The Great British Battles. Hilaire Belloc
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would guarantee his right. On that very account, Marlborough was determined to storm it; for if it fell, there would instantly follow upon its fall a complete victory. The whole French line would be turned.
It may be argued that Marlborough here attempted the impossible, but it must be remembered, in the first place, that he was by temperament a man of the offensive and of great risks. His first outstanding action, that of the Schellenberg, proved this, and proved it in his favour. Five years later, in one of his last actions, that of Malplaquet, this characteristic of his was to appear in his disfavour. At any rate, risk was in the temperament of the man, and it is a temperament which in warfare accounts for the greatest things.
First and last, some 10,000 men were employed against the one point of Blenheim; and the assault upon the village, though a failure, forms one of the noblest chapters in the history of British arms.
It was one o’clock of the afternoon when the serious part of the action opened by the two first lines of Marlborough’s extreme left advancing under Lord Cutts to pass the Nebel, to cross the pasture beyond, and to force the palisades of the village. The movement across the stream was undertaken under a fire of grape from four guns posted upon a slight rise outside the village. Cutts’ body crossed the brook in face of this opposition, re-formed under the bank beyond, left their Hessian contingent in shelter there as a reserve, while the British, who were the remainder of the body, advanced against the palisades.
The distance is one of about 150 yards. The Guards and the four regiments with them16 came up through the long grass of the aftermath, Row at their head. Two-thirds of that short distance was passed in silence. The guns upon the slope beyond could not fire at a mark so close to their own troops behind the palisades. The English had orders not to waste a shot until they had carried the line of those palisades with the bayonet. The French behind the palisades reserved their fire.
It was one of those moments which the eighteenth century, with its amazingly disciplined professional armies, alone can furnish in all the history of war, an episode of which the Guards at Fontenoy were, a generation later, to afford the supreme example, and one depending on that perfection of restraint for which the English service was deservedly renowned. When a distance but a yard or two longer than a cricket pitch separated the advancing English from the palisades, the French volley crashed out. One man in three of the advancing line fell agonised or dead.
The British regiments, still obedient to Row’s instructions, reserved their fire until their leader touched the woodwork with his sword. Then they volleyed, and having fired, wrestled with the palisades as though to drag them down by sheer force. Perhaps some few parties here and there pressed in through a gap, but as the English soldiers struggled thus, gripped and checked by the obstacle, the French fire poured in again was deadly; the British assault was broken, and fled in disorder over the little field to the watercourse. As it fled, the Gendarmerie charged it in flank, captured the colours of the 21st, were repelled again by the Hessians in reserve (who recaptured the flag), and the first fierce moment of the battle was over.
One-third of Cutts’ command had been concerned in this first failure against Blenheim village. Two-thirds remained to turn that failure into a success. But before this second two-thirds was launched, there took place an episode in the battle, not conspicuously noted at the time, and given a minor importance in all accounts save Tallard’s own. It was significant in the extreme.
As Cutts’ broken first line was passing out of range and was effecting its retirement after the first disorder, and after the Hessians had repelled the first and partial cavalry charge of the French, the Gendarmerie, eight squadrons strong, prepared to charge again as a whole. They came upon the English before these had regained safety. Cutts naturally begged for cavalry to meet this cavalry danger, and Lumley sent five British squadrons to cross the stream and check the French charge. The English horse came to the further bank after some little difficulty with the mud of the sluggish stream, which difficulty has been exaggerated, and in no way affected the significance of what followed.17
For what followed was the singular sight of eight French squadrons charging down a slope against only five, those five cramped in the hollow near a stream bed, and yet succeeding in receiving the shock of the charge of numbers so greatly superior, and, so far from yielding, breaking the offensive of their opponents into a confusion.
I repeat, it was but an episode, one that took place early in the day, and apparently of no weight. But, in a general historical view of the battle, it is of the first importance, for it showed what different stuff the opposed cavalries were made of, and that the allied army, which was already numerically the superior in cavalry—nearly double its opponents—had also better mounts, better riders, and a better discipline in that arm. A universal observer, seeing this one early detail in the battle of Blenheim, might have prophesied that the action would be a cavalry action as a whole, and that the cavalry of Marlborough would decide it.
I left Cutts prepared to launch the remaining two-thirds of his force at Blenheim village, in the hope of accomplishing what the first third had failed to do.
The whole combined body which the French had estimated at 10,000 men, and which seems to have been at least of some 8000, surged up in the second attempt against the palisades of the village. Part of that line and many of the outer gardens were carried, but the attack could not be driven home. It was, perhaps, at this moment that Tallard sent in those extra men which raised the French battalions in Blenheim from nine to sixteen, and gave the defenders, behind their walls, a force equal to the attackers. At any rate, the main attack was thrust back as the first had been, and the great corps of men, huddled, confused, rallied here and there as best they could be, broke from before the village.
The loss was terrible, and Marlborough having failed, not only failed, but saw that he had failed. It was his salvation. His subordinates would have returned to the fruitless attack with troops already shaken and dreading the ground. Marlborough ordered a false attack to be kept up from the further bank, upon the village, and, with that elasticity of command which is the prime factor of tactical success, and which commonly distinguishes youth rather than middle age in a general, turned all his efforts upon the centre.18
Here the main road crosses the Nebel by a stone bridge. Four other bridges had been thrown across at other points between this stone bridge and Unterglauheim. By these the infantry were crossing, which infantry, it will be remembered (and my frontispiece shows it), stood as to their first line in front of the cavalry in the main central body. This almost undisputed passage of the Nebel would not have been possible had not the distance between Blenheim and Oberglauheim been what it was. The gap was great, the French line defending it too thin, and the possibility of a cross fire defending the centre was eliminated by the width of that centre.
Even as it was, the passage of the Nebel led to one very difficult moment which might by accident or genius have turned the whole action in favour of the French; and in connection with this episode it must be remembered that the French commanders asserted that the passage of the Nebel was no success on the part of their enemy, but was deliberately permitted to that enemy in order that he might be overwhelmed upon the opposing slope, with the marshy stream behind him, when the time for a counter-attack should come.
The moment came when the greater part of Marlborough’s cavalry had crossed, but before they had fully formed upon the further bank. While they were still in the disorder of forming, the French cavalry upon their left—that is, between the main road and Blenheim—charged down the slight slope, and something like a dismemberment of the whole of Marlborough’s mounted line began. It was checked for a moment by the fire of the British infantry, during which check Marlborough brought over certain Danish and Hanoverian squadrons which had remained upon the further bank. But the French charged again, and though infantry of Marlborough’s which was pouring over the stream up beyond the stone bridge came up in time to prevent a complete break down, the moment was critical in the extreme. All Marlborough’s centre was pressed and shaken; a further spurt against it and it would break.