The Battle of Blenheim Part 8

I left Cutts prepared to launch the remaining two-thirds of his force at Blenheim village, in the hope of accomplis.h.i.+ng what the first third had failed to do.

The whole combined body which the French had estimated at 10,000 men, and which seems to have been at least of some 8000, surged up in the second attempt against the palisades of the village. Part of that line and many of the outer gardens were carried, but the attack could not be driven home. It was, perhaps, at this moment that Tallard sent in those extra men which raised the French battalions in Blenheim from nine to sixteen, and gave the defenders, behind their walls, a force equal to the attackers. At any rate, the main attack was thrust back as the first had been, and the great corps of men, huddled, confused, rallied here and there as best they could be, broke from before the village.

The loss was terrible, and Marlborough having failed, not only failed, but saw that he had failed. It was his salvation. His subordinates would have returned to the fruitless attack with troops already shaken and dreading the ground. Marlborough ordered a false attack to be kept up from the further bank, upon the village, and, with that elasticity of command which is the prime factor of tactical success, and which commonly distinguishes youth rather than middle age in a general, turned all his efforts upon the centre.[18]

Here the main road crosses the Nebel by a stone bridge. Four other bridges had been thrown across at other points between this stone bridge and Unterglauheim. By these the infantry were crossing, which infantry, it will be remembered (and my frontispiece shows it), stood as to their first line in front of the cavalry in the main central body. This almost undisputed pa.s.sage of the Nebel would not have been possible had not the distance between Blenheim and Oberglauheim been what it was. The gap was great, the French line defending it too thin, and the possibility of a cross fire defending the centre was eliminated by the width of that centre.

Even as it was, the pa.s.sage of the Nebel led to one very difficult moment which might by accident or genius have turned the whole action in favour of the French; and in connection with this episode it must be remembered that the French commanders a.s.serted that the pa.s.sage of the Nebel was no success on the part of their enemy, but was deliberately permitted to that enemy in order that he might be overwhelmed upon the opposing slope, with the marshy stream behind him, when the time for a counter-attack should come.

The moment came when the greater part of Marlborough's cavalry had crossed, but before they had fully formed upon the further bank. While they were still in the disorder of forming, the French cavalry upon their left--that is, between the main road and Blenheim--charged down the slight slope, and something like a dismemberment of the whole of Marlborough's mounted line began. It was checked for a moment by the fire of the British infantry, during which check Marlborough brought over certain Danish and Hanoverian squadrons which had remained upon the further bank. But the French charged again, and though infantry of Marlborough's which was pouring over the stream up beyond the stone bridge came up in time to prevent a complete break down, the moment was critical in the extreme. All Marlborough's centre was pressed and shaken; a further spurt against it and it would break.

It was such a moment as commanders of rapid decision and quick eye have always seized; and if it be asked how Tallard should have seized it, the answer is that there were French guns to ma.s.s, there was French infantry in Blenheim unused, and more in reserve behind Blenheim wholly useless.

There were the ten squadrons of Tallard's second line of cavalry under Silly, a couple of hundred yards away, to be summoned in a few moments.

Rapid decision and keen sight of this sort would have done the business; but Tallard was slow of perception; an excellent strategist, but short-sighted and a great gentleman; one, moreover, who had advanced by favour rather than by intrigue. He lost the moment.

Marlborough's cavalry managed to form, struggling beyond the brook, and the last final phase of the action was at hand--for Marlborough's cavalry would reiterate that general lesson which the whole battle teaches, to wit, that the horse of the allies was not only far stronger numerically, but far better trained than the French cavalry before them, and, with equal chances, must destroy it. Tallard, by missing his moment, had permitted those equal chances to be restored. Even so, yet one other last accident favoured the French. The hour was about five, or rather later in the mid-afternoon. In order to be able to form his cavalry beyond the Nebel, Marlborough wanted to have a clear right flank, and with that object he had launched from 6000 to 7000 Hanoverians against Oberglauheim.

The excellent infantry of Blainville, less in numbers, emerged from the village, threw the Hanoverians into gross disorder, and captured their commander. At this point there was beginning to be a rout. This new French success, properly followed up, would again have had a chance to break the allied centre at its weakest point, just at the link where Marlborough joined on to Eugene.

Marcin, inferior as was his command, gripped the opportunity, sent cavalry at once to Oberglauheim, and that cavalry charged. But here the greatness of Marlborough as a personal commander suddenly appeared. He seized the whole character of the moment in a way that Tallard on his first chance had wholly failed to do. He put himself in person at the head of the Danish brigade that lay in reserve, brought it across the rivulet, and came just in time to take the charge of the French cavalry. Even as that charge was preparing, Marlborough sent to Eugene for cavalry at the gallop. He (Marlborough) must hold fast with his Danes against the French horse--five minutes, ten, fifteen at the most--till help should come from the right.

Here, again, another factor in the success of the day appeared--that Eugene and Marlborough understood each other.

Eugene had just suffered a sharp check upon the extreme right; he was re-forming for a new attack when he got Marlborough's message. Without the loss of a moment in weighing his own immediate necessities, he sent Fugger thundering off, and Fugger, with the imperial cuira.s.siers, came galloping full speed upon Marlborough's right flank just as the French charge was at its hardest pressure upon the Danish line. He took that French charge in flank, broke its impetus, permitted the Danish infantry to hold their own, and so compelled the French horse to fall back; within a quarter of an hour from its inception the peril of a breach in Marlborough and Eugene's centre was thus dissolved.

Here, then, is yet another incident in the battle, which shows not only on which side rapidity of perception lay, but also on which side lay sympathy between commanders, and, most important of all, the discipline and material eminence of the dominating arm.

It was now nearly six o'clock, and the August sun was red and low in the face of the English General. The French line still stood intact before him.

Marlborough's first great effort against Blenheim had disastrously failed all during the earlier afternoon; he had but just escaped a terrible danger, and had but barely been saved, by Eugene's prompt.i.tude in reinforcement, from seeing his line cut in two. Nevertheless, he was the master of the little daylight that remained. His cavalry, and indeed nearly all his troops, were now formed beyond the Nebel; he had the ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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.

Clerambault, 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.sacred 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate II. _The Battle of Blenheim._

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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.

FINISH