The Project Gutenberg eBook ofMalplaquetThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: MalplaquetAuthor: Hilaire BellocRelease date: May 5, 2010 [eBook #32257]Most recently updated: January 6, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from imagesgenerously made available by The Internet Archive/CanadianLibraries.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MALPLAQUET ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: MalplaquetAuthor: Hilaire BellocRelease date: May 5, 2010 [eBook #32257]Most recently updated: January 6, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from imagesgenerously made available by The Internet Archive/CanadianLibraries.)
Title: Malplaquet
Author: Hilaire Belloc
Author: Hilaire Belloc
Release date: May 5, 2010 [eBook #32257]Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from imagesgenerously made available by The Internet Archive/CanadianLibraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MALPLAQUET ***
Malplaquet.
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Frontispiece.
That political significance which we must seek in all military history, and without which that history cannot be accurate even upon its technical side, may be stated for the battle of Malplaquet in the following terms.
Louis XIV. succeeding to a cautious and constructive period in the national life of France, this in its turn succeeding to the long impotence of the religious wars, found at his orders when his long minority was ended a society not only eager and united, but beginning also to give forth the fruit due to three active generations of discussion and combat.
Every department of the national life manifested an extreme vitality, and, while the orderly and therefore convincing scheme of French culture imposed itself upon Western Europe, there followed in its wake the triumph of French arms; the king in that triumph nearly perfected a realm which would have had for its limits those of ancient Gaul.
It would be too long a matter to describe, even in general terms, the major issues depending upon Louis XIV.’s national ambitions and their success or failure.
In one aspect he stands for the maintenance of Catholic civilisation against the Separatist and dissolving forces of the Protestant North; in another he is the permanent antagonist of the Holy Roman Empire, or rather of the House of Austria, which had attained to a permanent hegemony therein. An extravagant judgment conceives his great successes as a menace to the corporate independence of Europe, or—upon the other view—as the opportunity for the founding of a real European unity.
But all these general considerations may, for the purposes of military history, be regarded in the single light of the final and decisive action which Louis XIV. took whenhe determined in the year 1701 to support the claims of his young grandson to the throne of Spain. This it was which excited against him a universal coalition, and acts following upon that main decision drew into the coalition the deciding factor of Great Britain.
The supremacy of French arms had endured in Europe for forty years when the Spanish policy was decided on. Louis was growing old. That financial exhaustion which almost invariably follows a generation of high national activity, and which is almost invariably masked by pompous outward state, was a reality already present though as yet undiscovered in the condition of France.
It was at the close of that year 1701 that the French king had determined upon a union of the two crowns of France and Spain in his own family. His forces occupied the Spanish Netherlands, which we now call the Kingdom of Belgium; others of his armies were spread along the Rhine, or were acting in Northern Italy—for the coalition at once began to make itself felt. Two men of genius combined in an exact agreement, the qualities of each complementing the defects of the other, to lead the main armies that were operating against the French. Thesemen were Prince Eugene of Savoy (French by birth and training, a voluntary exile, and inspired throughout his life by a determination to avenge himself upon Louis XIV.), and the Englishman John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough.
The combination of such a pair was irresistible. Its fruit appeared almost at the inception of the new situation in the great victory of Blenheim.
This action, fought in August 1704, was the first great defeat French arms had registered in that generation. Henceforward the forces commanded from Versailles were compelled to stand upon the defensive.
To Blenheim succeeded one blow after another. In 1706 the great battle of Ramillies, in 1708 the crushing action of Oudenarde, confirmed the supremacy of the allies and the abasement of France. By the opening of 1709 the final defeat of Louis and his readiness to sue for peace were taken for granted.
The financial exhaustion which I have said was already present, though hardly suspected, in 1701, was grown by 1709 acute. The ordinary methods of recruitment for the French army—which nominally, of course, was upon a voluntary basis—had long reached and passed their limit. The failure of the harvest in 1708, followed by a winter of terrible severity, had completed the catastrophe, and with the ensuing spring of 1709 Louis had no alternative but to approach the allies with terms of surrender.
It seemed as though at last the way to Paris lay open. The forces of the allies in the Netherlands were not only numerically greatly superior to any which the exhausted French could now set against them, but in their equipment, in their supplies, the nourishment of the men, and every material detail, they were upon a footing wholly superior to the corresponding units of the enemy, man for man. They had further the incalculable advantage of prestige. Victory seemed normal to them, defeat to their opponents; and so overwhelming were the chances of the coalition against Louis that its leaders determined with judgment to demand from that monarch the very fullest and most humiliating terms.
Though various sections of the allies differed severally as to their objects and requirements, their general purpose of completely destroying the power of France for offence, of recapturing all her conquests, and in particular of driving the Bourbons fromthe throne of Spain, was held in common, and vigorously pursued.
Marlborough was as active as any in pushing the demands to the furthest possible point; Eugene, the ruling politicians of the English, the Dutch, and the German princes were agreed.
Louis naturally made every effort to lessen the blow, though he regarded his acceptance of grave and permanent humiliation as inevitable. The negotiations were undertaken at the Hague, and were protracted. They occupied the late spring of 1709 and stretched into the beginning of summer. The French king was prepared (as his instructions to his negotiators show) to give up every point, though he strove to bargain for what remained after each concession. He would lose the frontier fortresses, which were the barrier of his kingdom in the north-east. He would even consent to the abandonment of Spain to Austria.
Had that peace been declared for which the captains of Europe were confidently preparing, the future history of our civilisation would have proved materially different from what it has become. It is to be presumed that a complete breakdown of the strength of France would have followed; that the monarchy at Versailles would havesunk immediately into such disrepute that the eighteenth century would have seen France divided and possibly a prey to civil war, and one may even conclude that the great events of a century later, the Revolution and the campaigns of Napoleon, could not have sprung from so enfeebled a society.
It so happened, however, that one of those slight miscalculations which are productive in history of its chief consequences, prevented the complete humiliation of Louis XIV. The demands of the allies were pushed in one last respect just beyond the line which it was worth the while of the defeated party to accept, for it was required of the old king not only that he should yield in every point, not only that he should abandon the claims of his own grandson to the throne of Spain (which throne Louis himself had now, after eight years of wise administration, singularly strengthened), but himself take arms against that grandson and co-operate in his proper shame by helping to oust him from it. It was stipulated that Louis should so act (if his grandson should show resistance and still clung to his throne) in company with those who had been for so many years his bitter and successful foes.
This last small item in the programme of the victors changed all. It destroyed in the mind of Louis and of his subjects the advantages of the disgraceful peace which they had thought themselves compelled to accept; and, as Louis himself well put it, if he were still compelled to carry on the war, it was better to fail in pursuing it against his enemies than against his own household.
The king issued to the authorities of his kingdom and to his people a circular letter, which remains a model of statesmanlike appeal. Grave, brief, and resolute, it exactly expressed the common mood of the moment. It met with an enthusiastic response. The depleted countrysides just managed to furnish the armies with a bare pittance of oats and rye (for wheat was unobtainable). Recruits appeared in unexpected numbers; and though none could believe that the issue could be other than disastrous, the campaign of 1709 was undertaken by a united nation.
Of French offensive action against the overwhelming forces of their enemies there could be no question. Villars, who commanded the armies of Louis XIV. upon the north-eastern frontier, opposing Marlborough and Eugene, drew up a line of defence consisting of entrenchments, flooded land, andthe use of existing watercourses, a line running from the neighbourhood of Douai away eastward to the Belgian frontier. Behind this line, with his headquarters at La Bassée,[1]he waited the fatal assault.
It was at the close of June that the enemy’s great forces moved. Their first action was not an attempt to penetrate the line but to take the fortresses upon its right, which taken, the defence might be turned. They therefore laid siege to Tournai, the first of the two fortresses guarding the right of the French line. (Mons was the second.)
Here the first material point in the campaign showed the power of resistance that tradition and discipline yet maintained in the French army. The long resistance of Tournai and its small garrison largely determined what was to follow. Its siege had been undertaken in the hope of its rapid termination, which the exiguity of its garrison and the impossibility of its succour rendered probable. But though Marlborough had established his headquarters before the place by the evening of the 27th of June, and Eugene upon the next day, the 28th, though trenches were opened in thefirst week of July and the first of the heavy fighting began upon the 8th of that month, though the town itself was occupied after a fortnight’s struggle, yet it was not until the 3rd of September that the citadel surrendered.
This protracted resistance largely determined what was to follow. While it lasted no action could be undertaken against Villars. Meanwhile the French forces were growing stronger, and, most important of all, the first results of the harvest began to be felt.
Tournai once taken, it was the business of the allies to pierce the French line of defence as soon as possible, and with that object to bring Villars to battle and to defeat him.
The plan chosen for this object was as follows:—
The allied army to march to the extreme right of the positions which the French could hope to defend. There the allies would contain the little garrison of Mons. Thither the mass of the French forces must march in order to bar the enemy’s advance upon Paris, and upon some point near Mons the whole weight of the allies could fall upon them, destroy them, and leave the way to the capital open.
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Sketch Map showing how the Lines of La Bassée blocked the advance of the Allies on Paris,and Marlborough’s plan for turning them by the successive capture of Tournai and Mons.
The plan was strategically wise. The lines of La Bassée proper could not be pierced, but this right extremity of the French positions was backed by easy country; the swamps, canals, and entrenchments of the main line to the north and west were absent. With the defeat of the inferior French forces at this point all obstacle to an advance into the heart of France would be removed.
The plan was as rapidly executed as it was skilfully devised. Actually before the capitulation of the citadel of Tournai, but when it was perceived that that capitulation could only be a matter of hours, Lord Orkney had begun to advance upon the neighbourhood of Mons. Upon the day of the capitulation of Tournai, the Prince of Hesse-Cassel had started for Mons, Cadogan following him with the cavalry. Less than twenty-four hours after Tournai had yielded, the whole allied army was on the march throughout the night. Never was a military operation performed with organisation more exact, or with obedience more prompt. Three days later Mons was contained, and by Monday the 9th of September Villars awaited, some few miles to the west of that fortress, the assault of the allies.
There followed two days of delay, whichwill be discussed in detail later. For the purposes of this introductory survey of the political meaning of the battle, it is enough to fix the date, Wednesday, 11th September 1709. A little before eight o’clock on the morning of that day the first cannon-shot of the battle of Malplaquet was fired. To the numerical superiority of the allies the French could oppose entrenchment and that character in the locality of the fight, or “terrain,” which will be fully described on a later page. To the superiormoral, equipment, and subsistence of the allies, however, it was doubtful whether any factor could be discovered on the French side.
An unexpected enthusiasm lent something to the French resistance; the delay of two days lent something more to their defensive power. As will be seen in the sequel, certain errors (notably upon the left of Marlborough’s line) also contributed to the result, and the whole day was passed in a series of attacks and counter-attacks which left the French forces intact, and permitted them in the early afternoon to rely upon the exhaustion of the enemy and to leave, in order and without loss, the field to the enemy.
Marlborough’s victory at Malplaquet was both honourable and great. The Frenchwere compelled to withdraw; the allies occupied upon the evening of the battle the ground upon which the struggle had taken place. It is with justice that Malplaquet is counted as the fourth of those great successful actions which distinguish the name of Marlborough, and it is reckoned with justice the conclusion of the series whose three other terms are Blenheim, Ramillies, and Oudenarde. So much might suffice did war consist in scoring points as one does in a game. But when we consider war as alone it should be considered for the serious purposes of history—that is, in its political aspect; and when we ask what Malplaquet was in the political sequence of European events, the withdrawal of the French from the field in the early afternoon of September 11, 1709, has no significance comparable to the fact that the allies could not pursue.
Strategically the victory meant that an army which it was intended to destroy had maintained itself intact; morally, the battle left the defeated more elated than the victors; and for this reason, that the result was so much more in their favour than the expectation had been. In what is most important of all, the general fortunes of the campaign, the victory of the allies atMalplaquet was as sure a signal that the advance on Paris could not be made, and as sure a prevention of that advance as though Marlborough and Eugene had registered, not a success, but a defeat.
Situations of this sort, which render victories barren or actually negative, paradoxical to the general reader, simple enough in their military aspect, abound in the history of war. It is perhaps more important to explain them if one is to make military history intelligible than to describe the preliminaries and movements of the great decisive action.
The “block” of Malplaquet (to use the metaphor which is common in French history), the unexpected power of resistance which this last of the French armies displayed, and the moral effect of that resistance upon the allies, have an historical meaning almost as high as that of Blenheim upon the other side. It has been well said that one may win every battle and yet lose a campaign; there is a sense in which it may be said that one may win a campaign and suffer political loss as the result.
Malplaquet was the turning-point after which it was evident that the decline of the French position in Europe would go no further. As Blenheim had marked the turnof the tide against Louis, so Malplaquet marked the slack water when the tide was ready to turn in his favour. After Blenheim it was certain that the ambition of Louis XIV. was checked, and probable that it would wholly fail. After Malplaquet it was equally certain that the total destruction of Louis’ power was impossible, that the project of a march on Paris might be abandoned, and that the last phases of the great war would diminish the chances of the allies.
The Dutch (whose troops in particular had been annihilated upon the left of the field) did indeed maintain their uncompromising attitude, but no longer with the old certitude of success; Austria also and her allies did continue the war, but a war doomed to puerility, to a sort of stale-mate bound to end in compromise. But it was in England that the effect of the battle was most remarkable.
In England, where opinion had but tardily accepted the necessity for war nine years before, and where the fruits of that war were now regarded as quite sufficient for the satisfaction of English demands, this negative action, followed by no greater fruit than the capitulation of the little garrison at Mons, began the agitation for peace. Look closely at that agitation through itsdetails, and personal motives will confuse you; the motives of the queen, of Harley, of Marlborough’s enemies. Look at it in the general light of the national history and you will perceive that the winter following Malplaquet, a winter of disillusionment and discontent, bred in England an opinion that made peace certain at last. The accusation against Marlborough that he fought the battle with an eye to his failing political position is probably unjust. The accusation that he fought it from a lust of bloodshed is certainly a stupid calumny. But the unpopularity of so great a man succeeding upon so considerable a technical success sufficiently proves at what a price the barrenness of that success was estimated in England. It was the English Government that first opened secret negotiations with Louis for peace in the following year; and when the great instrument which closed the war was signed at Utrecht in 1713, it was after the English troops had been withdrawn from their allies, after Eugene, acting single-handed, had suffered serious check, and in general the Peace of Utrecht was concluded under conditions far more favourable to Louis than would have been any peace signed at the Hague in 1709. The Spanish Netherlands were ceded to Austria,but France kept intact what is still her Belgian frontier. She preserved what she has since lost on the frontier of the Rhine, and (most remarkable of all!) the grandson of Louis was permitted to remain upon the Spanish throne.
Such is the general political setting of this fierce action, one of the most determined known in the history of European arms, and therefore one of the most legitimately glorious; one in which men were most ready at the call of duty and under the influences of discipline to sacrifice their lives in the defence of a common cause; and one which, as all such sacrifices must, illumines the history of the several national traditions concerned, of the English as of the Dutch, of the German principalities as of the French.
No action better proves the historical worth of valour.
When the negotiations for peace had failed, that is, with the opening of June 1709, the King of France and his forces had particularly to dread an invasion of the country and the march on Paris.
The accompanying sketch map will show under what preoccupations the French commander upon the north-eastern frontier lay.
Lille was in the hands of the enemy. There was still a small French garrison in Ypres, another in Tournai, and a third in Mons. These of themselves (considering that Lille, the great town, was now occupied by the allies, and considering also the width of the gap between Ypres and Tournai) could not prevent the invasion and the advance on the capital.
It was necessary to oppose some more formidable barrier to the line of advance which topography marked out for the allies into the heart of France.
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Sketch Map showing how the Allies holding Lille thrust the French backon to the defensive line St Venant-Valenciennes, and thus cut off theFrench garrisons of Ypres, Tournai, and Mons.
Some fear was indeed expressed lest a descent should be made on the coasts and an advance attempted along the valley of the Somme. The fear was groundless. To organise the transportation of troops thus by sea, to disembark them, to bring and continue the enormous supply of provisions and ammunition they would require, was far less practical than to use the great forces already drawn up under Marlborough and Eugene in the Low Countries. Of what size these forces were we shall see in a moment.
The barrier, then, which Villars at the head of the French forces proceeded to erect, and which is known in history as “The Lines of La Bassée,” are the first point upon which we must fix our attention in order to understand the campaign of Malplaquet, and why that battle took place where it did.
It was upon the 3rd of June that Louis XIV. had written to Villars telling him that a renewal of the war would now be undertaken. On the 14th, Villars began to throw up earth for the formation of an entrenched camp between the marshy ground of Hulluch and that of Cuinchy. Here he proposed toconcentrate the mass of his forces, with La Bassée just before him, the town of Lens behind. He used the waterways and the swamped ground in front and to the right for the formation of his defensive lines. These followed the upper valley of the Deule, the line of its canal, and finally reposed their right upon the river Scarpe. Though the regularly fortified line went no further than the camp near La Bassée, he also threw up a couple of entrenchments in front of Bethune and St Venant in order to cover any march he might have to make towards his left should the enemy attempt to turn him in that direction.
It must further be noted that from the Scarpe eastward went the old “lines of La Trouille” thrown up in a former campaign, and now largely useless, but still covering, after a fashion, the neighbourhood of Mons.
Toward the end of the month of June Villars awaited the advance of the allies. His forces were inferior by 40,000 to those of his enemy. He had but eight men to their twelve. The season of the year, immediately preceding the harvest, made the victualling of his troops exceedingly difficult, nor was it until the day before the final assault was expected that the moneys necessary to their pay, and to the otherpurposes of the army, reached him; but he had done what he could, and, acting upon a national tradition which is as old as Rome, he had very wisely depended upon fortification.
The same conditions of the season which produced something like famine in the French camp, though they did not press equally severely upon that of the allies, rendered difficult the provisioning of their vast army also.
It was the first intention of Marlborough and Eugene to attack the lines at once, to force them, and to destroy the command of Villars. But these lines had been carefully reconnoitred, notably by Cadogan, who, with a party of English officers, and under a disguise, had made himself acquainted with their strength. It was determined, therefore, at the last moment, partly also from the fears of the Dutch, to whom the possession of every fortress upon the frontier was of paramount importance, to make but a “feint” upon Villars’ lines and to direct the army upon Tournai as its true object. The feint took the form of Eugene’s marching towards the left or western extremity of the line, Marlborough towards the eastern or right extremity near Douai, and this general movement was effected onthe night of the 26th and 27th of June. In the midst of its execution, the feint (which for the moment deceived Villars) was arrested.
The 27th was passed without a movement, Villars refusing to leave his entrenchments, and the commanders of the allies giving no hint of their next intention. But during that same day Tilly with the Dutch had appeared before Tournai. On the evening of the day Marlborough himself was before the town. On the 28th Prince Eugene joined both the Dutch and Marlborough before the town, taking up his headquarters at Froyennes, Marlborough being at Willemeau, and the Dutch, under Tilly, already established on the east of Tournai from Antoing to Constantin, just opposite Eugene, where they threw a bridge across the Scheldt. By the evening of the 28th, therefore, Tournai was invested on every side, and the great allied armies of between 110,000 and 120,000 men had abandoned all hope of carrying Villars’ lines, and had sat down to the capture of the frontier fortress.[2]
A comprehension of this siege of Tournai, which so largely determined the fortunes of the campaign of Malplaquet, will be aided by the accompanying sketch map. Here it is apparent that Marlborough with his headquarters at Willemeau, Eugene with his at Froyennes, the Dutch under Tilly in a semicircle from Antoing to Constantin, completed the investment of the fortress, and that the existing bridge at Antoing which the Dutch commanded, the bridge at Constantin which they had constructed, giving access over the river to the north and to the south, made the circle complete.
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Sketch Map showing complete investment of Tournai.
The fortifications of Tournai were excellent. Vauban had superintended that piece of engineering in person, and the scheme of the fortifications was remarkable from the strength of the citadel which lay apart from the town (though within its ring of earthworks) to the south. The traveller can still recognise in its abandonment this enormous achievement of Louis XIV.’s sappers, and the opposition it was about to offer to the great hosts of Marlborough and Eugene does almost as much honour to the genius of the French engineer as to the tenacity of the little garrison then defending it.
Two factors in the situation must first be appreciated by the reader.
The first is that the inferiority of Villars’ force made it impossible for him to do more than demonstrate against the army of observation. He was compelled to leave Tournai to its fate, and, indeed, the king in his first instructions, Villars in his reply, had taken it for granted that either that town or Ypres would be besieged and must fall. But the value of a fortress depends not upon its inviolability (for that can never be reckoned with), but upon the length oftime during which it can hold out, and in this respect Tournai was to give full measure.
Secondly, it must be set down for the allies that their unexpectedly long task was hampered by exceptional weather. Rain fell continually, and though their command of the Scheldt lessened in some degree the problem of transport, rain in those days upon such roads as the allies drew their supplies by was a heavy handicap. The garrison of Tournai numbered thirteen and a half battalions, five detached companies, the complement of gunners necessary for the artillery, and a couple of Irish brigades—in all, counting the depleted condition of the French units at the moment, some six to seven thousand men. Perhaps, counting every combatant and non-combatant attached to the garrison, a full seven thousand men.
The command of this force was under Surville, in rank a lieutenant-general. Ravignon and Dolet were his subordinates. There was no lack of wheat for so small a force. Rationed, it was sufficient for four months. Meat made default, and, what was important with a large civil population encumbering the little garrison, money. Surville, the bishop, and others melteddown their plate; even that of the altars in the town was sacrificed.
The first trench was opened on the night of the 7th of July, and three first attacks were delivered: one by the gate called Marvis, which looks eastward, another by the gate of Valenciennes, the third at the gate known as that of the Seven Springs. A sortie of the second of these was fairly successful, and upon this model the operations continued for five days.
By the end of that time a hundred heavy pieces had come up the Scheldt from Ghent, and sixty mortars as well. Four great batteries were formed. That to the south opened fire upon the 13th of July, and on the 14th the three others joined it.
The discipline maintained in the great camps of the besiegers was severe, and the besieged experienced the unusual recruitment of five hundred to six hundred deserters who penetrated within their lines. A considerable body of deserters also betook themselves to Villars’ lines, and the operations in these first days were sufficiently violent to account for some four thousand killed and wounded upon the side of the allies. Villars, meanwhile, could do no more than demonstrate without effect. Apart from the inferiority of his force, it wasstill impossible for him, until the harvest was gathered, to establish a sufficient accumulation of wheat to permit a forward movement. He never had four days’ provision of bread at any one time, nor, considering the length of his line, could he concentrate it upon any one place. He was fed by driblets from day to day, and lived from hand to mouth while the siege of Tournai proceeded to the east of him.
That siege was entering, with the close of the month, upon the end of its first phase.
It had been a desperate combat of mine and counter-mine even where the general circumvallation of the town was concerned, though the worst, of course, was to come when the citadel should be attacked. The batteries against the place had been increased until they counted one hundred and twelve heavy pieces and seventy mortars. On the night of the 24th of July the covered way on the right of the Scheldt was taken at heavy loss; forty-eight hours later the covered way on the left between the river and the citadel. The horn work in front of the Gate of the Seven Springs was carried on the 27th, and the isolated work between this point and the Gate of Lille upon the following day. Surville in his report, in the true French spirit of self-criticism,ascribed to the culpable failure of their defenders the loss of these outworks. But the loss, whatever its cause, determined the loss of the town. A few hours later practicable breaches had been made in the walls, ways were filled in over the ditches, and on the imminence of a general assault Surville upon the 28th demanded terms. The capitulation was signed on the 29th, and with it the commander sent a letter to Versailles detailing his motives for demanding terms for the civilian population. Finally, upon the 30th,[3]Surville with 4000 men, all that was left of his original force of 7000, retired into the citadel and there disposed himself for as a long a resistance as might be. As his good fortune decided, he was to be able to hold with this small force for five full weeks.
To Marlborough is due the honour of the capitulation. The besieging troops were under his command, while Eugene directed the army of observation to the west. Marlborough put some eight thousand men into the town under Albemarle. A verbal understanding was given on both sides that thecitadel would not fire upon the civilian part, nor the allies make an attack from it upon the citadel, and the siege of that stronghold began upon the following day, the 21st, towards evening. The operations against the citadel proved far more severe and a far greater trial to Marlborough’s troops than those against the general circumvallation of the town. The subterranean struggle of mine and counter-mine particularly affected the moral of the allies, and after a week a proposal appeared[4]that the active fighting should cease, the siege be converted into a blockade, and only the small number of men sufficient for such a blockade be left before the citadel until the 5th of September, up to which date, a month ahead, at the utmost, it was believed the garrison could hold out. Louis was willing to accept the terms upon the condition that this month should be one of general truce. The allies refused this condition, and hostilities were resumed.[5]
The force employed for containing the citadel and for prosecuting its siege had no necessity to be very large.
It was warfare of a terrible kind. Men met underground in the mines, were burned alive when these were sprung, were exhausted, sometimes to death, in the subterranean and perilous labour. The mass of the army was free to menace Villars and his main body.
But the admirable engineering which had instructed and completed the lines of La Bassée still checked the allies, in spite of superior numbers and provisionment still superior.
The effect of the harvest was indeed just beginning to be felt, and the French general was beginning to have a little more elbow-room, so to speak, for the disposition of his men through the gradual replenishment of his stores. But even so, Marlborough and Eugene had very greatly the advantage of him in this respect.
When the siege of the citadel of Tournai had been proceeding a little more than a week, upon the 8th of August the main body of the allies fell suddenly upon Marchiennes.Here the river Scarpe defended the main French positions. The town itself lay upon the further bank like a bastion. The attack was made under Tilly, and, consonantly to the strength of all Villars’ defensive positions, that attack failed. On the night of the 9th Tilly retired from before Marchiennes, after having suffered the loss of but a few of his men.
This action, though but a detail in the campaign, is well worth noting, because it exhibits in a sort of section, as it were, the causes of Malplaquet.
Malplaquet, as we shall see in a moment, was fought simply because it had been impossible to pierce Villars’ line, and Malplaquet, though a victory, was a sterile victory, more useful to the defeated than to the victors, because the defence had been kept up for such a length of time and was able to choose its own terrain.
Now all this character in the campaign preceding the battle is exemplified in the attempt upon Marchiennes upon August 8th and 9th and its failure. Had it succeeded, had the line been pierced, there would have been no “block” at Malplaquet but an immediate invasion of France, just as there would have been had the line been pierced in the first attempt of five weeks before.
In the next week and the next, Villars continually extended that line. He brought it up solidly as far as St Venant on his left, as far as Valenciennes on his right. He continually strengthened it, so that at no one place should it need any considerable body of men to hold it, and that the mass of the army should be free to move at will behind this strong entrenchment and dyke, fortified as it was with careful inundation and the use of two large rivers.
Though the body of the allies again appeared in the neighbourhood of the lines, no general attack was delivered, but on the 30th of August Villars heard from deserters and spies that the citadel of Tournai was at the end of its provisions. Though but a certain minority of the allied army was necessary to contain that citadel, yet once it had fallen the whole of the allied forces would be much freer to act.
It was upon the 31st of August that Surville, finding himself at the end of his provisionment of food, proposed capitulation. At first no capitulation could be arrived at. Marlborough insisted upon the garrison’s complete surrender; Surville replied by threatening a destruction of the place. It was not until the morning of the 3rd September that a capitulation was signed in theform that the officers and soldiers of the garrison should not be free to serve the king until after they had been exchanged. The troops should march out with arms and colours, and should have safe escort through the French lines to Douai. They reached that town and camp upon the 4th, and an exchange of prisoners against their numbers was soon effected.
Thus after two months ended the siege of Tournai, a piece of resistance which, as the reader will soon see, determined all that was to follow. Six thousand four hundred men had held the place when it was first invested. Of these, 1709 (nearly a third) had been killed; a number approximately equal had been wounded. The figures are sufficient to show the desperate character of the fighting, and how worthy this episode of war was on both sides of the legends that arose from it.
With the end of the siege of Tournai both armies were free, the one for unfettered assault, the other to defend itself behind the lines as best it might.
To make a frontal attack upon Villars’ lines at any point was justly thought impossible after the past experience which Eugene and Marlborough had of their strength. A different plan was determined on. Mons, with its little garrison, should be invested, and the mass of the army should, on that extreme right of the French position, attempt to break through the old lines of the Trouille and invade France.
Coincidently with the first negotiations for the capitulation of the citadel of Tournai, this new plan was entered upon. Lord Orkney, with the grenadiers of the army and between 2000 and 3000 mountedmen, was sent off on the march to the south-east just as the first negotiations of Marlborough with Surville were opened. With this mobile force Orkney attempted to pass the Haine at St Ghislain. He all but surprised that point at one o’clock of the dark September night, but the French posts were just in time. He was beaten off, and had to cross the river higher up upon the eastern side of Mons, at Havre.
The little check was not without its importance. It meant that the rapid forward march of his vanguard had failed to force that extreme extension of the French line, which was called “The Line of the Trouille” from the name of the small river that falls into the Haine near Mons. In point of time—which is everything in defensive warfare—the success of the defence at St Ghislain meant that all action by the allies was retarded for pretty well a week. Meanwhile, the weather had turned to persistent and harassing rain, the allied army, “toiling through a sea of mud,”[6]had not invested Mons even upon the eastern side until the evening of the 7th of September. On the same day Villars took advantage of a natural feature, stronger for purposes of defence than the line of the Trouille. Thisfeature was the belt of forest-land which lies south and a little west of Mons, between that town and Bavai. He strengthened such forces as he had on the line of the Trouille (the little posts which had checked the first advance upon Mons, as I have said), concentrated the whole army just behind and west of the forest barrier, and watching the two gaps of that barrier, whose importance will be explained in a moment, he lay, upon the morning of Sunday, September the 8th, in a line which stretched from the river Haine at Montreuil to the bridge of Athis behind the woods; keeping watch upon his right in case he should have to move the line down south suddenly to meet an attack. As Villars so lay, he was in the position of a man who may be attacked through one of two doors in a wall. Such a man would stand between the two doors, watching both, and ready to spring upon that one which might be attacked, and attempt to defend it. The wall was the wall of wood, the two doors were the opening by Boussu and the other narrow opening which is distinguished by the name of Aulnois, the principal village at its mouth. It was this last which was to prove in the event the battlefield.
All this I must make plainer and elaborate in what follows, and close this section by a mere statement of the manœuvring for position.