Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
Libraries.)
THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM
[Illustration: Plate I. _The Battle of Blenheim._
_Frontispiece._]
THE BATTLE OF
BLENHEIM
BY
HILAIRE BELLOC
LONDON
STEPHEN SWIFT & CO., LTD.
10 JOHN STREET, ADELPHI
1911
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART I. THE POLITICAL OBJECTIVE 9
" II. THE EARLY WAR 16
" III. THE MARCH TO THE DANUBE 28
" IV. THE SEVEN WEEKS--THE THREE PHASES 68
" V. THE ACTION 109
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The General Situation in 1703 27
Map showing the peril of Marlborough's March to
the Danube beyond the Hills which separate the
Rhine from the Danube 45
Map illustrating Marlborough's March to the Danube 59
Map illustrating the March of Marlborough and
Baden across Marcin's front, from the
neighbourhood of Ulm to Donauwoerth 71
Map showing how Donauwoerth is the key of Bavaria
from the North-West 76
Map showing Eugene's March on the Danube from the
Black Forest 92
Map showing the Situation when Eugene suddenly
appeared at Hochstadt, August 5-7, 1704 95
The Elements of the Action of Blenheim 118
THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM
PART I
THE POLITICAL OBJECTIVE
The proper understanding of a battle and of its historical significance is
only possible in connection with the campaign of which it forms a part;
and the campaign can only be understood when we know the political object
which it was designed to serve.
A battle is no more than an incident in a campaign. However decisive in
its immediate result upon the field, its value to the general conducting
it depends on its effect upon the whole of his operations, that is, upon
the campaign in which he is engaged.
A campaign, again, is but the armed effort of one society to impose its
will in some particular upon another society. Every such effort must have
a definite political object. If this object is served the campaign is
successful. If it is not served the campaign is a failure. Many a campaign
which began or even concluded with a decisive action in favour of one of
the two belligerents has failed because, in the result, the political
object which the victory was attempting was not reached. Conversely, many
a campaign, the individual actions of which were tactical defeats,
terminated in favour of the defeated party, upon whom the armed effort was
not sufficient to impose the will of his adversary, or to compel him to
that political object which the adversary was seeking. In other words,
military success can be measured only in terms of civil policy.
It is therefore essential, before approaching the study of any action,
even of one so decisive and momentous as the Battle of Blenheim, to start
with a general view of the political situation which brought about
hostilities, and of the political object of those hostilities; only then,
after grasping the measure in which the decisive action in question
affected the whole campaign, can we judge how the campaign, in its turn,
compassed the political end for which it was designed.
The war whose general name is that of the Spanish Succession was
undertaken by certain combined powers against Louis XIV. of France (and
such allies as that monarch could secure upon his side) in order to
prevent the succession of his grandson to the crown of Spain.
With the various national objects which Holland, England, the Empire and
certain of the German princes, as also Savoy and Portugal, may have had in
view when they joined issue with the French monarch, military history is
not concerned. It is enough to know that their objects, though combining
them against a common foe, were not identical, and the degrees of interest
with which they regarded the compulsion of Louis XIV. to forego the
placing of his grandson upon the Spanish throne were very different. It is
this which will largely explain the various conduct of the allies during
the progress of the struggle; but all together sought the humiliation of
Louis, and joined on the common ground of the Spanish Succession.
The particular object, then, of the campaign of Blenheim (and of those
campaigns which immediately preceded and succeeded it) was the prevention
of the unison of the crowns of France and Spain in the hands of two
branches of the same family. Tested by this particular issue alone, the
campaign of Blenheim, and the whole series of campaigns to which it
belongs, failed. Louis XIV. maintained his grandson upon the throne of
Spain; and the issue of the long war could not impose upon him the
immediate political object of the allies.
But there was a much larger and more general object engaged, which was no
less than the defence of Austria--more properly the Empire--and of certain
minor States, against what had grown to be the overwhelming power of the
French monarchy.
From this standpoint the whole period of Louis XIV.'s reign--all the last
generation of the seventeenth century and the first decade and more of the
eighteenth--may be regarded as a struggle between the soldiers of Louis
XIV. (and their allies) upon the one hand, and Austria, with certain minor
powers concerned in the defence of their independence or integrity, upon
the other.
In this struggle Great Britain was neutral or benevolent in its sympathies
in so far as those sympathies were Stuart; but all that part of English
public life called _Whig_, all the group of English aristocrats who
desired the abasement of the Crown, perhaps the mass of the nation also,
was opposed, both in its interests and in its opinions, to the supremacy
of Louis XIV. upon the Continent.
William of Orange, who had been called to the English throne by the
Revolution of 1688, was the most determined opponent Louis had in Europe.
Apart from him, the general interests of the London merchants, and the
commercial interests of the nation as a whole, were in antagonism to the
claims of the Bourbon monarchy. We therefore find the forces of Great
Britain, in men, ships, guns, and money, arrayed against Louis throughout
the end of his reign, and especially during this last great war.
Now, from this general standpoint--by far the most important--the war of
the Spanish Succession is but part of the general struggle against Louis
XIV.; and in that general struggle the campaign of 1704, and the battle of
Blenheim which was its climax, are at once of the highest historical
importance, and a singular example of military success.
For if the general political object be considered, which was the stemming
of the French tide of victory and the checking of the Bourbon power,
rather than the particular matter of the succession of the Spanish
throne, then it was undoubtedly the campaign of 1704 which turned the
tide; and Blenheim must always be remembered in history as the great
defeat from which dates the retreat of the military power of the French in
that epoch, and the gradual beating back of Louis XIV.'s forces to those
frontiers which may be regarded as the natural boundaries of France.
Not all the French conquests were lost, nor by any means was the whole
great effort of the reign destroyed. But the peril which the military
aptitude of the French under so great a man as Louis XIV. presented to the
minor States of Europe and to the Austrian empire was definitely checked
when the campaign of Blenheim was brought to its successful conclusion.
That battle was the first of the great defeats which exhausted the
resources of Louis, put him, for the first time in his long reign, upon a
close defensive, and restored the European balance which his years of
unquestioned international power had disturbed.
Blenheim, then, may justly rank among the decisive actions of European
history.
In connection with the campaign of which it formed a part, it gave to that
campaign all its meaning and all its complete success.
In connection with the general struggle against Louis, that campaign
formed the turning point between the flow and the ebb in the stream of
military power which Louis XIV. commanded and had set in motion.
From the day of Blenheim, August 13th, 1704, onwards, the whole French
effort was for seven years a desperate losing game, which, if its end was
saved from disaster by the high statesmanship of the king and the devotion
of his people, was none the less the ruin of that ambitious policy which
had coincided with the great days of Versailles.
* * * * *
The war was conducted, as I have said, by various allies. Its success
depended, therefore, upon various commanders regarded as coequal, acting
as colleagues rather than as principals and subordinates. But the story of
the great march to the Danube and its harvest at Blenheim, which we are
about to review, sufficiently proves that the deciding genius in the whole
affair was that of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. The plan was
indeed Eugene's; and in the battle itself he shared the glory with his
English friend and colleague. Again, the British troops present were few
indeed compared with the total of the allied forces. At Blenheim, in
particular, they amounted to less than a third of the numbers present. The
excellence of their material, however, their magnificent work at the
Schellenberg and on Blenheim field itself, coupled with the fact that the
general to whom the final success is chiefly due was the great military
genius of this country, warrants the historian in classing this battle
among British actions, and in treating its story as a national affair.
* * * * *
I will approach the story of the campaign and of the battle by a
conspectus of the field of war in which Marlborough was so unexpectedly to
show the military genius which remains his single title to respect and his
chief claim to renown.