Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
nearly all his troops, were now formed beyond the Nebel; he had the mass of his forces now all gathered opposite the weakest part of the French line. It was his business to pierce that line and to conquer.
As he advanced upon it, the French infantry, then stationed over the long evening shadows of the slope, though there deplorably few in numbers, met his advance by so accurate a fire that his own line for a moment yielded. Even then the day might have been retrieved if the French cavalry under Tallard’s command had been capable of a charge. To charge—if we may trust the commander’s record—they received a clear order. As a point of fact, charge they did not. A failure to comprehend, a tardy delivery of the dispatch, fatigue, or error was to blame—we have no grounds on which to base a decision. There was a discharge of musketry from the saddle, an abortive attempt to go forward, which in a few minutes was no more an attempt but a complete failure, and in a few more minutes not a failure but a rout. The words of Tallard himself, who saw that almost incredible thing, and who writes as an eye-witness, are sufficiently poignant. They are these:—
“I saw one instant in which the battle was won if the cavalry had not turned and abandoned the Line.”
What happened was that the incipient, doubtful, and confused French charge had broken before a vigorous and united counter-charge of Marlborough’s cavalry: the French horse backed, turned, bunched, fell into a panic; and when the mass of their cavalry had fled in that panic, the French centre, that is, the thin line of infantry still standing there, were ridden through and destroyed.
They lay in heaps of dead or wounded, cut down with the sword, for the most part unbroken in formation, their feet eastward whence the charge had come, and their faces to the sky. Over and beyond those corpses rode the full weight of Marlborough’s cavalry, right through Tallard’s left, which was the centre of the French line, while Tallard vainly called for troops to come out of Blenheim and check the fury, and as vainly sent for reinforcements to come from Marcin on the left, which should try and dam the flood that was now pouring through the bulwark of his ranks. On the left, Marcin heard too late. As to the messenger to Blenheim on the right he was taken prisoner; Tallard himself, hastening to that village, was taken prisoner in turn.
What followed, at once something inevitable and picturesque, must not be too extended in description for the purpose of a purely military recital. The centre being pierced, while the left under Marcin and the Elector still held its own against Eugene, the right, that is, the huddled battalions—now twenty-seven—within Blenheim village, and the four mounted regiments of dragoons therein, were the necessary victims of the victory. The piercing of the centre had cut them off from all aid. They were surrounded and summoned to surrender.
Clérambault, their commander, had already drowned himself in despair, or had been drowned in a deplorable attempt at flight—at any rate, was dead.
Blausac, an honest man, the second in command, refused to surrender. British cavalry rode round to prevent all egress from the village upon its western side. Churchill brought up the mass of Marlborough’s infantry. Upon the side towards the Danube the churchyard was stormed and held. Still Blausac would not ask for terms.
It looked for a moment, under the setting sun of that fatal day, as though the 11,000 thus isolated within the streets of Blenheim would be massacred for mere glory, for Blausac was still obstinate. A subordinate officer, who saw that all was lost, harangued the troops into surrender, and the last business of the great battle was over.
Plate II. The Battle of Blenheim.
To face page 143.
As darkness gathered, the undefeated left under Marcin and the Elector—the half now alone surviving out of the whole host, the other half or limb being quite destroyed or surrendered—retreated with such few prisoners and such few colours as they had taken. They retreated hastily with all their train and their artillery, abandoning their camp, of course, and all through the night poured towards the Danube and built their bridges across the stream.
Darkness checked the pursuit. Some few remnants of Tallard’s escaped to join the retreat. The rest were prisoners or dead.
Of the fifty odd thousand men and ninety guns that had marshalled twelve hours before along the bank of the Nebel, 12,000 men had fallen, 11,000 had surrendered, and one-third of the pieces were in the hands of the enemy.
The political consequences of this great day were more considerable by far than was even its character of a military success. It was the first great defeat which marked the turn of the tide against Louis XIV. It was the first great victory which stamped upon the conscience of Europe the genius of Marlborough. It wholly destroyed all those plans, of which the last two years had been full, for an advance upon Vienna by the French and Bavarian forces. It utterly cleared the valley of the Danube; it began to throw the Bourbons upon the defensive at last. It crushed the hopes of the Hungarian insurrection. It opened that series of successes which we couple with the names of Marlborough and Eugene, and which were not to be checked until, five years later, the French defence recovered its stubbornness at Malplaquet.
Footnotes:
1. It was this success which to Marlborough’s existing earldom added the high dignity of Duke, by letters patent of December 16, 1702.
2. As the French dispatch goes, 7500 men, every horse, and all the waggons, save 120, which had got into difficulties on the way; Fortescue’s note suggesting that 1500 men only reached the Franco-Bavarians (vol. i. p. 42) is based on Quincy.
3. It is, of course, an error to say, as is too often done in our school histories and the official accounts of our universities, that the French commanders had no idea of a march upon the Danube. A child could have seen that the march upon the Danube was one of the possible plans open to Marlborough, and Villeroy expressly mentions the alternative in his letter of the 30th of May. The whole point of Marlborough’s manœuvres was to leave the enemy in doubt until the very last moment as to which of the three, the Danube, the Moselle, or Alsace, he would strike at; and to be well away upon the road to the former before the French had discovered his final decision.
4. It is worthy of remark that the opportunity for victory which the weak forces under Marcin and the Elector of Bavaria offered at this moment to the superior forces of the allies would have led to an immediate attack of the last upon the first when, two generations later, war had developed into something more sudden and less formal, through the efforts of the Revolution.
Marlborough and the Duke of Baden, with their superior forces, would have attacked Marcin and the Elector had they been their own grandsons. Napoleon, finding himself in such a situation as Marlborough’s a hundred years later, would certainly have fallen on the insufficient forces to his south, for it was known that reinforcements were coming over the Black Forest to save the Franco-Bavarian forces. To break up those forces before reinforcement should come was something which a sudden change of plan could have effected, but not even the genius of Marlborough was prepared, in his generation, for a movement necessitating so great a disturbance of calculations previously made. Donauwörth was his objective, and upon Donauwörth he marched, leaving intact this inferior hostile force which watched his advance from the south.
5. As a fact, the advance along this “isthmus” on to the Schellenberg is slightly downhill, and against artillery of modern range and power the Schellenberg could not be held.
6. Of seventeen officers of the Guards, twelve were hit; of the total British force at least a third fell; more than a third of these, again, were