In the dark hours of 1 February 1702 Imperial soldiers under Prince Eugene of Savoy got inside the walls of Cremona, the Lombard town where the French army in Italy had its winter quarters. They seized a gate, cut down French soldiers as they ran out of their billets and took the French commander, Marshal François de Neufville, duc de Villeroi, prisoner in his own lodgings. By the end of the day, though, the garrison had rallied and Eugene had to march out again. The French kept Cremona and lost their general.
Winter quarters in Lombardy
The War of the Spanish Succession began in northern Italy in 1701, before the powers had formally declared war. The emperor took the initiative and sent an army under Eugene of Savoy over the mountain passes from Tyrol into Italy, aimed at the Spanish possessions there. Eugene beat the French at Carpi and then at Chiari, where Villeroi had attacked his entrenched position. The French army withdrew into winter quarters around Cremona on the Po, while Eugene kept up a blockade of Mantua.1
After five months of consolidating his gains since Chiari, Eugene went over to the offensive again in the middle of winter. According to WarHistory.org, a priest in Cremona, Father Cossoli, told him of a secret way into the town through one of the sewer canals; The Irish Times describes a friendly priest who arranged for a sewer grate to be opened.2
The night attack
On the night of 31 January a party of Imperial soldiers, about 400 men according to WarHistory.org, crept in through the canal to open the gates from within. They seized a gate, and in the early hours of 1 February several thousand more troops followed them into the town. The French were caught in their beds. Many were killed before they could fight, and Villeroi was seized in his quarters. According to WarHistory.org, a Scottish officer in Imperial service, Captain Francis MacDonnell, saved the marshal from being bayoneted.3
The plan also depended on a second column, which was to come from the far side of the Po and take the Po Gate and the citadel. It was delayed. Before it could get in, Irish troops closed the Po Gate under heavy fire. Two Irish regiments in French service, Dillon's and Burke's, about 600 men, held the gate and the citadel with great stubbornness and stopped the Imperial attack. The fighting went on for hours.4
A town kept, a marshal lost
With the Po Gate still in French hands and French troops expected from outside, Eugene broke off the fight in the afternoon and withdrew, taking Villeroi with him as a prisoner. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica calls it a confused fight and notes that the French, many of them surprised in their beds, still managed to drive Eugene's men out.5
French wits soon summed up the day in a rhyme: by the favor of Bellona and by unequaled good luck, it ran, we have kept Cremona and lost our general. Losses are uncertain. WarHistory.org writes that more than a thousand French soldiers were killed in their beds when the gate fell, and The Irish Times notes that the Irish regiments paid for their stand with heavy casualties.6
What followed
Villeroi was soon back in command, facing Marlborough in the Low Countries, and Britannica notes that he is remembered above all for his misfortunes in this war: his capture at Cremona and his defeat at Ramillies in 1706. In Italy the duc de Vendôme was sent to replace him. Louis XIV raised the pay of the Irish regiments and honored them on their return to France; The Irish Times names Major Daniel O'Mahony as the officer who led their defense, and Alfred Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography (1878) records that Louis sent his thanks to the regiment and that O'Mahony was made a colonel. For Eugene the raid was a near miss: it showed what surprise and nerve could do, but the town stayed French.7 › Battle of Luzzara, 1702
Also on this day
- 1713: Skirmish at Bender. Ottoman forces moved against Charles XII of Sweden at Bender, in today's Moldova, where he had stayed in exile since his defeat at Poltava, in order to remove him.
