Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
under command of the French general D’Artagnan. Among the regiments holding this part was that of the Bourbonnais, the famous brigade of Navarre (the best in the service), and certain of the Swiss mercenaries. The last of this body on the left was formed by the French Guards. The entrenchments in the centre were held by the Irish Brigades of Lee and O’Brien, and by the German mercenaries and allies of Bavaria and Cologne. These guarded the redans which defended the left or northern part of the open gap. The remainder of this gap, right up to the forest of Sars, was held by Alsatians and by the Brigade of Laon, and the chief command in this part lay with Steckenberg. The forest of Sars was full of French troops, Picardy, the Marines, the Regiment of Champagne, and many others, with a strong reserve of similar troops just behind the wood. The cavalry of the army formed a long line behind this body of entrenched infantry; the Household Cavalry being on the right near the wood of Lanière, the Gens d’armes being in the centre, and the Carabiniers upon the left. These last stretched so far northward and westward as to come at last opposite to Withers.
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Such was the disposition of the two armies when at half-past seven the sun pierced the mist and the first cannon-shots were exchanged. Marlborough and Eugene had decided that they would begin by pressing, as hard as might be, the assault upon the forest of Sars. When this assault should have proceeded for half an hour, the opposite end of the line, the left, under the Prince of Orange,13 should engage the French troops holding the wood of Lanière. It was expected that the forest of Sars would be forced early in the action; that the troops in the wood of Lanière would at least be held fast by the attack of the Prince of Orange, and that the weakened French centre could then be taken by assault with the use of the reserves, of Orkney’s men, and of detachments drawn from the two great masses upon the wings.
The reader may here pause to consider the excellence of this plan—very probably Marlborough’s own, and one the comparative ill-success of which was due to the unexpected power of resistance displayed by the French infantry upon that day.
It was wise to put the greater part of the force into a double attack upon the forest of Sars, for this forest, with its thick woods and heavy entrenchments, was at once the strongest part of the French position in its garnishing and artificial enforcement, yet weak in that the salient angle it presented was one that could not, from the thickness of the trees, be watched from any central point, as can the salient angle of a fortification. Lottum on the one side, Schulemberg on the other, were attacking forces numerically weaker than their own, and separate fronts which could not support each other under the pressure of the attack.
It was wise to engage the forces upon the French side opposite the allied left in the wood of Lanière half an hour after the assault had begun upon the forest of Sars, for it was legitimate to expect that at the end of that half hour the pressure upon the forest of Sars would begin to be felt by the French, and that they would call for troops from the right unless the right were very busily occupied at that moment.
Finally, it was wise not to burden the centre with any great body of troops until one of the two flanks should be pressed or broken, for the centre might, in this case, be compared to a funnel in which too great a body of troops would be caught at a disadvantage against the strong entrenchments which closed the mouth of the funnel. An historical discussion has arisen upon the true rôle of the left in this plan. The commander of the allies gave it out after the action (as we have seen above) that the left had only been intended to “feint.” The better conclusion is that they were intended to do their worst against the wood of Lanière, although of course this “worst” could not be expected to compare with the fundamental attack upon the forest of Sars, where all the chief forces of the battle were concentrated.
If by a “feint” is meant a subsidiary part of the general plan, the expression might be allowed to pass, but it is not a legitimate use of that expression, and if, as occurred at Malplaquet with the Dutch troops, a subsidiary body in the general plan is badly commanded, the temptation to call the original movement a “feint,” which developed from breach of orders into a true attack, though strong for the disappointed commanders, must not be admitted by the accurate historian. In general, we may be certain that the Dutch troops and their neighbours on the allied left were intended to do all they could against the wood of Lanière, did all they could, but suffered in the process a great deal more than Marlborough had allowed for.
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These dispositions once grasped, we may proceed to the nature and development of the general attack which followed that opening cannonade of half-past seven, which has already been described.
The first movement of the allies was an advance of the left under the Prince of Orange and of the right under Lottum. The first was halted out of range; the second, after getting up as far as the eastern flank of the forest of Sars, wheeled round so as to face the hedge lining that forest, and formed into three lines. It was nine o’clock before the signal for the attack was given by a general discharge of the great battery in the centre opposite the French entrenchments in the gap. Coincidently with that signal Schulemberg attacked the forest of Sars from his side, the northern face, and he and Lottum pressed each upon that side of the salient angle which faced him. Schulemberg’s large force got into the fringe of the wood, but no further. The resistance was furious; the thickness of the trees aided it. Eugene was present upon this side; meanwhile Marlborough himself was leading the troops of Lottum. He advanced with them against a hot fire, passed the swampy rivulet which here flanks the wood, and reached the entrenchments which had been drawn up just within the outer boundary of it.
This attack failed. Villars was present in person with the French troops and directed the repulse. Almost at the same time the advance of Schulemberg upon the other side of the wood, which Eugene was superintending, suffered a check. Its reserves were called up. The intervals of the first line were filled up from the second. One French brigade lining the wood was beaten back, but the Picardy Regiment and the Marines stood out against a mixed force of Danes, Saxons, and Hessians opposing them. Schulemberg, therefore, in this second attack had failed again, but Marlborough, leading Lottum’s men upon the other side of the wood to a second charge in his turn, had somewhat greater success. He had by this time been joined by a British brigade under the Duke of Argyle from the second line, and he did so far succeed with this extension of his men as to get round the edge of the French entrenchments in the wood.
The French began to be pressed from this eastern side of their salient angle, right in among the trees. Schulemberg’s command felt the advantage of the pressure being exercised on the other side. The French weakened before it, and in the neighbourhood of eleven o’clock a great part of the forest of Sars was already filled with the allies, who were beating back the French in individual combats from tree to tree. Close on noon the battle upon this side stood much as the sketch map upon the opposite page shows, and was as good as won, for it seemed to need only a continuation of this victorious effort to clear the whole wood at last and to turn the French line.
This is undoubtedly the form which the battle would have taken—a complete victory for the allied forces by their right turning the French left—and the destruction of the French army would have followed, had not the allied left been getting into grave difficulty at the other end of the field of battle.
Sketch Map showing the peril the French centre ran towards
noon of being turned on its left.
The plan of the allied generals, it will be remembered, was that the left of their army under the Prince of Orange should attack the wood of Lanière about half an hour after the right had begun to effect an entrance into the opposing forest of Sars. When that half hour had elapsed, that is, about half-past nine, the Prince of Orange, without receiving special orders, it is true, but acting rightly enough upon his general orders, advanced against the French right. Tullibardine with his Scottish brigade took the worst of the fighting on the extreme left against the extreme of the French right, and was the first to get engaged among the trees. The great mass of the force advanced up the opening between the coppice called the