Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
with the object of carrying the entrenchments which ran from the corner of the wood in front of Malplaquet and covered this edge of the open gap. The nine foremost battalions were led by the Prince of Orange in person; his courage and their tenacity, though fatal to the issue of the fight, form perhaps the finest part of our story. As they came near the French earthworks, a French battery right upon their flank at the edge of the wood opened upon them, enfilading whole ranks and doing, in the shortest time, terrible execution. The young leader managed to reach the earthworks. The breastwork was forced, but Boufflers brought up men from his left, that is, from the centre of the gap, drove the Dutch back, and checked, at the height of its success, this determined assault. Had not the wood of Tiry been there to separate the main part of the Prince of Orange’s command from its right, reinforcements might have reached him and have saved the disaster. As it was, the wood of Tiry had cut the advance into two streams, and neither could help the other. The Dutch troops and the Highlanders rallied; the Prince of Orange charged again with a personal bravery that made him conspicuous before the whole field, and should make him famous in history, but the task was more than men could accomplish. The best brigade at the disposal of the French, that of Navarre, was brought up to meet this second onslaught, broke it, and the French leapt from the earthworks to pursue the flight of their assailants. Many of Orange’s colours were taken in that rout, and the guns of his advanced battery fell into French hands. Beyond the wood of Tiry the extreme right of the Dutch charge had suffered no better fate. It had carried the central entrenchment of the French, only to be beaten back as the main body between the wood of Tiry and the wood of Lanière opened.
At this moment, then, after eleven o’clock, which was coincident with the success of Lottum and Schulemberg in the forest of Sars, upon the right, the allied left had been hopelessly beaten back from the entrenchments in the gap, and from the edge of the wood of Lanière.
Marlborough was hurriedly summoned away from his personal command of Lottum’s victorious troops, and begged to do what he could for the broken regiments of Orange. He galloped back over the battlefield, a mile or so of open fields, and was appalled to see the havoc. Of the great force that had advanced an hour and a half before against Boufflers and the French right, fully a third was struck, and 2000 or more lay dead upon the stubble and the coarse heath of that upland. The scattered corpses strewn over half a mile of flight from the French entrenchments, almost back to their original position, largely showed the severity of the blow. It was impossible to attempt another attack upon the French right with any hope of success.
Marlborough, trusting that the forest of Sars would soon be finally cleared, determined upon a change of plan. He ordered the advance upon the centre of the position of Lord Orkney’s fifteen battalions, reinforced that advance by drafts of men from the shattered Dutch left, and prepared with some deliberation to charge the line of earthworks which ran across the open and the nine redans which we have seen were held by the French allies and mercenaries from Bavaria and Cologne, and await his moment. That moment came at about one o’clock; at this point in the action the opposing forces stood somewhat as they are sketched on the map over page.
The pressure upon the French in the wood of Sars, perpetually increasing, had already caused Villars, who commanded there in person, to beg Boufflers for aid; but the demand came when Boufflers was fighting his hardest against the last Dutch attack, and no aid could be sent.
Somewhat reluctantly, Villars had weakened his centre by withdrawing from it the two Irish regiments, and continued to dispute foot by foot the forest of Sars. But foot by foot and tree by tree, in a series of individual engagements, his men were pressed back, and a larger area of the woodland was held by the troops of Schulemberg and Lottum. Eugene was wounded, but refused to leave the field. The loss had been appalling upon either side, but especially severe (as might have been expected) among the assailants, when, just before one o’clock, the last of the French soldiers were driven from the wood.
Sketch Map showing Marlborough bringing up troops to the centre for the
final and successful attack upon the entrenchments about one o’clock.
All that main defence which the forest of Sars formed upon the French left flank was lost, but the fight had been so exhausting to the assailants in the confusion of the underwood, and the difficulty of forming them in the trees was so great, that the French forces once outside the wood could rally at leisure and draw up in line to receive any further movement on the part of their opponents. It was while the French left were thus drawn up in line behind the wood of Sars, with their redans at the centre weakened by the withdrawal of the Irish brigade, that Marlborough ordered the final central attack against those redans. The honour of carrying them fell to Lord Orkney and his British battalions. His men flooded over the earthworks at the first rush, breaking the depleted infantry behind them (for these, after the withdrawal of the Irish, were no more than the men of Bavaria and Cologne), and held the parapet.
The French earthworks thus carried by the infantry in the centre, the modern reader might well premise that a complete rout of the French forces should have followed. But he would make this premise without counting for the preponderant rôle that cavalry played in the wars of Marlborough.
Facing the victorious English battalions of Orkney, now in possession of the redans, stood the mile-long unbroken squadrons of the French horse.
The allied cavalry, passing between gaps in its infantry line, began to deploy for the charge, but even as they deployed they were charged by the French mounted men, thrust back, and thrown into confusion. The short remainder of the battle is no more than a mêlée of sabres, but the nature of that mêlée must be clearly grasped, and the character of the French cavalry resistance understood, for this it was which determined the issue of the combat and saved the army of Louis XIV.
A detailed account of the charges and counter-charges of the opposing horse would be confusing to the reader, and is, as a fact, impossible of narration, for no contemporary record of it remains in any form which can be lucidly set forth.
A rough outline of what happened is this:—
The first counter-charge of the French was successful, and the allied cavalry, caught in the act of deployment, was thrust back in confusion, as I have said, upon the British infantry who lined the captured earthworks.
The great central battery of forty guns which Marlborough had kept all day in the centre of the gap, split to the right and left, and, once clear of its own troops, fired from either side upon the French horse. Shaken, confused, and almost broken by this fire, the French horse were charged by a new body of the allied horse led by Marlborough in person, composed of British and Prussian units. But, just as Marlborough’s charge was succeeding, old Boufflers, bringing up the French Household Cavalry from in front of Malplaquet village, charged right home into the flank of Marlborough’s mounted troops, bore back their first and second lines, and destroyed the order of their third.
Thereupon Eugene, with yet another body of fresh horse (of the Imperial Service), charged in his turn, and the battle of Malplaquet ends in a furious mix-up of mounted men, which gradually separated into two undefeated lines, each retiring from the contest.
It will be wondered why a conclusion so curiously impotent was permitted to close the fighting of so famous a field.
The answer to this query is that the effort upon either side had passed the limits beyond which men are physically incapable of further action. Any attempt of the French to advance in force after two o’clock would have led to their certain disaster, for the allies were now in possession of their long line of earthworks.14
On the other hand, the allies could not advance, because the men upon whom they could still count for action were reduced to insufficient numbers. Something like one-third of their vast host had fallen in this most murderous of battles; from an eighth to a sixth were dead. Of the remainder, the great proportion suffered at this hour from an exhaustion that forbade all effective effort.
The horse upon either side might indeed have continued