The Great British Battles. Hilaire Belloc
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effective numbers. The Franco-Bavarians hurried south to entrench themselves under Augsburg, while Donauwörth, and with it the passage of the two great rivers and the entry into Bavaria, lay in the possession of Marlborough and his ally.
The balance of military and historical opinion will decide that Marlborough played for too high stakes in beginning the assault so late in the evening and with so small a force. But he was playing for speed, and he won the hazard.
It was a further reward of his daring that he could point after this first engagement to the fine quality of his British contingent.6
It was upon the evening of July the 2nd, then, that this capital position was stormed. It was upon the 5th that Marcin and the Elector lay hopeless and immobile before Augsburg, while their enemies entered a now defenceless Bavaria by its north-western gate. And this complete achievement of Marlborough’s plan was but the end of the first phase in the campaign upon the Danube.
Meanwhile, a large French reinforcement under Tallard was already far up on its way from the Rhine, across the Black Forest, to join Marcin and the Elector of Bavaria and set back the tide of war, and, when it should have effected its junction with those who awaited it at Augsburg, to oppose to Marlborough and the Duke of Baden a total force greater than their own.
The French marshal, Tallard, was in command of the army thus rapidly approaching in relief of the Franco-Bavarians. His arrival, if he came without loss, disease, or mishap, promised a complete superiority over the English and their allies, unless, indeed, by some accident or stroke of genius, reinforcement should reach them also before the day of the battle.
This reinforcement, in the event, Marlborough did receive. He owed it, as we shall see, to the high talents of Prince Eugene; and it is upon the successful march of this general, his junction with Marlborough, and the consequent success of Blenheim, that the rest of the campaign turns.
We turn next, then, to follow the second phase of the seven weeks, which consists in Tallard’s advance to join the Elector, and in Eugene’s rapid parallel march, which brought him, just in time, to Marlborough’s aid.
The Second Phase
The Advance of Tallard
To follow the second phase of the seven weeks, that is, the phase subsequent to the capture of the Schellenberg and the retirement of Marcin and the Elector of Bavaria on to Augsburg, it is necessary to hark back a little, and to trace from its origin that advance of Tallard’s reinforcements which was to find on the field of Blenheim so disastrous a termination.
We shall see that in this second phase Tallard did indeed manage to effect his junction with the Elector and Marcin with singular despatch; that this junction compelled Marlborough and Baden to cease the ravaging of Bavaria upon which they had been engaged, and to join in closely watching the movement of the Franco-Bavarian forces, lest their own retreat or their line of supplies should be cut off by that now large army.
The Schellenberg was stormed, as we have seen, on the 2nd of July.
Tallard, as we have also seen, had orders from Versailles, when Marlborough’s plan of reaching the Danube was clear, to put himself in motion for an advance to the Elector’s aid.
He moved at first with firmness and deliberation, determined to secure every post of his advance throughout the difficult hills, and thoroughly to provision his route. He crossed the Rhine upon July 1st, and during the very hours that, far to the east, the disaster of Donauwörth was in progress, he was assembling his forces upon the right bank of the river before beginning to secure his passage through the Black Forest. Upon the 4th he began his march over the hills.
A week later he was in the heart of the broken country at Hornberg, and on the 16th of July he had contained the garrison of Villingen, the principal stronghold which barred his route to the Danube, and which, did he leave it untaken, would jeopardise his provision and supply, the health and even the maintenance of his horses and men by the mountain road.
Upon the 18th he opened fire upon the town; but on the very day that the siege thus began he received from Marcin the whole story of the disaster of the Schellenberg, which had taken place a fortnight before, and a most urgent request for immediate reinforcement.
Tallard’s deliberation, his attempt to secure the enemy’s one stronghold upon the line of his passage across the hills, and amply to provision his advance, were fully justified. He knew nothing of the fall of Donauwörth. He believed himself to have full time for a properly organised march to join the Elector of Bavaria, and that meant the capture of Villingen. And the siege of that fortress had the further advantage that it compelled Eugene and his army to remain near the Rhine. Only at this late day, the 18th of July, did Tallard learn that the forces of Marlborough and of Baden had captured the crossing of the Danube and the Lech, and were pouring into Bavaria.
He should have known it earlier, but the despatch which bore him the information had miscarried.
Already, upon the 9th, Marcin had written from Augsburg a pressing letter to Tallard, bidding him neglect everything save an immediate march, and, ill provisioned as he was, and insecure as he would leave his communications, to hasten to the aid of the Elector. Marlborough and Baden (he wrote) had crossed the Danube and the Lech on the 5th and 6th of July. They were before Rhain; and when Rhain fell (as fall it must), all Bavaria would be at their mercy.
This letter Tallard never received.
Marcin was right. Rhain could not possibly hold out: none of the Bavarian strongholds except Ingolstadt were tolerably fortified. Rhain was destined to fall, and with its fall all Bavaria would be the prey of the allied generals.
The Elector, watching all this from just beyond the Lech, was in despair. He proposed to sue for terms unless immediate news of help from the French upon the Rhine should reach him. And if the Elector sued for terms and retired from the contest, France would be left alone to bear the whole weight of the European alliance: its forces would at once be released to act upon the Rhine, in Flanders, or wherever else they would.
When, upon the 14th, Marcin wrote that second letter to Tallard, telling him to neglect everything, to march forward at all costs, and to hasten to Bavaria’s relief—the letter which Tallard did receive, and which came to him on the 18th of July, just as he was beginning the siege of Villingen—Rhain still held out; but, even as Tallard read the letter, Rhain had fallen, and the terrible business of the harrying of Bavaria had begun. For Baden and Marlborough proceeded to ravage the country, a cruel piece of work, which Marlborough believed necessary, because it was his supreme intention to bring such pressure to bear upon the Elector as might dissuade him from taking further part in the war.
The villages began to burn (one hundred and twenty were destroyed), the crops to be razed. The country was laid waste to the very walls of Munich, and that capital itself would have fallen had the Englishman and his imperial ally possessed a sufficient train to besiege it.
Tallard was still hesitating to abandon the siege of Villingen when, upon the 21st of July, came yet a third message from Marcin, which there was no denying. Tallard learnt from it of the fall of Rhain, of the ravaging of Bavaria, of the march of Marlborough and Baden upon Munich, of the crucial danger in which France lay of seeing the Elector of Bavaria abandon her cause.
Wholly insufficient as the provisioning of the route was, Marcin assured Tallard it was just enough to feed his men and horses during the dash eastwards; and, with all the regret and foreboding necessarily attached to leaving in his rear an unconquered fortress and marching in haste upon an insufficiently provided route, Tallard, on the next day, the 22nd, raised the siege of Villingen and risked his way across the mountains down to the valley of the Danube.
The move was undoubtedly necessary if the Bavarian alliance was to be saved, but it had to be accomplished in fatal haste.
Sickness broke out among Tallard’s horses; his squadrons were reduced in a fashion that largely determined the ultimate issue at Blenheim.
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