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Home A Period of Foreign Wars, 1689-1714 Part 8 |
Part 8Then followed the battle of Blenheim. The French and Bavarians held a strong position behind the River Nebel. Marl-borough first sent Lord Cutts (Cutts's bravery was famous, and at the siege of Numur in 1695 his coolness in the hottest fire of the French batteries won for him the nickname of " Salamander) to storm the village of Blenheim on the French right. But it was strongly held, and Cutts, received at thirty yards with a murderous fire, was repulsed. Meantime Marlborough, seeing the weakness of the French centre, which was held only by cavalry, and finding the marshes which protected the French front passable, began to cross the river with the intention of making his main attack on the centre, whilst Cutts kept up a feint attack on Blenheim, and Eugene attacked the left wing. Marlborough's attack was entirely successful; the French centre was pierced, and their right wing then enveloped. By the end of the day Marlborough had one of the two chief French generals in his own coach, and had captured one hundred guns and some eleven thousand prisoners. The Blenheim campaign marks an epoch in history. It saved Vienna; it preserved Germany from a French occupation; it destroyed the impression of French invincibility on land; and it re-established our military prestige, a prestige which had been at times sadly tarnished since the days of Agincourt.Yet the Blenheim campaign did not exhaust Maryborough's schemes for that year. Marlborough, like William, had realized the importance of the Mediterranean, and had planned a great attack on Toulon by land under the Duke of Savoy and by sea with the English fleet. Unfortunately the Duke of Savoy was unable to make the attack. Our fleet, however, under Rooke, took Gibraltar-not, as it turned out, a matter of much difficulty -and fought a battle off Malaga which, though indecisive, led the French fleet to desist from challenging our position in the Mediterranean. The next important year is 1706. First, the French were evicted from Italy in consequence of a great battle won by Eugene near Turin. Then, in the Netherlands, Marlborough won the battle of Ramillies. He was threatening the strong fortress of Namur, and the French general had concentrated his forces to protect it. In the battle which ensued Marlborough saw that his troops could move from one flank to another more quickly than the French, as they had the shorter distance to traverse, and there were no marshes to hinder them. Accordingly, he made an attack on one flank, and then, leaving the conspicuous red-coated British on a hill to keep the enemy occupied on that flank, he transferred the more sober-hued Allies behind some hills to the other wing, and won a victory which he followed up with such rapidity, that by the end of the year the French had lost not only Antwerp and Brussels, but nearly the whole of the Spanish Netherlands. |
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