Marlborough

by Richard Holmes

  Lastly, despite his lack of ministerial office, Marlborough continued to play a central role in government. The issues of fixing the succession and pursuing a union between England and Scotland were uppermost in the minds of Westminster politicians, and that autumn’s session of Parliament passed both a Regency Act and legislation authorising the appointment of commissioners to negotiate a Union with Scotland. Godolphin was anxious to continue removing Tories from the ministry, a process which Harley rightly feared would lead to his own replacement and which ran contrary to the queen’s desire to have a broadly-based government. She continued to value Marlborough’s advice, but even before the summer’s exhausting wrangling with the Dutch he expressed a wish to retire at the end of the campaign, and clearly felt that his headaches and associated problems with his vision were the harbingers of something fatal.

  By the vexation and trouble I undergo, I find a daily decay, which may deprive me of the honour of serving Your Majesty any more, which thought makes me take the liberty to beg of Your Majesty, that for your own sake and for the happiness of both kingdoms, you will never suffer anybody to do the Lord Treasurer an ill office. For besides his integrity for your service, his temper and abilities are such, that he is the only man in England capable of giving such advice as may keep you out of the hands of both parties, which may at last make you happy, if quietness can be had in a country where there is so much faction.85

  Edward Gregg, Anne’s distinguished biographer, identifies here ‘a maudlin note which was to be repeated later in his correspondence and which the Queen was to find increasingly grating’.86 Marlborough’s correspondence with Sarah and Godolphin testifies to the fact that there was nothing political in his desire to retire: indeed, he rarely mentioned Blenheim Palace save in the context of a place where he might live out his days in peace. Although he had suffered from headaches for many years, their frequency and severity in 1705, together with the appearance of stomach trouble and gout, left him fearing that, as he told Heinsius that autumn, ‘I am really ill.’

  Despite the closeness of his relationship with Godolphin, Marlborough was often a reluctant participant in the lord treasurer’s campaign against the Tories, and was far from sharing his wife’s Whig principles. But there was no more escaping his requirement to support Godolphin than his need to keep propping up the alliance. Welded into his myriad of concerns at the close of a difficult year was the need to dissuade the Elector of Hanover from allowing the dowager Electress Sophia, the Tories’ preferred candidate to succeed Anne, from settling in England, something that the queen told him ‘gives me a great deal of uneasiness’.87

  The twenty-first century is too often prepared to diagnose stress as a universal illness, but by any reasonable assessment the pressures bearing down upon Marlborough at the close of 1705 were almost intolerable. It was the cruellest of ironies that he was able to sustain them largely because of his relationship with Sarah, but Sarah’s own views and attitudes were by now contributing to his burden. His occasional attempts to steer her towards a less confrontational relationship with Anne, or to dissuade her from inciting Godolphin into fresh attacks on the Tories in government, could not be pressed too far without the risk of the sort of marital crisis that had disfigured the early months of 1704. In short, Marlborough could not survive without Sarah, but had come to realise that surviving with her was increasingly hard.

  Happy and Glorious: Ramillies

  One year tumbled into another. Marlborough spent November and December 1705 visiting Allied capitals. The new emperor urgently needed money to sustain the war in Italy, and Marlborough pressed the bankers of Vienna to supply an immediate 100,000 crowns on Dutch and English security. He undertook to arrange a loan of £250,000, on the security of the silver mines in Silesia, and did so as soon as he returned to England, putting up £10,000 himself: the sum was raised in full by early March 1706. In Berlin he was presented with a diamond-encrusted sword, but found the King of Prussia so irritated by the irregular payment of his troops that he would not, at that time, guarantee to keep them under Prince Louis’ command. Finally he went to Hanover, whence he wrote to Godolphin that the Elector ‘has commanded me to assure Her Majesty that he will never have any thoughts but what may be agreeable to hers’. He had just heard that the Lords had passed the Regency Act, and later that month the queen gave her assent to an act naturalising the Electress Sophia and her heirs.88 This bout of diplomacy ended with him prostrate with migraine: ‘My head aches to that degree that I can say no more …’ It was wholly typical of this curmudgeonly year that he did not manage to return to England until late on the evening of Sunday, 29 December.

  Marlborough returned to a nation making the greatest military effort of its history so far. In the Iberian Peninsula the Allies had scored significant successes, capturing Gibraltar and Barcelona, overrunning Catalonia, and being poised for an attack on Madrid from Catalonia and Portugal. The threat to the Empire had been blunted at Blenheim, the Duke of Savoy’s defection to the Allies had widened the Italian theatre. Marlborough had seventeen British battalions in 1702, and twenty from 1703; maritime enterprises consumed twelve in 1702, eleven in 1703 and six from 1704. The Peninsula gobbled up ten battalions in 1704, fifteen in 1705 and nineteen in the winter of 1705–06. In 1706 the war in Flanders and Brabant cost £1,255,000, and operations in the Peninsula £829,000 from a military budget of £2,112,000. Even Italy absorbed £334,000 in assorted loans to the emperor, the Duke of Savoy and German princes providing troops.89 Parliament, now narrowly under Whig control, was prepared to vote unprecedented sums of money for a war which the Allies now seemed to be within measurable distance of winning.

  Marlborough was in the unusual position of being Allied commander in a particular theatre of war, captain general of all the queen’s land forces, and strategic adviser to a government prosecuting the closest thing to a world war that history had so far seen. Winston S. Churchill maintains that Marlborough merely tolerated the war in the Peninsula as a sop to the Tories, but on the contrary, it is evident that in the winter of 1705–06 he actually recognised that his own theatre of operations was the least important. A drive on Madrid seemed to offer the prospect of winning the war in a single campaign, but conversely failure to reinforce Allied armies in Italy might lead to a crushing French victory there, and reopen the threat to Vienna. And, in just the same way that the French hoped that disaffected Irish or Scots might be used to spearhead an invasion of Britain, so Marlborough believed that Huguenot ‘refugee regiments’ could be used against France. In March 1706, not long before he left for the Continent, he told Heinsius how he saw the war in the round for the coming campaign.

  I am very sensible that there are very just objections to this project [of refugee regiments], but I can’t hinder being of opinion that it ought to be attempted though the success should not be a third part of what is promised; for we should attempt everything that is in our power this campaign, for the troops of France were at no time so divided as they now are. When we shall consider that we have an army in Spain, another in Italy, a third in Germany, and a fourth in Flanders, we may conclude that this is the time, that we ought to do something that they do not expect, and we may be sure, that if they are being surprised, they will find it very difficult to oppose us, their armies being at so great a distance from each other.90

  This was a wide strategic view from a general capable of lifting his gaze above the Lines of Brabant.

  When Marlborough reached The Hague in late April 1706 he first decided on attacks into France, in concert with Prince Louis, by way of the Moselle and Landau. This scheme did not survive early recognition that Prince Louis’ army had been too weakened by detachments for Italy to be able to mount a serious offensive. Marlborough then determined to go to Italy himself, where, working in concert with Eugène, he would attack into south-east France, and the Dutch, to his astonishment, agreed to devote troops to the venture. Marlborough had told Heinsius that the French would find it hard to opp
ose the Allies effectively if they were surprised. However, what applied to one combatant was no less true for the other, and Marlborough was himself surprised by the fact that the French, straining every nerve over the winter, had created a total of eight armies, three of which – under Villars on the Rhine, Villeroi in Brabant, and Marsin on the Moselle – were to attack in unison before the Allies could begin the campaign. Louis had concluded that he was now unable to fulfil his original war aim after Blenheim, but that by mounting a vigorous offensive he could obtain peace on suitable terms.

  Marlborough was making preparations for the march to Italy, with the usual problems in getting Allied contingents in on time, when he heard that Villars had attacked Prince Louis and administered what seemed, even from the first unconfirmed reports, to be a considerable defeat. Writing from The Hague, he told Godolphin that:

  we have had news of the Prince of Baden retiring over the Rhine, by which he has not only abandoned his lines, but also Haguenau, and whatever the French shall see fit to attack in lower Alsace. These people here are so very angry with Prince Louis that they will never be brought to let any of their troops be under his command, so that I very much apprehend the campaign on that side.91

  He was quite right. The Dutch at once deduced that this would enable Villars to send troops to strengthen Villeroi in Brabant, and would allow only 10,000 of their men to go to Italy, and then only if Marlborough himself remained in the north. Worse was to come. Prince Louis was fixed in the Lines of Stollhofen, demanding urgent support. Marsin paused only long enough to ensure that the Allied forces on the Moselle were being sent down to help Louis, and then took most of his troops to join Villeroi. The latter, now far stronger than he had been the previous year, thinned his forces west of Antwerp to a mere eleven battalions, designated sixteen battalions and eight squadrons for the siege of Leau, which, once Marsin’s men had come in, he would be able to cover with eighty battalions and 140 squadrons. It was a good plan, capitalising on ‘interior lines’ which enabled the French to move more quickly than the Allies. Marlborough would have to let Leau fall, and face subsequent attacks on Huy and Liège, or give battle against a superior force.

  There is a hoary old tale of a bear-keeper who, hoping to administer physic to the creature, placed the potion in a piece of rolled-up paper, inserted one end into the bear’s mouth and the other into his own, and prepared to blow. The bear, alas, blew first. This is what happened to the unlucky Villeroi. Marlborough, ground down by headaches and Alliance politics during the previous campaign, and now wrong-footed by a development he had not expected, rose at once to the top of his game. His intelligence service, which had given him no warning of Villars’ attack on Prince Louis, now focused on the immediate threat, enabling him to track the arrival of reinforcements to Villeroi’s army, and making it clear that Villeroi would venture into the field confident in support which might not arrive in time. The editors of the French official account admit that Villeroi was ‘determined, by the orders he had received, to act offensively, and by the superiority which he thought he had over the enemy, not to await attack, but to force them to come to an action’.92

  Although his army was still not ready to march in the first week of May, Marlborough rightly judged that the prospect of Marsin’s arrival would tempt the French to take risks, and would ‘give them such a superiority as would tempt them to march out of their lines; which, if they do, I will most certainly attack them, not doubting with the blessing of God to beat them’. They could only concentrate to face him by weakening themselves elsewhere, and this was all the more reason why a seaborne ‘descent’ should be attempted against a suitable spot. He would, come what may, make six regiments of foot and one of dragoons available for it.93 In short, he was prepared to take a short-term tactical risk to advance towards a wider strategic goal.

  By 9 May Marlborough was confident that the balance of forces favoured him, for Marsin’s infantry were still some way off.

  The English will join the army this day, and the Danes two days hence. We will then be 122 squadrons and 74 battalions. They pretend to be stronger in horse and foot, but with the blessing of God I hope for success, being resolved to venture for as yet they have but 20 squadrons of the Marshal de Marsin’s detachment. With my humble duty, assure Her Majesty, that with all my heart and soul I pray to God that I may be able to send her good news, so that her reign may be happy and glorious, and that your faithful friend and servant might have some quiet before he dies.94

  He was similarly bullish in a letter to Harley, written on 20 May with the army almost complete.

  The enemy having drained all their garrisons, and, depending on their superiority, passed the Dyle yesterday and came and posted themselves at Tirlemont, with the Geet before them, whereupon I have sent orders to the Danish troops … to hasten their march. I hope they may be with us on Saturday, and then I design to advance towards the enemy, to oblige them to retire or, with the blessing of God, to bring them to a battle.95

  At three o’clock on the morning of 23 May, Whit Sunday, the Allies decamped from Corswarem and set off south-westwards, probably in four columns, heading, as Marlborough was to tell Eugène, ‘for the gap between the Mehaigne and the Great Geet’, passing through a section of the demolished Lines of Brabant near Merdorp. It had been raining heavily for the past few days, but the day dawned dry. As was the normal practice, Cadogan had left camp before the main body with an escort of six squadrons of dragoons, including some of the recently-arrived Danes, ready to mark out that evening’s campsite. But as he rode forward through the fog across the plateau of Jandrenouille he met French hussar vedettes, static patrols posted to provide security for the main army. There was a spattering of shots. The hussars fell back westwards, and as the mist lifted Cadogan could see that the broad-shouldered ridge marking his westerly horizon was white with the tents of Villeroi’s army.

  Villeroi was probably not expecting a battle that day, although he was certainly prepared to fight soon afterwards. Marlborough told Eugène that French prisoners had said that ‘their design was not to fight us before Monday, not believing that we would dare to go to them’. The devout Elector of Bavaria, commanding Villeroi’s cavalry, was away attending a Pentecost service in Brussels. Both Louis and Chamillart had made it clear to Villeroi that he should fight if a favourable opportunity presented itself, and the gossipy duc de Saint-Simon went further, saying that ‘Villeroi had the feeling that the king doubted his courage … He resolved to put all at stake to satisfy him, and to prove that he did not deserve such harsh suspicions.’96 Louis, always given to using a long screwdriver to tinker with his commanders’ plans from a distance, warned Villeroi ‘to pay special attention to that part of the line which will endure the first shock of the English troops’, a process which was to work to Marlborough’s advantage.

  Although some historians suggest that the French were already drawn up for battle when Cadogan first saw them, this is evidently not the case. John Marshall Deane reckoned that when his regiment arrived the French were ‘getting onto the old camping ground on Mount St Andrews’.97 De la Colonie, whose Bavarian grenadiers were brigaded with the Cologne Regiment on the French right, recalled that when his army finished deploying it was parallel to the Allies, then drawing up in battle array, and already within cannon-shot. There was, however, time for the French to scratch together some field fortifications. Captain Robert Parker recalled that on their right, towards the Mehaigne, they ‘had … thrown up such an entrenchment as time would permit of’, and they had also ‘thrown up a trench’ on the crest-line just east of Ramillies, with, so Private Deane thought, ‘a battery of twelve pieces of treble cannon’ in it.98

  The French had, however, begun to stir before those first shots out on the plateau. The general call to arms was beaten at dawn, and Villeroi’s army went through the martial ritual of rising, soldiers tugging on breeches, waistcoats and coats, for men normally slept in their shirts, and falling in with their weapons. Pe
ter Drake, who assures us that he was a cadet (in ‘a regimental suit, like those worn by the officers’) in an Irish regiment in French service, recalled:

  On Whitsun eve we were all furnished with sixteen charges of powder and ball a man: orders were given out at night for the general to beat at dawn of day; the chaplains to say mass at the head of their prospective regiments; the tents to be struck, the baggage loaded, all sure token there was work cut out for the fighting day.99

  The French deployed in the simplest way, by forming up in two massive columns, with the artillery between them, and stepping out till the heads of the columns were close to the Mehaigne near Taviers. Successive regiments then wheeled left into line to take up a strong natural position on the western side of the Geete, running from the village of Autreglise, through Offus and Ramillies, down to Taviers, stretching, in a very gentle crescent, for over three miles, and held by about 60,000 men: there were seventy-four battalions, 132 squadrons and seventy guns.

  It was big, open country, with more than an echo of Salisbury Plain, and as self-confident as the white-coated infantry who now stood in rank and file upon it. The prosperous, tightly-nucleated villages were marked out from a distance by their church spires. There were few hedges on the plain itself, but the going was more difficult in the trappy terrain of the valleys and amongst the cottage gardens and orchards of the villages. The recent rainy weather and primitive land-drainage system meant that both rivers were far more significant than they seem today. The valley of the Mehaigne was boggy enough to splash a southern edge to the battlefield, and the headwaters of the Geete, which rise just north of Ramillies and are singularly unimpressive today, were then an obstacle to horse and foot, and a very serious barrier to guns. The ground grew more boxy the further north one went, effectively giving Villeroi a secure left flank beyond Autreglise.