THE MARCH TO THE DANUBE
The position of the enemy at the moment when Marlborough's march to the
Danube from the Netherlands was conceived may be observed in the sketch
map on page 59.
Under Villeroy, who must be regarded as the chief of the French commanders
of the moment, lay the principal army of Louis XIV., with the duty of
defending the northern front and of watching the Lower Rhine.
It was this main force which was expected to have to meet the attack of
Marlborough and the Dutch in the same field of operations as had seen the
troops in English pay at work during the two preceding years. But Villeroy
was, of course, free to detach troops southwards somewhat towards the
Middle Rhine, or the valley of the Moselle, if, as later seemed likely,
an attack should be made in that direction.
On the Upper Rhine, and in Alsace generally, lay Tallard with his corps.
This marshal had captured certain crossing-places over the Rhine, but had
all his munitions and the mass of his strength permanently on the left
bank.
Finally, Marcin, with his French contingent, and Max-Emanuel, the Elector
of Bavaria, with the Bavarian army, held the whole of the Upper Danube,
from Ulm right down to and past the Austrian frontier.
Over against these forces of the French and their Bavarian allies we must
set, first, the Dutch forces in the north, including the garrisons of the
towns on the Meuse which Marlborough had conquered and occupied; and, in
the same field, the forces in the pay of England (including the English
contingents). These amounted in early 1704 to 50,000 men, which
Marlborough was to command.
Next, upon the Middle Rhine, and watching Tallard in Alsace, was Prince
Eugene, who had been summoned from Hungary by the Imperial government to
defend this bulwark of Germany, but his army was small compared to the
forces in the north.
Finally, the Margrave of Baden, Louis, with another separate army, was
free to act at will in Upper Germany, to occupy posts in the Black Forest,
or to retire eastward into the heart of Germany or towards the Danube as
circumstances might dictate. This force was also small. It was
supplemented by local militia raised to defend particular passes in the
Black Forest, and these, again, were supported by the armed peasantry.
It is essential to a comprehension of the whole scheme to understand that
_before_ the march to the Danube the whole weight of the alliance against
the French lay in the north, upon the frontier of Holland, the valley of
the Meuse, and the Lower Rhine. The successes of Bavaria in the previous
year had given the Bavarian army, with its French contingent, a firm grip
upon the Upper Danube, and the possibility of marching upon Vienna itself
when the campaign of 1704 should open.
The great march upon the Danube which Eugene had conceived, and which
Marlborough was to execute so triumphantly, was a plan to withdraw the
weight of the allied forces suddenly from the north to the south; to
transfer the main weapon acting against France from the Netherlands to
Bavaria itself; to do this so rapidly and with so little leakage of
information to the enemy as would prevent his heading off the advance by a
parallel and faster movement upon his part, or his strengthening his
forces upon the Danube before Marlborough's should reach that river.
* * * * *
Such was the scheme of the march to the Danube which we are now about to
follow; but before undertaking a description of the great and successful
enterprise, the reader must permit me a word of distinction between a
strategic move and that tactical accident which we call a battle. In the
absence of such a distinction, the campaign of Blenheim and the battle
which gives it its name would be wholly misread.
A great battle, especially if it be of a decisive character, not only
changes history, but has a dramatic quality about it which fixes the
attention of mankind.
The general reader, therefore, tends to regard the general movements of a
campaign as mere preliminaries to, or explanations of, the decisive action
which may conclude it.
This is particularly the case with the readers attached to the victorious
side. The French layman, in the days before universal service in France,
wrote and read his history of 1805 as though the march of the Grand Army
were deliberately intended to conclude with Austerlitz. The English reader
and writer still tends to read and write of Marlborough's march to the
Danube as though it were aimed at the field of Blenheim.
This error or illusion is part of that general deception so common to
historical study which has been well called "reading history backwards."
We know the event; to the actors in it the future was veiled. Our
knowledge of what is to come colours and distorts our judgment of the
motive and design of a general.
The march to the Danube was, like all strategic movements, a general plan
animated by a general objective. It was not a particular thrust at a
particular point, destined to achieve a highly particular result at that
point.
Armies are moved with the object of imposing political changes upon an
opponent. If that opponent accepts these changes, not necessarily after a
pitched battle, but in any other fashion, the strategical object of the
march is achieved.
Though the march conclude in a defeat, it may be strategically sound;
though it conclude in a victory, it may be strategically unsound.
Napoleon's march into Russia in 1812 was strategically sound. Had Russia
risked a great battle and lost it, the historical illusion of which I
speak would treat the campaign as a designed preface to the battle. Had
Russia risked such a battle and been successful, the historical illusion
of which I speak would call the strategy of the advance faulty.
As we know, the advance failed partly through the weather, partly through
the spirit of the Russian people, not through a general action. But in
conception and in execution the strategy of Napoleon in that disastrous
year was just as excellent as though the great march had terminated not in
disaster but in success.
Similarly, the reputation justly earned by Marlborough when he brought his
troops from the Rhine to the Danube must be kept distinct from his
tactical successes in the field at the conclusion of the effort. He was to
run a grave risk at Donauwoerth, he was to blunder badly in attacking the
village of Blenheim, he was to be in grave peril even in the last phase of
the battle, when Eugene just saved the centre with his cavalry.
Had chance, which is the major element in equal combats, foiled him at
Donauwoerth or broken his attempt at Blenheim, the march to the Danube
would still remain a great thing in history. Had Tallard refused battle on
that day, as he certainly should have done, the march to the Danube would
still deserve its great place in the military records of Europe.
* * * * *
When we have seized the fact that Marlborough's great march was but a
general strategic movement of which the action at Blenheim was the happy
but accidental close, we must next remark that the advance to the Danube
was the more meritorious, and gives the higher lustre to Marlborough's
fame as a general, from the fact that it was an attempt involving a great
military hazard, and that yet that attempt had to be made in the face of
political difficulties of peculiar severity.
In other words, Marlborough was handicapped in a fashion which lends his
success a character peculiar to itself, and worthy of an especial place in
history.
This handicap may be stated by a consideration of three points which cover
its whole character.
The first of these points concerns the physical conditions of the move;
the other two are peculiar to the political differences of the allies.
It was in the nature of the move that a high hazard was involved in it.
The general had calculated, as a general always must, the psychology of
his opponent. If he were wrong in his calculation, the advance on the
Danube could but lead to disaster. It was for him to judge whether the
French were so nervous about the centre of their position upon the Rhine
as to make them cling to it to the last moment, and tend to believe that
it was either along the Moselle or (when he had left that behind) in
Alsace that he intended to attack. In other words, it was for him to make
the French a little too late in changing their dispositions, a little too
late in discovering what his real plan was, and therefore a little too
late in massing larger reinforcements upon the Upper Danube, where he
designed to be before them.
Marlborough guessed his opponent's psychology rightly; the French marshals
hesitated just too long, their necessity of communicating with Louis at
Versailles further delayed them, and the great hazard which he risked was
therefore risked with judgment. But a hazard it remained until almost the
last days of its fruition. The march must be rapid; it involved a thousand
details, each requiring his supervision and his exact calculation, his
knowledge of what could be expected of his troops, and his survey of daily
supply.
There was another element of hazard.
Arrived at his destination upon the plains of the Danube, Marlborough
would be very far from any good base of supply.
The country lying in the triangle between the Upper Danube and the Middle
Rhine, especially that part of it which is within striking distance of the
Danube, is mountainous and ill provided with those large towns, that
mobilisable wealth, and those stores of vehicles, munitions, food, and
remounts which are the indispensable sustenance of an army.
The industry of modern Germany has largely transformed this area, but even
to-day it is one in which good depots would be rare to find. Two hundred
years ago, the tangle of hills was far more deserted and far worse
provided.
By the time Marlborough should have effected his junction with his ally in
the upper valley of the Danube only two bases of supply would be within
any useful distance of the new and distant place to which he was
transferring his great force.
The most important of these, his chief base, and his only principal store
of munitions and every other requisite, was _Nuremberg_; and that town was
a good week from the plains upon the bank of the Danube where he proposed
to act. As an advanced base nearer to the river, he could only count upon
the lesser town of _Nordlingen_.
Therefore, even if he should successfully reach the field of action which
he proposed, cross the hills between the two river basins without loss or
delay, and be ready to act as he hoped upon the banks of the Danube before
the end of June, his stay could not be indefinitely prolonged there, and
his every movement would be undertaken under the anxiety which must ever
haunt a commander dependent on an insufficient or too distant base of
supply. This anxiety, be it noted, would rapidly increase with every march
he might have to take southward of the Danube, and with every day's
advance into Bavaria itself, if, as he hoped, the possibility of such an
advance should crown his efforts.
We have seen that the great hazard which Marlborough risked made it
necessary, as he advanced southward up the Rhine during the first half of
his march, to keep Villeroy and Tallard doubtful as to whether his
objective was the Moselle or, later, Alsace; and while they were still in
suspense, abruptly to leave the valley of the Rhine and make for the
crossing of the hills towards the Danube. So long as the French marshals
remained uncertain of his intentions, they would not dare to detach any
very large body of troops from the Rhine valley to the Elector's aid:
under the conditions of the time, the clever handling of movement and
information might create a gap of a week at least between his first
divergence from the Rhine and his enemy's full appreciation that he was
heading for the south-east.
He so concealed his information and so ordered his baffling movements as
to achieve that end.
So much for the general hazard which would have applied to any commander
undertaking such an advance.
But, as I have said, there were two other points peculiar to Marlborough's
political position.
The first was, that he was not wholly free to act, as, for instance, Caesar
in Gaul was free, or Napoleon after 1799. He must perpetually arrange
matters, in the first stages with the Dutch commissioner, later with the
imperial general, Prince Louis of Baden, who was his equal in command. He
must persuade and even trick certain of his allies in all the first steps
of the great business; he must accommodate himself to others throughout
the whole of it.
Secondly, the direction in which he took himself separated him from the
possibility of rapidly communicating his designs, his necessities, his
chances, or his perils to what may be called his _moral_ base. This moral
base, the seat both of his own Government and of the Dutch (his principal
concern), lay, of course, near the North Sea, and under the immediate
supervision of England and the Hague. This is a point which the modern
reader may be inclined to ridicule until he remembers under what
conditions the shortest message, let alone detailed plans and the
execution of considerable orders, could alone be performed two hundred
years ago. By a few bad roads, across a veritable dissected map of little
independent or quasi-independent polities, each with its own frontier and
prejudices and independent government, the messenger (often a single
messenger) must pass through a space of time equivalent to the passage of
a continent to-day, and through risks and difficulties such as would
to-day be wholly eliminated by the telegraph. The messenger was further
encumbered by every sort of change from town to town, in local opinion,
and the opportunities for aid.
More than this, in marching to the Danube, Marlborough was putting between
himself and that upon which he morally, and most of all upon which he
physically, relied, a barrier of difficult mountain land.
Having mentioned this barrier, it is the place for me to describe the
physical conditions of that piece of strategy, and I will beg the reader
to pay particular attention to the accompanying map, and to read what
follows closely in connection with it.
In all war, strategy considers routes, and routes are determined by
obstacles.
Had the world one flat and uniform surface, the main problems of strategy
would not exist.
The surface of the world is diversified by certain features--rivers,
chains of hills, deserts, marshes, seas, etc.--the passage across which
presents difficulties peculiar to an army, and it is essential to the
reading of military history to appreciate these difficulties; for the
degrees of impediment which natural features present to thousands upon the
march are utterly different from those which they present to individuals
or to civilian parties in time of peace. Since it is to difficulties of
this latter sort that we are most accustomed by our experience, the
student of a campaign will often ask himself (if he is new to his subject)
why such and such an apparently insignificant stream or narrow river, such
and such a range of hills over which he has walked on some holiday without
the least embarrassment, have been treated by the great captains as
obstacles of the first moment.
[Illustration: Map showing the peril of Marlborough's march to the Danube,
beyond the hills which separate the Rhine from the Danube.]
The reason that obstacles of any sort present the difficulty they do to an
army, and present it in the high degree which military history discovers,
is twofold.
First, an army consists in a great body of human beings, artificially
gathered together under conditions which do not permit of men supplying
their own wants by agriculture or other forms of labour. They are gathered
together for the principal purpose of fighting. They must be fed; they
must be provided with ammunition, usually with shelter and with firing,
and if possible with remounts for their cavalry; reinforcements for every
branch of their service must be able to reach them along known and
friendly (or well-defended) roads, called their _lines of communication_.
These must proceed from some _base_, that is from some secure place in
which stores of men and material can be accumulated.
Next, it is important to notice that variations in speed between two
opposed forces will nearly always put the slow at a disadvantage in the
face of the more prompt. For just as in boxing the quicker man can stop
one blow and get another in where the slower man would fail, or just as in
football the faster runner can head off the man with the ball, so in war
superior mobility is a fixed factor of advantage--but a factor far more
serious than it is in any game. The force which moves most quickly can
"walk round" its opponent, can choose its field for action, can strike in
flank, can escape, can effect a junction where the slower force would
fail.
It is these two causes, then--the artificial character of an army, with
its vast numbers collected in one place and dependent for existence upon
the labour of others and the supreme importance of rapidity--which between
them render obstacles that seem indifferent to a civilian in time of peace
so formidable to a General upon the march.
The heavy train, the artillery, the provisioning of the force, can in
general only proceed upon good ways or by navigable rivers. At any rate,
if the army departs from these, a rival army in possession of such means
of progress will have the supreme advantage of mobility.
Again, upon the flat an army may proceed by many parallel roads, and thus
in a number of comparatively short columns, marching upon one front
towards a common rendezvous. But in hilly country it will be confined to
certain defiles, sometimes very few, often reduced to _one_ practicable
pass. There is no possibility of an advance by many routes in short
columns, each in touch with its neighbours; the whole advance resolves
itself into one interminable file.
Now, in proportion to the length of a column, the units of which must each
march one directly behind the other, do the mechanical difficulties of
conducting such a column increase. Every accident or shock in the long
line is aggravated in proportion to the length of the line. Finally, a
force thus drawn out on the march in one exiguous and lengthy trail is in
the worst possible disposition for meeting an attack delivered upon it
from either side.
All this, which is true of the actual march of the army, is equally true
of its power to maintain its supply over a line of hills (to take that
example of an obstacle); and therefore a line of hills, especially if
these hills be confused and steep, and especially if they be provided
with but bad roads across them, will dangerously isolate an army whose
general base lies upon the further side of them.
What the reader has just read explains the peculiar character which the
valley of the Upper Danube has always had in the history of Western
European war.
The Rhine and its tributaries form one great system of communications,
diversified, indeed, by many local accidents of hill and marsh and forest,
with which, for the purposes of this study, we need not concern ourselves.
In a lesser degree, the upper valley of the Danube and its tributaries,
though these are largely in the nature of mountain torrents, forms another
system of communications, nourishing considerable towns, drawing upon
which communications, and relying upon which towns as centres of supply,
an army may manoeuvre.
But between the system of the Rhine and that of the Danube there runs a
long sweep of very broken country, the Black Forest merging into the
Swabian Jura, which in a military sense cuts off the one basin from the
other.
At the opening of the eighteenth century, when that great stretch of
hills had but a score of roads, none of them well kept up, when no town of
any importance could be found in their valleys, and when no communication,
even of a verbal message, could proceed faster than a mounted man, this
sweep of hills was a very formidable obstacle indeed.
It was these hills, when Marlborough determined to strike across them, and
to engage himself in the valley of the Upper Danube, which formed the
chief physical factor of his hazard; for, once engaged in them, still more
when he had crossed them, his appeals for aid, his reception of advice,
perhaps eventually a reinforcement of men or supplies, must depend upon
the Rhine valley.
True he had, the one within a week of the Danube, the other within two
days of it, the couple of depots mentioned above, the principal one at
Nuremberg, the advanced one at Nordlingen. Nevertheless, so long as he was
upon the further or eastern side of the hills, his position would remain
one of great risk, unless, indeed, or until, he had had the good fortune
to destroy the forces of the enemy.
All this being before the reader, the progress of the great march may now
be briefly described.
In the winter between 1703 and 1704 domestic irritation and home
intrigues, with which we are not here concerned, almost persuaded
Marlborough to give up his great role upon the Continent of Europe.
Luckily for the alliance against Louis and for the history of British
arms, he returned upon this determination or phantasy, and with the very
beginning of the year began his plans for the coming campaign.
He crossed first to Holland in the middle of January 1704, persuaded the
Dutch Government to grant a subsidy to the German troops in the South,
pretended (since he knew how nervous the Dutch would be if they heard of
the plan for withdrawing a great army from their frontiers to the Danube)
that he intended operating upon the Moselle, returned to England, saw with
the utmost activity to the raising of recruits and to the domestic
organisation of the expedition, and reached Holland again to undertake the
most famous action of his life in the latter part of April.
It was upon the 5th of May that he left the Hague. He was at Maestricht
till the 14th, superintending every detail and ordering the construction
of bridges over the Meuse by which the advance was to begin. Upon the 16th
he left by the southward road for Bedburg, and immediately his army broke
winter quarters for the great march.
It was upon the 18th of May that the British regiments marched out of
Ruremonde by the bridges constructed over the Meuse, aiming for the
rendezvous at Bedburg.
The very beginning of the march was disturbed by the fears of the Dutch
and of others, though Marlborough had carefully kept secret the design of
marching to the Danube, and though all imagined that the valley of the
Moselle was his objective.
Marlborough quieted these fears, and was in a better position to insist
from the fact that he claimed control over the very large force which was
directly in the pay of England.
He struck for the Rhine, up the valley of which he would receive further
contingents, supplied by the minor members of the Grand Alliance, as he
marched.
By the 23rd he was at Bonn with the cavalry, his brother Churchill
following with the infantry. Thence the heavy baggage and the artillery
proceeded by water up the river to Coblentz, and when Coblentz was reached
(upon the 25th of May) it was apparent that the Moselle at least was not
his objective, for on the next day, the 26th, he crossed both that river
and the Rhine with his army, and continued his march up the right bank of
the Rhine.
But this did not mean that he might not still intend to carry the war into
Alsace. He was at Cassel, opposite Mayence, three days after leaving
Coblentz; four days later the head of the column had reached the Neckar at
Ladenberg, where bridges had already been built by Marlborough's orders,
and upon the 3rd of June the troops crossed over to the further bank.
Here was the decisive junction where Marlborough must show his hand: the
first few miles of his progress south-eastward across the bend of the
Neckar would make it clear that his object was not Alsace, but the Danube.
He had announced to the Dutch and all Europe an attack upon the valley of
the Moselle; that this was a ruse all could see when he passed Coblentz
without turning up the valley of that river. The whole week following, and
until he reached the Neckar, it might still be imagined that he meditated
an attack upon Alsace, for he was still following the course of the Rhine.
Once he diverged from the valley of this river and struck across the bend
of the Neckar to the south and east, the alternative he had chosen of
making the Upper Danube the seat of war was apparent.
It is therefore at this point in his advance that we must consider the art
by which he had put the enemy in suspense, and confused their judgment of
his design.
The first point in the problem for a modern reader to appreciate is the
average rate at which news would travel at that time and in that place. A
very important dispatch could cover a hundred miles and more in the day
with special organisation for its delivery, and with the certitude that it
had gone from one particular place to another particular place. But
general daily information as to the movements of a moving enemy could not
be so organised.
We must take it that the French commanders upon the left bank of the Rhine
at Landau, or upon the Meuse (where Villeroy was when Marlborough began
his march), would require full forty-eight hours to be informed of the
objective of each new move.
For instance, on the 25th of May Marlborough's forces were approaching
Coblentz. To find out what they were going to do next, the French would
have to know whether they were beginning to turn up the valley of the
Moselle, which begins at Coblentz, or to cross that river and be going on
further south. A messenger might have been certain that the latter was
their intention by midday of the 26th, but Tallard, right away on the
Upper Rhine, would hardly have known this before the morning of the 29th,
and by the morning of the 29th Marlborough was already opposite Mayence.
It is this gap of from one to three days in the passage of information
which is so difficult for a modern man to seize, and which yet made
possible all Marlborough's manoeuvres to confuse the French.
Villeroy was bound to watch until, at least, the 29th of May for the
chance of a campaign upon the Moselle.
Meanwhile, Tallard was not only far off in the valley of the Upper Rhine,
but occupied in a remarkable operation which, had he not subsequently
suffered defeat at Blenheim, would have left him a high reputation as a
general.
This operation was the reinforcement of the army under the Elector of
Bavaria and Marcin by a dash right through the enemy's country in the
Black Forest.
Early in May the Elector of Bavaria had urgently demanded reinforcements
of the French king.
The mountains between the Bavarian army and the French were held by the
enemy, but the Elector hurried westward along the Danube, while Tallard,
with exact synchrony and despatch, hurried eastward; each held out a hand
to the other, as it were, for a rapid touch; the business of Tallard was
to hand over the new troops and provisions at one exact moment, the
business of the Elector was to catch the junction exactly. If it succeeded
it was to be followed by a sharp retreat of either party, the one back
upon the Danube eastward for his life, the other back westward upon the
Rhine.
Tallard had crossed the Rhine on the 13th of May with a huge convoy of
provisionment and over 7000 newly recruited troops. Within a week the
thing was done. He had handed over in the nick of time the whole mass of
men and things to the Elector.[2] He had done this in the midst of the
Black Forest and in the heart of the enemy's country, and he immediately
began his retirement upon the Rhine. Tallard was thus particularly delayed
in receiving daily information of Marlborough's march.
Let us take a typical date.
On the 29th of May Tallard, retiring from the dash to help Bavaria, was
still at Altenheim, on the German bank of the Rhine. It was only on that
day that he learnt from Villeroy that Marlborough had no idea of marching
up the Moselle, but had gone on up the Rhine towards Mayence. Marlborough
had crossed the Moselle and the Rhine on the 26th, but it took Tallard
three days to know it. Tallard, knowing this, would not know whether
Marlborough might not still be thinking of attacking Alsace: to make that
alternative loom large in the mind of the French commanders, Marlborough
had had bridges prepared in front of his advance at Philipsburg--though he
had, of course, no intention at all of going as far up as Philipsburg.
It was on June 3rd, as we have seen, that the foremost of Marlborough's
forces were nearing the banks of the Neckar, and upon the 4th that anyone
observing his troops would have clearly seen for the first time that they
were striking for the Danube. But it was twenty-four hours before Tallard,
who had by this time come down the Rhine as far as Lauterberg to defend a
possible attack upon Alsace, knew certainly that the Danube, and not the
Rhine, would be the field of war.
All this time it was guessed at Versailles, and thought possible by the
French generals at the front, that the Danube was Marlborough's aim. But a
guess was not good enough to risk Alsace upon.
By the time it was certain Marlborough was marching for the Danube--June
4th and 5th--Tallard's force was much further from the Elector of Bavaria
than was Marlborough's, as a glance at the map will show. There was no
chance then for heading Marlborough off, and the chief object of the
English commander's strategy was accomplished. He had kept the enemy in
doubt[3] as to his intentions up to the moment when his forces were safe
from interference, and he could strike for the Danube quite unmolested.
[Illustration: Map illustrating Marlborough's march to the Danube.]
Villeroy at once came south in person, and joined Tallard at
Oberweidenthal. The two commanders met upon the 7th of June to confer upon
the next move, but at this point appeared that capital element of delay
which hampered the French forces throughout the campaign, namely, the
necessity of consulting with the King at Versailles. The next day, the
8th, Tallard and Villeroy, who had gone back to their respective commands
after their conference, sent separate reports to Versailles. It was not
until the 12th that Louis answered, leaving the initiative with his
generals at the front, but advising a strong offensive upon the Rhine in
order to immobilise there a great portion of the enemy's forces.
The advice was not unwise. It did, as a fact, immobilise Eugene for the
moment, and kept him upon the Rhine for some weeks, but, as we shall see
later, that General was able to escape when the worst pressure was put
upon him, to cross the Black Forest with excellent secrecy and speed, and
to effect his junction with Marlborough in time for the battle of
Blenheim.
But, meanwhile, Baden had chased the Elector of Bavaria out of the Black
Forest and down on to the Upper Danube. Marlborough might, at any moment,
join hands with Baden. The Elector sent urgent requests for yet more
reinforcements from the French, and Tallard, in a letter to Versailles of
the 16th of June, advised the capture and possession of such points in the
Black Forest as would give him free access across the mountains, the
proper provisioning of his line of supply when he should cross them, and
the accomplishment of full preparations for joining the Elector of Bavaria
in a campaign upon the Upper Danube.
Let the day when the French court received this letter be noted, for the
coincidence is curious. At the very moment when Tallard's letter reached
Versailles, the 22nd of June, Marlborough was effecting his junction with
Baden outside the gates of Ulm at Ursprung. The decision of Louis XIV.,
that Tallard should advance beyond the hills in force to the aid of the
Elector, exactly coincides with the appearance of the English General upon
the Danube, and it was on the 23rd of June, the morrow, that the King
wrote to Villeroy the decisive letter recommending Tallard to cross over
from Alsace towards Bavaria with forty battalions and fifty squadrons, say
25,000 men.
But this advance of Tallard's across the Black Forest and his final
junction with the Elector and Marcin before the battle of Blenheim did
not take place until after Marlborough had joined Baden and the march to
the Danube was accomplished. It must therefore be dealt with in the next
division, which is its proper place. For the moment we must return to
Marlborough's advance upon the Danube, which we left at the point where he
crossed the Neckar upon the 3rd and 4th of June. He had, as we have just
seen, and by methods which we have reviewed, completely succeeded in
saving the rest of his advance from interference.
Safe from pursuit, and with no further need for concealing his plan,
Marlborough lingered in the neighbourhood of the Neckar, partly to effect
a full concentration of his forces, partly to rest his cavalry. It was a
week before he found himself at Mundelsheim, between Heilbron and
Stuttgart, and at the foot of the range which still divided him from the
basin of the Danube. Here Eugene, the author of the whole business, met
Marlborough; between them the two men drew up the plans which were to lead
to so momentous a result, and knitted in that same interview a friendship
based upon the mutual recognition of genius, which was to determine seven
years of war.
Upon the 13th of June these great captains met and conferred also with the
Margrave, Louis of Baden, who commanded all the troops in the hills, and
who was to be the third party to their plan. He was a man, cautious, but
able, easily ruffled in his dignity, often foolishly jealous of another's
power. He insisted that Marlborough and he should take command upon
alternate days--he would not serve as second--and in all that followed,
the personal relations between himself and Marlborough grew less and less
cordial up to the eve of the great battle. His prudence and arrangement,
however, his exact synchrony of movement and good hold over his troops,
made Marlborough's decisions fruitful.
Upon the 14th of June the passage of Marlborough's column over the hills
between the Rhine and the Danube began. Baden went back to the command of
his army, which already lay in the plain of the Upper Danube, and awaited
the arrival of Marlborough's command, and the junction of it with his own
force before Ulm.
A heavy rain, drenched and bad roads, marked Marlborough's crossing of the
range. It was not until the 20th that the cavalry reached the foot of the
final ascent, but in two days the whole body had passed over. It was thus
upon the 22nd of June that the junction between Marlborough and Baden was
effected. From that day on their combined forces were prepared to operate
as one army upon the plain of the Upper Danube. They stood joined at the
gates of Ulm, and in their united force far superior to the
Franco-Bavarians, who had but just escaped Baden's army, and who lay in
the neighbourhood watching this fatal junction of their rivals.
I say, "who had but just escaped Baden's army," for it was part of the
general plan (and a part most ably executed) that not only should the seat
of war be brought into the valley of the Upper Danube by Marlborough's
march to join Baden, but, as a preparation for this, that the army of the
Elector, with his French allies under Marcin, should be driven eastward
out of the mountains and cut off from the main French forces upon the
Rhine.
This chasing of the Franco-Bavarians down on to the Danube and out of the
Black Forest was begun just after the spirited piece of generalship by
which Tallard had, as we have seen, reinforced the Elector of Bavaria in
the middle of May. That rapid and brilliant piece of work had been
effected only just in time. Hardly was it accomplished when Baden's force
in the mountains marched, as part of Marlborough's general plan, against
the Elector, with the object of forcing him back into the Danube valley at
full speed.
It was on the 18th of May that the British regiments were crossing the
Meuse, and the advance upon the Danube had begun.
It was on the 18th of May that Louis of Baden appeared at the head of his
army in the Black Forest and initiated that separation of the Bavarian
forces from the French which was a necessary part of the general plan we
have spoken of. It was but a few hours since Tallard had stretched out his
hand and passed the recruits and the provisions over to the
Franco-Bavarian forces.
The Elector of Bavaria had with him certain French regiments, and Marshal
Marcin was under his commands, while Marlborough's plan was still quite
unknown. Therefore no large French force could apparently be spared from
the valley of the Rhine to help the Elector in that of the Danube; the
Duke of Baden could have things his own way against the lesser force
opposed to him.
On the 19th he was advancing on Ober and Neder Ersasch. The Duke of
Bavaria had evacuated these villages upon the 20th, and on the same night
the Duke of Baden reached Meidlingen. Pursuer and pursued were marching
almost parallel, separated only by the little river of Villingen. Now and
then they came so close that Baden's artillery could drop a shot into the
hurrying ranks of the Elector.
On the 21st Baden was at Geisingen, threatening Tuttlingen. On the 23rd he
had reached Stockach, and was pressing so hard that his van had actually
come in contact with the rear of the Bavarians, a situation reminiscent of
the Esla Bridge in Moore's retreat on Coruna.
The valley of the Danube opened out before the two opponents. The Elector
found it possible to maintain his exhausted but rapid retreat, and, ten
days later, he had escaped. For by the 3rd of June the Franco-Bavarian
forces lay at Elchingen, the Duke of Baden was no nearer than Echingen,
and the former was saved after a fortnight of very anxious going; but,
though saved, they were now completely cut off for the moment from French
reinforcement. Marlborough was approaching the hills; he would cross them
in a few days. He would join Baden's army; and the moment Marlborough
should have joined Baden, the Elector would be in peril of overwhelming
adversaries.
We have seen how the plan matured. Three weeks after the Bavarian army's
escape from the Black Forest, upon the 22nd of June, Marlborough's force
had crossed the range and made one with Baden's before Ulm.