410 Blenheim [1704 had Villeroi found that Marlborough's feint at the Moselle was only the cloak to greater designs than he had pushed across to Alsace and joined Tallard. This allowed Tallard to cross the Rhine at Kehl (July 6) and carry 40 battalions and 60 squadrons through the Black Forest to Villingen (July 16), and, after wasting five days in a futile attempt on that town, to join the Elector near Augsburg on August 6. This delay was important. Eugene had been restrained from impeding Tallard's march by the presence of Villeroi's superior numbers; but, when he found that Villeroi showed no signs of taking the offensive, he set off with 78 squadrons and 18 battalions, nearly 20,000 men (July 23), and by forced marches reached Höchstädt on the Danube on the day Tallard joined his colleagues. This reinforcement made it possible to detach Margrave Lewis, whom Marlborough had found a somewhat uncongenial colleague, with 22 battalions and 34 squadrons of Austrians, amounting to some 15,000 men, to besiege Ingolstadt, the one strong place on the Danube below Donauwörth still in the hands of the Bavarians, and a fortress of great importance to the Allies because of its position on their direct line of communication with Vienna. Immediately after his departure (August 9) the enemy, hoping to find Eugene isolated, crossed to the north of the Danube at Dillingen and moved downstream. But, though Marlborough had remained posted south of the Danube so as to cover the siege of Ingolstadt, if necessary, he was not out of supporting distance of Eugene. A forced march brought his army into line with Eugene's on the Kessel (August 11); and, two days later, the Allies, anxious not to let slip the chance of a battle, attacked the FrancoBavarians behind the Nebel. The position was strong: the fortified villages of Blenheim (Blindheim) and Lutzingen protected its flanks, that of Oberglauheim covered its centre, and marshy banks made the Nebel a formidable obstacle. But Marlborough was quick to see that it had weak spots: that Blenheim and Oberglauheim were too far apart for mutual support; that, as the result of the two armies being posted separately, the actual centre of the Franco-Bavarians was formed of cavalry; that the cavalry who formed their centre were too far back from the Nebel to dispute the passage; and that the massing of Tallard's infantry in the villages left very few available to support his centre. Accordingly, Eugene's army worked round to the right through the woods to attack Marsin and the Elector, who were on Tallard's left from Oberglauheim to Lutzingen; Marlborough, after delaying till past mid-day to give Eugene time to get into place, drew Tallard's attention to the extremities of his line by vigorous, if expensive, attacks on Blenheim and Oberglauheim, under cover of which he pushed his cavalry forward to attack the hostile centre, from which reinforcements had been drawn off to Blenheim. Covered by the fire of the infantry and artillery which Marlborough brought up to support them, the Allied cavalry crossed the marshy Nebel, repulsed with the aid of Lord Orkney's infantry a belated charge by the French 1701-4] The results of Blenheim. The Mediterranean 411 horse, and then, reinforced by their reserves, delivered a smashing blow against Tallard's centre. The French cavalry, not having enough infantry to succour them, were routed and driven headlong, the few battalions of their centre being cut to pieces. Thus Tallard's whole army was shattered; and, though up to this point Marsin's had held Eugene at bay, the valiant efforts of the Imperial general's infantry being ill-supported by his horse, Marlborough's blow was decisive. Marsin, his right flank uncovered by the defeat of his colleague, could not hold his ground; Oberglauheim had already been carried; the 28 fine battalions in Blenheim were completely cut off and forced to surrender; and though Marsin withdrew his army in good order, Tallard's had ceased to exist as an efficient fighting-force. At a cost of 12,000 casualties the 52,000 Allies had routed a rather larger force in a strong position, inflicting on them 14,000 casualties, capturing over 100 guns and 11,000 prisoners, and had by this crushing blow shattered the great reputation of the French arms. The effect of this great victory was seen in the precipitate retreat of the French behind the Rhine, and in Villeroi's failure to interfere with the siege of Landau, which the Allies, who crossed at Philippsburg on September 8, invested a week later. On November 23 Landau fell; and on the same day Trarbach surrendered to Marlborough, who had pushed up the difficult valley of the Queich to the Moselle and occupied Trier (October 26). Thus in the year 1704 the situation was completely reversed in Germany; Vienna was delivered; the French invaders were expelled; the Elector of Bavaria was a fugitive, his dominions being placed under Austrian control by the Convention of Ilbersheim (November 7); and French prestige destroyed by a blow without a parallel since Condé had destroyed the Spanish reputation at Rocroi. Nor could Louis XIV balance this disaster with any success elsewhere. In Italy, Victor Amadeus, though sore beset and isolated, still maintained his ground in Piedmont ; in the Netherlands nothing had been done since Villeroi's departure; and in the new theatre of operations in the Pyrenean Peninsula and the Mediterranean the advantage had remained with the Allies. In the negotiations as to the Partition Treaties the question of the Mediterranean had been one of the most important issues. William, fresh from the experience of the last war, had seen that, were Spain to pass to a Bourbon, England would be excluded from the Mediterranean unless she should secure a base within the Straits. He had fought hard to obtain Minorca for England; and, but for the reluctance of Rooke to venture out so late in the season, a squadron would probably have been dispatched to Cadiz in the autumn of 1701 to forestall the French in occupying that all-important position. William was pressing on the preparations for such an expedition, when his death, which threw all arrangements out of gear, caused a serious delay in its departure. The instructions issued to Rooke leave no doubt that the expedition was 412 Cadiz. The Methuen Treaty [1702-4 aimed at Cadiz, not as the commercial centre of the trade of Spanish America, but as a strategic point capable of being made the base from which a British fleet might control the Mediterranean. But Rooke never liked or appreciated the scheme. In his eyes the intercepting of the returning Plate fleet was of far greater importance; and, owing partly to his lack of energy, but even more to Ormond's mismanage ment and the bad discipline of the troops, the attack on Cadiz (August 15 -September 15) proved a fiasco, which was only partly redeemed by Rooke's exploit on the homeward voyage. He found the Plate fleet sheltering in Vigo, and attacked and destroyed it with the French squadron which formed its escort (October 12). By this means he managed to return with one useful achievement to his credit, though the greater scheme had miscarried, and for want of a Mediterranean base the naval operations of the Allies in 1703 were of little effect. Still, by forcing the French to lie quiet all that summer in Toulon, Shovell proved to Portugal that England could cover her against France. This demonstration directly furthered the negotiation of the Treaty of May 16, 1703, by which Portugal was detached from the side of Louis and enrolled among the adherents of the Grand Alliance.1 One important result of Portugal's change of sides was that, when the Emperor decided to transfer his rights over Spain to his second son, Archduke Charles, and to dispatch him to the Peninsula to prosecute his claim, a good base was secured for the operations of the troops which England and Holland sent out to assist him (February, 1704). Philip V was, however, prepared for the attack; and by land little was accomplished. It was at sea, not ashore, that took place the principal operations of the Allies in southern Europe in 1704. Seeing clearly that the capture of Toulon would be the most damaging blow that could be inflicted on France, Marlborough had planned that, after Rooke had escorted Archduke Charles to the Tagus, he should carry his fleet to the Riviera and there gain touch with the Duke of Savoy, who was to furnish the land forces needed to co-operate with the British navy in this great enterprise. Unfortunately for the Allies, it was at this time wholly out of the power of the Duke of Savoy to spare any troops for an attack on Toulon. Accordingly, Rooke had to fall back on his alternative task of assisting the operations of the Archduke, and returned to the Straits. On the way home, he unluckily just failed to intercept the French squadron from Brest, which the Count of Toulouse was bringing 1 This Treaty, signed by Paul Methuen, must be distinguished from the famous "Methuen Treaty concluded by his father John (formerly Lord Chancellor of Ireland) on December 27, by which Portugal was commercially tied to England. Greatly to the damage of the general commercial and industrial interests of Portugal, her wines were admitted into England at a duty lower by one-third than that levied upon French wines, while the importation of English woollens into Portugal was permitted. 1704-5] Gibraltar and Malaga. The Netherlands 413 to the assistance of the Toulon squadron, sighting them without being able to overtake them (May 27). At the Straits, Rooke found reinforcements awaiting him from the Channel Fleet, sent southward as soon as the destination of Toulouse was known, which brought his fleet up to over 50 sail of the line. Thus reinforced, he decided to carry out an enterprise which English strategists had been contemplating for some time past. The capture of Gibraltar (August 4) was, like the destruction of the Plate fleet at Vigo, a useful rather than a brilliant achievement, for both garrison and defences were weak; but, if Rooke's merits in this matter are sometimes overstated, he has not generally received proper credit for the action which he fought three weeks later-the only encounter of the main battle fleets during the War. Believing that Rooke was going to attack Barcelona, Toulouse had put to sea with about 50 sail of the line (July 29); and, on hearing of the loss of Gibraltar, he hastened to the Straits to see if he could do anything to retrieve the situation. Rooke was cruising to the eastward of Gibraltar, to cover his prize from any attempt to recover it; and on August 24 he fell in with the French off Velez Malaga. The odds were approximately equal; for, if the Allies had a slight superiority in ships, they were very short-handed, and were also seriously handicapped by the great expenditure of ammunition in the capture of Gibraltar. It was a hard-fought encounter -"the sharpest day's service I ever saw," Rooke called it-of which tactically the Allies had by no means the worst, preventing Toulouse's efforts to break their line, and ultimately forcing the French to draw off so roughly mauled that next day, when he had the wind, Toulouse made no attempt to renew the action but withdrew to Toulon, leaving the Allies in possession of the fortress they had fought for. Strategically, there was no doubt about the victory; and during the rest of the War the French made no serious effort to challenge the Allied control of the Mediterranean, their fleet retiring into the shelter of Toulon whenever the British appeared in any strength. Shortly afterwards, it is true, when the lateness of the season had forced Rooke to depart homeward with the bulk of his fleet, Gibraltar was vigorously assailed by land by the Marquis of Villadarias with a large Franco-Spanish army, supported by a small squadron under de Pointis; but the siege. proved ineffectual, and in March, 1705, Leake finally raised it by destroying the blockading squadron off Marbella Point (March 21). For the campaign of 1705 Marlborough had planned an invasion of France by the line he had pretended to be about to use in 1704 - that of the Moselle and Saar. His aim was to penetrate to Metz, thereby turning the fortresses of the Netherlands and also cutting off Alsace from the interior. However, neither the States General, who had promised to fill his magazines, nor the Rhenish Electors on whom he was relying for transport, performed their obligations; and, when the death of the 414 Eugene in Italy. - Marlborough's great plan [1705–6 Emperor (May 5) caused the recall home of the Austrian contingent, Marlborough, not relishing the prospect of a campaign with a colleague so unsympathetic to him as Lewis of Baden, decided to transfer himself and his army to the Netherlands. Here Villeroi had already taken the offensive by capturing Huy (May 24); but Marlborough's return sent him back to his lines, out of which the Duke, despite the constant interference of Dutch deputies, proceeded to manœuvre him by a series of adroitly planned and skilfully executed enterprises. Feints against the extremities of the lines diverted Villeroi's attention and allowed the Duke to pierce their centre near Tirlemont (July 18); but the obstruction of the Dutch spoilt more than one fair chance of victory, and the campaign ended with the levelling of the lines between the Méhaigne and the Demer as the only thing accomplished. This, however, caused a strong detachment to be called up from Alsace, so that Villars was reduced to the defensive (August), just as he had taken Weissenburg and seemed likely to recover the line of the Lauter. In Italy, rather more had been accomplished. Eugene, taking the field in April, forced Vendôme's brother, the Grand Prior of France, to abandon the line of the Oglio and retire hastily behind the Adda by appearing on his flank and rear at Brescia (June 23). However, at Cassano (August 16) Vendôme checked Eugene's advance somewhat sharply; and the Austrians had finally to retire towards Tyrol for the winter. Still, Eugene's activity had greatly relieved the pressure on Piedmont, enabled Turin to hold out, and kept the half hearted Duke of Savoy true to his new alliance. The next campaign opened badly for the Imperialists in Italy. In April, 1706, Vendôme made a sudden attack on their cantonments round Brescia, driving them back into Tyrol in confusion, just as Eugene returned from his labours at Vienna, whither he had gone to obtain reinforcements and a supply of money for the army in Italy. Had the Allied commanders been able to have their own way, Eugene would have been accompanied by Marlborough and a British contingent; for the Duke, ever looking towards Toulon, hoped in concert with Eugene to sweep the French from northern Italy, and then, assisted by the British fleet in the Mediterranean, to deal the blow hitherto forbidden by the want of a land force at his disposal. It was a scheme more brilliant even than the march to the Danube in 1704 and exhibiting to the full Marlborough's strategic insight and comprehensive grasp. However, just as he seemed about to win the consent of the States General, the sudden retreat of Lewis of Baden behind the Rhine (April) revived their apprehensions, and prevented the great design from being carried out. But an English subsidy of £250,000 furnished Eugene with 24,000 troops from Hesse-Cassel, Brandenburg, Saxe-Gotha and the Palatinate; and, thus reinforced, he moved down the left of the Adige (July 5), disregarding Venetian neutrality as in 1701, outflanked Marsin, the new commander of the French army of Italy, and crossed to the south of the Po |