When was the Battle of Dettingen?

It was fought on 27 June 1743 by the modern calendar, which was 16 June in the Old Style calendar still used in Britain at the time.

Who won the Battle of Dettingen?

The Pragmatic Army of British, Hanoverian and Austrian troops under King George II won, driving the French back across the river Main.

Was Dettingen the last battle led by a British king?

Yes. George II was present and in command, and no reigning British monarch has led troops into battle since.

How many soldiers died at Dettingen?

BritishBattles.com puts allied losses at about 2,350 killed and wounded. French losses are usually given as about 8,000, a figure it calls unreliable.

Dettingen is now part of Karlstein am Main in Bavaria, on the north bank of the Main between Hanau and Aschaffenburg.

Battle of Dettingen, 1743: the last battle led by a British king

Plan de l'Action de Dettingen du 27 juin 1743, engraving by De St. Hilaire Mallet (The Hague, 1743), Rijksmuseum, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain (CC0).

Quick answer

What happened at the Battle of Dettingen?

On 27 June 1743 the Pragmatic Army of British, Hanoverian and Austrian troops, short of food and retreating down the river Main toward Hanau, found a French force under the Duc de Gramont blocking its road at the village of Dettingen. Instead of waiting in his strong position, Gramont attacked. The allied infantry and cavalry threw back the French, who fled across the Main, and the allies marched on to Hanau. King George II was with his army, the last time a reigning British monarch led troops into battle.¹

The War of the Austrian Succession began in 1740 over Maria Theresa's right to inherit the Habsburg lands, and France backed her rivals. Britain sided with Austria. In 1742 it sent an army to Flanders, which joined Hanoverian and Austrian troops in what became known as the Pragmatic Army. Its task was officially to protect the Austrian Netherlands from France, but, as BritishBattles.com notes, the army also guarded Hanover, of which George II was elector.²

A trap on the Main

In the spring of 1743 the army marched up the Rhine and the Main toward Frankfurt, at the king's insistence and against the advice of its nominal commander, the Earl of Stair. It camped near Aschaffenburg, where there was little forage for horses and little food for men. A large French army under Marshal the Duc de Noailles moved along the opposite bank. When the French bridged the Main at Seligenstadt downstream, they cut the allies off from their magazines at Hanau.³

George II joined the army on 19 June and found it hungry and plundering. For a week there had been no proper bread. The museum of the Queen's Royal Hussars, heir to Bland's King's Own Dragoons, calls the king "intrepid in battle" but "a ditherer" in council, and it took him a week to order the retreat west to Hanau along the north bank of the Main.⁴

Noailles springs the trap

At one in the morning of 27 June Noailles learned that the allies were on the march. He sent some 28,000 men over his bridges to occupy Dettingen and the marshy ground between the village and the wooded Spessart hills, and planned to send a second force across above Aschaffenburg to close in from behind. The allies, caught by surprise, needed from 9 a.m. to midday to deploy from marching columns into a line between the river and the hills, while French batteries on the south bank fired into their flank.⁵

Noailles's plan depended on Gramont staying in his strong position and making the allies attack him across the brooks. He did not. According to BritishBattles.com, the French advanced out of Dettingen in some disorder, perhaps without orders at all. The elite horsemen of the king's household, the Maison du Roi, charged the British cavalry by the river. Bland's Dragoons, after standing for hours under artillery fire, met nine French squadrons and, in the words of their own regimental history, fought "with a degree of gallantry truly astonishing"; the regiment lost 42 men killed and 106 wounded. Trooper Thomas Brown rescued the regiment's guidon and was made a knight banneret by the king on the field.⁶

"Bravo, Young Buffs"

The French infantry then attacked the allied foot and was stopped by its volleys. George II's horse bolted and carried him to the second line, where, as the Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment tells the story, he dismounted and led the infantry on foot. Seeing a regiment with buff facings advancing, he called "Bravo, Buffs!". Told that this was the 31st Foot, not the Buffs, he answered "Then bravo, Young Buffs", and the 31st kept the nickname. The Duke of Cumberland, the king's son, was wounded in the leg.⁷

The French broke and streamed back to their bridges. One of them collapsed, and many soldiers are said to have drowned. After about four hours of fighting the allies had won the field. They made no attempt to pursue, resumed their march and reached Hanau, leaving their wounded for the French to care for.⁸

Counting the cost

BritishBattles.com lists British losses of 265 killed and 558 wounded, Hanoverian of 177 killed and 376 wounded and Austrian of 315 killed and 663 wounded, about 2,350 in all. For the French it gives 8,000, which it calls not a reliable figure but the best available. The strength of the armies is just as uncertain: the Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment gives 40,000 allies against 70,000 French, BritishBattles.com 50,000 against 70,000.⁹

Why Dettingen is remembered

Militarily the battle changed little. The allies escaped a trap of their own making, did not follow up their success and went back to their bases in Flanders, and the war went on. Its fame rests on the king. No reigning British monarch has led soldiers into battle since. Handel wrote his Dettingen Te Deum for the victory, and young officers who fought there included James Wolfe, the future victor at Quebec, and Jeffrey Amherst, later the conqueror of French Canada. The Duke of Cumberland was troubled by his Dettingen wound for the rest of his life.¹⁰ › Battle of Rocoux, 1746