THE BATTLE OF DETTINGEN.
On the 21st of April, 1743, King George prorogued Parliament, and
almost immediately hastened over to Hanover accompanied by his son,
William, Duke of Cumberland, and Lord Carteret as Secretary of State,
in attendance. The object of this departure was to aid Queen Maria
Theresa of Hungary in her struggle against the French and Bavarians,
and in so doing to gratify an ambition long cherished by King George
to place himself at the head of an allied army. For whatever failings
the little King is credited with, and we know he had many--those
_foiblesses_ of which we have been so frequently reminded--he was
certainly a soldier, and a brave one.
Probably also he had a great desire to establish a reputation as a
soldier for his favourite son William, also, that young man having at
a very early period displayed a considerable penchant for the military
art.
This preference for his brother was very far from gratifying to the
Prince of Wales, who would have much liked to have gone to the wars
himself, although his training had never been in that direction.
But to give him a command was about the last thing that King George
would have thought of doing. Such an act would have given his eldest
son fresh popularity, which he was far from desiring.
Not only was Frederick denied a command, but he was also excluded
from the regency which his father left behind him. Sir Robert Walpole
remarked as follows upon it:
“I think the Prince might have been of it, when Lord Gower is. I don’t
think the latter more Jacobite than his Royal Highness.” So once more,
as far as any active participation in the affairs of the state were
concerned, the Prince of Wales was left in the galling position of
being on the shelf.
Meanwhile the British troops under the Earl of Stair, had commenced
their march towards the end of February into Germany, but appear to
have moved with incredible slowness as it was the middle of May before
they crossed the Rhine.
Lord Stair--the celebrated correspondent of Sarah Duchess of
Marlborough,--appears to have been a very poor sort of a general, and
in addition was hampered for want of a proper commissariat, which was
not understood in those days.
There appeared to be the same happy-go-lucky state of affairs--which
seems to be national and chronic--to which the great Marlborough
referred in 1702, by calling his native country: “England that is
famous for negligence.”[66] Lord Stair’s army, however, struggled
onward, and was joined on the way by some sixteen thousand Hanoverians
in British pay, who had been in winter quarters in Liège, and by a few
Austrian regiments. Eventually they all arrived at Hochst, between
Mayence and Frankfort, and here Lord Stair’s command numbered about
forty thousand men.
Meanwhile, the French commander-in-chief, the Maréchal de Noailles,
with sixty-thousand men, crossed the Rhine and approached the Southern
bank of the River Maine, the northern bank of which was occupied by the
British.
It is an extraordinary thing that although these two armies stood
facing one another, prepared for battle--a battle which came off
very soon--their respective countries had not broken off diplomatic
relations with one another.
Horace Walpole refers to it as follows:
“A ridiculous situation! we have the name of War with Spain without the
thing, and War with France without the name.”
Lord Stair appears to have entirely lost his head under these
circumstances and to have made a series of imbecile marches and
countermarches, which thoroughly tired out his horses and men and left
him and his army at their conclusion in a worse position than they were
before, with the addition that they were exceeding short of food and
forage. The French General had entirely out-manœuvred Stair.
At this juncture--19th July, 1743--King George and his son, the Duke
of Cumberland, joined the English army, which was at that time hemmed
in in a narrow valley extending from Aschaffenberg to the considerable
village of Dettingen on the north bank of the River Maine.
Here, after several counsels of War, it was decided to fall back on
Hanau, a town where a magazine of provisions had been established. At
this period the horses had but two days’ rations of forage left, all
other supplies being cut off by the French.
The difficult retreat was commenced in face of the enemy--on the other
bank of the River Maine--who immediately, as might have been expected
from such a celebrated General as de Noailles, pontooned the river,
and sent twenty-three thousand men across, under his nephew the Duc
de Grammont to stop the retreat of the British and their allies at
the defile of Dettingen, through which they must pass to reach their
supplies at Hanau, sixteen miles further on.
So that the battle of Dettingen may be referred to as a
“bread-and-butter” fight on the part of the British, who fought
possibly all the better on that account.
The march of the English on Dettingen began before daylight on the
27th of June, the King at first commanding the rear guard, which was
considered through ignorance of the movements of the French, to be the
point of danger.
When, however, the advance guard was driven in at Dettingen and French
troops came pouring across the river, King George and his son rode
along the column to the front, where they appear to have taken supreme
command at once.
Now the British Army was in a very tight corner indeed; no sooner had
they marched than the Marquis de Noailles, perfectly alive to the
situation, sent twelve thousand men to occupy Aschaffenberg in their
rear; thus with twenty-three thousand men in a strong entrenched
position in their front between them and their stores of food, the
river on their left, and a force of twelve thousand in their rear, the
position of the British looked pretty hopeless, hemmed in as they were
in addition by hills on the right. Across the river a strong force of
artillery was posted, which commenced a heavy fire into the left flank
of our regiments, mowing down whole ranks. It was a position which
at any moment might have been turned into a panic. That it was _not_
turned into a panic and a rout is entirely owing to the courage and
military skill of George the Second.
As far as courage was concerned, he was ably seconded by his son the
Duke of Cumberland, but as this was his first fight, his military
knowledge was _nil_, and it never shone particularly at any time after.
With all his faults and frailties and “_foiblesses_,” little King
George on this day showed himself to be a skilled soldier, and a
brave man. His previous reputation gained at Oudenarde had not been
forgotten by our own poets when he came to England and became Prince of
Wales; one of them had thus addressed him on a birthday:--
“Let Oudenarde’s field your courage tell
Who looked so martial, or who fought so well?
Who charg’d the foe with greater fire or force?
Who felt unmoved the trembling falling horse?
Sound, sound, O Fame, the trumpet loud and true,
All, all, this blaze to my Prince George is due.
In early life such deeds in arms were done
As prove you able to defend the throne.”
He had then a well-established reputation for courage, which was no
doubt well known to the men he commanded.
The King and his son rode from their station in the rear to the front,
and there the former at once deployed the columns into line with the
left resting on the river and the right on the slopes of the hills
at the other side of the valley. The infantry were in front with the
half-starved cavalry in reserve.
The British Army was in presence of perhaps the most accomplished
general of his time, Maréchal Noailles, and he had selected his
position before Dettingen--an old post village--with consummate
judgment.
It had a ravine, the course of a small rivulet running across its
front, while its right flank rested on a morass and the river. The only
mistake the Maréchal had made was in placing his hot-headed nephew the
Duc de Grammont in command of it. This circumstance led to a big stroke
of luck in King George’s favour at the very commencement of the action.
The Duc de Grammont committed the common and deadly error of despising
his enemy; believing the advancing force to be but a part of the
British Army, he left his entrenchments with the object apparently,
of crushing it before its main body came up, but it was in fact the
main body, which he had to engage. This advance had a double effect
in favour of King George; the French guns across the river, which had
been making fearful play on the English ranks, had to cease fire, as
the French very soon came in close proximity to their foes, and were
as likely to be hit by their own gunners as the English. Therefore our
men were relieved from this demoralizing flank fire. This movement of
the Duc de Grammont rendered the excellent dispositions of his uncle
valueless.
But an untoward incident, at the very commencement, delayed for a time
the fruits of this error being gathered and very nearly deprived the
British Army of its royal commander; King George’s horse ran away with
him in the direction of the enemy.
This was a paralysing spectacle for our own men!
Fortunately, however, the King succeeded in pulling him round before he
got close enough for the French to grab him, and he returned in safety
if not in triumph to his own lines. This incident, however, determined
the brave little man to take a certain course; he got off his horse.
“I vill go on my legs,” he remarked cheerfully, “dey cannot run away
with me!”
But the enemy’s cavalry, composed of the _élite_ of the French Army,
were now advancing; the King drew his sword and placed himself at the
head of his Grenadiers. Waving his sword, he cheered them on, the last
King of England who led his soldiers into battle.
“Now boys,” he cried, “now for the honour of England; fire and behave
bravely, and the French will soon run!”
All this was very fine, but the French did _not_ run, at first; they
came on in a wild charge and considerably shook our infantry, so much
so, that it required all the energy of the King and his son--who, with
the rank of Major-General, led the left wing--to get them steady again.
The father and son certainly did not spare themselves on this day; even
when the Duke was wounded in the leg he refused to leave the field. No
wonder that poor Frederick at home was boiling with jealousy.
Maréchal Noailles from the other side of the river, where he was
organizing a supporting movement, saw his nephew’s error, and hastened
back to Dettingen; but he arrived too late.
King George, at the head of a brigade of infantry, had swept the
French from their position and cleared the road to Hanau and the much
needed food and stores. The French loss in the retreat was frightfully
heavy, and the French Maréchal very wisely drew off the remainder of
his troops to the other side of the river, with a list of killed and
wounded which totalled up to six thousand men.
Thus ended the Battle of Dettingen, concerning King George’s part in
which, Justin McCarthy in his “Four Georges,” makes the following
comment:--
“George behaved with a great courage and spirit. If the poor, stupid,
puffy, plucky little man did but know what a strange, picturesque,
memorable figure he was as he stood up against the enemy at the Battle
of Dettingen! The last King of England who ever appeared with his
army in the battlefield. There, as he gets down off his unruly horse,
determined to trust to his own stout legs--because as he says, they
will not run away--there is the last successor of the Williams, and
the Edwards, and the Henrys; the last successor of the Conqueror, and
Edward the First, and the Black Prince, and Henry the Fourth, and Henry
of Agincourt, and William of Nassau; the last English King who faces a
foe in battle.”
FOOTNOTES:
[66] Marlborough to Lord Godolphin, September, 1702. To Sir H. Mann,
July 19th, 1743.