whole of the forces were assembled a little to the south of Lille at
Orchies; ◆April 20./May 1.◆ and on the 1st of May Marlborough moved
forward to a position parallel to that of Villars, who lay in rear of
the river Sensée with his left at Oisy and his right at Bouchain.
There both armies remained stationary and inactive for six
weeks. Eugene came, but presently received orders to return and to
bring his troops with him. ◆June 3/14.◆ On the 14th of June
Marlborough moved away one march westward to the plain of Lens in
order to conceal this enforced diminution of his strength. The
position invited a battle, but Villars only moved down within his
lines, parallel to the Duke; and once more both armies remained
inactive for five weeks. After the departure of Eugene the French
commander detached a portion of his troops to the Rhine, but even so
he had one hundred and thirty-one battalions against ninety-four, and
one hundred and eighty-seven squadrons against one hundred and
forty-five of the Allies.
We now approach what is perhaps the most remarkable and certainly the
most entertaining feat of the Duke during the whole war. Villars,
bound by his instructions, would not come out and fight; his lines
could not be forced by an army of inferior strength, and they could
therefore be passed only by stratagem. The inundation on the Sensée
between Arras and Bouchain could be traversed only by two causeways,
the larger of which was defended by a strong fort at Arleux, while the
other was covered by a redoubt at Aubigny, half a mile below
it. Marlborough knew that he could take the fort at Arleux at any time
and demolish it, but he knew also that Villars would certainly retake
it and rebuild as soon as his back was turned. He therefore set
himself to induce Villars to demolish it himself. ◆June 25./July 6.◆
With this view he detached a strong force under General Rantzau to
capture the fort, which was done without difficulty. The Duke then
gave orders that the captured works should be greatly strengthened,
and, for their further protection, posted a large force under the
Prussian General Hompesch on the glacis of Douay, some six miles
distant from the fort.
[Illustration:
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1711.
_Stanford’s Geogl. Estabt., London._
]
As fate ordained it, Hompesch, thinking himself secure under the guns
of Douay, neglected his outposts and even his sentries, and was
surprised two days later by a sudden attack from Villars, which was
only repulsed with considerable difficulty and not a little
shame. ◆June 28./July 9.◆ Villars was in ecstasies over his success,
and Marlborough displayed considerable annoyance. However, the Duke
reinforced Hompesch, as if to show the value which he attached to
Arleux, and pushed forward the new works with the greatest vigour.
Finally, when all was completed, he threw a weak garrison into the
fort and led the rest of the army away two marches westward, encamping
opposite the lines between the Canche and the Scarpe. ◆July 10/21.◆
Villars likewise moved westward parallel to him, and took up a
position between Oppy and Montenancourt; but, before he started, he
detached a force to attack Arleux. The commander of the fort sent a
message to Marlborough that he could not possibly hold it, and the
Duke at once despatched Cadogan with a strong force to relieve it. It
was noticed, however, that Cadogan made no such haste as the urgency
of the occasion would have seemed to require; and indeed, before he
had gone half-way, he returned with the intelligence that Arleux had
surrendered.
Villars was elated beyond measure; and Marlborough for the first time
in his life seemed to be greatly distressed and cast down. Throwing
off his usual serenity, he proclaimed in public with much passion that
he would be even with Villars yet, and would attack him, come what
might of it, where he lay. Then came the news that Villars had razed
the entire works of Arleux, over which Marlborough had spent such
pains, entirely to the ground. This increased the Duke’s
ill-temper. He declared that he would avenge this insult to his army,
and renewed his menace of a direct attack on the entrenchments.
◆July 15/26.◆ Villars now detached a force to make a diversion in
Brabant; and this step seemed to drive Marlborough distracted. Vowing
that he would check the march of this detachment, he sent off ten
thousand men under Lord Albemarle to Béthune, and the whole of his
baggage and heavy artillery to Douay. ◆July 17/28.◆ Having thus
weakened an army already inferior to that of the French, he repaired
the roads that led towards the enemy’s entrenchments, and on the 1st
of August, with much display of vindictiveness, sulkiness, and general
vexation, advanced one march nearer to the lines, encamping between
Houdain and St. Pol. ◆July 21./Aug. 1.◆ His army watched his
proceedings with amazement, for it had never expected such behaviour
from Corporal John.
Villars meanwhile was in a transport of delight. He drew every man,
not only from all parts of the lines but also from the neighbouring
garrisons, towards the threatened point, and asked nothing better than
that Marlborough should attack. In the height of exultation he
actually wrote to Versailles that he had brought the Duke to his _ne
plus ultra_. Marlborough’s strange manner still remained the
same. ◆July 22./August 2.◆ On the 2nd of August he advanced to within
a league of the lines, his left being opposite to Aubigny on the Upper
Scarpe; and during that day and the next set the whole of his cavalry
to work to collect fascines. ◆July 23./August 3.◆ At nightfall of the
3rd he sent away all his light artillery, together with every wheeled
vehicle, under escort of a strong detachment, and next morning rode
forward with most of his generals to reconnoitre the eastern end of
the lines. ◆July 24./August 4.◆ Captain Parker of the Eighteenth Royal
Irish, who had obtained permission to ride with the Staff, was amazed
at the Duke’s demeanour. Marlborough had now thrown off all his
ill-temper and was calm and cool as usual, indicating this point and
that to his officers. “Your brigade, General, will attack here, such
and such brigades will be on your right and left, such another in
support, and you will be careful of this, that, and other.” The
generals listened and stared; they understood the instructions clearly
enough, but they could not help regarding them as madness. So the
reconnaissance proceeded, drearily enough, and was just concluding
when General Cadogan turned his horse, unnoticed, out of the crowd,
struck in his spurs and galloped back to camp at the top of his
speed. Presently the Duke also turned, and, riding back very slowly,
issued orders to prepare for a general attack on the morrow.
At this all ranks of the army, from the general to the drummer, fell
into the deepest depression. Not a man could fail to see that direct
assault of the lines was a hopeless enterprise at the best of times,
and doubly hopeless now that half of the army and the whole of the
artillery had been detached for other service. Again the violent and
unprecedented outburst of surliness and ill-temper was difficult to
explain; and the only possible explanation was that the Duke, rendered
desperate by failure and misfortunes, had thrown prudence to the winds
and cared not what he did. A few only clung faintly to the hope that
the chief, who had led them so often to victory, might still have some
surprise in store for them; but the most part gave themselves up for
lost, and lamented loudly that they should ever have lived to see such
a change come over the Old Corporal.
So passed the afternoon among the tents of the Allies; but meanwhile
Cadogan with forty hussars at his heels had long started from the camp
and was galloping hard across the plain of Lens to Douay, five leagues
away. There he found Hompesch ready with his garrison, now strengthened
by detachments from Béthune and elsewhere to twelve thousand foot and
two thousand horse, and told him that the time was come. Hompesch
thereupon issued his orders for the troops to be ready to march that
night. Still the main army under Marlborough knew nothing of this, and
passed the day in dismal apprehension till the sun went down, and the
drummers came forward to beat tattoo. Then a column of cavalry trotted
out westward, attracting every French eye and stirring every French
brain with curiosity as to the purport of the movement. The drums began
to roll; and the order ran quietly down the line to strike tents and
prepare to march immediately.
Never was command more welcome. Within an hour all was ready and the
army was formed into four columns. The cavalry, having done their work
of distracting French vigilance to the wrong quarter, returned unseen
by the enemy; and at nine o’clock the whole army faced to its left and
marched off eastward in utter silence, with Marlborough himself at the
head of the vanguard.
◆July 24–25./August 4–5.◆
The night was fine, and under the radiant moonlight the men swung
forward bravely hour after hour over the plain of Lens. The moon
paled; the dawn crept up into the east throwing its ghastly light on
the host of weary, sleepless faces; and presently the columns reached
the Scarpe at Vitry. So far the march had lasted eight hours, and
fifteen miles had been passed. Pontoon-bridges were already laid
across the river, and on the further bank, punctual to appointment,
stood Brigadier Sutton with the field-artillery. The river was passed,
and presently a messenger came spurring from the east with a despatch
for the Duke of Marlborough. ◆July 25./August 5.◆ He read it; and
words were passed down the columns of march which filled them with new
life. “Generals Cadogan and Hompesch” (such was their purport)
“crossed the causeway at Arleux unopposed at three o’clock this
morning, and are in possession of the enemy’s lines. The Duke desires
that the infantry will step out.” The right wing of horse halted to
form the rearguard and bring up stragglers, while a cloud of dust in
the van told that the Duke and fifty squadrons with him were pushing
forward at the trot. Then the infantry shook themselves up and stepped
out with a will.
◆July 25./August 5.◆
Villars had received intelligence of Marlborough’s march only two hours
after he had started, but he was so thoroughly bewildered by the Duke’s
intricate manœvres that he did not awake to the true position until
three hours later. Then, quite distracted, he put himself at the head
of the Household Cavalry and galloped off at full speed. So furiously
rode he that he wore down all but a hundred of his troopers and
pushed on with these alone. But even so Marlborough was before him.
At eight o’clock he crossed the lower causeway at Aubanchœuil-au-bac
and passing his cavalry over the Sensée barred the road from the west
by the village of Oisy. Presently Villars, advancing reckless of all
precautions, blundered into the middle of the outposts. Before he could
retire, his whole escort was captured, and he himself only by miracle
escaped the same fate.
The Marshal now looked anxiously for the arrival of his main body of
horse; but the Allied infantry had caught sight of the French on the
other side of the Sensée, and, weary though they were, had braced
themselves to race them for the goal. Nevertheless the severity of the
march and the burden of their packs began to tell heavily on the foot.
Hundreds dropped down unconscious, and many died there and then, but
they were left where they lay to await the arrival of the rearguard;
for no halt was called, and each regiment pushed on as cheerfully as
possible with such men as still survived. Thus they were still ahead
of the French when they turned off to the causeway at Arleux, and,
Marlborough having thrown additional bridges over the Sensée, they came
quickly into their positions. The right wing of infantry crossed the
river about four o’clock in the afternoon, having covered close upon
forty miles in eighteen hours; and by five o’clock the whole force
was drawn up between Oisy and the Scheldt within striking distance of
Arras, Cambrai, and Bouchain. So vanished the ne plus ultra of Villars,
a warning to all generals who put their sole trust in fortified lines.
Marlborough halted for the next day to give his troops rest and to
allow the stragglers to come in. Fully half the men of the infantry had
fallen out, and there were many who did not rejoin the army until the
third day. Villars on his side moved forward and offered Marlborough
battle under the walls of Cambrai; but the Duke would not accept it,
though the Dutch deputies, perverse and treacherous to the last, tried
hard to persuade him. Had the deputies marched in the ranks of the
infantry with muskets on their shoulders and a kit of fifty pounds’
weight on their backs, they would have been less eager for the fray.
Marlborough’s own design, long matured in his own mind, was the
capture of Bouchain, and his only fear was lest Villars should cross
the Scheldt before him and prevent it. The deputies, however, who
had been so anxious to hurry the army into an engagement under every
possible disadvantage, shrank from the peril of a siege carried on by
an inferior under the eyes of a superior force. But Marlborough, even
if he had not been able to adduce Lille as a precedent, was determined
to have his own way, and carried his point. ◆July 27./August 7.◆ At
noon on the 7th of August he marched down almost within cannon-shot
of Cambrai, ready to fall on Villars should he attempt to pass the
Scheldt, halted until his pontoon-bridges had been laid a few miles
further down the stream, and then gradually withdrawing his troops
threw the whole of them across the river unmolested.
It is hardly credible that a vast number of foolish civilians, Dutch,
Austrian, and even English, blamed Marlborough for declining battle
before Cambrai, and that he was actually obliged to explain why he
refused to sacrifice the fruit of his manœvres by attacking a superior
force in a strong position with an army not only smaller in numbers at
its best, but much thinned by a forced march and exhausted by fatigue.
“I despair of being ever able to please all men,” he wrote. “Those who
are capable of judging will be satisfied with my endeavours: others
I leave to their own reflections, and go on with the discharge of my
duty.”
It is possible that Villars only refrained from hindering
Marlborough’s passage of the Scheldt in deference to orders from
Versailles, of which the Duke was as well aware as himself; but it is
more than doubtful whether he ever intended the British to capture
Bouchain. Though inferior in numbers, however, Marlborough covered
himself so skilfully with entrenchments that Villars could not hinder
him, while all attempts at diversion were met so readily that not one
of them succeeded. ◆Sept. 2/13.◆ Finally, the garrison surrendered as
prisoners of war under the very eyes of Villars. The Duke would have
followed up his success by the siege of Quesnoi, the town before which
English troops first came under the fire of cannon in the year of
Crecy; but by this time Lewis, with the help of the contemptible
Harley, had succeeded in detaching England from the Grand Alliance.
Though, therefore, the English ministers continued to encourage
Marlborough in his operations, in order to conceal their own infamous
conduct from the Allies, yet they took good care that those operations
should proceed no further. So with the capture of Bouchain the last
and not the least remarkable of Marlborough’s campaigns came, always
victoriously, to an end.
CAMPAIGNS OF 1744–1748
VOL. II. BOOK VII. CHAPTER V
However fortunate might be the issue of Dettingen, it served at least
its purpose in preventing the despatch of French reinforcements to the
Danube and to Bohemia; and the campaign of 1743 closed with the utter
collapse of Belleisle’s great schemes and with the expulsion of the
French from Germany. It was now clear that the war would be carried on
in the familiar cockpit of the Austrian Netherlands. Such a theatre
was convenient for France, since it lay close to her own borders, and
convenient for the Allies, because the Dutch had at last been persuaded
to join them, and because the British would be brought nearer to their
base at Ostend. Marshal Saxe, whose fine talent had hitherto been
wasted under incompetent French Generals in Bohemia, was appointed to
the chief command of the French in Flanders; and every effort was made
to give him a numerous and well-equipped army, and to enable him to
open his campaign in good time.
◆1744.◆
In England the preparations by no means corresponded with the
necessities of the position. The estimates indeed provided for a force
of twenty-one thousand British in Flanders in 1744 as against sixteen
thousand in the previous year, but only at the cost of depleting the
weak garrison left in England; for the actual number of men voted
for the two years was the same. All British officers of experience
strongly urged upon the Government the importance of being first
in the field,[68] but, when an army was to be made up in different
proportions of English, Dutch, Germans and Austrians, it needed a
Marlborough to bring the discordant Courts into harmony as well as to
make ready the troops for an early campaign. By the beginning of April
eighty thousand French soldiers had marched from their winter quarters,
and were concentrated on the frontier between the Scheldt and the
Sambre, while the Allies were still scattered about in cantonments,
not exceeding even then a total strength of fifty-live thousand men.
Wade, the English commander, delayed first by confusion at home and
next by contrary winds, was still in England while the French were
concentrating, and not a single English recruit, to repair the losses
of the past campaign, had arrived in Flanders. Then arose disputes
as to the disposition of the Allied forces, both Austrians and Dutch
being nervously apprehensive of leaving their towns on the frontier
without garrisons. When in the second week in May the Allied Army was
at last collected close to Brussels, it was still weaker by twenty
thousand men than it should have been, and found itself confronted
with the task of holding Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, and the Sambre
against a superior force of French.[69] May passed away and June came,
but the Allies remained helpless and motionless in their camp, while
Saxe, after a short march westward, turned north and advanced steadily
between the Scheldt and the Lys. His principal object was not very
difficult to divine. By the middle of June his detachments had seized
Ypres and Fort Knock, which commanded the canal from Nieuport to Ypres,
thus cutting off the British from one of their bases on the coast. It
remained to be seen whether he would aim next at Ostend, where the
whole of the British stores of ordnance were accumulated, or whether he
would attempt Bruges and Ghent in order to secure the navigation of the
Bruges Canal as well as of the Scheldt and Lys. Again, it was always
open to him, if he pleased, to besiege Tournay, a fortress which the
Allies would not willingly lose. Thus the problem set to the Allies
was not easy of solution; but of all solutions they chose the worst.
The Dutch and Austrians could not bear the notion of forsaking any one
of their darling strongholds, and insisted that the strength of the
army should be frittered away in providing weak garrisons for the
defence of all.[70] Wade, to do him justice, was for keeping all the
troops together, crossing the Scheldt, and taking up a strong position
to cover Ghent; but the Austrians would not consent, lest they should
expose Brussels.[71] Wade was certainly not a strong man, but he must
not be too hardly judged. Marlborough had spent the most anxious days
of all his campaigns in distraction between the safety of Ghent and of
Brussels, and had only extricated himself by the march that preceded
the battle of Oudenarde.
Meanwhile King George had been exerting himself with great energy,
though two months too late, to provide Wade with additional troops,
both British and Dutch, and had begged that Prince Charles of Lorraine
might cross the Rhine with his whole army, and direct the operations
in Flanders as Commander-in-Chief of all the Allies. It was a wise
step in every way, since the Prince’s relationship to Queen Maria
Theresa assured to him the seniority in rank which was needed to hold
so heterogeneous a host in coherence. ◆July.◆ Prince Charles did his
share of the work admirably, forcing his passage across the Rhine with
great skill in the face of the French, and taking up a strong position
on the frontier of Alsace. A few days later the British reinforcements
reached Wade, and King George issued positive orders to him to take
the offensive and “commence hostilities of all kinds.”[72]
It seemed, indeed, as if the time were come for pressing home upon
the French; but just at this critical moment Frederick of Prussia
intervened in favour of France, and, by a threat to invade Bohemia,
brought Prince Charles back quickly over the Rhine. None the less
Wade and his fellows held a council of war and resolved to bring Saxe
to action if possible. ◆July 20/31.◆ King George gave his gracious
approval to their plan, and on the 31st of July the Allies turned
westward and crossed the Scheldt. It still remained to be seen,
however, whether Saxe would allow an action to be forced on him; for
he lay now, entrenched to the teeth, on the Lys between Menin and
Courtrai, which was a pretty clear indication that he would not. At
this moment Lord Stair, who had followed the course of operations
carefully from England, came forward, like a true pupil of Marlborough,
with a new plan of campaign. His advice was that the Allies should turn
Saxe’s tactics against himself. They should march south to Orchies,
between Lille and Tournay, and there encamp, where they would be within
reach of half-a-dozen French fortified towns. The French would not dare
to leave the fortresses defenceless; and the garrisons necessary to
render them secure would absorb the whole of their force in the field.
Then the Allies could send detachments into France and lay Picardy
under contribution, or possibly carry out the plan, rejected two years
before, of a march to the Seine. The King of Prussia’s action only made
some bold stroke of the kind the more imperative.[73]
Stair had gained over the Austrian general D’Arenberg to this project
in 1742; but it was hardly likely to be accepted by him now. Carteret,
in forwarding Stair’s memorandum to Wade, gave him no positive orders
except at least to do something; but poor Wade found it impossible to
make the Austrians do anything. The Allies having crossed the Scheldt
halted inactive for weeks, and no persuasion could induce D’Arenberg
to move. At last the army did march down to the plains of Lille, but
without its artillery, so that it could not be said seriously to
threaten the French fortresses. The Dutch and Austrians had undertaken
to furnish a siege-train, but had taken no step to procure one of the
ten thousand horses that were required to transport it. After a short
sojourn in the south the Allies marched helplessly northward once
more. August passed away and September came, but even in the fourth
month of the campaign the Dutch and Austrians were still without their
artillery.[74] Wade boldly proposed to force Saxe’s lines on the
Lys: the Austrians refused. He proposed to pounce on a detachment of
fourteen thousand men, which Saxe had imprudently isolated from his
main army: D’Arenberg carefully sent a weak body of cavalry to reveal
to the detachment the danger of its position. Finally, in the first
week of October the Allies retired into winter-quarters, which was
precisely the object for which D’Arenberg had been working from the
first. Despite of the English subsidies, he had no money with which to
pay his troops, and he wished to spare the Austrian Netherlands the
burden of furnishing forage and contributions. Wade, sick in body and
distressed in mind, at once resigned his command. He had had enough of
the Austrian alliance, and King George before long was to have enough
of it also.[75]
◆1745.◆