The Battle of Blenheim Part 6

In the evening of that Wednesday, August the 6th, Tallard and the Elector were at Biberach, Marlborough and Baden at Schobenhausen, which, as the map shows, lies also a day's march to the north from the last position these troops had held, and was on the way to the crossing of the Danube at Neuburg, as the Franco-Bavarians were on the way to the crossing of the same great river at Dillingen.

On the 7th there was no movement, but on the 8th, the Friday, as the Franco-Bavarian host approached the crossing of the Danube at Dillingen, their leader (if Tallard may be regarded as their leader--he was nominally under the orders of the Elector, but he was the marshal of Louis XIV.) heard suddenly that Eugene _had appeared at Hochstadt with thirty-nine squadrons and twenty battalions_.

The trick was done. The rapid and secret march of Eugene had been accomplished with complete success, and his force was within speaking distance of Marlborough's.

When the news came to the French camp, it was even there evident what a sudden transformation had come over the campaign; but to one who could see, as the historian sees, the moral condition of both forces, the event is more significant still.

A great commander, whose name was henceforth to be linked most closely with that of Marlborough's himself, was present upon the Upper Danube. He brought with him troops not only equivalent in number to a third of his colleague's existing forces, but trained under his high leaders.h.i.+p, disciplined in his excellent school, and containing, what will prove essential to the fortunes of the coming battle, a very large proportion of cavalry. Further, the appearance of Eugene at this critical moment permitted Marlborough to rid himself of Louis of Baden, to despatch him to the siege of Ingolstadt in the heart of Bavaria, at once to be free of the clog which the slow decision and slow movements of that general burdened him with, to threaten the heart of the enemy's country by that general's departure on such a mission, and to unite himself and his forces with a man whose methods were after his own heart.

It is true that a minor problem lay before Eugene and Marlborough which must be solved before the great value of the junction they were about to effect could be taken advantage of. Their forces were still separated by the Danube: Marlborough lay a day's march to the south of it, and were he to cross the Danube at Neuburg he would be two days' march from Eugene.

But each army was free to march towards the other, and all that their commanders had to decide was upon which side of the river the junction should be effected. Were the junction effected to the south--that is, were Eugene to cross the Danube and join Marlborough in Bavaria--Tallard, crossing the Danube at Dillingen, could strike at the great northern line of communications which conditioned all these movements. It was, therefore, the obvious move for Eugene and Marlborough to join upon the _northern_ bank of the Danube, and to move upon and defend that all-important line of communications, point for point, as Tallard might threaten it.

It was on the 8th, the Friday, as I have said, that Eugene's presence was known both to Tallard and to Marlborough, for Eugene had ridden forward and met his colleague.

Upon the 9th, the Sat.u.r.day, the French marched towards the bridge of Dillingen. Eugene, who was already on the way back to his army, returned to inform Marlborough of this, then rode westward again to his forces, and, while the French made their arrangements for crossing the river on the morrow, he busied himself in conducting his 15,000 eastward down the north bank of the Danube. Three thousand of Marlborough's cavalry went forward to meet him, and to begin that junction between the two forces which was to determine the day at Blenheim.

The next day, Sunday the 10th, the Franco-Bavarian army pa.s.sed the river and lay in the position with which their forces had in the past been so familiar, the position from Lauingen to Dillingen which Marcin and the Elector had held when, six weeks before, Marlborough and Baden had pa.s.sed across the Franco-Bavarian front to the north in their march upon Donauworth and the Sch.e.l.lenberg.

On the same Sunday, the 10th, Marlborough had brought up his main force to Rhain, within an hour of the Danube, and Eugene was drawing up his force at a safe distance from the French position north of the village of Munster, and behind the brook of Kessel, where that watercourse joins the Danube.

But, though junction with Marlborough was virtually effected, it must be effected actually before Eugene could think himself safe from that Franco-Bavarian force a day's march behind him, which was three times his own and more. His urgent messages to Marlborough led that commander to march up his men through the night. Before the dawn of August the 11th broke, Churchill, with twenty battalions, had crossed at Merxheim, and the whole army, marching in two columns, was upon the move--the right-hand column following Churchill to the bridge of Merxheim, the left-hand column crossing the Lech by the bridge of Rhain, to pa.s.s the Danube at Donauworth. In the afternoon of that Monday the whole of Marlborough's command was pa.s.sing the Wornitz, and long after sunset, following upon a march which had kept the major part of the great host afoot for more than twenty hours, Eugene and Marlborough were together at the head of 52,000 men, established in unison, and defending, with now no possibility of its interruption, the line of communications from the north.

Every historian of this great business has justly remarked the organisation and the patient genius of the man who made such a concentration possible under such conditions and in such a time, without appreciable loss, at hurried notice, and with a complete success.

It is a permanent example and masterpiece in that inglorious part of war, the function of transport and of marching orders, upon which strategy depends as surely as an army depends on food.

Fully accompanied by his artillery, Marlborough's force could not have accomplished the marvel that it did; yet even this arm was brought up, in the rear of the army, by the morning of Tuesday the 12th, and from that moment, given a sufficient repose, the whole great weapon under the two captains could act as one.

On that same morning, Tuesday the 12th, the Franco-Bavarian army under Tallard and the Elector were choosing out with some deliberation a camp so situated as to block any movement of their enemy up the valley of the Danube. The situation of the camp was designed to make this advance up the Danube so clearly impossible that nothing would be left but what the strategy of the last few days had imposed upon Marlborough, namely, a retreat upon his base northward, away from the Danube, towards Nordlingen.

It was not imagined that the two commanders of the imperial forces would attack this Franco-Bavarian position, and so risk a general action; for by a retreat upon Nordlingen their continued existence as an army was a.s.sured, while an indecisive result would do them far more harm than it would do their opponents. Did Marlborough and Eugene force an action, it is doubtful whether Tallard had considered the alternative of refusing it.

At any rate, on this Tuesday, the 12th of August, Tallard and the Elector had no intention but to take up a position and camp which would make a retreat up the Danube impossible to Marlborough and Eugene; and certainly neither imagined that any attempt to force the camp would be made, since an alternative of retreat and complete safety was offered the enemy towards Nordlingen.

While the French fourriers were ordering the lines of the encampment--the tents stretching, the streets staking out--the English duke and Eugene overlooked the business from the church tower of Tapfheim and saw what Tallard designed. Between the main of their own forces and the camp which the Franco-Bavarians were pitching was a distance of about five miles. The location of each body was therefore perfectly well known to the other, and rarely have two great hosts lain in mutual presence for full twenty-four hours in so much doubt of an issue, in such exact opposition, and each with so complete an apprehension of his opponent's power.

At this point--let us say noon of Tuesday, August 12th--it is essential for us to dwell upon the character of such battles as that upon which Marlborough was already determined; for by the time he had seen the French disposition of their camp, the duke had determined upon forcing an action.

It is the characteristic of great captains that they live by and appreciate the heavy risk of war.

When they suffer defeat, history--which soldiers and those who love soldiers so rarely write--contemns the hardiness of their dispositions.

When victory, that capricious gift, is granted them, history is but too p.r.o.ne to fall into an opposite error, and to see in their hardihood all of the calculating genius and none of the determined gambler.

Justice would rather demand that the great captain should be judged by the light in the eyes of his men, by the endurance under him of immense fatigues, by the exact accomplishment of one hundred separate things a day, each clearly designed and remembered, by his grasp of great sweeps of landscape, by his digestion of maps and horizons, and finally and particularly by this--that the great captain, whether he loses or he wins, _risks_ well: he smells the adventure of war, and is the opposite of those who, whether in their fortunes or their bodies, chiefly seek security.

Judged by all these tests, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, was a supreme commander; and it is not the least part in our recognition of this, that the first and chief of the great actions upon which his fame reposes was an action essentially and typically hazardous, and one the disastrous loss of which was as probable as, or more probable than, the successful issue which it obtained.

He could not know the special factor of weakness in his opponent's cavalry; he was to misjudge the first element in the position when he broke his best infantry in the futile attack upon the village. But he was to benefit by those small, hidden, momentary things which determine great battles, and which make of soldiers, as of men who follow the sea, determined despisers of success, and as determined wors.h.i.+ppers of the merit which may or may not attain it.

To have led his army as he had led it for now three months, to have designed the general plan that he had designed, and to have accomplished it; to have effected the splendid concentration but a few hours since upon the Kessel--these formed a work sufficient to deserve the reward of victory, Marlborough had the fortune not only to deserve, but to achieve.

The night of that Tuesday fell with no alarm upon the one side or upon the other. In the camp of Marlborough and of Eugene was the knowledge that the twin commanders had determined upon an action; in that of Tallard and the Elector the belief that it was more probable their opponents would follow the general rules of war, and fall back to recruit their supplies by the one route that was widely open to them.

Midnight pa.s.sed. It was already the morning of Wednesday the 13th before the one had moved, or the other had guessed the nature of his enemy's plan.

It was moonless and pitch-dark, save for the dense white mist which, in the marshy lands of that river valley, accompanies the turn of the August night. This mist had risen and covered the plain. The little villages were asleep after their disturbance by the advent of so many armed men. The c.o.c.kcrows of midnight were now well past when there was stir in Marlborough's camp, and from this moment, somewhere about two of the morning of Wednesday, August the 13th, the action of Blenheim begins.

PART V

THE ACTION

The field of Blenheim has changed in its physical aspect less than any other of the great battlefields of Europe during the two hundred years and more that have pa.s.sed since Marlborough's victory.

He who visits to-day this quiet Bavarian corn-land, with its pious and happy peasantry, its modest wealth, and its contempt for haste and greed, sees, if he come in the same late summer of the year, just what the mounted parties saw who rode out upon that Wednesday before the eight columns of Marlborough and Eugene under the early morning.

Thus, approaching the field of Blenheim from the east, the view consists in a low and strangely regular line of closely-wooded hills to the right and northwards; southwards, and to the left, a ma.s.s of undergrowth, the low trees of the marshes, occasional gaps of rank herbage which make bright green patches interspersing the woodland, mark the wide and marshy course of the Danube, with its belt of alluvial soil and swamp on either side.

Between this stretch of damp river-ground to the south and the regular low wooded hills to the north lies a plain just lifted above the level of the river by such few feet as are sufficient to drain it and no more. Crossing this plain transversely, on their way to the Danube, ooze and trickle rather than run certain insignificant streams; each rises in the wooded hills to the north, falls southward, and in the length of a very few miles reaches the main river. These streams are found, as one goes up the great valley, at every mile or so. With one, the Nebel, we shall be particularly concerned, for during the action at Blenheim it formed the only slight obstacle separating the two armies. This plain, which in August is all stubble, is some three miles across, such a s.p.a.ce separates the hills from the river, and that distance, or a trifle more, is the full length of the little muddy brooks which thus occasionally intersect it.

To the eye which takes in that landscape at a first glance, bare of crops and under a late summer sun, the plain seems quite even and undisturbed by any hollows or rolls of land. It is, in fact, like most such apparently simple terrains, slightly diversified: its diversity is enough to affect in some degree the disposition of soldiers, to afford in certain places occasional cover, and to permit of opportunities for defence.

But these variations from the flat are exceedingly slight. The hollow which the Nebel has made, for instance, is not noticed on foot or even in mechanical traction as one follows the main road which runs the whole length of the plain, though if one goes across country on foot, one notices the slight bank of a few feet separating the cultivated land from a narrow belt of rough gra.s.s, which is boggy in wet weather, and which, in varying breadth, accompanies the course of the stream.

The plain also, as might be expected, rises slightly from its low shelf just above the Danube swamps and meadows, to the base of the hills. Its ascent in its whole three miles of breadth is but sixty feet.

Over this level sweep of tilled land rise at intervals the spires of rare villages, round which scattered houses and gardens of the Bavarian sort--broad-eaved, flat-roofed, gay with flowers--are gathered. But for these few human groups there is no break in the general aspect of the quite open fields.

As might be expected, an interrupted chain of such villages marks the line of the great river from Donauworth to Ulm, each standing just on the bank and edge of what for long was the flood-ground of the Danube, and is still in part unreclaimed marsh and water meadow. Each is distant a mile or two from its next fellow. Thus, nearest Donauworth we have Munster, upon which the left of the allied army reposed when it lay in camp before the battle.

Next in order come Tapfheim and Schwenningen, through which that army marched to the field. Further up-stream another group stretches beyond the Nebel, the hamlet of Sonderheim, the little town of Hochstadt, the village of Steinheim, etc.; and, in the middle of this line, at the point where the Nebel falls into the old bed of the Danube, is built that large village of _Blindheim_, which, under its English form of BLENHEIM, has given the action the name it bears in this country.

I say "the old bed of the Danube," for one feature, and one alone, in that countryside has changed in the two hundred years, though the change is not one which the eye can note as it surveys the plain, nor one which greatly affects the story of the action. This change is due to the straightening of the bed of the great river.

At the time when Blenheim was fought, the Danube wound in great loops, with numerous islands and backwaters complicating its course, and swung back and forth among the level swamps of its valley. It runs to-day in an artificial channel, which takes the average, as it were, of these variations, drains the flood-ground, and leaves the old bed in the form of stagnant, abandoned lengths of water or reeds, in which the traveller can trace the former vagaries of the river. Thus Blindheim, which stood just above the broad and hurrying water at the summit of one such loop, is now 800 yards away from the artificial trench which modern engineering has dug for the river. But the new channel has no effect upon the landscape to the eye. The floor on which the Danube runs is still a ma.s.s of undergrowth and weeds and gra.s.s, which marks off the cultivated land on the south, as it has been limited since men first ploughed.

I have said that the little slow and muddy streamlet called the Nebel must particularly meet with our attention, because it formed at the beginning of the action of Blenheim a central line dividing the two hosts, and round its course may be grouped the features of the terrain upon which the battle was contested.

_Blindheim_, or, as we always call it, _Blenheim_, lay, as we have seen, just above the bank of the Danube at the mouth of this stream. Following up the water (which is so insignificant that in most places a man can cross it unaided in summer), at the distance of about one mile, is the village of _Unterglauheim_, lying above the _left_ bank, as Blenheim does above the right. Further on, another three-quarters of a mile up the _right_ bank, is the village of _Oberglauheim_; and where the water dribbles in various small streams from the hills, and at their base, where the various tiny rivulets join to form the Nebel, at the edge of the woods, is _Schwennenbach_.

The tiny hamlet of _Weilheim_ may be regarded as an appendix of this last or of Oberglauheim indifferently. It lies opposite the latter village, but on the further side of the stream, and about half a mile away.

Right behind Oberglauheim, at the base of the hills to the westward, and well away from the Nebel, is the larger village of _Lutzingen_.

These names, and that of the Nebel, are sufficient for us to retain as we follow the course of the battle, remembering as we do so that one good road, the road by which the allies marched in the morning to the field from Munster, and the road by which the Franco-Bavarian forces retreated after the defeat--the main road from Donauworth to Ulm--traversed, and still traverses, the terrain in its whole length.[7]