The Battle of Blenheim Part 5

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 Donauworth was in progress, he was a.s.sembling his forces upon the right bank of the river before beginning to secure his pa.s.sage 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Sch.e.l.lenberg, 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 pa.s.sage across the hills, and amply to provision his advance, were fully justified. He knew nothing of the fall of Donauworth.

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 a.s.sured 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.

His troops, ill fed and exhausted, marched upon wretched rations of bread and biscuit alone, and with that knowledge of insecurity behind them which the private soldier, though he can know so little of the general plan of any campaign, instinctively feels when he is taking part in an advance of doubtful omen.

A week later, upon the 29th of July, the army was in sight of Ulm. It found there but six thousand sacks of flour. It knew that it would find no sufficient provisionment in Augsburg at the end of its advance, yet advance it must unless the forces of Bavaria were to be lost to the cause of Louis XIV.

Five days later the junction was effected, and upon Monday the 4th of August the united armies of Tallard and the Elector of Bavaria faced, in the neighbourhood of Augsburg, the opposing armies of Marlborough and Baden upon the further side of the Lech.

In spite of the deplorable sickness and loss among his horse, the absence of remounts, the exhaustion of his men, the poor provisioning, and the insecurity of the line of supply behind him, Tallard could now present forces somewhat superior (counted by battalions and nominal squadrons)--far superior in artillery--to the forces of the allies.

Had this reluctant and tardy advance of Tallard's on the one hand, the ravaging of Bavaria by Baden and Marlborough on the other, between them const.i.tuted the whole of the second phase in the preliminaries of Blenheim, the result of the campaign might have been very different, in spite of the impoverished condition of the Franco-Bavarian army.

But a third element, of the utmost importance, must be added: the rapid, the secret, and the successful march of Eugene during these same days across the northern part of these same hills which the French had just traversed by their southern pa.s.ses, and the debouching of that formidable captain with his admirably disciplined force, especially strong in cavalry, upon the upper valley of the Danube to reinforce Marlborough and to decide the war.

So long as Tallard proceeded, with soldierly method, to the proper affirmation of his line of advance and to the reduction of Villingen, Eugene had been pinned to the neighbourhood of the Rhine.

Would Eugene, when the siege of Villingen was raised, and when Tallard had been persuaded to that precipitous eastern move, go back to hold the line of the Rhine against the French forces there situated, or would he decide for the risk of detaching a large command, perhaps of leading it himself, and of joining Marlborough? That was the doubtful factor in Tallard's plans.

As in the case of Marlborough's own march to the Danube, either alternative was possible. The safer course for Eugene, and that one therefore which seemed in the eyes of his enemies the more probable, was for him to remain on the Rhine. But it was conceivable that he would run the risk of leading a force to the Danube; and did he so decide, the whole business of the French remaining on the Rhine was to discover his intention, the whole business of Eugene to hide it.

As in the case of Marlborough's march to the Danube, Eugene was led by a just instinct to gamble on the chance of the French army in Alsace not noting his move, and of the few troops he left opposite them upon the Rhine sufficing to screen his movements and to give the effect of much larger numbers. In other words, though his task in the coalition was to watch the central Rhine, he decided to take the risk of seeing the Rhine forced, and to march in aid of the English general whom he had himself summoned to Bavaria, with whose genius his own had such sympathy, and at whose side he was to accomplish the marvels of the next seven years.

Like Marlborough, he was successful in concealing his determination, but, with a smaller force than Marlborough's had been, he was able to be more successful still.

Villeroy, who commanded the French upon the Middle Rhine, was informed by numerous deserters and spies that Eugene, after the fall of Villingen, was at Radstadt, and intended detaching but two or three battalions at most from his lines upon the right bank of the Rhine, and these not, of course, for work upon the Danube, but only to cover Wurtemburg by garrisoning Rottweil.

This information, coming though it did from many sources, was calculatedly false, and Eugene's movements, after the siege of Villingen had been raised, were arranged with a masterly penetration of his enemy's mind. A leisurely two days after the siege of Villingen was raised he entered that fortress, ordered the breaches to be repaired, and, in his every order and disposition, appeared determined to remain within the neighbourhood of the Upper Rhine. Nearly a week later he was careful to show himself at Rottweil, hardly a day's march away, apparently doing no more than cover Wurtemburg against a possible French attack from beyond the Rhine; and, so far as such leisure and immobility could testify to his intentions, he proclaimed his determination to remain in that neighbourhood, and in no way to preoccupy himself with what might be going on in the valley of the Upper Danube.

With due deliberation, he left eight battalions in Rottweil to garrison that place, posted seventeen upon his lines upon the Rhine, and himself openly proceeded--and that at no great speed--to march for the valley of the Neckar with 15,000 men.... Those 15,000 had been picked from his army with a particular care; nearly one-third were cavalry in the highest training, and the command, which seemed but one of three detachments all destined to operate upon the Rhine, was in fact a body specially chosen for a very different task. Eugene continued to proceed in this open fashion and slow as far as Tubingen....

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map showing Eugene's march on the Danube from the Black Forest.]

It was many days since Tallard had begun his advance; many days since Villeroy, on the Rhine, had been watching the movements of Eugene; and during all these days that great general had done no more than a.s.sure his original positions with ample leisure, and to begin, with what was apparently a gross lack of concealment, a return by the Neckar round the north of the Black Forest to the Rhine valley.

Suddenly, from the moment of his reaching Tubingen, all this slow and patient work ceases. Eugene and his 15,000 abruptly disappear.

In place of the open march which all might follow, friend and foe alike, there is a void; in place of clear and reiterated information upon his unhurried movements, there is nothing but a fog, contradictory rumours, fantastic and ill-credited.

Never was a design better kept or concealed to a moment so near its accomplishment. When that design was accomplished, it was to determine, as we shall see in what follows, the whole issue of the campaign of Blenheim.

THE THIRD PHASE

_The Appearance of Eugene_

The third phase in the operations which led up to the battle of Blenheim is one of no more than nine days.

It stands distinct from all that went before, and must be regarded in history as a sort of little definite and enclosed preface to the great action. The distinctive character of this, the third phase, resides in the completion of the Franco-Bavarian force, its manoeuvring in the presence of the enemy, and its finding itself unexpectedly confronted with the reinforcements of Eugene.

To seize the character of this third phase, the sketch map opposite must be referred to.

It is the 5th of August. Tallard has fully effected his junction with Marcin and the Elector of Bavaria, and the united Franco-Bavarian force lies in and to the east of Augsburg. On the opposite bank of the river Lech this force is watched by the army of Marlborough and Baden, which has been ravaging Bavaria. But Marlborough and Baden, though they have an advanced depot at Donauworth, have their forward munitions and supplies far up northwards. Nordlingen is their advanced base, two days' marching beyond the Danube. A week away to the north Nuremberg contains their only large and permanent collection of stores. Marlborough and Baden are in perpetual difficulty for food, for ammunition, and for forage--especially for ammunition.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map showing the situation when Eugene suddenly appeared at Hochstadt, August 5-7, 1704.]

Since the whole object of Marlborough in marching to the Upper Danube was to embarra.s.s in this new seat of war the alliance of the French and Bavarian forces, it is, conversely, the business of the French commander to get him out of the valley of the Upper Danube and restore the liberty of action of the French monarch and of his ally the Elector of Bavaria.

The surest way of getting Marlborough out of the Upper Danube is to threaten his line of supply. He will then be compelled to fall back northward upon his base. Further (though Tallard did not know it at the moment), there is present the very real difficulty of friction between the two commanders of the army opposing him. Marlborough and Baden are not getting on well together. If it were possible for Marlborough to persuade Baden to go off on some little expedition of his own, withdrawing but a few soldiers, Marlborough would be well content, and Marlborough is by far the more formidable of the two men. But though the opportunity for such a riddance of divided command is open, for Prince Louis of Baden is anxious to besiege Ingolstadt, Marlborough dares not weaken the combined forces, even by a few battalions, now that Tallard has effected his junction with the Elector and with Marcin, and that a formidable force is opposed to him.

These elements in the situation, once clearly seized, the sequel follows from them logically enough.

The above describes the situation on the 5th of August.

On the 6th, Wednesday, the united Franco-Bavarian force began its march northward towards the Danube, a march parallel with Marlborough's line of supply, and threatening that line all the way, ready to cut it when once the northern bank of the Danube was reached. Marlborough was compelled, in view of that march, to go back northward, step for step with his opponents. The artery that fed him was in danger, and everything else must be neglected.