Battle of Warburg, 1760: Granby's charge on the Diemel

In the summer of 1760 the war in western Germany went badly for Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick. His army of Hanoverians, Hessians, Brunswickers and British faced a French army under the Duc de Broglie of more than twice its size: BritishBattles.com gives 62,000 men against 130,000. Broglie invaded Hesse at the end of June, joined his two armies at Corbach on 10 July and then began to maneuver Ferdinand out of his positions, aiming to cut him off from Paderborn and Lippstadt and to take Kassel.²

De Muy alone at Warburg

On 27 July Broglie sent the Chevalier de Muy down the Diemel towards Warburg, a small Hessian town on the north bank of the river. Three days later, moving on Kassel, the marshal took his main army to Zierenberg and left de Muy's reserve corps, about 18,000 men in Kronoskaf's count, dangerously isolated. De Muy held a high ridge west of the town with the river at his back and only two bridges behind him, which were half blocked by his baggage. Kronoskaf calls it a pretty bad position: woods screened the ground to his front, and from a watchtower on the Hein-Berg hill the enemy could look straight down into his camp.³

The Hereditary Prince of Brunswick scouted the position and proposed to march round its left, use the hills to hide the move, and seize the unoccupied Hein-Berg, while Ferdinand brought the main army against its front. Ferdinand agreed, and on the evening of 30 July his army set off in eight columns to cross the Diemel during the night.⁴

A flank march in the fog

The crossing took longer than planned, and the heads of the main army reached the heights only at 6 a.m. Rather than wait any longer, the Hereditary Prince and Spörcken set off at 7 a.m. in two columns, hidden for more than an hour by thick fog. De Muy, uneasy at what the fog might hide, sent the Marquis de Castries forward with his grenadiers and dragoons; when the mist lifted at about 9:30 Castries saw the main army coming up from the Diemel but missed the two flanking columns.⁵

Around noon the columns appeared on the French left near the village of Ossendorf and began to deploy. At 1:30 p.m. the Hereditary Prince opened fire. Everything depended on the Hein-Berg, and when de Muy saw it at last he sent a battalion of the Bourbonnais regiment to take it. Kronoskaf tells how Colonel Beckwith with ten grenadiers, and the Hereditary Prince with thirty more, ran ahead out of sight and reached the crest first, holding it until the rest of the British grenadiers came up.⁶

The fight for the Hein-Berg

A furious struggle followed around the watchtower. Castries and the Marquis de Ségur made five attacks on the hill, and at times the Allies had to give ground. Then the Hessian and Hanoverian battalions of the second column struck the heights east of Ossendorf and the flank of the Bourbonnais brigade, and the French left gave way. The 1st Royal Dragoons and 7th Dragoons rode down the broken battalions and took many prisoners. De Muy ordered a retreat over the river.⁷

Granby's ride

Ferdinand's own infantry could not reach the field in time. The day was hot, the ground marshy, and British soldiers fell senseless from exhaustion on the march. So Ferdinand sent the Marquess of Granby forward with 22 squadrons of British cavalry and two brigades of light guns, and they covered more than 8 km at the trot. They fell on the French cavalry of the right wing as it was already pulling back. BritishBattles.com describes a ferocious charge that drove it over the river with the rest of de Muy's force.⁸

Granby rode at the head of the Royal Horse Guards, his own regiment. Both sources tell how his hat flew off, leaving his bald head shining in the sun, and BritishBattles.com adds the tradition that this gave English the expression to "go bald-headed" at something. Kronoskaf sees in the charge the British cavalry redeeming the good name it had lost through Lord George Sackville's conduct at Minden the year before.⁹

Losses and what followed

The French crowded over the two bridges, the fords and even swam the river, while the British light guns galloped down to the bank and fired into them. De Muy rallied his men on the far heights and withdrew to Volkmarsen. The losses are reported very differently. Kronoskaf gives the French 1,600 killed and wounded and 78 officers and about 2,100 men taken prisoner, with 12 guns lost, and the Allies 66 officers and 1,173 men, about 800 of them British. BritishBattles.com puts the French loss at 6,000 to 8,000 and the Allied at 1,200, and calls the British cavalry's losses trifling.¹⁰

Warburg was a clean tactical victory, but it did not save Ferdinand's campaign. With the Allied army drawn north to the Diemel, Broglie took Kassel, a heavy blow to Ferdinand's plans. In Britain the battle is remembered for Granby, who became one of the most popular soldiers of his age; many inns still carry his name.¹¹