The Battle of Blenheim Part 1

The Battle of Blenheim.

by Hilaire Belloc.

PART I

THE POLITICAL OBJECTIVE

The proper understanding of a battle and of its historical significance is only possible in connection with the campaign of which it forms a part; and the campaign can only be understood when we know the political object which it was designed to serve.

A battle is no more than an incident in a campaign. However decisive in its immediate result upon the field, its value to the general conducting it depends on its effect upon the whole of his operations, that is, upon the campaign in which he is engaged.

A campaign, again, is but the armed effort of one society to impose its will in some particular upon another society. Every such effort must have a definite political object. If this object is served the campaign is successful. If it is not served the campaign is a failure. Many a campaign which began or even concluded with a decisive action in favour of one of the two belligerents has failed because, in the result, the political object which the victory was attempting was not reached. Conversely, many a campaign, the individual actions of which were tactical defeats, terminated in favour of the defeated party, upon whom the armed effort was not sufficient to impose the will of his adversary, or to compel him to that political object which the adversary was seeking. In other words, military success can be measured only in terms of civil policy.

It is therefore essential, before approaching the study of any action, even of one so decisive and momentous as the Battle of Blenheim, to start with a general view of the political situation which brought about hostilities, and of the political object of those hostilities; only then, after grasping the measure in which the decisive action in question affected the whole campaign, can we judge how the campaign, in its turn, compa.s.sed the political end for which it was designed.

The war whose general name is that of the Spanish Succession was undertaken by certain combined powers against Louis XIV. of France (and such allies as that monarch could secure upon his side) in order to prevent the succession of his grandson to the crown of Spain.

With the various national objects which Holland, England, the Empire and certain of the German princes, as also Savoy and Portugal, may have had in view when they joined issue with the French monarch, military history is not concerned. It is enough to know that their objects, though combining them against a common foe, were not identical, and the degrees of interest with which they regarded the compulsion of Louis XIV. to forego the placing of his grandson upon the Spanish throne were very different. It is this which will largely explain the various conduct of the allies during the progress of the struggle; but all together sought the humiliation of Louis, and joined on the common ground of the Spanish Succession.

The particular object, then, of the campaign of Blenheim (and of those campaigns which immediately preceded and succeeded it) was the prevention of the unison of the crowns of France and Spain in the hands of two branches of the same family. Tested by this particular issue alone, the campaign of Blenheim, and the whole series of campaigns to which it belongs, failed. Louis XIV. maintained his grandson upon the throne of Spain; and the issue of the long war could not impose upon him the immediate political object of the allies.

But there was a much larger and more general object engaged, which was no less than the defence of Austria--more properly the Empire--and of certain minor States, against what had grown to be the overwhelming power of the French monarchy.

From this standpoint the whole period of Louis XIV.'s reign--all the last generation of the seventeenth century and the first decade and more of the eighteenth--may be regarded as a struggle between the soldiers of Louis XIV. (and their allies) upon the one hand, and Austria, with certain minor powers concerned in the defence of their independence or integrity, upon the other.

In this struggle Great Britain was neutral or benevolent in its sympathies in so far as those sympathies were Stuart; but all that part of English public life called _Whig_, all the group of English aristocrats who desired the abas.e.m.e.nt of the Crown, perhaps the ma.s.s of the nation also, was opposed, both in its interests and in its opinions, to the supremacy of Louis XIV. upon the Continent.

William of Orange, who had been called to the English throne by the Revolution of 1688, was the most determined opponent Louis had in Europe.

Apart from him, the general interests of the London merchants, and the commercial interests of the nation as a whole, were in antagonism to the claims of the Bourbon monarchy. We therefore find the forces of Great Britain, in men, s.h.i.+ps, guns, and money, arrayed against Louis throughout the end of his reign, and especially during this last great war.

Now, from this general standpoint--by far the most important--the war of the Spanish Succession is but part of the general struggle against Louis XIV.; and in that general struggle the campaign of 1704, and the battle of Blenheim which was its climax, are at once of the highest historical importance, and a singular example of military success.

For if the general political object be considered, which was the stemming of the French tide of victory and the checking of the Bourbon power, rather than the particular matter of the succession of the Spanish throne, then it was undoubtedly the campaign of 1704 which turned the tide; and Blenheim must always be remembered in history as the great defeat from which dates the retreat of the military power of the French in that epoch, and the gradual beating back of Louis XIV.'s forces to those frontiers which may be regarded as the natural boundaries of France.

Not all the French conquests were lost, nor by any means was the whole great effort of the reign destroyed. But the peril which the military apt.i.tude of the French under so great a man as Louis XIV. presented to the minor States of Europe and to the Austrian empire was definitely checked when the campaign of Blenheim was brought to its successful conclusion.

That battle was the first of the great defeats which exhausted the resources of Louis, put him, for the first time in his long reign, upon a close defensive, and restored the European balance which his years of unquestioned international power had disturbed.

Blenheim, then, may justly rank among the decisive actions of European history.

In connection with the campaign of which it formed a part, it gave to that campaign all its meaning and all its complete success.

In connection with the general struggle against Louis, that campaign formed the turning point between the flow and the ebb in the stream of military power which Louis XIV. commanded and had set in motion.

From the day of Blenheim, August 13th, 1704, onwards, the whole French effort was for seven years a desperate losing game, which, if its end was saved from disaster by the high statesmans.h.i.+p of the king and the devotion of his people, was none the less the ruin of that ambitious policy which had coincided with the great days of Versailles.

The war was conducted, as I have said, by various allies. Its success depended, therefore, upon various commanders regarded as coequal, acting as colleagues rather than as princ.i.p.als and subordinates. But the story of the great march to the Danube and its harvest at Blenheim, which we are about to review, sufficiently proves that the deciding genius in the whole affair was that of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. The plan was indeed Eugene's; and in the battle itself he shared the glory with his English friend and colleague. Again, the British troops present were few indeed compared with the total of the allied forces. At Blenheim, in particular, they amounted to less than a third of the numbers present. The excellence of their material, however, their magnificent work at the Sch.e.l.lenberg and on Blenheim field itself, coupled with the fact that the general to whom the final success is chiefly due was the great military genius of this country, warrants the historian in cla.s.sing this battle among British actions, and in treating its story as a national affair.

I will approach the story of the campaign and of the battle by a conspectus of the field of war in which Marlborough was so unexpectedly to show the military genius which remains his single t.i.tle to respect and his chief claim to renown.

PART II

THE EARLY WAR

In order to grasp the strategic problem presented to Marlborough and the allies in the spring of 1704, it is first necessary to understand the diplomatic position at the outbreak of the war, and the military disposition of the two years 1702 and 1703, and thus the general position of the armies which preceded Marlborough's march to the Danube.

Louis XIV. recognised his grandson as king of Spain late in 1700. The coalition immediately formed against him was at first imperfect. Savoy, with its command of the pa.s.ses over the Alps into Austrian territory, was in Louis' favour. England, whose support of his enemies was (for reasons to be described) a capital factor in the issue, had not yet joined those enemies. But, from several causes, among the chief of which was Louis'

recognition of the Pretender as king of England after James the II.'s death, the opinion of the English aristocracy, and perhaps of the English people, was fixed, and in the last months of 1701 the weight of England was thrown into the balance against France.

Why have I called this--the decision of the English Parliament--a capital factor in the issue of the war?

Excepting for a moment the military genius of Marlborough--whose great capacity had not yet been tested in so large a field--two prime characters gave to Great Britain a deciding voice in what was to follow. The first of these was her wealth, the second that aristocratic const.i.tution of her polity which was now definitely established, and which, for nearly a century and a half, was to make her strength unique in its quality among all the elements of European compet.i.tion.

As to the first of these--the _Wealth_ of England--it is a matter of such importance to the comprehension of all the eighteenth century and most of the nineteenth that it should merit a far longer a.n.a.lysis and affirmation than can be devoted to it in these few lines. It must be enough for our purpose to say that Great Britain, from about 1680 onwards, was not only wealthier (in proportion to her population) than the powers with whom she had to deal as enemies or allies, but was also proceeding to increase that wealth at a rate far exceeding that of her rivals. Again, what was perhaps, for the purposes of war, the chief point of all, England held that wealth in a mobile, fluid form, which could at once be translated into munitions, the wages of mercenaries, or the hire of transports, within the shortest time, and at almost any point in Western and Northern Europe.

Essentially commercial, already possessed of a solid line of enterprises beyond the seas, having defeated and pa.s.sed the Dutch in the race for mercantile supremacy, England could afford or withhold at her choice the most valuable and rapid form of support--money.

How true this was, even those in Europe who had not appreciated the changed conditions of Great Britain immediately perceived when the determination of Parliament, at the end of 1701, to support the alliance against Louis XIV., took the form of voting 40,000 men, all of whom would be immediately supplied and paid with English money.

True, of the 40,000 not half were British; but (save for the excellent quality of the British troops), the point was more or less indifferent.

The important thing was that England was able to provide and to maintain this immense accretion to the coalition against France, and to use it where she would. We shall see later how this power turned the fate of the war.

If I have insisted so strongly upon the financial factor, it is both because that factor is misappreciated in most purely military histories, and also because, in the changed circ.u.mstances of our own time, it is not easy for the reader to take for granted, as did his ancestors, the overwhelming superiority which England once enjoyed in mobilised wealth, usable after this kind. It can best be compared to the similar superiority enjoyed in the Middle Ages by the Republic of Venice, to whose fortunes, both good and ill, the story of modern England affords so strange a parallel.

The second factor I have mentioned--the aristocratic const.i.tution of the country--though almost equally important, is somewhat more elusive, and might be more properly challenged by a critic.

England had not, in the first years of the eighteenth century, reached that calm and undisturbed solidity which is the mark of an aristocratic State at its zenith. Faction was bitter, the opposition between the old loyalty to the Crown and the new national regime was so determined as to make civil war possible at any moment. This condition of affairs was to last for a generation, and it was not until the middle of the eighteenth century was pa.s.sed that it disappeared.

Nevertheless, compared with the Continental States, Great Britain already presented by 1701 that elasticity in substance and tenacity in policy which accompany aristocratic inst.i.tutions. Corruption might be rife, but it was already growing difficult to purchase the services of a member of the governing cla.s.s against the national interests. That knowledge of public affairs, diffused throughout a small and closely combined social cla.s.s, which is the mark of an aristocracy, was already apparent. The power of choosing, from a narrow and well-known field, the best talents for any particular office (which is another mark of aristocracy), was already a power apparent in the government of this country. The solidarity which, in the face of a common enemy, an aristocracy always displays, the long-livedness, as of a corporate body, which an aristocracy enjoys, and which permits it to follow with such strict continuity whatever line of foreign policy it has undertaken, was clearly defining itself at the moment of which I write.

In a word, the new settlement of English life upon the basis of cla.s.s government, the exclusion of the ma.s.s of the people from public affairs, the decay (if you will) of a lively public opinion, the presence of that hopeless disinherited cla.s.s which now forms the majority of our industrial population; the organisation of the universities, of justice, of the legislature, of the executive, as parts of one social cla.s.s; the close grasp which that cla.s.s now had upon the land and capital of the whole country, which it could utilise immediately for interior development or for a war--all this marked the youth and vigour of an oligarchic England, which was for so long to be at once invulnerable and impregnable.

At what expense in morals, and therefore in ultimate strength and happiness, such experiments are played, is no matter for discussion in a military history. We must be content to remark what vigour her new const.i.tution gave to the efforts of England in the field, while yet that const.i.tution was young.

England, then, having thrown this great weight into the scale of the Empire, and against France, the campaign of 1702 was entered upon with the chances in favour of the former, and with the latter in an anxiety very different from the pride which Louis XIV. had taken for granted in the early part of his reign.

If the reader will consider the map of Western Europe, the effect of England's joining the allies will be apparent.