unable even to keep the field. The utmost alarm seized upon the United Provinces. They already in imagination saw Louis XIV. a second time at the gates of Amsterdam. Courier after courier was dispatched to Marlborough, soliciting relief in the most urgent terms; and it was hinted, that if effectual protection were not immediately given, Holland would be under the necessity of negotiating for a separate peace. There was not a moment to be lost: the Dutch were now as hard pressed as the Austrians had been in the preceding year, and in greater alarm than the Emperor was before the battle of Blenheim. A cross march like that into Bavaria could alone reinstate affairs. Without a moment's hesitation, Marlborough took his determination.

On the 17th June, without communicating his designs to any one, or even without saying a word of the alarming intelligence he had received, he ordered the whole army to be under arms at midnight, and setting out shortly after, he marched, without intermission, eighteen miles to the rear. Having thus gained a march upon the enemy, so as to avoid the risk of being pursued or harassed in his retreat, he left General D'Aubach with eleven battalions and twelve squadrons to cover the important magazines at Treves and Saarbruck; and himself, with the remainder of the army, about thirty thousand strong, marched rapidly in the direction of Maestricht. He was in hopes of being able, like the Consul Nero, in the memorable cross march from Apulia to the Metaurus in Roman story, to attack the enemy with his own army united to that of Overkirk, before he was aware of his approach; but in this he was disappointed. Villeroi got notice of his movement, and instantly raising the siege of the citadel of Liege, withdrew, though still superior in number to the united forces of the enemy, within the shelter of the lines he had prepared and fortified with great care on the Meuse. Marlborough instantly attacked and carried Huys on the 11th July. But the satisfaction derived from having thus arrested the progress of the enemy in Flanders, and wrested from him the only conquest of the campaign, soon received a bitter alloy. Like Napoleon in his later years, the successes he gained in person were almost always overbalanced by the disasters sustained through the blunders or treachery of his lieutenants. Hardly had Huys opened its gates, when advices were received that D'Aubach, instead of obeying his orders, and defending the magazines at Treves and Saarbruck to the last extremity, had fled on the first appearance of a weak French detachment, and burned the whole stores which it had cost so much time and money to collect. This was a severe blow to Marlborough, for it at once rendered impracticable the offensive movement into Lorraine, on which his heart was so set, and from which he had anticipated such important results. It was no longer possible to carry the war into the enemy's territory, or turn, by an irruption into Lorraine, the whole fortresses of the enemy in Flanders. The tardiness of the German powers in the first instance, the terrors of the Dutch, and misconduct of D'Aubach in the last, had caused that ably conceived design entirely to miscarry. Great was the mortification of the English general at this signal disappointment of his most warmly cherished hopes; it even went so far that he had thoughts of resigning his command.4 But instead of abandoning himself to despair, he set about, like the King of Prussia in after times, the preparation of a stroke which should reinstate his affairs by the terror with which it inspired the enemy, and the demonstration of inexhaustible resources it afforded in himself.

The position occupied by the Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Villeroi was so strong that it was regarded as impregnable, and in truth it was so to a front attack. With its right resting on Marche aux Dames on the Meuse, it stretched through Leau to the strong and important fortress of Antwerp. This line was long, and of course liable to be broken through at points; but such was the skill with which every vulnerable point had been strengthened and fortified by the French engineers, that it was no easy matter to say where an impression could be made. Wherever a marsh or a stream intervened, the most skilful use had been made of it; while forts and redoubts, plentifully mounted with heavy cannon, both commanded all the approaches to the lines, and formed so many points d'appui to its defenders in case of disaster. Such a position, defended by seventy thousand men, directed by able generals, might well be deemed impregnable. But Marlborough, with an inferior force, resolved to attempt it. In doing so, however, he had difficulties more formidable to overcome than even the resistance of the enemy in front; the timidity of the authorities at the Hague, the nervousness and responsibility of the Dutch generals, were more to be dreaded than Villeroi's redoubts. It required all the consummate address of the English general, aided by the able co-operation of General Overkirk, to get liberty from the Dutch authorities to engage in any offensive undertaking. At length, however, after infinite difficulty, a council of war, at headquarters, agreed to support any undertaking which might be deemed advisable; and Marlborough instantly set about putting his design in execution.

The better to conceal the real point of attack, he gave out that a march to the Moselle was to be immediately undertaken; and to give a colour to the report, the corps which had been employed in the siege of Huys was not brought forward to the front. At the same time Overkirk was detached to the Allied left towards Bourdine, and Marlborough followed with a considerable force, ostensibly to support him. So completely was Villeroi imposed upon, that he drew large reinforcements from the centre to his extreme right; and soon forty thousand men were grouped round the sources of the Little Gheet on his extreme right. By this means the centre was seriously weakened; and Marlborough instantly assembled, with every imaginable precaution to avoid discovery, all his disposable forces to attack the weakened part of the lines. The corps hitherto stationed on the Meuse was silently brought up to the front; Marlborough put himself at the head of his own English and German troops, whom he had carried with him from the Moselle; and at eight at night, on the 17th July, the whole began to march, all profoundly ignorant of the service on which they were to be engaged. Each trooper was ordered to carry a truss of hay at his saddle-bow, as if a long march was in contemplation. At the same instant on which the columns under Marlborough's orders commenced their march, Overkirk repassed the Mehaigne on the left, and, hid by darkness, fell into the general line of the advance of the Allied troops.

No fascines or gabions had been brought along to pass the ditch, for fear of exciting alarm in the lines. The trusses of hay alone were trusted to for that purpose, which would be equally effectual, and less likely to awaken suspicion. At four in the morning, the heads of the columns, wholly unperceived, were in front of the French works, and, covered by a thick fog, traversed the morass, passed the Gheet despite its steep banks, carried the castle of Wange, and, rushing forward with a swift pace, crossed the ditch on the trusses of hay, and, in three weighty columns, scaled the rampart, and broke into the enemy's works. Hitherto entire success had attended this admirably planned attack; but the alarm was now given; a fresh corps of fifteen thousand men, under M. D'Allegré, hastily assembled, and a heavy fire was opened upon the Allies, now distinctly visible in the morning light, from a commanding battery. Upon this, Marlborough put himself at the head of Lumley's English horse, and, charging vigorously, succeeded, though not till he had sustained one repulse, in breaking through the line thus hastily formed. In this charge the Duke narrowly escaped with his life, in a personal conflict with a Bavarian officer. The Allies now crowded in, in great numbers, and the French, panic-struck, fled on all sides, abandoning the whole centre of their intrenchments to the bold assailants. Villeroi, who had become aware, from the retreat of Overkirk in his front, that some attack was in contemplation, but ignorant where the tempest was to fall, remained all night under arms. At length, attracted by the heavy fire, he approached the scene of action in the centre, only in time to see that the position was broken through, and the lines no longer tenable. He drew off his whole troops accordingly, and took up a new position, nearly at right angles to the former, stretching from Elixheim towards Tirlemont. It was part of the design of the Duke to have intercepted the line of retreat of the French, and prevented them from reaching the Dyle, to which they were tending; but such was the obstinacy and slowness of the Dutch generals, that nothing could persuade them to make any further exertion, and, in defiance of the orders and remonstrances alike of Marlborough and Overkirk, they pitched their tents, and refused to take any part in the pursuit. The consequence was, that Villeroi collected his scattered forces, crossed the Dyle in haste, and took up new ground, about eighteen miles in the rear, with his left sheltered by the cannon of Louvain. But, though the disobedience and obstinacy of the Dutch thus intercepted Marlborough in the career of victory, and rendered his success much less complete than it otherwise would have been, yet had a mighty blow been struck, reflecting the highest credit on the skill and resolution of the English general. The famous lines, on which the French had been labouring for months, had been broken through and carried, during a nocturnal conflict of a few hours; they had lost all their redoubts and ten pieces of cannon, with which they were armed; M. D'Allegré, with twelve hundred prisoners, had been taken; and the army which lately besieged Liege and threatened Maestricht, was now driven back, defeated and discouraged, to seek refuge under the cannon of Louvain.

Overkirk, who had so ably co-operated with Marlborough in this glorious victory, had the magnanimity as well as candour, in his despatch to the States-general, to ascribe the success which had been gained entirely to the skill and courage of the English general.5 But the Dutch generals, who had interrupted his career of success, had the malignity to charge the consequences of their misconduct on his head, and even carried their effrontery so far as to accuse him of supineness in not following up his success, and cutting off the enemy's retreat to the Dyle, when it was themselves who had refused to obey his orders to do so. Rains of extraordinary severity fell from the 19th to the 23d July, which rendered all offensive operations impracticable, and gave Villeroi time, of which he ably availed himself, to strengthen his position behind the Dyle to such a degree, as to render it no longer assailable with any prospect of success. The precious moment, when the enemy might have been driven from it in the first tumult of success, had been lost.

The subsequent success in the Flemish campaign by no means corresponded to its brilliant commencement. The jealousy of the Dutch ruined every thing. This gave rise to recriminations and jealousies, which rendered it impracticable even for the great abilities and consummate address of Marlborough to effect any thing of importance with the heterogeneous array, with the nominal command of which he was invested. The English general dispatched his adjutant-general, Baron Hompesch, to represent to the States-general the impossibility of going on longer with such a divided responsibility; but, though they listened to his representations, nothing could induce them to put their troops under the direct orders of the commander-in-chief. They still had "field deputies," as they were called who were invested with the entire direction of the Dutch troops; and as they were civilians, wholly unacquainted with military affairs, they had recourse on every occasion to the very fractious generals who already had done so much mischief to the common cause. In vain Marlborough repeatedly endeavoured, as he himself said, "to cheat them into victory," by getting their consent to measures, of which they did not see the bearing, calculated to achieve that object; their timid, jealous spirit interposed on every occasion to mar important operations, and the corps they commanded was too considerable to admit of their being undertaken without their co-operation. After nine days' watching the enemy across the Dyle, Marlborough proposed to cross the river near Louvain, and attack the enemy; the Dutch Deputies interposed their negative, to Marlborough's infinite mortification, as, in his own words, "it spoiled the whole campaign."6

Worn out with these long delays, Marlborough at length resolved at all hazards to pass the river, trusting that the Dutch, when they saw the conflict once seriously engaged, would not desert him. But in this he was mistaken. The Dutch not only failed to execute the part assigned them in the combined enterprise, but sent information of his designs to the enemy. The consequence was, Villeroi was on his guard. All the Duke's demonstrations could not draw his attention from his left, where the real attack was intended; but nevertheless the Duke pushed on the English and Germans under his orders, who forced the passage in the most gallant style. But when the Duke ordered the Dutch generals to support the attack of the Duke of Wirtemberg, who had crossed the river, and established himself in force on the opposite bank, they refused to move their men. The consequence was that this attack, as well planned and likely to succeed as the famous forcing of the lines a fortnight before, proved abortive; and Marlborough, burning with indignation, was obliged to recall his troops when on the high-road to victory, and when the river had been crossed, before they had sustained a loss of a hundred men. So general was the indignation at this shameful return on the part of the Dutch generals to Marlborough for all the services he had rendered to their country, that it drew forth the strongest expressions from one of his ablest, but most determined opponents, Lord Bolingbroke, who wrote to him at this juncture: – "It was very melancholy to find the malice of Slangenberg, the fears of Dopf, and the ignorance of the deputies, to mention no more, prevail so to disappoint your Grace, to their prejudice as well as ours. We hope the Dutch have agreed to what your Grace desires of them, without which the war becomes a jest to our enemies, and can end in nothing but an ill peace, which is certain ruin to us."7

Still the English general was not discouraged. His public spirit and patriotism prevailed over his just private resentment. Finding it impossible to prevail on the Dutch deputies, who, in every sense, were so many viceroys over him, to agree to any attempt to force the passage of the Dyle, he resolved to turn it. For this purpose the army was put in motion on the 14th August; and, defiling to his left, he directed it in three columns towards the sources of the Dyle. The march was rapid, as the Duke had information that strong reinforcements, detached from the army at Alsace, would join Villeroi on the 18th. They soon came to ground subsequently immortalized in English story. On the 16th they reached Genappe, where, on 17th June 1815, the Life-guards under Lord Anglesea defeated the French lancers; on the day following, the enemy retired into the forest of Soignies, still covering Brussels, and the Allied headquarters were moved to Braine la Leude. On the 17th August, a skirmish took place on the plain in front of Waterloo; and the alarm being given, the Duke hastened to the spot, and rode over the field where Wellington and Napoleon contended a hundred and ten years afterwards. The French upon this retired into the forest of Soignies, and rested at Waterloo for the night.

The slightest glance at the map must be sufficient to show, that by this cross march to Genappe and Waterloo, Marlborough had gained an immense advantage over the enemy. He had interposed between them and France. He had relinquished for the time, it is true, his own base of operations, and was out of communication with his magazines; but he had provided for this by taking six days' provisions for the army with him; and he could now force the French to fight or abandon Brussels, and retire towards Antwerp – the Allies being between them and France. Still clinging to their fortified lines on the Dyle, and desirous of covering Brussels, they had only occupied the wood of Soignies with their right wing; while the Allies occupied all the open country from Genappe to Frischermont and Braine la Leude, with their advanced posts up to La Haye Sainte and Mount St John. The Allies now occupied the ground, afterwards covered by Napoleon's army: the forest of Soignies and approaches to Brussels were guarded by the French. Incalculable were the results of a victory gained in such a position: it was by success gained over an army of half the size, that Napoleon established his power in so surprising a manner at Marengo. Impressed with such ideas, Marlborough, on the 18th August, anxiously reconnoitred the ground; and finding the front practicable for the passage of troops, moved up his men in three columns to the attack. The artillery was sent to Wavre; the Allied columns traversed at right angles the line of march by which Blucher advanced to the support of Wellington on the 18th June 1815.