Authors: Richard Holmes
leads cavalry at Grammont, 174
aims to capture Kehl, 240
defeats Prince Louis at Friedlingen, 251
declines to offer battle at Sieck, 310
attacks Prince Louis on Rhine, 331–2
commands army on Rhine, 331
at battle of Ramillies, 341
forced to retreat after Ramillies, 348
appointed commander in Flanders (1709), 412, 417, 420
character, 412
deployment and manoeuvres in Flanders, 417–19, 422–3
on weak state of soldiers, 417
and Allied attack on Tournai, 418
given permission to fight, 421
reinforces Mons, 421
in battle of Malplaquet, 423, 425, 430–1
wounded, 431–2, 434
Marlborough writes to after Malplaquet, 434
in 1710 campaign, 450–2
on Charles III’s accession as Emperor, 452
throws up
Ne Plus Ultra
lines, 453–4, 457
captures Arleux, 454
Marlborough plans to attack, 455–7
letter from Ormonde, 462
victories against Eugène, 462
Villeroi, Marshal François de Neufville, duc de:
Eugène captures at Cremona, 224
commands in Lines of Brabant, 240–4, 246
captures Tongres, 241
forage supply, 244
Marlborough’s confidence of defeating, 256
and Marlborough’s march into Germany, 259–60
at Lines of Stollhofen, 278
Elector joins on Rhine, 305
in Brabant (1705–6), 310, 317, 331
sends snuffboxes to Marlborough, 311
counters Marlborough’s movements at Lines of Brabant, 312
defeated at Lines of Brabant, 315
opposes Allied crossing of Dyle, 320–1
besieges Leau, 331
deployment and defeat at Ramillies, 332–6, 339, 345, 346–7
casualties at Ramillies, 348
replaced by Vendôme after Ramillies, 349
Villiers, Barbara
see
Cleveland, Duchess of
Villiers, Elizabeth
see
Orkney, Countess of
Vimy Ridge, 455
Violaine, Brigadier de, 229
Voisin, Daniel François, 412
Vollant, Simon, 392
Vryberg, Martinus van, 325
Wade, Colonel Nathaniel, 112, 116, 124
Walcourt, battle of (1689), 160–2
Waldeck, Georg Friedrich, Prince of, 159–62, 173
Walker, Robert, 14
Waller, Sir Hardress, 210
Waller, Sir William, 40
Walpole, Horace, 235
Walpole, Sir Robert, 22, 416
Walter, Lucy, 77, 110
Wangé, château of, 314
warfare:
seasonal conduct of, 220
Warneton, 421
Wassenaer en Obdam (Opdam), General Jacob van Wassenaer, Count van, 227, 230–1, 242–6, 318
Webb, Major General John:
Toryism, 36, 413
commands arms convoy in Flanders, 399–401
and Wynendaele engagement, 399
in battle of Malplaquet, 400–1, 426
Webb, Stephen Saunders, 175, 184
Wedderburn, Major, 416
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of:
compared with Marlborough, 2, 6
promotion after Moore’s death, 185
and discipline, 480
Wentworth, George, 24
Wentworth, Peter, 23
Wentworth, Thomas, 5th Baron, 48–9
Werden, Sir John, 95
Wermüller, Colonel, 341
Wesel, 240
Westonzoyland, Somerset, 120–3, 125 Wharton, Thomas, 1st Marquess of:
on voting in Lords, 29
political activities
and sympathies, 33–7
in conspiracy against James II, 136
supposedly writes lyrics to ‘Lillibulero’, 143
and Anne’s claim for grant, 164
earldom, 353
and Sarah’s differences with Anne, 408
in Cabinet, 413
Wheatcroft, Andrew, 1
Wheate, Sir Thomas, 223, 461
Whigs:
in Parliament, 32–3
junto, 35, 353
as party, 35–6
term adopted, 90
government (1705), 330
supports funding of war, 330
election success (1708), 364
ascendancy, 412, 437
Marlborough supports, 413
and peace terms, 441
government under Harley, 442
condemn light peace terms for France, 459
fear Jacobite invasion, 463
purged from army, 467
Whitehall, palace of, 56–7
Wild Geese (Irish), 130, 347
Wilkes, John, 459
Wilkes, Lieutenant General, 292
William I (the Silent), Prince of Orange, 67
William III (of Orange), King of England, Scotland and Ireland:
achievements, 1
appearance, 13
accession, 15, 156–7
favours and ennobles Dutch officers, 27, 172
composition of Parliament, 33
marriage, 52, 92
cultivates Hampton Court gardens, 57
opposes Louis XIV, 67
confirms sentence on Elnberger, 75
Marlborough confers with on French threat to Bruges, 89
at battle of Boyne (1690), 16, 93
and sinking of
Gloucester
, 98
nicknamed by Anne and Sarah, 105
and Monmouth rebellion, 114
and British military opposition to James II, 135
invasion of England and advance to London, 137, 142, 145–9, 155
issues
Declaration
, 145–7
appoints Feversham master of Royal Hospital, 155
tensions with Marlborough, 157
reforms army, 158–9
praises Marlborough for Walcourt victory, 162
suspected of homosexuality, 163
and Anne’s funding, 164
campaign in Ireland, 164, 166–9
praises Marlborough for Irish campaign, 171
and War of League of Augsburg, 173–4, 181–2, 210
dismisses Marlborough from appointments and court, 175–6
and Marlborough’s arrest and imprisonment, 180
Mediterranean strategy fails, 182–3
Shrewsbury urges to reinstate Marlborough, 185
and death of Mary, 186
Jacobite assassination plots against, 187, 193
recognised by Louis XIV as monarch, 188
reinstates Marlborough, 190–1
and succession to throne, 191
and War of Spanish Succession, 193
death, 194, 198
and government of United Provinces, 198, 200
and payments to Marlborough, 461
Wilson, Sergeant John:
as source, 8, 225–6
on march to Danube, 264, 268
at Donauwörth, 273
on plundering of Bavaria, 277
on battle of Blenheim, 294
on siege of Tournai, 420
in battle of Malplaquet, 427
disparages French fighting, 430
Winchester:
bishopric, 355
Windsor Castle:
Charles II at, 57
Windsor Great Park:
Ranger’s Lodge, 268, 473
Winston, Sir Henry, 40
Wissembourg, 249
Withers, Lieutenant General Henry, 75, 226, 264, 272, 423, 425–6, 428, 430–2
Witt, Jan de, 67
Wolfenbüttel, Prince of, 275
Wolseley, Field Marshal Garnet Joseph, Viscount, 79
Wood, Major General Cornelius, 275, 291, 431
Woodstock:
election (1710), 223
Woodstock manor, Oxfordshire:
given to Marlborough, 299
Wotton (house), Surrey, 14
Wratislaw, Johann Wenzel, Count, 252–3, 255, 302–3, 322, 362
Wren, Sir Christopher:
church designs, 14
loses post of surveyor general, 22
and development of Whitehall Palace, 57
designs Marlborough House, 408
Wren, Christopher, Jr, 408
Württemberg, Alexander, Prince of, 397
Württemberg, Carl Rudolph, Duke of, 264, 276, 280, 346
Württemberg, Ferdinand William, Prince of, 169–70, 210
Wycherley, William, 63
Wynendaele, battle of (1708), 21, 36, 399
Yarborough, John, 247
York, Anne Hyde, Duchess of, 29, 47, 83, 88
Young, Robert, 178, 180
Ypres, 393, 418, 454
Zandvliet, 326
Zenta, battle of (1697), 250
Zurlauben, Lieutenant General von, 292
Celebrated military historian and television presenter Richard Holmes is famous for his BBC series such as
War Walks
and
Wellington.
He is the author of the bestselling and widely acclaimed
Redcoat
and
Tommy
and more than a dozen other books, including
The Western Front
,
Dusty Warriors
and
Sahib.
He is general editor of the definitive
Oxford Companion to Military History.
He taught military history at Sandhurst for many years and is now a professor at Cranfield University and the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. He lives near Winchester in Hampshire.
English money at the time in which this book is set was reckoned in pounds, shillings and pence, with twenty shillings to the pound and twelve pence to the shilling: a guinea was worth thirty shillings prior to the recoinage in 1696, and twenty-one shillings thereafter. Simple multiplications do not catch the subtleties of the real value of money, although one reliable source suggests that £1 in 1700 was worth the equivalent of £125 in 2006. Scots money was worth rather less: in 1703 five dragoon broadswords cost £24 Scots, but just £2 Sterling. Soldiers and merchants had to take local currencies as they found them, and relative values were generally on the move. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the French livre was worth about twenty louis d’or, and one of the latter was worth about a guinea. The Dutch guilder contained twenty stivers, and a stiver roughly equated to an English penny. The Spanish pistole, widely used in the Spanish Netherlands, in which so much of Marlborough’s campaigning took place, was worth much the same as a louis d’or. There were other currencies about, their value easily reckoned up by those like the jovial Irishman ‘Captain’ Peter Drake (his rank stemming from self-granted courtesy, not formal commission) with an eye to the main chance. In 1702 he slit a corn bag in Nijmegen castle and found ‘a hundred silver ducatoons, value about five shillings and tenpence each, near £30 Sterling’.
1
Incomes differed hugely. Near the top of the social scale, Sir William Cowper met lord treasurer Godolphin on 11 October 1705 and agreed to become lord keeper ‘on condition I had the same money for equipage (£2,000) and salary of £4,000 as my predecessor had, and a peerage next promotion’. Before he could take office he had to swear the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, paying a fee of £26 for each. In the period 1706–08 his income did not fall below £7,000 a year.
2
This was wealth indeed: in 1688 Gregory King estimated the yearly average income of noble families at £3,200 apiece. However, at the height of her power Sarah Marlborough made £9,500 a year from all her court offices
(that of groom of the stole alone was worth £3,000), and one apparently well-founded contemporary estimate put her husband’s total income in 1704 at the staggering sum of £54,825.
3
The merchant princes of the age, like Sir Peter Vansittart and Sir Theodore Jensen, left fortunes of more than £100,000, and most London merchants of the middling sort, bringing in £200–£400 a year, might leave £5,000–£15,000. It cost perhaps £1,000 to be sworn apprentice to a ‘Turkey merchant’ trading with the east, £400–£600 to other merchants, and £200–£300 to wholesale dealers like linen drapers.
In 1667 Bab May suggested that £300 a year was quite enough for any country gentleman, coming quite close to Gregory King’s 1688 estimate of £450 a year for the average annual income of esquires – the rank between knight and gentleman – and £280 for plain gentlemen.
4
Although King thought that ‘persons in greater offices and places’ averaged £240 a year, Samuel Pepys, a rising young official, had clearly done rather better. He reckoned himself worth £650 in 1662, £2,164 (and an inherited estate) in 1665, and £6,700 in 1667.