The Battle of Blenheim (9 page)
He could not know the special factor of weakness in his opponent’s cavalry; he was to misjudge the first element in the position when he broke his best infantry in the futile attack upon the village. But he was to benefit by those small, hidden, momentary things which determine great battles, and which make of soldiers, as of men who follow the sea, determined despisers of success, and as determined worshippers of the merit which may or may not attain it.
To have led his army as he had led it for now three months, to have designed the general plan that he had designed, and to have accomplished it; to have effected the splendid concentration but a few hours since upon the Kessel—these formed a work sufficient to deserve the reward of victory, Marlborough had the fortune not only to deserve, but to achieve.
The night of that Tuesday fell with no alarm upon the one side or upon the other. In the camp of Marlborough and of Eugene was the knowledge that the twin commanders had determined upon an action; in that of Tallard and the Elector the belief that it was more probable their opponents would follow the general rules of war, and fall back to recruit their supplies by the one route that was widely open to them.
Midnight passed. It was already the morning of Wednesday the 13th before the one had moved, or the other had guessed the nature of his enemy’s plan.
It was moonless and pitch-dark, save for the dense white mist which, in the marshy lands of that river valley, accompanies the turn of the August night. This mist had risen and covered the plain. The little villages were asleep after their disturbance by the advent of so many armed men. The
cockcrows of midnight were now well past when there was stir in Marlborough’s camp, and from this moment, somewhere about two of the morning of Wednesday, August the 13th, the action of Blenheim begins.
THE ACTION
The field of Blenheim has changed in its physical aspect less than any other of the great battlefields of Europe during the two hundred years and more that have passed since Marlborough’s victory.
He who visits to-day this quiet Bavarian corn-land, with its pious and happy peasantry, its modest wealth, and its contempt for haste and greed, sees, if he come in the same late summer of the year, just what the mounted parties saw who rode out upon that Wednesday before the eight columns of Marlborough and Eugene under the early morning.
Thus, approaching the field of Blenheim from the east, the view consists in a low and strangely regular line of closely-wooded hills to the right and northwards; southwards, and to the left, a mass of undergrowth, the low trees of the marshes, occasional gaps of rank herbage which make bright green
patches interspersing the woodland, mark the wide and marshy course of the Danube, with its belt of alluvial soil and swamp on either side.
Between this stretch of damp river-ground to the south and the regular low wooded hills to the north lies a plain just lifted above the level of the river by such few feet as are sufficient to drain it and no more. Crossing this plain transversely, on their way to the Danube, ooze and trickle rather than run certain insignificant streams; each rises in the wooded hills to the north, falls southward, and in the length of a very few miles reaches the main river. These streams are found, as one goes up the great valley, at every mile or so. With one, the Nebel, we shall be particularly concerned, for during the action at Blenheim it formed the only slight obstacle separating the two armies. This plain, which in August is all stubble, is some three miles across, such a space separates the hills from the river, and that distance, or a trifle more, is the full length of the little muddy brooks which thus occasionally intersect it.
To the eye which takes in that landscape at a first glance, bare of crops and under a late summer sun, the plain seems quite even and undisturbed by any hollows or rolls of
land. It is, in fact, like most such apparently simple terrains, slightly diversified: its diversity is enough to affect in some degree the disposition of soldiers, to afford in certain places occasional cover, and to permit of opportunities for defence.
But these variations from the flat are exceedingly slight. The hollow which the Nebel has made, for instance, is not noticed on foot or even in mechanical traction as one follows the main road which runs the whole length of the plain, though if one goes across country on foot, one notices the slight bank of a few feet separating the cultivated land from a narrow belt of rough grass, which is boggy in wet weather, and which, in varying breadth, accompanies the course of the stream.
The plain also, as might be expected, rises slightly from its low shelf just above the Danube swamps and meadows, to the base of the hills. Its ascent in its whole three miles of breadth is but sixty feet.
Over this level sweep of tilled land rise at intervals the spires of rare villages, round which scattered houses and gardens of the Bavarian sort—broad-eaved, flat-roofed, gay with flowers—are gathered. But for these few human groups there is no break in the general aspect of the quite open fields.
As might be expected, an interrupted chain of such villages marks the line of the great river from Donauwörth to Ulm, each standing just on the bank and edge of what for long was the flood-ground of the Danube, and is still in part unreclaimed marsh and water meadow. Each is distant a mile or two from its next fellow. Thus, nearest Donauwörth we have Münster, upon which the left of the allied army reposed when it lay in camp before the battle. Next in order come Tapfheim and Schwenningen, through which that army marched to the field. Further up-stream another group stretches beyond the Nebel, the hamlet of Sonderheim, the little town of Hochstadt, the village of Steinheim, etc.; and, in the middle of this line, at the point where the Nebel falls into the old bed of the Danube, is built that large village of
Blindheim
, which, under its English form of
Blenheim
, has given the action the name it bears in this country.
I say “the old bed of the Danube,” for one feature, and one alone, in that countryside has changed in the two hundred years, though the change is not one which the eye can note as it surveys the plain, nor one which greatly affects the story of the action. This change is due to the straightening of the bed of the great river.
At the time when Blenheim was fought, the Danube wound in great loops, with numerous islands and backwaters complicating its course, and swung back and forth among the level swamps of its valley. It runs to-day in an artificial channel, which takes the average, as it were, of these variations, drains the flood-ground, and leaves the old bed in the form of stagnant, abandoned lengths of water or reeds, in which the traveller can trace the former vagaries of the river. Thus Blindheim, which stood just above the broad and hurrying water at the summit of one such loop, is now 800 yards away from the artificial trench which modern engineering has dug for the river. But the new channel has no effect upon the landscape to the eye. The floor on which the Danube runs is still a mass of undergrowth and weeds and grass, which marks off the cultivated land on the south, as it has been limited since men first ploughed.
I have said that the little slow and muddy streamlet called the Nebel must particularly meet with our attention, because it formed at the beginning of the action of Blenheim a central line dividing the two hosts, and round its course may be grouped the features of the terrain upon which the battle was contested.
Blindheim
, or, as we always call it,
Blenheim
, lay, as we have seen, just above the bank of the Danube at the mouth of this stream. Following up the water (which is so insignificant that in most places a man can cross it unaided in summer), at the distance of about one mile, is the village of
Unterglauheim
, lying above the
left
bank, as Blenheim does above the right. Further on, another three-quarters of a mile up the
right
bank, is the village of
Oberglauheim
; and where the water dribbles in various small streams from the hills, and at their base, where the various tiny rivulets join to form the Nebel, at the edge of the woods, is
Schwennenbach
.
The tiny hamlet of
Weilheim
may be regarded as an appendix of this last or of Oberglauheim indifferently. It lies opposite the latter village, but on the further side of the stream, and about half a mile away.
Right behind Oberglauheim, at the base of the hills to the westward, and well away from the Nebel, is the larger village of
Lutzingen
.
These names, and that of the Nebel, are sufficient for us to retain as we follow the course of the battle, remembering as we do so that one good road, the road by which the allies marched in the morning to the field from Münster, and the road by which
the Franco-Bavarian forces retreated after the defeat—the main road from Donauwörth to Ulm—traversed, and still traverses, the terrain in its whole length.
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It was at two in the morning of Wednesday the 13th of August that the allies broke camp and began their march westward towards the field of Blenheim.
That they intended to reach that field was not at first apparent. They might equally well have designed a retirement upon Nördlingen, and it was this that the commanders of the Franco-Bavarian army believed them to intend. The dense mist which covered the marshes of the river and the plain above clung to the soil long after sunrise. It was not until seven o’clock that the advancing columns of the enemy were observed from the French camp, distant about a mile away, and beginning to deploy in order to set themselves in line of battle. But, though they were then first seen, their arrival had been appreciated two hours before,
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and the French line was already
drawn up opposite them on the further bank of the Nebel as they deployed.
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The French order of battle is no longer to be found in the archives, though we can reconstruct it fairly enough, and in parts quite accurately, from the separate accounts of the action given by Tallard, by Marcin himself, by Eugene, and from English sources. The line of battle of the allies we possess in detail; and the reader can approach with a fair accuracy the dispositions of the two armies at the moment when the action began, though it must be understood that the full deployment of Marlborough and Eugene was not accomplished until after midday on account of the difficulty the latter commander found in posting his extreme right at the foot of the hills and in the woods of Schwennenbach; while it must be further noted that the first shots of the battle sounded long before its main action began, that is, long before noon—for the French guns upon the front of their line opened at long range as early as nine o’clock, and continued a lively cannonade until, at half-past twelve, Eugene
being at last ready, the first serious blows were delivered by the infantry.
All this we shall see in what followed. Meanwhile we must take a view of the two armies as they stood ranged for battle before linesman or cavalryman had moved.
The map on following page indicates in general terms the situation of the opposing forces.
The French stood upon the defensive upon the western bank of the Nebel. Their camp lay behind their line of battle, a stretch of tents nearly two miles long.
It is particularly to be noted that though, for the purpose of fighting this battle, they formed but one army, the two separate commands, that of the Elector (with Marcin) and that of Tallard, were separately treated and separately organised. The point is of importance if we are to understand the causes of their defeat, for it made reinforcement difficult, and put two loosely joined wings where a strong centre should have stood.
Tallard’s command, thirty-six battalions and (nominally) forty-four squadrons, extended from Blindheim to the neighbourhood of Oberglauheim. Its real strength may be taken at about 16,000 to 18,000 infantry, and at the most 5200 cavalry; but of these last a great number could not be used as mounted men.
The Elements of the Action of Blenheim.
The village of Oberglauheim itself, and all that stretched to the left of it up the Nebel as far as the base of the hills, was occupied by the army of Marcin and the Elector of Bavaria. This force was forty-two battalions and eighty-three squadrons strong. The cavalry in this second army, the left of the whole force, had been less severely tried by disease, rapid marching, and ill provisionment than that of Tallard. We may reckon it, therefore, at its full or nearly its full strength, and say that Marcin and the Elector commanded over 20,000 men and close upon 10,000 horse. In a word, the total of the Franco-Bavarian forces, though we have no documents by which to estimate their exact numbers, may be regarded, from the indications we have of the losses of the cavalry, etc., as certainly more than fifty and certainly less than fifty-three thousand men, infantry and cavalry combined. To these we must add ninety guns, disposed along the whole front after the fashion of the time, and these under the general and separate command of Frézelière.
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