Battle of Blenheim, 1704: Marlborough and Eugene save Vienna

The war began over a will. When King Charles II of Spain died in 1700 he left his crown and his empire to Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France. England, the Dutch Republic and the Austrian Habsburgs feared a France and a Spain under one family, formed the Grand Alliance and backed the Habsburg claimant, Archduke Charles. In 1702 Bavaria took the French side.²

The march to the Danube

By 1704 Louis XIV meant to win the war in Germany. French and Bavarian armies on the Danube threatened Vienna, and with it the whole alliance. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, commander of the English and Dutch forces in the Low Countries, answered with one of the boldest moves of the age. According to the National Army Museum he marched about 40,000 British, Dutch and German troops some 250 miles (400 km) in five weeks, using dummy bridges on the Rhine to make the French think he was heading for Alsace.³

On 2 July he stormed the heights of the Schellenberg and took Donauwörth, and then laid waste to Bavarian land to force the Elector Maximilian II Emanuel into battle or terms. Marshal Camille de Tallard brought a second French army over the Black Forest to join the Elector and Marshal Ferdinand de Marsin, while Prince Eugene of Savoy brought an Imperial army to join Marlborough.⁴ › Battle of the Schellenberg, 1704

A position no one expected them to attack

The French and Bavarians camped behind the Nebel, a marshy stream that runs into the Danube, on a front of about four miles. Their right rested on the river and the village of Blenheim (Blindheim), their left on the village of Lutzingen and wooded hills, with the village of Oberglau between. BritishBattles.com notes that Tallard and his colleagues did not believe the Allies would attack them there, and expected Marlborough to fall back north for supplies.⁵

The numbers were close and are still argued. The National Army Museum puts the French and Bavarians at no fewer than 60,000 men with about 90 guns against 56,000 Allies with 66. BritishBattles.com gives 60,000 and around 60 guns against 56,000 and 52, and adds that some authorities put the Franco-Bavarian army as high as 72,000.⁶

Fog, bridges and the fight for the villages

The morning of 13 August was foggy, and many French troopers were out foraging. When the mist lifted at about 7 a.m. the French saw the Allied army deployed across the Nebel half a mile away, and drums and trumpets called the foragers back. Eugene needed hours to work his men into place on the broken ground of the right, and it was about 12:30 when he reported ready.⁷

Lord Cutts then sent his British and German infantry against Blenheim. Brigadier Row led them forward under orders not to fire until he struck the barricade with his sword; he did, and fell, along with a large part of his brigade. The village did not fall, but Tallard fed more and more infantry into it, until the battalions packed inside could hardly move. In the center the Prince of Holstein-Beck was thrown back from Oberglau, and on the right Eugene's Imperial troops were repulsed three times by the Elector's men.⁸

The cavalry charge in the center

These attacks were not wasted. They fixed the French and Bavarians in their villages and left the open ground between Blenheim and Oberglau, where Tallard's and Marsin's armies met, thinly held. Marlborough's engineers had repaired the stone bridge and laid pontoons, and he brought his main force over the Nebel in an unusual formation: a line of infantry, a line of cavalry, then infantry and cavalry again, so that each arm could cover the other. French horse struck the leading squadrons while they were still disordered by the crossing, and Prussian and Austrian cavalry helped to drive them off.⁹

Late in the afternoon Marlborough launched his massed cavalry at the French center. Tallard's horse broke and fled towards Höchstädt and the Danube, and the marshal himself was wounded and taken prisoner. The National Army Museum puts the number drowned in the river at over 3,000. Seeing the center gone, Marsin and the Elector set fire to Oberglau and Lutzingen and withdrew in order.¹⁰

The surrender in Blenheim village

The French infantry crammed into Blenheim was now cut off. As General Charles Churchill, Marlborough's brother, prepared to storm the village, the French asked for terms. They wanted to march out with honor; they were offered only surrender, and in the end 24 battalions of infantry and four regiments of dragoons laid down their arms. BritishBattles.com records that the Regiment of Navarre burned its colors rather than hand them over.¹¹

The figures again depend on the source. The National Army Museum gives about 12,000 Allied killed and wounded, and for the French and Bavarians at least 20,000 casualties and 14,000 prisoners. BritishBattles.com gives the same Allied loss and about 40,000 French and Bavarians killed, wounded and captured, among them some 11,000 prisoners.¹²

What Blenheim decided

Blenheim saved Vienna and kept the Grand Alliance together. In the months that followed the Allies took Ulm, Ingolstadt, Augsburg and Munich, and in November 1704 the Treaty of Ilbersheim took Bavaria out of the war. It destroyed the myth of French invincibility and began a partnership between Marlborough and Eugene that would bring a string of further victories. At home Queen Anne gave Marlborough the royal manor of Woodstock, where Blenheim Palace was built in the battle's name.¹³

The war itself went on for another nine years, and Philip of Anjou kept the Spanish throne in the end. But Louis XIV's plan to win it on the Danube died at Blenheim, together with the belief that a French army in the field could not be beaten.¹⁴ › Battle of Almansa, 1707