Hope and Failure, 1707.

Great things had been expected after Marlborough’s resounding victory at Ramillies (23^rd May 1706), and the subsequent surrender of Ath (2^nd October 1706). In Italy Prince Eugene had trounced the French army under Marshal Marsin and the Duc d’Orléans, which caused them to abandon the siege of Turin (1^st September 1706). While on the Upper Rhine Marshal Villars was forced onto the defensive owing to his army being whittled away by having many of his troops withdrawn to bolster the battered French army in Flanders. Spain alone remained still tenable to Louis XIV, with no decisive Allied progress being made. Only the growing fear of Swedish involvement in Northern Germany caused the Allies some anxiety. Thus the forthcoming campaign of 1707 seemed set to see the hopes of the Sun King dashed, and the French finally brought to the peace table.¹

Unfortunately things started to deteriorate rapidly during the late spring of 1707. The Act of Union, which brought together Scotland and England in April of that year, did not go down well with the majority in Scotland, while the problems arising from internal bickering between the Allied powers soon put a damper on any constructive plans that Marlborough may have harboured for a new offensive in the Moselle valley. The Dutch once more found strong objections to any plan that would take their troops away from Flanders, while the Austrians had given the war- worn Louis XIV a fresh injection of manpower by signing a convention with his forces in Northern Italy, which allowed for the unconditional repatriation of some 20,000 French prisoners of war. Not content with this, the Austrian Emperor (Joseph I) began to concoct his own military plans for an expedition against Naples, a plan that required the assistance of the Anglo-Dutch fleet as well as 5,000 of their soldiers.²

In Spain a plan was proposed for a march on Madrid by the combined Allied forces under Galway and Stanhope, amounting to almost thirty thousand men, but king Charles III (Archduke Karl of Austria, pretender to the Spanish throne, who became Holy Roman Emperor in 1711) considered that the troops would do better being placed in garrisons protecting the provinces of Catalonia and Valencia. This vacillation led to a compromise, causing the army to be split, king Charles and Stanhope marching to garrison Aragon and Catalonia, while Galway moved on Madrid. Here Marshal Berwick (illegitimate son of James, Duke of York, later king James II of England- and Marlborough’s nephew) covered the approaches, with his magazines in Murcia well stocked, and several thousand fresh troops on their way to join him from Italy.³

With fifteen thousand troops, to Berwick’s twenty five thousand, Galway was quite seriously outnumbered. Unable to ascertain the strength of the French forces before him Galway pressed on eager to give battle, which was joined on April 25^th before the walls of Almanza, in the province of Castilla y Leon. Here the allies were decisively beaten, losing over half their number in killed, wounded and prisoners. As Marlborough himself stated, “ This ill success in Spain has flung everything backwards, so that the best resolution we can take is to let the French see we are resolved to keep on the war, so that we can have a good peace.⁴

The Duke of Marlborough

The Duke himself took the field in May 1707, joining his army, which numbered some ninety thousand, and was concentrated near Brussels, for a march south towards Hal, but since the Dutch had issued strict instructions to their field deputies to avoid giving battle at all costs, Marlborough was forced to retire somewhat ignominiously back towards Brussels, while Marshal Vendôme manoeuvred with the French field army to tempt him into a false position uncovering Brussels and Louvain. Back once again around his old campaigning ground along the Dyle River, east of Brussels, Marlborough received yet more bad news. The French Marshal Villars had captured the lines of Stollhofen on the Upper Rhine. This massive system of trenches, redoubts and fortifications were some of the strongest constructed during the War of Spanish Succession, and prevented any incursion into Germany along the Rhine valley. The problem was that the defenders of these seemingly impregnable works were the poor remnants of the Austrian Emperor’s Rhine army, which had been sadly depleted by its master to bolster his grand ideas in Italy. Thus, on 23^rd May 1707 Marshal Villars, almost without any loss of life, occupied the Stollhofen position and Germany was laid wide open.

As if all the above were not bad enough, yet another misfortune was about to fall upon the Allied cause. The joint sea and land operations against Toulon began well, with Prince Eugene marching from Italy to attack the port from land, while Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell sailed with the British fleet to bottle up the French ships in the harbour. However Eugene had grave reservations about the whole affair, and what should have been a great opportunity for delivering a decisive blow at the soft underbelly of France became no more than a costly raid. As Sir Winston Churchill explains, ‘ Properly speaking, it was no siege, but only an attack by the fleet and one by the field army upon the fortified position of another. Eugene, whose sentiments are only too apparent, bent to his task against his mood and judgment in fulfilment of his promise to Marlborough “that he would do his best.” Besides this, however, he formed a certain contract, comprehensible to fighting chiefs, with Shovell and the English admirals. No soldier of high quality can be unmoved by the ardour and comradeship of the naval service in a joint operation. Eugene was evidently affected by Shovell’s grit, resource, and zeal. “ In spite of the representations I have made to the Admiral,” he wrote to the Emperor (August 5^th), “ he absolutely insists upon carrying on with the enterprise of Toulon…If they wish to proceed to its serious undertaking, in spite of all the difficulties they see with their own eyes, the troops of Your Imperial Majesty will certainly not separate from them.” And later, “ Although the Admirals do not understand the land service, they refuse to listen to facts, and adhere obstinately to their opinion that for good or ill, everything must be staked on the siege of Toulon. Yet the pure impossibility of this is clearly before their eyes.”

No one, on the other hand, must ignore the estimate of the difficulties presented on the spot by so sincere and noble a warrior as Eugene. He may well have been right that the task was impossible. It does not look in retrospect so hard as many of the feats of arms which he performed both before and after. But it failed, and with it failed the best hope of redeeming for the Allies the year 1707.’⁵

Marshal Vendôme

For his part Marlborough now tried to make something out of nothing. Knowing that the French had sent troops from both Spain and Flanders to bolster the forces defending Toulon, the Duke endeavoured to manoeuvre the French away from their foraging area around Gembloux. Still with strict instructions from the Dutch not to offer battle, which was being reciprocated by the French who also feared bringing on a general engagement in Flanders now that their army there had been weakened, the Allied army moved out of its camp on August 10^th, marching towards Genappe in an attempt to turn the French left flank. Marshal Louis-Joseph, Duc de Vendôme, one of the finest commanders in the French army, despite his appalling habits and fiery temper, soon fathomed Marlborough’s plan and retired back towards Seneffe, with the Allies floundering around in torrential rain in his wake. The result of these manoeuvres resulted in both the French and Allied armies occupying roughly the same positions they started from in May. With Vendôme unlikely to make any move that would jeopardise his lines of communication, and Marlborough constricted both by the orders of the Dutch Deputies and the terrible state of the roads, the campaign of 1707 petered out, ‘…The recovery of France seemed complete in every theatre. Grievous defeats had overtaken all the allied arms at Almanza and Stollhofen; cruel disappointment at Toulon. His (Marlborough’s) own campaign had been fettered and ineffectual. The Empire pursued its own woebegone, particularist ambitions. Southern Germany had allowed itself to be ravaged without any rally of the Teutonic princes. The Dutch, angry and disappointed, hugged their Barrier, and their grasping administration had already cost the Allies every scrap of Belgian sympathy…In this adversity the Confederate armies sought their winter quarters; and Marlborough returned home to face a Cabinet crisis, the Parliamentary storm, and, worst of all, bedchamber intrigue.’⁶