1701-4] The results of Blenheim.

The Mediterranean 411

horse, and then, reinforced by their reserves, delivered a smashing blow against Tallard's centre. The French cavalry, not having enough infantry to succour them, were routed and driven headlong, the few battalions of their centre being cut to pieces. Thus Tallard's whole army was shattered; and, though up to this point Marsin's had held Eugene at bay, the valiant efforts of the Imperial general's infantry being ill-supported by his horse, Marlborough's blow was decisive. Marsin, his right flank uncovered by the defeat of his colleague, could not hold his ground; Oberglauheim had already been carried; the 28 fine battalions in Blenheim were completely cut off and forced to surrender; and though Marsin withdrew his army in good order, Tallard's had ceased to exist as an efficient fighting-force. At a cost of 12,000 casualties the 52,000 Allies had routed a rather larger force in a strong position, inflicting on them 14,000 casualties, capturing over 100 guns and 11,000 prisoners, and had by this crushing blow shattered the great reputation of the French arms. The effect of this great victory was seen in the precipitate retreat of the French behind the Rhine, and in Villeroi's failure to interfere with the siege of Landau, which the Allies, who crossed at Philippsburg on September 8, invested a week later. On November 23 Landau fell; and on the same day Trarbach surrendered to Marlborough, who had pushed up the difficult valley of the Queich to the Moselle and occupied Trier (October 26).

Thus in the year 1704 the situation was completely reversed in Germany; Vienna was delivered; the French invaders were expelled; the Elector of Bavaria was a fugitive, his dominions being placed under Austrian control by the Convention of Ilbersheim (November 7); and French prestige destroyed by a blow without a parallel since Condé had destroyed the Spanish reputation at Rocroi. Nor could Louis XIV balance this disaster with any success elsewhere. In Italy, Victor Amadeus, though sore beset and isolated, still maintained his ground in Piedmont; in the Netherlands nothing had been done since Villeroi's departure; and in the new theatre of operations in the Pyrenean Peninsula and the Mediterranean the advantage had remained with the Allies.

In the negotiations as to the Partition Treaties the question of the Mediterranean had been one of the most important issues. William, fresh from the experience of the last war, had seen that, were Spain to pass to a Bourbon, England would be excluded from the Mediterranean unless she should secure a base within the Straits. He had fought hard to obtain Minorca for England; and, but for the reluctance of Rooke to venture out so late in the season, a squadron would probably have been dispatched to Cadiz in the autumn of 1701 to forestall the French in occupying that all-important position. William was pressing on the preparations for such an expedition, when his death, which threw all arrangements out of gear, caused a serious delay in its departure. The instructions issued to Rooke leave no doubt that the expedition was

406

Alsace and the Netherlands

[1702

at Luzzara (August 15) on the greatly superior forces of Vendôme and Philip of Spain, who had brought up a strong division from Naples. One reason for the lack of assistance he experienced is to be found in the fact that, when rather late in the year reinforcements were about to start for Italy, they had to be diverted to southern Germany. There the command of the Allies, a motley and not very efficient force provided mainly by the Swabian and Upper-Rhenish Circles, with an Austrian contingent, had been entrusted to Lewis of Baden-Baden, a veteran of the Turkish wars. Fortunately for him, the diversion of the main efforts of France to the Netherlands caused Catinat's army of Alsace to be in even worse plight. Indeed, when in June the Allies crossed the Rhine and laid siege to Landau, Catinat was too weak to relieve the fortress, which, after a valiant defence, capitulated on September 11. Here the successes of Lewis of Baden were rudely checked, for the Elector of Bavaria, suddenly throwing off the mask of neutrality he had hitherto assumed, had declared for France and attacked and captured Ulm. The Allies, finding their communications with Vienna in grave peril, hastily recrossed the Rhine; and Villars, superseding Catinat, not only managed to gain a passage at Hüningen, but, advancing into the Black Forest, engaged and defeated Lewis of Baden at Friedlingen (October 14). However, it was too late in the year for the victors to effect a junction with their Bavarian ally; and the Elector was prevented from attacking Upper Austria by the troops which were to have joined Eugene and were instead diverted to hold the line of the Inn.

Meanwhile Marlborough had taken the field in the Netherlands (July), where the main body of the Allies, some 40,000 strong, was lying in front of Nymegen to cover the siege of Kaisers werth on the lower Rhine, which 25,000 Dutch and Prussians were assailing, and to protect the south-eastern frontier of Holland against 60,000 Frenchmen quartered in the bishopric of Liége under Marshal Boufflers. Skilfully taking advantage of the undue extension of the French lines, Marlborough drew Boufflers back from Cleves to the left bank of the Meuse threatening to cut him off from Brabant; and, though the intervention of the Dutch deputies twice prevented a battle when Marlborough seemed to have Boufflers at his mercy, the French had to withdraw behind the Demer (August 23). Marlborough was thus able to successively besiege and reduce Venloo (September 16), Ruremonde (October 7), and Liége (October 23); Boufflers making an unavailing attempt to anticipate the Allies at Liége, but retreating at once when he found the position he had meant to take up occupied by Marlborough's covering army. These successes gave the Allies control of the lower Meuse, while the capture of Kaiserswerth (June 15) and Rheinberg did the same for the lower Rhine, so that the work of securing the communications between the Maritime Powers and Vienna was well started. In the next summer,

Marlborough invaded the electorate of Cologne, overrunning it and

1703]

Vienna threatened by Villars

407

capturing Bonn (May 18, 1703). But, before he could gain complete strategic freedom, it was necessary to remove further from the neighbourhood of the Dutch frontier the menace of the French occupation of the Spanish Netherlands. A well-conceived scheme for an attack on Antwerp was spoilt by the disobedience of one Dutch general and the rashness of another, resulting in the defeat of Obdam at Eckeren (June 30); and Marlborough had to content himself with securing the Meuse below Namur by the capture of Huy and other minor fortresses and with forcing the French back behind the lines of the Méhaigne, where they remained passive spectators of the fate of these places. These achievements, though less than he might have achieved if unimpeded, cleared the country between Meuse and Rhine of the French and set him free to carry to Vienna the help so urgently needed there.

With the spring of 1703, the French prepared to utilise the path to Vienna thrown open to them by Bavaria's action. In March Villars secured Kehl, and, pushing across the Black Forest by Villingen, joined the Bavarian Elector near Ulm (May 9), unimpeded by Lewis of Baden, who lay inactive in his celebrated lines of Stolhofen, watched by another French corps under Marshal Tallard. The Elector would not have been there for Villars to join, had but Styrum, who commanded the troops of the Franconian Circle, co-operated with the 19,000 Austrians under Schlick on the Inn. Their failure to unite had allowed the Elector to capture Ratisbon, and to inflict on Schlick's isolated corps a sharp reverse at Scharding (March 11).

Vienna was now in dire peril. Had Villars and the Bavarian Elector pushed on down the Danube, it is difficult to see how the city could have been saved. Lewis of Baden was helpless, Marlborough fully occupied in the distant Netherlands, Hungary actually in insurrection ; and not even Eugene could prevent the army of Italy from being pressed back through Tyrol by Vendôme's superior forces. But, like his son Charles Albert thirty-eight years later, Maximilian Emanuel missed his chance. Intent on securing communication with much-coveted Milan, he turned aside into Tyrol, leaving Villars, much to the French commander's chagrin, to cover his operations against Lewis of Baden, who had come up from Stolhofen with most of his corps and joined Styrum (June). But the conquest of Tyrol did not prove so easy as the Elector anticipated. Though opposed by the peasantry, he reached Innsbruck (July 2) and even pushed a detachment forward to the Brenner Pass, only to find that Vendôme had not arrived. The latter, indeed, never started for Trent till July 20; and, by the time he reached it (September 2), the Bavarians, harassed by the Tyrolese mountaineers, who cut off their detachments and threatened their communications, had given up hope of his coming and had beaten a costly retreat to Bavaria (August). During this time Lewis of Baden and

408

Savoy joins the Grand Alliance

[1703-4 Styrum had let slip the chance of combining their forces against Villars, who, profiting by their separation, parried the Margrave's attack on Augsburg by falling on Styrum's weaker force at Höchstädt (September 20) and completely defeating him. This checked Lewis, who had to abandon Augsburg and retire into winter-quarters, just north of the Lake of Constance. Even at this late point in the campaigning season Villars was anxious to try a dash at Vienna, now seriously menaced by the Hungarian insurgents; but the Elector's refusal to contemplate the project led to violent quarrels between him and Villars, and to the recall of the latter before the next campaign.

Meanwhile, on the Rhine things had fared ill for the Allies. Thüngen, whom Lewis of Baden had left at Stolhofen, failed to prevent Tallard from taking Breisach (September 8) and besieging Landau. Reinforced by a corps from the Netherlands under the Hereditary Prince Frederick of Hesse-Cassel, he attempted the relief of Landau, only to suffer a disastrous defeat at Speyerbach (November 13), on which Landau surrendered (November 21). Thus, with 40,000 French wintering in Bavaria, their communications with Alsace greatly improved by Tallard's successes and the forces of the Maritime Powers apparently committed to operations in the Netherlands, the prospects for the Emperor looked bad indeed. The only gleam of satisfaction was that the Duke of Savoy, always distrustful of the sincerity of his French ally's promises, had been in secret communication with the Emperor for some time, and now, urged to the step by Vendôme's demand that he should hand over Turin and Susa to the French and suffer the disarming of his troops, definitively threw in his lot with the Allies and signed a treaty with the Emperor (October 25). On this, Starhemberg, who had maintained Eugene's old position on the lower Po during the summer, hastened with his 15,000 men across the Parmesan and joined Victor Amadeus on the Tanaro (January, 1704) -a move which Vendôme, who had evacuated southern Tyrol after his fruitless advance to Trent (September), completely failed to prevent. Savoy's defection meant that Austria was secure from attack on the side of Italy, at any rate until the French had secured their communications with France, which this change of sides had menaced.

But, even so, Vienna's peril was great; and, when in April strong reinforcements crossed the Black Forest by the Höllenthal and joined the Elector of Bavaria near Dillingen (May 19), unhampered by Lewis of Baden, it seemed futile to hope that even Eugene, who had replaced Styrum, would be able to stem the advance of the Franco-Bavarians down the Danube. Tallard, with over 30,000 men, took up a position near Kehl to protect the French communications with Bavaria and to hold Lewis of Baden in check; while Villeroi, with yet another army, was expected to keep Marlborough occupied in the Netherlands. Luckily for the Allied cause, Marlborough had realised the critical condition of

1704]

Marlborough's march to the Danube

409

affairs; and his great design of bringing the British and their auxiliaries to the Danube had been planned and discussed with Eugene during the winter. But to obtain the consent of the cautious Dutch to a scheme so daring would have been impossible, and the first stages of the march were accordingly carried out on the pretext that he intended to turn the French position in the Netherlands by a move up the Moselle. Under the colour of this pretence, the British and their auxiliaries left their cantonments towards the end of April, and, pushing across the Meuse to Jülich and thence (May 19) to the Rhine, made their way up that river. It was soon evident that something more than a campaign on the Moselle was afoot. Marlborough's appearance at Mainz (May 29) brought Tallard back to the left of the Rhine to cover Alsace; but the English commander merely made a feint of being about to cross at Mannheim and pushed on south-eastward across the Main, up the Neckar by Ladenburg (June 3) and Mondelheim (June 10), on by the Pass of Geislingen through the hills which divide the Neckar from the Danube until, on June 22, he joined the corps of Lewis of Baden at Ursprung, a little north of Ulm. On the way, Eugene and Margrave Lewis had joined Marlborough to discuss plans; and the result of their deliberations was that Eugene proceeded to Stolhofen to contain Tallard, while the Margrave and Marlborough co-operated against the Elector and the French under Marsin, Villars' successor. A week later (June 28) the arrival of the British infantry with Marlborough's guns brought up the Allied force to 202 squadrons and 96 battalions, about 70,000 men in all. The march had changed the situation: the dangerous weakness of the Allied position was remedied; until Marlborough's army was beaten, Vienna could not be attacked. But the strategic insight which had determined Marlborough's course of action, and the daring with which he planned what was practically a flank movement right across the French front, are really less remarkable than the care with which the details of the move had been calculated and the success with which his object had been concealed from watchful foes and timid friends alike.

The first task before the Allies was to secure a passage over the Danube. To this end Marlborough moved upon Donauwörth, and on July 2 succeeded after a desperate struggle in storming the strong entrenched camp of the Bavarians on the Schellenberg. The losses, though heavy, were justifiable; for Tallard was reported to be coming up from the Rhine, and it was important to capture the post before the garrison could be reinforced. This success gave the Allies Donauwörth and its bridge, opening Bavaria to them, and forcing the Elector and Marsin to abandon the line of the Danube and retire southward up the Lech. Marlborough was thus enabled to place himself between the FrancoBavarians and Vienna, Bavaria being exposed to his raiding parties. However, reinforcements were on their way to join the Elector; for no sooner