Kitabı oku: «Battles of English History», sayfa 11

INTERMEDIATE NOTE

STANDING ARMIES

In 1658, on the anniversary of his two last victories, which was also his birthday, the great Protector died. With him practically expired the fabric of government which he had built up; and the nation a year and a half later recalled Charles II. The Protector's power had depended greatly on the army, which had been used after his death no longer to support steady if arbitrary government, but to further the interests of individuals or of factions. Naturally at the Restoration there was a strong feeling among the royalists against a standing army, though it is only fair to the best conducted body which ever bore that title, to point out that the many interferences of the army in public affairs, before the abolition of the monarchy and during the Commonwealth, were due to the strong feeling of all ranks, that as being soldiers they were all the more bound to do their duty as citizens, and not to the opposite tendency of soldiers to obey their chiefs in blind indifference to every political consideration. Everywhere except in England standing armies prevailed, and everywhere except in England the kings were absolute. Charles II. had had ample opportunities for imbibing the ideas of his contemporaries, especially of his cousin Louis XIV. He had all the will to be absolute, but would not take trouble to make himself so. Had it rested with him alone, he would no doubt have been glad to maintain a standing army like his neighbours. The cavaliers of the Restoration, however, partly from recent and painful experience, partly imbued with the traditional English jealousy of military force in any shape, were resolute that there should be none. They affirmed positively the principle for which Charles I. had contended, that the king was the sole and uncontrolled head of the armed forces of the state; but they took very good care, in resettling the royal revenue, that the king should not have the means of maintaining an army. Charles nevertheless made a beginning; he took into his service the regiment of General Monk, a prime agent in the Restoration, which has since been known as the Coldstream Guards. To them he added other regiments, one by one as occasion offered, and his brother James followed his example. On the deposition of the latter, Parliament affirmed in the Declaration of Right the maxim, very dubious as a statement of historical fact, but very rational as a principle of government, that "the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace, without consent of Parliament, is illegal."

Nevertheless the art of war had undergone such a transformation that a standing army was a necessity unless England were to abjure all interest in European affairs, almost a necessity if she would preserve her independence. It was no longer possible to extemporise efficient armies, as in the earlier middle ages: the superior strength given by discipline, which takes time and practice, was fully recognised. The providing of artillery, and of ammunition, to say nothing of supplies of other kinds, was become a complicated and expensive business, which could not be properly carried out except under the permanent care of the state. There was no peace till late in William III.'s reign; and by that time the method of voting men and money for the army annually had been introduced. In spite of this, strong pressure was put on William to disband the army altogether, and it was only with great difficulty that he induced Parliament, which saw things too exclusively from the point of view of constitutional checks on the crown, to assent to the retention of a small force. With the accession of Anne came the outbreak of the great European War of the Spanish Succession, and by the end of it the question was decided in favour of a standing army. Some of our present regiments bear on their colours the proud names of Marlborough's victories.

CHAPTER X
MARLBOROUGH

With the reign of William III. the military history of England entered on a new phase. Her continental wars had hitherto been, with trifling exceptions, connected with the claim of the English kings to the throne of France. Henceforth she took part in nearly every European war; and thanks to the restless energy of William III. and to the military genius of Marlborough, the part she played was a leading one from the first. It has been argued that England was wrong to concern herself with continental quarrels, when her real interests lay elsewhere, at sea, in North America, at a later date in India, and that she only weakened herself for protecting these interests by intervening in European affairs. Those who take this view leave out of account the essential facts which governed the action of England at the time of this new departure. She had recently expelled her legitimate king, who had still many partisans at home, and who found in France a ready and most powerful ally. Louis XIV. was bound to the Stuarts by every tie of sympathy, religious, political, personal: and though he was not the man to let his sentiments outweigh his interest, the two so far coincided that his schemes for domination in Europe would obviously be furthered by weakening England through civil dissension. The English nation as a whole was passionately attached to its church, to its political liberties, still more perhaps to its independence of foreigners, and saw in France the one dangerous enemy to all three. France had other enemies, arrayed against her for reasons which did not much concern England, and alliance with them was an opportunity worth seizing. The determining motive however was not this calculation, but outraged honour. When Louis XIV. formally recognised the son of the dying James II. as lawful king of England, he committed at once a crime and a blunder: he deliberately broke his word, and insulted England beyond endurance. Those words cost him his supremacy in Europe, and made England henceforth a permanent and ever weightier factor in European affairs.

The military reputation of England had suffered eclipse since the days of Henry V., not altogether deservedly, for the fighting qualities of Englishmen had been conspicuous on many fields, and yet not unnaturally. English troops fighting for the independence of the Netherlands had done excellent service; Cromwell's contingent allied with France in 1658 had mainly contributed to an important victory over Spain. But the few independent expeditions sent by the English government to the continent had been ill managed or ill commanded, and had failed more or less completely. Under William III. they showed all their ancient stubborn valour, but luck was against them. The defeats of Steinkirk and Landen were more glorious to the English infantry than many a victory: the misconduct of their allies in one case, the very superior numbers of the French army and the great skill of its commander in the other case, amply accounted for the failure, but still they were defeats. The great victories of Marlborough, almost as brilliant as Crecy or Agincourt, restored the military credit of England, again not quite deservedly, for the armies of Marlborough were by no means wholly English, and yet very naturally, since the great Englishman was the real conqueror of Louis XIV. The death of William III., just before war actually broke out, left Marlborough, who was all powerful with queen Anne, the real head of the coalition against France.

England thus entered on the war of the Spanish Succession as the ally of continental powers banded together against France, and hampered by having to act in concert with them, as well as supported by their strength. In the patient tact requisite for managing a body of allies with diverging interests, and practically no bond of union except hostility to the enemy, Marlborough was perhaps never excelled. In military skill he was vastly William's superior, being on the whole the first of an age fertile in good generals. The weak point in his position was that it depended on the personal favour of a stupid woman: when his wife lost her influence over queen Anne, his political antagonists in England found no great difficulty in bringing about his disgrace. Marlborough was not a good man; he was greedy of money and of power, and unscrupulous as to the means he adopted for gaining them. As a general however he had the virtues never too common, and almost unknown in his age, of humanity towards the peaceful population even of a hostile country, and of attention to the welfare of his own soldiers. Like Wellington a century later, he was habitually careful of the lives of his men, though he knew how to expend them when the occasion demanded it. Like Wellington also he never lost his patience and coolness of judgment, either in the excitement of battle or in dealing with troublesome allies. In fact the two great Englishmen were conspicuously alike, at least in their military character, though there is no real doubt that Marlborough had the greater genius.

The commencement of the war was uneventful. The king of France had taken possession of Belgium in the name of his grandson Philip, the French claimant of the crown of Spain, which alarmed the Dutch for their homes. In Spain itself the French party was preponderant, but not unopposed. Louis had every motive for standing on the defensive. Marlborough was as yet powerless to move his allies. It was not until the alliance of Bavaria with France opened a road for French armies into the heart of Germany that decisive events occurred. The chief item in the French plans for 1704 was that Marshal Tallard should march from the Rhine into Bavaria, where another army under Marsin had wintered; then the two armies, combined with the Bavarian contingent, were to advance down the basin of the Danube. It was calculated that the Emperor, already greatly hampered by an insurrection in Hungary, would be unable to oppose effectual resistance, and would purchase peace on almost any terms. If this were achieved, the keystone of the alliance against France, the candidature of an Austrian prince in Spain, would be removed, and the whole fabric might be expected to collapse. The plan was well conceived: it was an instance, on the great political scale, of acting upon the fundamental military maxim – strike at the vital point. But for Marlborough it must have succeeded, so far as anything can be safely predicted in war. But for the practice, invariable in that age and perhaps inevitable by reason of the badness of roads and of organised supply, that all military operations should be suspended during the winter half of the year, Marlborough would have had no time to prepare his counter stroke. His plan was indeed fully thought out before the winter, in concert with the imperial general Eugene of Savoy, but he had many obstacles to overcome before it could be carried into operation. Even to the English cabinet he did not venture to disclose his whole purpose, but he succeeded in obtaining a large addition to his own army, and increased money grants. The Dutch had but one idea, to guard their own frontier: they would not even assent beforehand to Marlborough's proposal, intended to conceal his real object from friend and foe alike, that he with part of the German contingents should operate against France from the Moselle, while the Dutch, with the rest of the Germans, defended the Netherlands. Marlborough was obliged to be content with the assurance of his one firm supporter in Holland, the Pensionary Heinsius, that consent should be obtained when the time came. Much trouble had also to be taken with other minor members of the confederacy, but Marlborough attained his ostensible object of being free to move with his own army to the Moselle.

Not until Marlborough with his army had reached Coblenz, did he give any hint of his intentions, except to the two or three persons necessarily in his confidence. Even then he only declared to the Dutch that he found it necessary to go further south; and they, finding that a deaf ear was turned to their remonstrances, let Marlborough take his own course, and even sent reinforcements after him. The distance to be traversed, the necessity of arranging every detail for troops moving by different routes, made his progress necessarily slow. The French did not in the least guess his design, but nevertheless persevered in their plan of reinforcing the army in Bavaria, a process which the Margrave of Baden, who commanded for the allies on the upper Rhine, ought to have rendered much more difficult. Not till Marlborough, ascending the Neckar, began to penetrate the hill country that separates the basins of the Neckar and Danube, was his real purpose apparent. He had before then met Eugene of Savoy, who was as he hoped to command the imperial army destined to co-operate with him: but the Margrave of Baden, who was Eugene's senior in rank, insisted on taking the more important part, and leaving Eugene to command on the Rhine. Marlborough's purpose was something like Napoleon's at the beginning of the famous Austerlitz campaign, to concentrate his army, reaching the Danube by various routes, near Ulm. In Marlborough's time however Ulm was not yet an important fortress: and the Elector abandoned it on the allies appearing in the vicinity, and marched down the Danube to a great intrenched camp near Dillingen. Marlborough's first object was necessarily to secure a point of passage across the Danube: and he determined to seize Donauwerth, a small fortified town lower down. His zeal was quickened by the tidings that the French army under Marshal Tallard was on the point of marching from Strasburg to assist the Elector. He therefore, as soon as his troops had come up in sufficient numbers, without waiting for full concentration, circled round Dillingen, and directed his march on Donauwerth. The Elector divined his intention, and occupying that town, with the hill of the Schellenberg adjoining it, began to put in order the fortifications. Marlborough saw the urgent necessity for haste: a couple of days' delay might render the works on the Schellenberg unassailable, in which case his chance of securing a bridge over the Danube before Tallard arrived would be but small. He therefore ordered an attack immediately on reaching the place, though his men had had a very long march, and it was verging towards evening.⁵⁶

Donauwerth stands on the north bank of the Danube, just below the junction of a tributary, the Wernitz. The Schellenberg, a large flat-topped hill, immediately adjoins the town on the east. A continuous line of works existed, passing along the brow of the hill, and extending to the fortifications of Donauwerth on one side and down to the Danube on the other; only the central portion however was in a state fit for defence, though the enemy was at work on the remainder. Marlborough arrived in person with his cavalry before Donauwerth on the forenoon of July 2. While waiting for the infantry to come up, he caused bridges to be thrown over the Wernitz, and ordered a site for a camp to be marked out, thus giving the enemy the impression that no attack was intended, at any rate until next day. At 6 p.m. however the pick of Marlborough's army assailed the hill: after a long and desperate struggle, in which the allies lost heavily, the enemy were routed, and fled down the reverse slope to the Danube. The crush broke down the bridge, and thousands were precipitated into the rapid stream. Scarcely more than a quarter of the defenders of the Schellenberg reached the Elector's camp. As a consequence of this defeat the Elector abandoned Donauwerth, as well as Dillingen, and retired to Augsburg, where he shut himself up, while Marlborough ravaged Bavaria, in the vain hope of compelling the Elector to abandon the French alliance. Nuremberg became the centre of Marlborough's supply system, which was elaborated in a manner far in advance of his age; and the devastation⁵⁷ of Bavaria made him even more dependent on his magazines than he would otherwise have been. As Tallard was now approaching from the Rhine, with a force that Eugene was powerless to stop, the allies found it necessary to abandon the southern bank of the Danube. Marlborough and Eugene persuaded the Margrave of Baden that to capture Ingolstadt, a fortified town lower down the river, would be a higher distinction than to await attack from the French. They themselves united their armies at Donauwerth on the northern bank, and marched up the river towards the enemy, whom they found encamped beyond the Nebel, a small tributary of the Danube.

The line occupied by the French and Bavarians ran nearly north and south, and extended for about four miles. They had naturally formed their camp on the higher ground west of the Nebel, the course of which was marshy along the whole front, troublesome to cross everywhere, and believed by the French to be a much greater obstacle than it really was. Tallard, misconstruing information that he had received, was under the impression that Eugene's army had not joined Marlborough, and that therefore the movement before dawn on August 13, of which he was apprised, was a retreat northwards. The body of cavalry which escorted the allied generals to the Nebel, when they rode in advance of their armies to reconnoitre, was supposed to be detached to cover this retreat. Nothing was further from the minds of the French generals than the expectation of being attacked where they were. Hence they had taken no steps, as they might easily have done, to render their front virtually unassailable. Hence also, when the morning fog cleared off, and discovered columns of infantry at the edge of the higher ground which bordered the valley of the Nebel on the east, they were in too great a hurry to do anything but form line of battle on the ground which they already occupied.

The Nebel emerges from the wooded uneven country to the northwards about a mile east of Luzingen, in which village were the Elector's head-quarters. A little lower down, also on the right bank of the stream, is the village of Oberglauheim. The infantry of the joint army, commanded by the Elector and Marshal Marsin, was drawn up from Luzingen to Oberglauheim, most of its cavalry on the right, extending further to the south. Marshal Tallard's infantry was most of it posted in Blenheim,⁵⁸ a village close to the Danube; his cavalry continued the line to the north till they met Marsin's, but had a reserve of infantry behind its centre. The artillery, which was not numerous in proportion, was distributed at intervals. The French apparently believed the Nebel to be impassable from Oberglauheim to Blenheim, where there were some mills on the stream, which however they neglected to occupy: nor had they effectually broken the bridge by which the high-road crosses the Nebel. About Unterglauheim, a hamlet on the left bank half-way between the two, there lies a wide piece of swamp. During a great part of the year, or after heavy rain, the Nebel might no doubt be a very serious obstacle, but in August the difficulty could be overcome. Their want of care to ascertain the truth on this point was the direct cause of their defeat. Their dispositions had two ruinous defects, the Nebel being passable: first, their line was fatally weak in the centre, where for a long distance it consisted almost entirely of cavalry: secondly, they were posted so far back from the stream that there was room for the enemy to form line for attack after struggling through it. The latter error might easily have been remedied by a short advance, but nothing was done. Tallard, it is said, uneasy about the weakness of the centre when he saw the enemy massing at Unterglauheim, urged Marsin to post his reserve of infantry there; but Marsin thought, rightly as the event showed, that his reserves were needed on the left. Why Marshal Tallard did not withdraw from Blenheim several of the useless thousands that crowded it, is a question easier to ask than to answer.

Tallard had plenty of time to correct his dispositions, had he known how, for the battle did not begin for several hours after the allies came in sight. Eugene and Marlborough had agreed that the army of the former should constitute the right, Marlborough's the left, of the line of battle. As their line of march had been near the Danube, and the ground through which Eugene's columns had to make their way was broken and wooded, it was a long time before he was opposite Luzingen, ready to begin the action, and Marlborough was of course obliged to wait for him. The allied generals had discerned the defect in the French position: a vigorous attack on the centre ought to cut the line in half. Their plan was that Eugene should occupy the Elector and Marsin, and that Cutts with Marlborough's left should assail Blenheim directly, while the duke himself undertook the decisive movement. All preparations were duly made while Eugene was on the march: the pontoon train was brought up, and bridges laid at intervals from Unterglauheim downwards: the artillery was posted to command the opposite bank: troops were pushed forward to seize the small existing bridges near Blenheim. Except for a not very serious cannonade, Tallard remained inactive: he had in fact no longer any choice, unless he retreated (for which there was no reason), after he had allowed all the passages of the Nebel to fall into his enemy's hands. About one o'clock came the welcome news that Eugene had completed his march, and the battle began at once on both flanks. Of the conflict on the right very little need be said. The Nebel above Oberglauheim was not a real obstacle, and Eugene attacked directly. The contest was long and obstinate, with considerable vicissitudes: Eugene's troops, exhausted by the long march under a hot sun, were scarcely equal to the exertion required of them. The Elector and Marsin held their ground till Tallard was routed, and then made an orderly retreat, but they could not spare a man to help their colleague. Eugene's share in the action, though not in itself successful, was a necessary and important contribution to the victory.

Cutts made his attack on Blenheim with all the fury which earned for him the nickname of the Salamander. Against the enormous force that was massed in the village it was scarcely possible that he should actually succeed, but he prevented any troops from being withdrawn towards the centre. Here also the vicissitudes of the action were great. The first line of English infantry advanced right up to the palisades covering the village before they fired a shot. While vainly trying to force their way through the defences they were suddenly charged in flank by some French cavalry, and would have been routed but for some Hessian cavalry, which drove back the enemy. A fierce and confused cavalry fight followed, into which was drawn every squadron that Cutts could command, but with no decisive result. Meanwhile Marlborough's centre had been slowly crossing the Nebel, covered by the artillery on the high ground east of the stream, which approached much nearer to it than on the French side. The passage was begun opposite Unterglauheim by the infantry of General Churchill, Marlborough's brother. As soon as they could begin to form on the further bank cavalry pushed across after them, and though charged by the first line of Tallard's cavalry, and driven back, they were rescued by the infantry, now fairly formed, and made good their position. As more and more cavalry crossed the Nebel they extended to the right towards Oberglauheim, which was held in force by the right of Marsin's army. His cavalry fully held their own, driving some of the Danish and Hanoverian squadrons back across the Nebel. The infantry of Marlborough's right now began to cross above Oberglauheim, but being promptly attacked by the French infantry out of that village, the Irish brigade conspicuous among them, suffered heavy loss, and would have been defeated, but for reinforcements brought up by Marlborough in person, which restored the balance.

The time was now come for Marlborough to deliver the decisive attack. His whole army was across the stream, and formed, the cavalry in two lines, the infantry in support with intervals between the battalions, so that the squadrons if repulsed might pass through. His artillery, advanced to the Nebel, played upon the stationary French until the last moment. Tallard had done, could do, nothing to meet the coming storm, except to bring up his reserve infantry, nine battalions, and mingle them with his cavalry. About five o'clock the signal was given, and Marlborough led his horsemen, some 8000 strong, up the gentle slope to the French position. The first charge did not succeed, but some infantry and artillery, brought up in support, took up the action. The French did not venture to charge in their turn, though they had ample numbers for doing so: apparently the feebleness of Tallard was felt throughout his army, and so the last chance was thrown away. Marlborough's second charge completely broke the French cavalry: the infantry intermixed with them were cut to pieces or surrendered. Tallard in vain tried to re-form his cavalry, in order to cover the retreat of his infantry from Blenheim: they did not even stand another charge, but fled in confusion, some westwards, some towards the Danube. Detaching part of his force to pursue the former, Marlborough drove the latter upon the river. Tallard himself, with such of the fugitives as did not try to swim the Danube, was compelled to surrender. Meanwhile General Churchill, advancing in rear of the victorious cavalry, had encircled Blenheim, where nearly 12,000 French, mostly infantry, were still cooped up. After vain attempts to cut their way out, the whole mass surrendered: they had been utterly wasted by the mismanagement of their general.

It was the practice in Marlborough's day to count armies by the number of battalions and squadrons; and as those of course varied in strength, through casualties as well as through unequal original numbers, calculations based on them are a little uncertain. There is very fair agreement as to the battalions and squadrons engaged on both sides, from which it may be reasonably inferred that the allies had about 52,000 men (9000 only being English), of which nearly 20,000 were cavalry, and the French about 56,000, of whom perhaps 18,000 were cavalry. In artillery the French had a decided superiority. With this advantage, and with a position difficult to assail effectually, they ought to have been well able to hold their own. The miserable tactics of Tallard however did more than throw away this advantage. The opinion has been expressed that 4000 men were amply sufficient to hold Blenheim: Tallard left 13,000 there all through the day. The difference, 9000, more than neutralised the French superiority in infantry, and left the allies their preponderance in cavalry. Moreover Eugene had apparently rather inferior forces to those immediately opposed to him. Thus Marlborough was able to carry out, to some extent at least, the cardinal maxim of bringing superior forces to bear at the decisive point.

As might be inferred from the severity of the fighting, the victory cost the allies dear, no less than 4500 killed and 7500 wounded. The French loss was enormous: fully a quarter of their army surrendered themselves prisoners, a still larger number were killed and wounded, or were drowned in attempting to pass the Danube. Their camp and nearly all their artillery fell into the hands of the victors. Roughly speaking it may be said that Tallard's army was annihilated: Marsin's, though it suffered severely, made good its retreat without being disorganised.

Without going so far as Sir E. Creasy, who ranks Blenheim among the fifteen decisive battles of the world, we may still say that its moral results were even more important than the heavy material blow inflicted on France. For half a century France had been much more than the first military nation in Europe. Thanks in the first place to Turenne, but also to the organising skill of Louvois and the engineering genius of Vauban, Louis XIV. had developed a power which, wielded as it was by a despot steadily bent on selfish aggrandisement, had been fully a match for coalition after coalition. A succession of great generals carried on the traditions of Turenne: they were pitted against enemies who on the whole were inferior in skill, in resources, above all in homogeneity. The world had almost come to believe in the natural and permanent military superiority of France, and to accept Louis XIV. on his own estimate of himself. The news of Blenheim broke the spell: the domination of France was over. Louis himself had to admit that he was mortal: during the remainder of the war he stood substantially on the defensive, trying to retain or to recover territories over which he or his grandson, the king of Spain, had some claim, but no longer dreaming of crushing his antagonists. The power of France was by no means broken as yet; thanks to the difficulties inherent in working a coalition, she held her ground for several years more, but the tide, which had turned at Blenheim, set on the whole steadily against her.

Believing France to be more exhausted than she in fact was, Marlborough hoped to achieve great things in 1705 by attacking France from the side of the Moselle. The reluctance of his allies however kept his army so small that he was powerless. Villars, the ablest living French general, was opposed to him with superior forces, and with orders to avoid a battle. After vainly trying for six weeks to find an opportunity – a direct attack on Villars in an intrenched position being beyond his strength – Marlborough returned to the Netherlands, where the incapable Villeroi lay behind a great line of almost continuous fortifications from Antwerp to Namur. It was the fashion of the age to construct these elaborate defences, always open to two fatal objections, that they deprived the army holding them of all mobility, and that they became useless if broken through at any point. So long as the enemy was content to play the game in the fashion that best suited the defence, or was so hindered by bad roads and lack of subsistence that he found it difficult to move promptly, such lines might serve their purpose; and if from the nature of the country they could not be turned, an enemy might deem it too hazardous to break through them. But from Turenne onwards skilful generals turned or pierced them whenever they seriously tried; and Marlborough's easy success in breaking through the French lines at what was deemed their strongest point was a very striking proof of their inutility.⁵⁹ Had it not been for the persistent opposition of the Dutch to any decisive action, Marlborough, advancing on Brussels, would have fought a great battle very nearly on the field of Waterloo. Hampered by the Dutch, he could achieve nothing; and the year 1705, though eventful in other parts of the vast theatre of war, ended in the Netherlands much as it began.