BLENHEIM: BATTLE FOR EUROPE
How Two Men Stopped the French Conquest of Europe
Charles Spencer

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William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2020

This edition first published by Endeavour Press Ltd. in 2014

First published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2004

Copyright © Charles Spencer, 2004

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Charles Spencer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Ebook Edition © September 2020 ISBN: 9780008373207

Version: 2020-07-30

Dedication

For Ned

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

Preface

Prologue

Part One – Louis’s Europe

Chapter One – A Rod for his Own Back

Chapter Two – An Island No More

Chapter Three – John Churchill

Chapter Four – France Feels the Strain

Chapter Five – The Spanish Succession

Part Two – The War

Chapter Six – Taking Sides

Chapter Seven – The War in Flanders

Chapter Eight – Friends Like These

Chapter Nine – Closing In

Part Three – The Campaign

Chapter Ten – Cutting the Gordian Knot

Chapter Eleven – Prince Eugène

Chapter Twelve – Combined Forces

Chapter Thirteen – The Storming of the Schellenberg

Chapter Fourteen – Looking to Louis

Chapter Fifteen – Laying Waste to Bavaria

Chapter Sixteen – Battle Looms

Part Four – The Battle

Chapter Seventeen – Battle Joined

Chapter Eighteen – Blenheim Village

Chapter Nineteen – General Engagement

Chapter Twenty – Cavalry Charge

Chapter Twenty-One – Victory

Part Five – The Aftermath

Chapter Twenty-Two – ‘Que Dira Le Roi?’

Chapter Twenty-Three – Vindication

Chapter Twenty-Four – Lessons Learned

Appendix A – The Senior Officers of the Army of the Grand Alliance at Blenheim

Appendix B – British and Irish Regiments who fought at Blenheim, with their later names

Appendix C – The regiments brought into Bavaria by Marshal Tallard

Footnotes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Author’s Note

Dates: At the time of Blenheim, England used the Old Style of dates, whereas the rest of Europe used the Gregorian Calendar. The Old Style was ten days behind the New. To avoid confusion, I have used the New Style throughout.

Spelling: This was not standardised. At the risk of being accused of meddling, I have modified spelling in diaries and letters that may confuse the general, modern, reader.

Preface

If it were not for the vast and impressive palace of the same name, it’s doubtful whether many people outside the academic world would be aware of the Battle of Blenheim. Agincourt and Waterloo still have a distant and satisfying echo in the modern British psyche, but Blenheim, where the British helped win a victory that changed the course of history, is all but forgotten. Historians have breathed life into the reign of Queen Anne, and written biographies of John and Sarah Marlborough, yet the battle itself seems to have slunk off into the background, overtaken by the more glamorous exploits of Napoleon and the large-scale carnage of the twentieth century’s wars.

Ironically, Napoleon believed that his contemporaries undervalued Marlborough’s generalship, and he commissioned authors to make good the neglect. But still in Europe you find the battle, most frequently referred to as Höchstädt, as a mere footnote, even though so many different nationalities took part. Austrians, Belgians, British, Danes, Dutch, French, Irish, Swiss, and many different German states all contributed soldiers to this, one of the greatest battles in Europe’s history.

When I went to see the battle site, in the spring of 2003, I could find only one specific memorial in the village of Blindheim, whose Anglicised name has given the engagement its identity. A small plaque in the ground gives a few basic details. Wandering the lines where the Irish ‘Wild Geese’ nearly turned the battle in favour of their master, King Louis XIV; where the French generals were stunned to see the elite horsemen of their Gendarmerie utterly defeated by British cavalry, there is little to see except neat dormitory communities surrounded by sweeping fields of highly mechanised agriculture. I had assumed that the churchyard at Blenheim, where some of the most intense fighting took place, would have gravestones pockmarked by musket balls: instead, I was confronted by the shininess of modern tombstones that had seen no battle, and witnessed no war. I found it immensely sad that the sacrifice of so many men on the surrounding battlefield could be distilled down into a marble tablet, and nothing more.

The tercentenary of Blenheim seems set to return the battle to its rightful prominence. The Bavarian state government, previously reluctant to remember a crushing defeat of its army on home turf, has chosen to honour the event with an exhibition. This will be in nearby Höchstädt Castle and is intended to be permanent. It will show how Louis XIV’s overweening ambition drove neighbouring countries to form a coalition that was at last strong enough to check the mighty army of the ‘Sun King’.

The exhibition at Höchstädt Castle will mirror the message of this book: that the Battle of Blenheim ended King Louis’s plans to dominate Europe, and to extend his brand of absolute royal power from Spain to the Low Countries, and from Germany to Italy. The battle took place as a mighty transition was underway in Europe. France, Austria and an enfeebled Spain were still major powers in European affairs; Sweden and the Netherlands, giants of the seventeenth century, were slipping towards secondary status; Prussia’s gathering strength hinted at its dramatic future.

British soldiers made up only a fifth of the victorious allied army at Blenheim, but their contribution was decisive. They shrugged off a reputation for idle incompetence and showed uncommon ability and bravery. In the wake of Blenheim, the greatest land victory won under an English commander on foreign soil since Henry V’s Agincourt, the British took their first faltering steps towards empire.

This tale unfolds at a time when the Age of Reason combined with increasingly lethal weaponry to produce a unique period of military history: one when heavy bloodshed was shunned. The violent excesses of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) were still fresh in the memory, and the increased reliability and rate of fire of muskets and cannon ensured that casualties were extraordinarily high if armies met head-on. Monarchs and generals shrank from the cost of defeat and preferred wars of manoeuvre and sieges where the stakes were relatively low. Only the boldest commanders were prepared to gamble everything in open battle.

Blenheim left some 40,000 men dead or wounded. The consequences of this bloody battle were far-reaching: Southey wrote a poem decrying the futility of war, arguing that the bloodshed of 13 August 1704 settled nothing. However, the nineteenth-century historian Sir Edward Creasy included Blenheim in his magnum opus, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, alongside such pivotal actions as Marathon, Hastings and Saratoga. The reason for this was the effect that the battle had on Louis XIV’s ambitions: ‘Blenheim had dissipated for ever his once proud visions of almost universal conquest.’ Winston S. Churchill believed Blenheim was an event that ‘changed the political axis of the world’. Placing the battle in a wider context, he wrote: ‘The destruction of the Armada had preserved the life of Britain: the charge at Blenheim opened to her the gateways of the modern world.’

Such assessments provide, I hope, justification enough for returning to the background and the expression of a dynamic moment in Europe’s history, three hundred years ago, when the hitherto invincible army of a monstrous tyrant was destroyed in an afternoon.

Prologue

Picture the prince at the peak of his power.

He has, in the course of an already monumental reign, transformed his nation’s status from one of fragile potential to that of feared military juggernaut. For France, for Louis XIV, the future looks not only secure; it also holds the promise of even greater glory. It seems certain that the empire historically at the heart of Europe will, within days, be superseded by his own Gallic hegemony. Louis knows that his armies are closing in on Vienna, poised to deliver the final blow to the Habsburgs and their decrepit Holy Roman Empire. Once the sword arm of Catholic Europe, the Empire had lost most of its power and survived only by default. The imminent French victory will compel all Europe to accept that Louis XIV holds the true imperial power and his Bourbon dynasty reigns supreme. This summer of 1704 is a glorious time indeed, for a third generation of heirs now stands in the direct line: after his son the Dauphin, then his grandson the Duke of Burgundy, there is now the reassuring consolidation of a great-grandson, the newborn Duke of Brittany.

To Louis, ‘the Catholic King’, this continuation of his seed is a clear demonstration of divine support for him and the Bourbon line. With confidence Louis writes that this latest royal birth ‘… is one of the most visible signs that I have yet received of [God’s] protection. I am aware that such is without example in any of my regal predecessors’ reigns, and that this long succession of Kings assures the perpetuation of the good fortune of my lands.’[fn1] He asks for the Te Deum to be sung across France in acknowledgement of the divine blessing afforded his family and nation.

With the boy’s June birth, Louis has declared the summer of 1704 a season of general celebration. The Duke of Saint Simon, courtier and diarist, records disapprovingly in his secret journal: ‘This event caused great joy to the King and the Court. The town [of Paris] shared their delight, and carried their enthusiasm almost to madness, by the excess of their demonstration, and their festivities.’[fn2]

It is at Versailles, where Saint Simon is one of the myriad drones in attendance on the Sun King, that the festivities reach their zenith. The day there habitually culminates in colourful evening amusements — balls, concerts, operas — but this being summer, it is the season for Louis’s beloved outdoor ‘fêtes’. A keen and accomplished actor in his youth, when an addiction to amateur theatricals was formed, Louis still basks in the opulence of such displays: they allow him to reclaim the thespian limelight, without demeaning his regal status. The fête, like so much at Versailles, is part play-acting, part propaganda, and wholly for Louis’s pleasure.

Most of the fêtes take place outdoors, in the regimented grounds. The water bobs with tributes from across Europe, some from countries that are now France’s bitterest enemies: ‘On the mile-long cross-shaped grand canal glided a hundred swans from Denmark, two little yachts from England, carved and gilded galleys decked with red and white streamers and hangings fringed with gold, a small warship and a fleet of gondolas, manned by fourteen Venetian gondoliers.’[fn3]

Tonight, see Louis sitting in customary splendour above the courtiers on his royal dais, a periwig on his head, modish high heels on his feet. A classically based triumph is accorded him, led by Mars. The God of War is atop a chariot, drawn forward by soldiers. Fawning nymphs are in attendance, testimony to Mars’ military virility. Louis takes the salute with studied precision. He may never have led his troops into battle, his wartime experience confined to observing sieges, but that is of no matter. He has been the figurehead through decades of glory.

After the triumphal procession there follows an allegory, further pandering to the royal ego. It is a representation of how Europe — in French eyes — is currently arranged. In a position of unquestioned dominance stands the Seine, the main artery of Paris and, here, the symbol of France. The river expects and receives cowered homage from six major waterways: the Thames, the Meuse, the Neckar, the Scheldt, the Rhine, and the Danube. The Danube has a central role in our tale, far removed from further French triumphalism. Tonight, though, the prospect beckons of domination of the continent that is criss-crossed by these rivers.

For Louis, this was an evening that he would look back on as a watershed in his reign. Before it stood years of victorious wars, and mounting dynastic solidity. After it came repeated hammer-blows of disappointment, both military and familial. Our eyewitness Saint Simon marked the moment everything changed: ‘Even while these rejoicings were being celebrated, news reached us which spread consternation in every family, and cast a gloom over the whole city.’[fn4] The first reports of Blenheim were reaching Paris.

Part One – Louis’s Europe

Chapter One – A Rod for his Own Back

That spirit of infatuation and error

The fatal avant-courier of the fall of kings.

From Racine’s Athalie

Louis XIV bestrode the end of the seventeenth and the opening of the eighteenth centuries with a mixture of menace and panache. He was as dominating a figure then as Napoleon was to be a hundred years later. Like Bonaparte, Louis relied on military might to impose his will; at home and abroad, he cajoled the unwilling and crushed the openly hostile. However, whereas Napoleon’s control was limited to less than twenty years, Louis’s pungent brand of autocracy wafted through seven decades of European history.

France had twenty million inhabitants: three times the population of Spain, four times that of England, and nine times that of the Netherlands. Louis harnessed this numerical advantage, building a huge, efficient, army. In a ferocious quest for personal glory and national security, he unleashed it on France’s neighbours one after another.

Louis was the insecure and poorly educated son of an unremarkable king. His inadequate childhood tutoring left him with an outlook that was underpinned by two intertwined prejudices: a passionate belief in the divine right of kings, and a violent abhorrence of Protestantism. His historical knowledge, which might have lent context to his reign, was limited. He was proud to be a grandson of Henry IV, one of France’s greatest rulers. He was also aware that his father had yielded much respect and power during a disappointing 23-year reign. He wanted to emulate his grandfather, and put right his father’s failings. Louis’s life’s aim was to create a homogenous force in the centre of Europe, which he could lead with distinction.

The instinct for greatness was evident early in Louis’s rule. In September 1651, the thirteen-year-old boy-king gamely announced to Parlement that he was assuming his place as active head of state. However, this was a case of premature posturing, for the real power still resided with Cardinal Mazarin, Louis’s first minister. This Macchiavellian cleric remained the de facto ruler of France until his death in 1661. Only then did Louis wrest the power that his self-esteem so craved. Confident in his regal status, the king informed his politicians: ‘You will assist me with your advice when I ask for it.’ This was to be less often than they could possibly have envisaged.

It was the start of an autocratic reign that led Winston S. Churchill to accord Louis a unique place in historical infamy: ‘No worse enemy of human freedom has ever appeared in the trappings of polite civilisation. Insatiable appetite, cold, calculating ruthlessness, monumental conceit, presented themselves armed with fire and sword.’[fn1] The year he assumed real power, the twenty-three-year-old king married Maria Theresa, a daughter of King Philip IV of Spain. The dynastic potential of this union between Bourbon and Habsburg, the two most powerful dynasties of Western Europe, was enormous, but he could not capitalise on the match straightaway. As he explained in his Mémoires, Louis’s domestic problems came first: in his kingdom ‘disorder reigned everywhere’.[fn2] Indeed, at the time of the wedding, international pressure persuaded Louis to renounce any future rights to the Spanish throne. The concession was accepted — Louis had no alternative — on condition that France receive the compensation of a sizeable dowry. This was not paid.

To the rest of Europe, this was a mere detail — an unfortunate reflection of Spain’s parlous finances, which had brought bread riots to her cities and creeping paralysis to her industry. However, to Louis, the non-payment constituted a clear breach of contract. It kept alive his hopes that, in the right circumstances, he could lop off various branches of the huge Spanish empire for French consumption.

His opportunity came in 1665 when Philip IV of Spain died, leaving the throne to four-year-old Carlos II, a sickly boy not expected to see adulthood. Better yet, Carlos had no obvious heir — although Philip had fathered more than thirty illegitimate children, neither of his two queens had been able to provide him with another son. Louis decided that the Spanish Netherlands (roughly equating to modern-day Belgium) would be fitting compensation for the unpaid dowry. The region had been the springboard for Spanish invasions during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so its annexation would solve a long-standing strategic problem for France. Louis informed his mother-in-law, the Queen Regent of Spain, and negotiations began. They ended in 1667 when Louis ordered his army to attack.

Marshal Turenne, perhaps Louis’s most able commander, led 50,000 French troops on campaign, accompanied by his king. Thirsting to be in at the kill, Louis travelled in characteristic style, accompanied by his queen and two of his mistresses. Turenne captured half-a-dozen towns before laying siege to the city of Lille. Vauban, the king’s renowned siege expert, cracked the Spanish defences within a month. The keys of the city were presented to Louis in a ceremony that emphasised his role as all-conquering king.

Louis had expected support from the Dutch United Provinces, whose savage and protracted war of liberation from Spanish control had made them instinctive opponents of the Habsburgs. Only five years previously they had signed a treaty with France, guaranteeing mutual armed assistance in attack or defence for the next twenty-five years. However, the Dutch had since realised that Spanish power was fading. Their international trading network reported Spanish ships rotting at anchor, while the garrisons were unpaid, under-equipped and sometimes only partially clothed. The Dutch had signed the treaty with France without realising the intensity of Louis’s ambitions. Now, many men of influence in the United Provinces pointed to the unprecedented increase in the size of the French army. Instead of joining Louis in the invasion, the Dutch reneged on the treaty.

The United Provinces sought help from two fellow Protestant nations, England and Sweden. The union with the English was surprising, since the two nations had recently been at war — Dutch warships had stormed up the Thames to burn a British fleet at anchor. Nevertheless, this new confederacy, the ‘Triple Alliance’, informed Louis that it would take up arms against him unless he withdrew from the Spanish Netherlands forthwith.

Louis was outraged by this betrayal, but he had no choice but to cease hostilities. France emerged from the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in possession of a handful of towns and cities, including Tournai, Oudenarde and Lille. However, Louis was convinced that the perfidy of the Dutch had denied him the lordship of the whole of the Spanish Netherlands. He swore revenge.

Louis eschewed renewed armed conflict, instead plotting his vengeance through sinuous diplomacy. First, he exploited his ties with Charles II of England. The two kings were first cousins and Charles, albeit secretly, shared Louis’s Catholic faith. Charles’s sister Henrietta was married to Louis’s brother, the Duke of Orléans, and she acted as the conduit between the two Courts, in negotiations that led to the secret Treaty of Dover in May 1670. England and France agreed ‘their joint resolution to humble the pride of the States-General [the Dutch Parliament], and to destroy the power of a people which has … shown ingratitude to those who have helped to create its republic.’[fn3] The alliance was cemented by massive bribery: Louis paid Charles a secret pension of £225,000 a year for the duration of the war. Charles’s chief minister, the Earl of Sunderland, also pocketed vast sums. Louis insisted on a clause that committed Charles to re-establishing Catholicism in Britain — promising further payments and the provision of 6,000 French troops if it met with resistance. Charles II took the money, but shrank from challenging the staunch Protestantism of his people.

Sweden proved equally receptive to French gold. For years the Protestant champion of Europe, the Swedes were beginning to place territorial ambition over religious solidarity. Already in control of Finland, Estonia, Livonia and West Pomerania, Swedish ambitions now extended to Denmark and Poland. The Dutch could fend for themselves.

Having torn the wings off the triple alliance, Louis entrusted his most seasoned and dynamic marshals with the avenging invasion. In 1672 Turenne and Condé marched through the Bishopric of Liège with 120,000 troops, before advancing along the Rhine on separate banks. Facing just 25,000 Dutch soldiers, the French swarmed over the southern areas of the United Provinces. Louis ordered a war of dark aggression: ‘Go, my children,’ Marshal Luxembourg exhorted his men, ‘plunder, murder, destroy — and if it be possible to commit yet greater cruelties, be not negligent therein. Let me see that I am not deceived in my choice of the flower of the King’s troops.’[fn4]

The Dutch took desperate measures. In coastal Holland the dykes’ sluice gates were opened, flooding the low-lying land to form the defensive Water Line. With their fields and roads submerged, the peasants retreated out of reach of the invader, behind fortified town walls. This held the French back through the autumn, but in late December winter frosts turned the expanses of water into walkways of ice. Marshal Luxembourg issued skates to his foot soldiers, so they could speed across the frozen flats. French soldiers raped the women of Bodegraven and Zwammerdam before herding them into their homes with their families. They then set the buildings alight, razing both towns to the ground, and burning alive many of their inhabitants. Louvois, the leading French military administrator of the age, recorded with relish his part in such an atrocity: ‘We lit the town and grilled all the Hollanders in it.’[fn5]

Louis’s policy of deliberate terror won him Leiden, whose citizens forced their mayor to greet the invaders outside the walls, bearing the city’s keys in cowed surrender. But the atrocities were ultimately counter-productive, inspiring lasting hatred of France. Saint Simon recognised French savagery to be counter-productive, since it ‘caused such fear to all Europe that France never recovered from it.’[fn6] The de Witt brothers, key Dutch apologists of Louis’s before the war, had refused to heed warnings that invasion was imminent. They were seized by the mob, shot, and then torn into pieces: their ripped-out hearts were placed on public display. In the de Witts’ place emerged William of Orange, the leading member of what had been the Dutch ruling family before the advent of the republic.

By blood a prince, William was now created Stadholder, the generalissimo of the republic’s forces. In their desperation the States-General were prepared to proclaim this living vestige of their nation’s royal past Captain- and Admiral-General for life; this despite William’s being, in Voltaire’s estimation, merely ‘a young Prince in poor health, who had seen neither siege nor combat’.[fn7]

William was aware of his shortcomings. To compensate for his military inexperience, he appointed the redoubtable Count von Waldeck as his second-in-command. The contrast of the charismatic, if sickly, young prince and the ill-humoured, but able, Prussian general gave the Dutch focus and hope. Waldeck inspired the troops, while William’s diplomatic skills brought allies to the aid of his people. Spain and the Holy Roman Empire joined the fight against France, forcing Louis to quit the United Provinces. After 1673 the Dutch War was mainly fought in the Spanish Netherlands.

The strong Dutch navy, under the brilliant admirals van Tromp and de Ruyter, stopped the English and French from landing invasion forces. By now William was being hailed as the ‘Redeemer of the Fatherland’: a young and dogged Protestant champion had emerged, who would stand against Louis for the remainder of the century.

William’s life’s work was a resolute refusal to bow to Louis’s military strength. It is a tale of brave resistance that takes us from the ravaged Lowlands of the 1670s to the brink of the war that produced the Battle of Blenheim. The influence of William — as Holland’s prince, England’s king, and France’s enemy — is a backdrop to our tale.

*

William’s hatred of Louis predated the rape of the United Provinces. His family inheritance included small, autonomous Orange, ‘which country and principality’, John Evelyn noted, ‘had no dependence on France these 500 years,’[fn8] despite being surrounded by French territory. To Louis, Orange’s independence was an accident that needed correction. The principality’s Protestantism was a further affront to Louis’s Catholic zeal. In 1660, Louis overran Orange, and made a triumphal entrance to establish his lordship of the new acquisition. His progress concluded at Orange’s fortifications, which he climbed. Reaching the top, he pulled a fragment of stone from the battlements, and tossed it over the walls to the ground below. The king’s retinue were quick to interpret this gesture, demolishing the fortress soon afterwards. Louis sent word to the ten-year-old William that he would oversee Orange as its protector, until the boy attained his majority. In the meantime, Louis explained, France would enjoy the principality’s revenues. William never forgave the confiscation of his patrimony.

The Dutch War ended in victory for Louis, recognised in a series of treaties from 1678-80. The Dutch had assembled a potent coalition to oppose him, but the combined forces of the United Provinces, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and several German states failed to defeat France. Franche-Comté and a dozen key cities were ceded to France, shortly followed by Alsace and Lorraine. In France, Louis was referred to as Louis le Grand, a sobriquet that he wholeheartedly embraced.

To cover his territorial ambitions with a veneer of legality, Louis established offices, Chambres de Réunion. There his lawyers sifted through ancient treaties and agreements, in search of long-forgotten clauses which might justify French territorial claims abroad. The 1680s saw the relentless combination of Louis, his court lawyers and his soldiers continue to identify and then seize cities and lands to which often only tenuous pretensions could be made. In 1681 the Chambres de Réunion identified Louis’s claim to the county of Chiny, in Spanish-owned Luxembourg. Three years of strong resistance followed, leading to the brief but bloody War of the Reunions. In 1684, however, blockaded Luxembourg was plucked from Spain, to become a French possession. Weeks later, Strasbourg was similarly added to France’s dominions. The same year, Louis ordered the bombardment of Genoa without declaration of war, because of the city’s pro-Habsburg leanings. No longer was Louis’s pretext simply to add francophone areas to his French dominions: German and Italian lands were also in his sights.

Louis emerged from the concluding Treaty of Ratisbon with his two major acquisitions, Strasbourg and Luxembourg, intact. Austria and Spain were obliged to recognise France’s new frontiers for twenty years. From The Hague, William of Orange watched Louis’s apparently unstoppable advance with despair: ‘If God does not take upon himself the protection of this poor people and her neighbours, in a short time all will be over.’[fn9] Evelyn, in England, agreed, recognising that Louis was within reach of establishing a ‘Fifth Universal Monarchy’.[fn10]

*

In the autumn of 1685, Louis developed an agonising and persistent toothache, and his doctors decided to extract the offending molar. However, they were ignorant of the importance of postoperative hygiene, and infection set in: the king’s gums, jawbone and sinuses became dangerously inflamed. A committee of nervous physicians concluded that drastic measures were called for. Louis underwent a truly terrible ordeal: they removed all the teeth from the top layer of his mouth, then punctured his palate and broke his jaw. This was all completed without anaesthetic, the king being fully awake throughout the procedure. The most powerful man in Western Europe was helpless before the primitive medical knowledge of his time. At least the wounds were kept clean on this occasion — cauterised with red-hot coals.

The Sun King never fully regained his former dignity. He had to be careful when drinking, in case the contents of his goblet reappeared out of his nose. The English poet Matthew Prior was later to observe that: ‘The monarch as to his health is lusty enough, his upper teeth are out … and he picks and shows his under teeth [with] a good deal of affectation, being the vainest creature alive even as to the least things.’[fn11] Mismanagement of another chronic irritant — France’s Protestant population — led to more than mere embarrassment at the dinner table.

To Louis, the continued tolerance of Huguenots was a betrayal of his deepest beliefs, and triggered his most heart-felt prejudices. The nation’s one million Protestants had been left relatively untroubled since the bloody religious and civil wars that preceded Louis’s personal rule. This was a pragmatic recognition of the material benefits that the Huguenots brought to the economy. They were conspicuously prominent in specialist areas of trade, commerce, and manufacture. Their rights to freedom of worship had been enshrined in the Edict of Nantes.

Now, with some of his key advisers encouraging a policy of intolerance, Louis resolved to rid the country of what he viewed as heresy. Louis’s bigotry, instilled during his scanty childhood education, was stoked by his mistress, Madame de Maintenon, herself a convert to Catholicism. She argued that the acceptance of divergent Christian views was untenable, and would stain her lover’s soul.

Louis had given vent to his religious prejudices in 1679, withdrawing some of the Protestants’ rights to worship. In 1680 he sent a regiment of dragoons to Poitou, ordering its soldiers to be billeted on the richer households. The expense of this was dire; but it was nothing compared with the deprivations meted out to the poorer Protestants in the region. They were raped and brutalised, whilst encouraged to end their torment by embracing Catholicism. Thirty thousand Poitevin conversions were recorded, convincing the king of his policy’s effectiveness. The dragonnades became a valued weapon against the Huguenots.

In the autumn of 1685, the season of his gruesome encounter with his dentists, Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes. Protestant worship was deemed a criminal activity, with imprisonment — even death — the penalty for those who refused to turn to Catholicism. Unless they were protected by noble status, women who rejected the religion du roi were whipped, and their faces branded with the fleur de lis. Men were broken at the wheel: each bone in their body systematically smashed by the executioner. To ensure that there could be no escape, Louis declared it illegal to seek sanctuary from his religious tyranny abroad.

Despite this, over 200,000 Huguenots fled France, many leaving behind all their possessions rather than slow their flight. The fugitives were enthusiastically welcomed in the United Provinces, Denmark, and Prussia. Many came to England, too, although there they were tolerated rather than fêted. Nevertheless, the English listened to the refugees’ tales of horror with deep concern. John Evelyn recorded with disgust: ‘The French persecution … raging with the utmost barbarity, exceeded even what the very heathens us’d … on a sudden demolishing all their churches, banishing, imprisoning and sending to the galleys all the ministers; plundering the common people … taking away their children; forcing people to the Mass, and then executing them as relapsers …’[fn12] Throughout Protestant Europe, such tales were received with horror. Since Louis was clearly intent on expanding France’s frontiers, many wondered if they would be next to experience such brutality.

In 1686, the United Provinces joined Spain and Prussia to form the League of Augsburg: a defensive alliance against Louis. He remained deaf to the fear and exasperation evoked by the rasping tone of his kingship, thrusting himself into the affairs of Cologne, where the incumbent ruler, Archbishop-Elector Wittelsbach, was seriously ill. Louis wanted to be certain that his successor would be a friend to France, as Wittelsbach had been: for Cologne, situated between France, several Germanic states, and the United Provinces, controlled bridgeheads across the area’s major rivers. The king informed Cologne that he had chosen its new archbishop-elector, who would take office when the current incumbent died. Louis’s choice was Cardinal von Fürstenberg, the Bishop of Strasbourg, who had cravenly served France’s interests for thirty years. However, Pope Innocent ignored Louis, installing Joseph Clement, brother to the Elector of Bavaria, instead.

Louis ordered his troops to invade, and they laid siege to Philippsburg. Hostilities quickly escalated: the French ravaged the Rhineland, provoking the Prussians, Saxons and Hanoverians into action. The Emperor sent a strong force under the Elector of Bavaria to assist them. War was inevitable, Louis knew that; but its form and scale was to surprise all of Europe.

Louis asserted rights over the Palatine from Strasbourg through to Mainz, in the name of his sister-in-law, Liselotte. Once more he anticipated speedy victory. The invading troops surpassed the litany of war crimes associated with the Dutch War of the 1670s, when Turenne had pillaged the electorate. In 1688, the Second Devastation of the Palatinate saw the destruction of a dozen historic cities, including Heidelberg, Worms, Mannheim and Speyer. Hundreds of towns and villages shared treatment of unspeakable savagery: murder, rape, torture and looting.

The French atrocities recalled the worst excesses of the Thirty Years’ War: and this in the so-called Age of Reason. Louis XIV’s state-sanctioned terror ran contrary to every tenet of ‘civilised’ warfare. Across Europe it was generally accepted that civilian losses should be kept to a minimum and that private property should be respected.

*

William of Orange now saw that it was not just his Dutchmen who looked to him for leadership, but also the majority of German princes. Emperor Leopold found common cause with the confederacy, bolstering the standing of the League of Augsburg by joining its ranks. He was uncomfortable about helping Protestant forces against a divinely anointed king, but political considerations overrode religious sensibilities. Besides, Leopold was comforted by the Pope’s encouragement: Innocent was furious that Louis had dismissed the papal claim to infallibility, and denied the Pontiff’s right to excommunicate princes. He, too, joined the anti-French coalition. So it was that by the end of 1688 only one power stood aloof from the forthcoming European war: England.

Chapter Two – An Island No More

‘Yes, mighty Prince, our fear and danger’s fled,

Error and ignorance by thee struck dead,

No more th’old chaos o’er our world shall spread.

Thy words bid there be light, and strait a ray,

All heavenly bright, calls forth a new-born day.

‘A congratulatory poem to his Highness the Prince of Orange on his arrival at London’, 1688

England’s lack of military pretensions in the quarter century following the Restoration was marked. Charles II was a hedonist, not a soldier. His energies were most happily deployed in his pleasures, such as race horses and mistresses — he kept a generous stable of both. Since 1660 British politics had been dominated by domestic considerations. The Civil Wars might be over, but instead of military campaigns, Court, Country, and Parliament engaged in political conflict. In Churchill’s phrase, ‘there had been sides in the Great Rebellion; henceforward there would be parties, less picturesque but no less fierce.’[fn1] Whigs and Tories would trace their family trees back to Charles’s reign: factions that could still clash with lethal force well into the eighteenth century.

By European standards, Charles maintained a tiny army; little more than 5,000 strong in 1661. Ten years later it still only numbered 8,000, but supporting this force consumed a quarter of the king’s revenue, a key reason he took the secret bribe from Louis. English attitudes to the army were coloured by the discord and destruction of the Civil War, and by the hated military government of Cromwell’s major-generals in the 1650s. People and Parliament were united in their opposition to a standing army that they feared was as likely to be turned on them as on the country’s enemies.

Charles died in 1685 and the throne passed to his controversial younger brother James, Duke of York. James II faced a rebellion within months, when his illegitimate nephew, the Duke of Monmouth, landed at Lyme Regis but failed to garner sufficient support before he was brought to battle at Sedgemoor. He was beheaded and his followers summarily dealt with at the ‘Bloody Assizes’.

James’s shrill Catholicism soon cost him popularity, since, in stark contrast to Charles’s covert faith, it was construed as a blatant threat to the Anglican Church. The Whigs had shown their intense distrust of James — and their political clout — by forcing Charles to send him into exile. His enforced spells in Scotland and on the Continent had not mellowed James: if anything they stiffened his resolve. Early in the new reign, James tired of hiding his strong beliefs.

At the end of 1686, Lord Chesterfield summed up the sadness of a people who could see its king’s qualities, but regret their misapplication: ‘Though we have now a Prince, whose study is his country’s glory, whose courage would give him lustre without a throne, whose assiduity in business makes him his own chief minister, yet heaven, it seems, hath found a way to make all this more terrible than lovely.’[fn2]

The English knew James’s talents included a gift for military leadership: as Duke of York, he had overseen the overhaul of the Navy and gained it parity with the Dutch fleet. On a personal level, he was also respected as a brave and accomplished fighter. When James began to expand the army, the suspicion spread that he was preparing to impose his own religious faith on England by force of arms. It was unfortunate for James that his efforts coincided with Louis’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The terrifying events unfolding across the Channel stoked fears that James planned to establish a similar absolutist and Catholic monarchy in England. By 1688, James had trebled the size of the army he had inherited to 25,000 men, its ranks swelled by Scottish and Irish soldiers and — most worryingly — by Catholic officers. Was this the precursor to England’s own dragonnades?

One more, diminutive, reinforcement to James’s forces tipped the scale. In 1688 his second, Catholic, queen, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son. To the Protestants, the baby’s gender caused consternation: he supplanted the two Protestant princesses by James’s first marriage, in the line of succession. The king’s opponents in England looked to the husband of James’s eldest daughter, Princess Mary, to intervene. He was William of Orange.

Although he was a foreign prince, whose navy was England’s great rival, William was the obvious candidate to save England from James and his Catholicism. The Dutchman’s links to the English throne were manifold. His mother was a Stuart princess, sister to Charles II and James II. As a boy William had been a great favourite with his uncles, during their exile from Commonwealth England. In 1677, William married his first cousin, Princess Mary. Charles II approved the match, which was an acknowledgement of improved English relations with the United Provinces since the conclusion of the Dutch War. Louis XIV was furious. ‘You have given your daughter to my mortal enemy,’[fn3] he fumed, in a letter to the Duke of York. Louis had correctly guessed that William’s motives for the match were tactical, rather than sentimental. The Prince of Orange was marrying the heir apparent to the Stuart crown because England’s wealth would be welcome in his European wars. Furthermore, Louis could not hope to equal the combined Dutch and English fleets.

William was not a risk-taker, but a man of unyielding practicality. He only agreed to seek the English crown after much thought. If he allowed James’s infant prince to take his wife’s place in the succession, the United Provinces would be denied the support of England’s ships and coffers in the forthcoming war with France. Despite his status as a Protestant saviour, William would not invade in order to save England from a potential Catholic tyrant. His intention was to harness the country’s capabilities against the Papist autocrat who had long possessed the throne of France. Before committing himself, William took soundings from trusted Dutch aides, who were encouraging about his prospects. He also received a letter inviting his immediate intervention, which had been signed by seven English magnates. Comfortingly, they represented the Anglican Church and the two dominant parliamentary factions, the Whigs and the Tories.

William invaded England in November 1688, while Louis’s forces were terrorising the upper Rhine. His polyglot army, which included Dutchmen, Swedes, Prussians, Danes, and French Huguenots, landed to negligible opposition. Senior political and military figures scrambled to join William; even Princess Anne slipped away from London in the night, deserting her Catholic father in favour of her Calvinist brother-in-law. It was an unexpectedly smooth end to James’s reign, and the English congratulated themselves on their ‘Glorious Revolution’.

Louis was surprised and disappointed by the success of William’s gamble. When the possibility of an invasion had first been mooted, earlier in the year, Louis had volunteered to come to James’s aid. He had offered money, 30,000 soldiers, and the French Channel fleet. In return for Louis’s support, James had to agree to align his nation with France in the pending European war. However, James would not consent to this, so the disgruntled Louis left him to fend for himself.

The view at Versailles had been that the invasion of England would bring nothing but ill to the Prince of Orange. It seemed inevitable that William’s army would be embroiled in another English Civil War. The French had failed to foresee a successful invasion without battle on sea or land. Neither had James’s speedy flight to the Continent been predicted: his many royal supporters dared not act when their leader had already deserted them.

William never felt enamoured of his new kingdom, nor did he trust many of those who had aided the toppling of his predecessor. Although he was the prime beneficiary of this treachery, he realised that it could be repeated to his cost. During his reign he remained focused on the war with Louis: England’s involvement could add a new and promising element to the hotchpotch of anti-French nations that he had brought together. Little did he realise that these first faltering steps, made under his gaze, were to take his island kingdom away from isolation, towards Empire.

Chapter Three – John Churchill

No one in this world could possibly have done better than Mr Churchill has done and M. de Turenne is very well pleased with all our nation.

Letter of Lord Duras (Later the Earl of Feversham) to the English Government, 1674

The French enjoyed belittling William of Orange’s generalship. They knew that his personal courage on the field of battle, whilst admirable, had rarely brought him victory. A contemporary joke in Paris suggests widespread disdain for a hapless foe: ‘The Prince of Orange can at least boast’, it was said, ‘that no general of his age had raised so many sieges and lost so many battles.’[fn1] William was bitterly aware of his limitations, blaming them on his lack of training at the side of the great generals of his youth. ‘I would’, he said wistfully, ‘willingly give part of my provinces to have served some campaigns under the Prince of Condé.’[fn2]

At the outbreak of war in 1689, William turned to an apprentice of Turenne — Condé’s brother-in-arms — to make something of his English troops. His name was John Churchill, and he had recently been promoted to lieutenant-general.

John was the son of Sir Winston Churchill, a Royalist cavalry officer during the Civil War. Sir Winston had suffered financially for having supported the king: the Churchill family endured confiscation and impoverishment during Cromwell’s Commonwealth. After the restoration of the Stuarts, however, Sir Winston retrieved some status, even if money continued to elude him. He became a Tory Member of Parliament, and a junior courtier. These posts left him time to write a sycophantic history of the kings of England, further testimony to his pronounced loyalty to the Crown.

Eight of John’s eleven siblings died young. His two surviving brothers followed him into the armed services, with success: George Churchill became an admiral, and younger brother Charles a general. The only surviving sister, Arabella, was also to enjoy prominence in adulthood.

In common with other daughters of impoverished Royalists, Arabella Churchill was despatched to the Restoration Court to become a teenaged maid of honour. Her mistress was the former Anne Hyde, a commoner who had caught the eye of James, Duke of York, whilst in-waiting to his sister Mary, the mother of William of Orange. To the chagrin of James’s family, the couple married. The new duchess quickly discovered that her duties included a tacit acceptance of her husband’s roving eye. The duke’s particular penchant was for her own female retinue, from which he drew fresh conquests at will.

Sir Peter Lely’s luscious portraits tell us that Charles II liked ravishing mistresses, with generous bosom and ringletted hair. James’s tastes were altogether less obvious, veering towards the plain. Bemused by his brother’s series of dowdy lovers, Charles concluded that they must be a penance inflicted on James by Catholic confessors. ‘My brother will lose his kingdom by his bigotry, and his soul for a lot of ugly trollops,’[fn3] was the king’s opinion; and we know that he was right on one count, at least.

Arabella Churchill captivated the Duke of York. Their romance started when she fell from her horse in a royal riding party. As she struggled amidst her petticoats, attempting to regain her dignity, James noticed her unexpectedly fine legs. The duke, who had already shown mild interest in Arabella, was now full of lustful resolve, and it was not long before Miss Churchill became his mistress. This was ‘not one of his numerous casual affairs; it was the chief affair of his life, lasting ten or twelve years.’[fn4] During this time Arabella bore James four illegitimate offspring. One was given the title of Duke of Berwick and was a great favourite of James’s: the king later contemplated installing his natural son as the Catholic ruler of Ireland. When James lost his English throne, Berwick joined him in exile. After his father’s death Berwick became one of the more successful of Louis’s later marshals, thus confirming the Churchills’ genetic gift for the military.

Of more immediate benefit to Arabella’s family was the favour that now fell on her younger brother. After studying at St Paul’s, in London, John became a page of honour to the Duke of York. Hostile historians have criticised John for benefiting from his sister’s courtesan status. However, impoverished gentry during the Stuart Age had few scruples about the method of their advancement.

Having become a trusted servant, young Churchill took advantage of his master’s favour to progress from Court life to soldiery. One day, when watching a parade of troops in London, James asked his page what he would most like in the world. ‘A pair of colours’ was the immediate reply, his words a euphemism for an ensign’s commission. James approved of this ambition and in 1667 the seventeen-year-old Ensign Churchill was gazetted to the King’s Regiment of Foot Guards.

In 1668, Churchill served in the Governor’s Regiment in Tangier, where Moors were the enemy. This outpost had come to Britain as part of Catharine of Braganza’s dowry when she married Charles II. Although the garrison cost over £100,000 per year to maintain, the king valued Tangier highly. It was certainly a useful training ground for Charles’s soldiers, toughening them up and introducing them to new methods of warfare: in 1663, the Tangier Regiment was the first English unit to employ the bayonet.

Returning to London in 1671, John embarked on an affair with his cousin, Barbara Castlemaine. Almost a decade John’s senior, she was one of King Charles’s more promiscuous mistresses. Her passion for Churchill was intense and the king, in a surprise visit, caught the pair in a tryst. Heading a court heaving with licentious behaviour, it is strange to think of Charles as a sentimental man. However, he was reportedly hurt by Barbara’s infidelity, for he had genuine feelings for the mother of five of his illegitimate tribe. The king showed magnanimity, though, dismissing the young gallant with an avuncular chiding: ‘Go. You are a rascal, but I forgive you because you do it to get your bread.’[fn5]

Charles’s comment showed an awareness of Churchill’s precarious financial position. Perhaps a consequence of relative childhood poverty, Churchill displayed an unattractive relationship with money throughout his life. It later brought him ridicule and contempt, for the rich and powerful were expected to display their wealth magnanimously. Avarice was a character flaw that John Churchill never defeated, although with his famed meanness came astute management of his personal finances. This was an important skill for the ambitious young man: without it, the prospects for future advancement were limited, for Court positions and army ranks were bought and sold as commodities. When the infatuated Barbara Castlemaine gave her young lover the astonishing gift of £5,000 — enough, at the time, to have bought a colonelcy in the Foot Guards — most of it was squirreled away to become the foundation of Churchill’s later extraordinary wealth and position.

A return from Court life to soldiery brought Churchill action and advancement in the early 1670s. It was soon clear that this was an officer of the highest potential. When life was breathed into Charles II’s secret Treaty of Dover, in 1672, the English joined Louis against the Dutch. The Duke of York kept his protege close to him, on board his flagship, the Royal Prince. The vessel was involved in the bloody Battle of Sole Bay, which was fought off the Suffolk town of Southwold within sight of a huge crowd. Churchill’s conduct has not been recorded, yet it was conspicuous enough to merit a rare double-promotion, to the rank of captain.

Churchill was transferred at the end of the year to fight on land for France. Serving as a volunteer under the Duke of Monmouth, Churchill distinguished himself at the siege of Maastricht. Several notable men were present during this action, including Count d’Artagnan, the musketeer later immortalised by Alexandre Dumas; while Claude-Louis-Hector Villars, Churchill’s most able military opponent in later life, fought alongside him here. Louis XIV, a proponent of siege warfare, was in the trenches as John joined in three French charges against the Dutch defences, the last of which was successful. Churchill is credited with raising the French standard on the captured parapet, as well as with saving Monmouth’s life while countering a daring but doomed Dutch counter-attack.

The taking of Maastricht was a bloody affair, the garrison of 6,000 inflicting heavy casualties on a French force that outnumbered it by eight to one. D’Artagnan was one of many attacking officers slain, shot through the head at the age of fifty-three. Churchill was among the numerous wounded. However, the capture of this fortress on the River Meuse was a significant French success, whose English participants shared the military glory. It seems ironic in retrospect that the king singled out Churchill for congratulations, allegedly thanking him at the head of Monmouth’s small force for his bravery in the cause of France. Louis wrote to Charles II recommending that he promote his brave and able captain. It was an act of patronage that Louis was later to regret.

*

Churchill’s next posting was with Marshal Turenne. In an age that favoured the gentle pace and structured format of siege warfare over the uncertainty and expense of pitched battle, Turenne was unorthodox. His bold dictum was: ‘Make few sieges and fight plenty of battles; when you are master of the countryside the villages will give us the town.’[fn6] It is a small step from this maxim to Churchill’s philosophy when a commander: winning a battle, the Englishman stated, was ‘of far greater advantage to the common cause than the taking of twenty towns.’[fn7]

Turenne also showed Marlborough the importance of using infantry firepower to maximum effect. This ran counter to the accepted bias that engagements were won or lost by the cavalry. The matchlock muskets of Turenne’s era were desperately slow and unreliable, taking more than a minute to reload and frequently misfiring. They had a range of 100 yards, but were inaccurate even at that distance: they had no sights to assist their aim and were often discharged not from the shoulder, but from the chest. However, the marshal was confident that, if used efficiently, they offered the commander the edge over chaotic infantry blocs: intermingling of pike-men and musketeers need not ape the clumsy deployments of the Middle Ages. Indeed, the trend towards larger armies in the second half of the seventeenth century resulted in the recruitment of far more foot soldiers than cavalry. This was essentially because of the cavalry’s greater expense. When Turenne was first a general, his army was one-third infantry to two-thirds cavalry; but by 1675, when he died, the ratio was three to one in favour of the foot soldier. The marshal’s ability to accept this development and adapt his tactics accordingly, made a lasting impression on his English apprentice.

Turenne’s military talents reached their zenith in 1674, when he was in his mid-sixties. ‘In that year’s campaign Turenne displayed his powers both in tactics and in strategy at their highest and to have served such a campaign under him was for Churchill a great good fortune.’[fn8] Churchill continued in Louis’s service, even though his country had agreed peace with the Dutch early in the year. The opportunities for advancement and action, neither of which Churchill ever knowingly shirked, were obvious. Aged only twenty-four, Churchill was placed in charge of a battalion of Turenne’s infantry.

There were three major battles during the campaign. It remains unclear whether Churchill fought at the first, Sinzheim, where Turenne’s flair and resolve upset a larger Imperial army: the marshal’s deft blending of foot soldiers, dragoons and cavalry reminded Europe of the great Swedish warrior Gustavus Adolphus at his peak. English infantrymen helped to hold Turenne’s flanks as the French cavalry advanced to engage Count Caprara’s Imperialist force. Intense fighting led to 2,000 deaths on each side, but France claimed victory when the enemy retreated.

We know that Churchill took part in the Battle of Enzheim, near Strasbourg. Turenne, his lines of communication already vulnerable, was forced to attack a superior enemy expecting reinforcements. His unorthodox tactics included an early morning advance over a river that the Imperialists had adjudged a secure defensive barrier. There was a massive exchange of artillery fire and Turenne sustained significant casualties in attaining his goal. Half of the officers in Churchill’s battalion were killed or wounded at Enzheim. Turenne praised the officer he liked to call his ‘handsome Englishman’ in his report to Louis. He admired the young man’s style, courage and readiness to learn.

Churchill’s experiences at Enzheim proved to be of crucial importance. Thirty years afterwards, he was to attempt an aggressive river crossing under circumstances that mirrored those facing Turenne. Artillery would have a vital role in the action, and losses would have to be borne in an assault on a well-ensconced enemy. The similarities between Enzheim and Blenheim were significant. ‘I durst not brag much of our victory’, Churchill wrote in 1674, ‘but we have three of their cannon, several of their colours and some prisoners.’[fn9] Even the reports of victory echoed one another. The main difference lay in the composition of forces: at Enzheim the French were his allies, while at Blenheim they would be the enemy.

It had been an extraordinary campaigning season for Turenne and he extended his good run, taking the Imperialists by surprise in their winter quarters and then defeating them at Turkheim, in January 1675. This campaign was a powerful finale by one of the great soldiers of the seventeenth century, played out in view of one who was to dominate the first decade of the eighteenth. Turenne died six months after Turkheim, felled by a cannon ball while reconnoitring an enemy gun emplacement. Churchill, having acquitted himself with distinction, returned to England an experienced, respected, young colonel, full of promise.

*

Resuming his place at court, Churchill was made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the Duke of York. His fine looks attracted much attention in a milieu where the appeal of the physical often eclipsed the cerebral. What choice of bride would this increasingly influential man make? His father, so impoverished that he had. asked John to return his share of the Churchill inheritance, encouraged a financially advantageous match. Katherine Sedley, an heiress cousin, and one of the Duke of York’s plain mistresses, was Sir Winston’s recommendation. For once, though, John overcame avarice and followed his heart.

Sarah Jenyns was the extremely pretty daughter of an impoverished Hertfordshire gentleman. She had followed her beautiful sister Frances to serve as an adornment at Court. The Jenynses were among many families who were prepared to despatch their daughters to the licentious world of the ‘Merry Monarch’, hoping that such a move might lead to an advantageous marriage which would pluck them from the ranks of the distressed gentry. Maybe their daughter would bring home to St Albans a wealthy, titled, son-in-law?

Sarah’s role was lowly: when the Duke of York married Mary of Modena at the end of 1673, having lost his first wife Anne to breast cancer, Sarah became Maid of Honour to the new duchess. She must have met John Churchill soon afterwards, and she cannot have been immune to his charms. Contemporaries found Churchill extraordinarily good-looking. A Dutch contemporary, while commenting on a frightening ambition and a suspicious charm, recorded his admiration for the Englishman’s physical attributes: ‘He is about the middle height, and has the best figure in the world; his features are without fault, fine, sparkling eyes and good teeth. In short, apart from his legs, which are too thin, he is one of the handsomest men ever seen.’[fn10] It is easy to see why the teenaged Sarah found the dashing colonel, ten years her senior, intriguing.

Allied to his looks and potential was an easy manner, which was soon engaged in earnest courtship. Initially wary of the man who was so scandalously associated with Barbara Castlemaine, Sarah found she could not resist her suitor, whom she declared ‘handsome as an angel’. John’s emotions have largely remained impenetrable, despite the copious correspondence that has survived him. It is clear, though, that he found Sarah’s uncompromising and forthright nature utterly bewitching. She was an auburn-haired beauty, yes; but beyond this the ambitious, calculating soldier was dazzled by the thrilling freeness of Sarah’s spirit. The courtship was tempestuous, but the chemistry between John and Sarah eventually drew a line under the Churchill and Jenyns families’ ambitions. They were quietly married in the winter of 1677-8, in the Duchess of York’s apartments; a suitable venue for the solemnisation of a partnership that was to reach the zenith of its power through royal favour, before being dashed by the same capricious force.

The couple’s relationship remained intense, in a marriage whose roles were clearly defined and rigidly adhered to: Sarah was passionate and wilful, often painfully so, while John was devoted and necessarily patient. He was afflicted with migraines throughout his life, many triggered by the stress of his wife’s behaviour. In early 1679, Sarah wrongly accused John of having an affair while in Scotland, causing him severe headaches, and evincing from him fervent protest: ‘I am not so unreasonable as to expect you should not be concerned if I were coquet, and made love to any other woman, but since I do not, and love only you above my own life, I can’t but think you are unjust, and unkind, in having a suspicion of me.’[fn11] Churchill blamed Sarah’s unfounded suspicions on his enforced absence from home. John’s counter to this was to write openly of the depth of his feelings for his wife: ‘Although I believe you love me, yet you do not love so well as I, so that you can not be truly sensible how much I desire to be with you. I swear to you the first night in which I was blessed in having you in my arms, was not more earnestly wish’d for by me, than now I do, to be again with you, for if ever man loved woman truly well I now do you, for I swear to you were we unmarried, I would beg you on my knees to be my wife, which I would not do, did I not esteem you, as well as love you.’[fn12]

The Churchills were diligent and loving parents, Sarah bearing seven children between 1679 and 1690, five of whom (‘four daughters and a son, all like little angels’[fn13]) survived infancy. John wrote to his wife of the huge enjoyment he derived from fatherhood: ‘You can not imagine how I am pleased with the children; for having nobody but their maid, they are so fond of me, that when I am at home, they will always be with me, kissing me and hugging me.’ Such parental tenderness was a reflection of profound adoration of his wife: ‘Miss [Henrietta, the eldest daughter] is pulling me by the arm, that she may write to her dear Mamma, so that I will say no more, only beg that you will love me always so well as I love you, and then we can not but be happy.’[fn14] His delight in family life was only accentuated by the demands of a career that was to take him overseas for increasingly extended periods.

In 1678 Churchill was entrusted with an apparently important piece of statecraft. He was sent on a diplomatic mission with his lifelong friend Sidney Godolphin, a Cornishman whom he met while both were Pages of Honour to the Duke of York. They were instructed to sound out the Dutch and the Spanish about the possibility of combining forces with England against France. It came to nothing; indeed, it is doubtful whether Charles II intended any other outcome, given his links with Louis XIV. However, the choice of Churchill for this task confirms his growing importance at Court, which was mirrored in his military career. On his return to England he was given command of a new regiment of Foot. By the end of 1678 he was promoted to brigadier-general.

Churchill was by now among the group of courtiers favoured not only by the Duke of York, whose creature he was seen to be, but also by the king. He, Godolphin, and Feversham (a Huguenot nephew of Turenne’s) made up the group which played ‘much at tennis’ with Charles II, the quartet being ‘all so excellent players that if one beat the other ‘tis alternately.’[fn15]

Religious and political tensions temporarily displaced the Churchills from their positions at Court, but not from royal friendship: after the Roman Catholic ‘Popish Plot’ against his life, Charles reluctantly bowed to Whig demands, and sent his brother James into exile. The Churchills loyally followed the ducal Court to Belgium and Scotland, their steadfastness being rewarded with a Scottish peerage; in 1682 they were created Baron and Baroness Churchill of Aymouth. After the exile had been repealed, Lord and Lady Churchill returned to London to even greater royal favour. The Duke of York’s second daughter, Anne, had nursed a schoolgirl crush on Sarah since childhood. The dowdy, plodding and neglected princess was entranced by Sarah’s glamour, confidence, and beauty. G. M. Trevelyan poeticised the cruel contrast between the women: ‘Anne’s mind was slow as a lowland river, Sarah’s swift as a mountain torrent.’[fn16] Anne married the stolid Prince George of Denmark, in 1683, after which she was allowed a modest, but independent, household. Sarah was encouraged by her husband to apply for the post of the princess’s Lady of the Bedchamber. Anne’s Tory relatives on her maternal side resisted this, fearing the effect of Sarah’s Whig sympathies on her mistress. Sarah told Anne how saddened she was by such a lack of trust, prompting an abject letter from the princess: ‘Oh, dear Lady Churchill, let me beg you once more not to believe that I am in fault: do not let this take away your kindness from me, for I assure you ’tis the greatest trouble in the world to me, and I am sure you have not a faithfuller friend on earth that loves you better than I do. My eyes are full, I cannot say a word more.’[fn17] Such was the balance of power when Sarah was installed in Anne’s affections, and her Court. These were positions of influence that Sarah was to exploit on her own and her husband’s behalf for quarter of a century.

*

The death of Charles II, in February 1685, brought John Churchill’s patron to the English throne. The new king, James II, chose him to travel to France to tell Louis XIV formally of the succession. While on this mission, Churchill was instructed to negotiate a continuation of the secret ‘pension’ that Louis had paid Charles. If possible, an increase was to be secured.

Although the people had greeted his coronation with enthusiasm, this was an uncertain time for James. Monmouth’s invasion came in the first summer of his reign. Churchill seized the moment and immediately moved against the man who had been his commanding officer at the siege of Maastricht. As soon as he heard that Monmouth had landed at Lyme (which was in his father’s, Sir Winston’s, parliamentary constituency), Churchill set out to head off the threat. With him went only a small column of foot and an inconsequential body of horse. However, Churchill’s march echoed the approach of his mentor, Marshal Turenne, by relying on speed and decisiveness to surprise the enemy. He appreciated that the key to defeating Monmouth was to harry him. The renegade duke must not be allowed to settle, since he could then become a focal point to which the disaffected could rally. Churchill forged ahead with his cavalry, moving from London to Bridport in just two days, purloining horses, oxen and wagons along the way, his confiscations causing resentment but gaining him speed.

Monmouth’s forward planning was thrown into confusion when, within a week of his arrival, Churchill appeared at his heels. The royal force lacked the manpower to attack, but Churchill reported to London that he would ‘press the rebels as close as ever I can’,[fn18] until reinforcements arrived. Otherwise, he told James, the West Country would be lost to Monmouth. He was further convinced of this by the conduct of militia drawn from the men of Devon and Somerset. Sent to tackle the invaders, they instead showed themselves sympathetic to their cause: many happily switched allegiance, proclaiming their support for ‘King Monmouth’.

Churchill harried the rebels continuously with his professional troops, seeking to contain the invasive bacillus rather than allow the contagion to spread. Monmouth later conceded that he had not enjoyed a moment’s peace between his arrival in England and his capture. It was Churchill’s terrier force that did most to deprive him of composure or hope. Under constant pressure, the duke’s campaign lost focus. Monmouth would have had more chance of success if he had ignored the attentions of Churchill’s cavalry and pushed ahead. If he had captured Gloucester, for instance, he could have established a bridgehead over the River Severn. From there he could have struck out from the south-west, into the belly of England. However, wrong-footed by Churchill, and suspecting in any event that his venture was doomed, Monmouth’s impetus stalled. He persuaded himself that stretching out for such a prize would leave him more vulnerable to his former colleague’s needling attacks.

Its momentum lost, the invasion gradually turned in on itself. Monmouth drew back to the south, followed by Churchill’s men, who had been joined by reinforcements. The royal cavalry pared away at the slow and the doubtful, till the duke was left with just the buffeted kernel of an increasingly despondent army. If he was to have a chance, Monmouth knew he must risk battle. By now significantly outnumbered, he elected to stake his success on that most uncertain of manoeuvres, a night attack.

The Earl of Feversham commanded the king’s army as it camped at Sedgemoor. An unexceptional general, Feversham owed his position to his friendship with James. His involvement in the sub-sequent battle was secondary to Churchill’s, who appears to have anticipated Monmouth’s plan, and was immediately on site to lead a steely defence against the rebels. The duke’s 4,000 men, some armed with nothing more than improvised agricultural implements, others toting guns but little ammunition, were brave and determined. However, the English standing army was disciplined, holding the initial attack before hurling it back on itself. Monmouth must have regretted his time as de facto captain-general of the English army a decade earlier: one of his legacies was a standardisation of the musket drill. The steadiness of James II’s infantry fire, combined with Churchill’s deft use of the artillery, destroyed the rebel cause that night at Sedgemoor. It was to be the last battle to be fought between Englishmen on English soil.

James II showed no mercy for the defeated. He sanctioned the execution of Monmouth, and several hundred of his followers. (Monmouth had a particularly grisly end, the executioner’s axe striking seven times before his head was severed.) Churchill had hoped to garner real advancement from what was essentially his victory, but Feversham received the chief plaudits. However, Churchill was promoted to major-general. He also received the lasting respect of those who had served him at Sedgemoor and in the weeks leading up to the battle. The London Gazette reported that Churchill had ‘performed his part with all the courage and gallantry imaginable’. He was now, in his late thirties, established as one of the foremost soldiers in England’s tiny army.

This was why William of Orange turned to Churchill after his own invasion, three years later. William was reluctant to trust those who had deserted his father-in-law: the new king’s reliance on Churchill at this time was a typically pragmatic gesture, based on an appreciation of his martial skill. His enthusiasm for the gifted general was tempered by a conviction that Churchill was a man of flimsy moral fibre. How else to explain his desertion from a monarch who had raised him from poverty to significant military and courtier status?

Lord Feversham, by contrast, proved loyal to James II to the end. After the king’s flight, he disbanded the army rather than have it remain in good order, ready to serve the Dutch usurper. William needed someone to reconstitute his new kingdom’s scattered regiments. He ordered Churchill not only to regroup, but also to reorganise, the soldiers. Although William had a low regard for English troops — preferring Dutch soldiers, Dutch officers, and Dutch generals — he wanted them as auxiliaries in the impending war in mainland Europe. Churchill was charged with improving the English army so that it could stand against the seasoned troops of France. To encourage Churchill, and to lend him the necessary authority to oversee such changes, he was confirmed in the rank of lieutenant-general. In April 1689, at the time of the coronation of William and Mary, his role in the Glorious Revolution was recognised with his elevation to an earldom.

One month later John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, landed at Rotterdam with 8,000 men. His arrival on the Continent coincided with the declaration of war with France. His priority was to harmonise the training of the different English regiments and to coalesce with their principal allies. A letter from him while at Breda during this time shows him keen to find out which musket drill was to be adopted by his infantry: ‘I desire that you will know the King’s pleasure, whether he will have the Regiments of Foot learn the Dutch Exercise or else continue the English, for if he will I must have it translated into English.’[fn19] Marlborough wrote with urgency, shocked at the state of the troops he had found awaiting his command. He must forge them into a force that could compete with the French, the most feared enemy in Europe.

Many of the greatest improvements to the English army in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries date from this time, when William needed more and better troops, and Marlborough set about providing them. Marlborough would benefit from his hard work over the coming years; for, one day, these soldiers would be his to lead.

Chapter Four – France Feels the Strain

War, the mortality of 1693, the constant quarterings and movements of soldiery, military service, the heavy dues and the withdrawal of the Huguenots have ruined the country.

Report of the Superintendent of Rouen, 1697

The conflict that enveloped much of Europe in the closing decade of the seventeenth century was a new trial for France. Despite her manpower, her wealth, and the galvanising capabilities of her autocratic government, by immersing herself yet again in warfare, an already stretched France was now riven with fresh and undeniable tensions. It was a watershed in Louis’s reign: before the War of the League of Augsburg French victory had been expected; from this point on, the possibility of defeat became increasingly pronounced.

The breadth and strength of the forces arrayed against Louis were daunting. The war saw France confronted by a union of her two historic rivals, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, together with the United Provinces and Britain. These four powers were aided by several predominantly Protestant states of Germany, as well as by powerful, Catholic, Bavaria. The menace of Louis’s aggression had goaded these disparate interests into forming the Grand Alliance. This confederacy, if it could be held together, seemed to match — perhaps even to exceed — the might of France. It was testimony to Louis’s success that he had conjured up a polyglot opponent that, for all its internal tensions, was potentially so strong. However, France was not to thank her king for provoking such a powerful antagonist.

Since 1643, and Condé’s defeat of Spain at Rocroi, France had been the dominant military nation in Europe. With Louis’s encouragement, his father’s well-organised army had become an enormous force. Soon after the outbreak of the War of the League of Augsburg, Louis was able to call on a total of 420,000 troops; six times the size of the French army one hundred years earlier. By the end of the seventeenth century his command reached a peak of 450,000 soldiers; and a further 250,000 served in the local militia, in the navy, and in military support. This was the largest European army since the height of the Roman Empire, a millennium and a half earlier.

It was desperately difficult for a largely rural society with a rudimentary economy to sustain such a force. Even before the latest outbreak of hostilities, liberties had been taken with recruitment. Restrictions — of height, of capability, of background — were waived, as the rapacious military machine began to feed from hand to mouth. The diet was increasingly poor, for the newly enlisted could now be any males, provided they were ‘neither vagabonds, nor children, nor deformed’.[fn1] Now, with the enemy so numerous and varied, the consumption of men and money escalated. The strain on the community and on the nation’s coffers was unprecedented. Philippe Contamine, in his recent Histoire Militaire de France, has calculated that whereas 7 per cent of French government expenses in 1694 went to direct military costs, and 8 per cent to debt service, by 1697 the figures were 64 per cent and 23 per cent respectively. Louis had created a military state; but scrutiny of its long-term sustainability was overdue.

The growth of the French military can be linked directly to Louis’s desire for territorial expansion and to his own appetite for glory. However, these were notional aims that could only be achieved if the army was reordered into an efficient and disciplined force. While England persevered with a Secretary-at-War who was essentially a senior bureaucrat, Louis demanded a more assertive role from his Minister of War. The minister must report directly to the king; but he had powers to drive through measures himself.

The king needed to find men of quality to realise his military dreams. Even as a young man he had been adept at spotting potential in his subordinates, and then delegating. Sir Edward Creasy, the nineteenth-century historian, noted: ‘One of the surest proofs of the genius of Louis was his skill in finding out genius in others, and his promptness in calling it into action.’[fn2] In Michel Le Tellier and his son, François-Michel, Marquis de Louvois, Louis divined real talent. He relied on them with increasing confidence, which they repaid with dynamic and committed service. United by blood, they were also linked by their determination to root out the military abuses that were common to the age. In a tenure that, between them, lasted from 1643 to 1691, Le Tellier and Louvois transformed the soldiers of France. No longer would they tolerate a series of independent regiments, each with its own self-serving owner-commander. They demanded, instead, a unified royal army.

Louvois had encouraged the excesses of his troops in the Dutch War. He had also inflicted obscenities on his Huguenot compatriots during the dragonnades. In 1662, he was brought into the ministry to lend youthful vigour to his father’s efforts. Eight years later he assumed the dominant role in the partnership; although Le Tellier had instigated reforms and most of the changes had been agreed upon by the time he retired in 1677. It was Louvois, ‘haughty, brutal, coarse’,[fn3] who rammed the programme through to its conclusion. Louis XIV benefited handsomely from the focus that Le Tellier and Louvois brought to their task. Unleashed, the two uncompromising agents of the Royal Will gradually amassed the powers needed for wholesale structural change of the military system.

The Controller-General of Finance found many of his military duties taken from him. The Ministry of War was now the body that would oversee the victualling and quartering of troops; the care of the sick and wounded; the building and running of defensive fortifications. This transfer of responsibilities seems as logical to us now as it was revolutionary then. Such a radical change was only achievable with the full support of an absolutist monarch, who could choose to ignore the protests of the losers in this power struggle. Louis backed his reformers with the full might of his autocracy.

A novel layer of control was introduced through intermediary inspectors, known as intendants d’armée, commissaires de guerre, and côntroleurs des guerres. The intendants had limited spheres of duty, sometimes only being appointed for a year, or given responsibility for a single regiment or region. However, within that time, or locality, their power was enormous: they supervised every aspect of the raising and payment of soldiers. They also provided medical facilities for the troops, and organised their fortifications. The commissaires helped to oversee recruitment and logistics, while the côntroleurs were bureaucrats who checked and logged the minutiae of army life: to them fell the task of verifying officers’ claims for wages, so that non-existent soldiers did not swell the pay list. The first loyalty of intendant, commissaire and côntroleur was to the reforming ministry, and not to the military establishment. They were the conduits of the king’s power as he set about standardising the French military system.

Le Tellier and Louvois sought control over the army through conformity. What better way of achieving this than establishing a model unit, a paragon of excellence for all to aspire to? In 1663, the Régiment du Roi was formed under Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Martinet, an officer whose surname has remained a byword for military pedantry. There had previously been a veneration of the long-established units. Now the insistence that a totally new body was the crack regiment of the army made it clear that the old and complacent days were over. In 1667, this message was driven home when Martinet was promoted to become inspector-general for the entire infantry.

With Martinet came the standardisation of military life. The comprehensive overhaul addressed everything from firearms and uniforms, to discipline and methods of military encampment. Instead of haphazard camps, tents were to be erected in carefully ordered rows, away from the health hazards of human waste. In place of the white sash that had been the distinguishing feature of French troops in battle, regimental uniforms were ordered. Out went the cheap ragbag of firearms ordered by cost-cutting colonels, and in came standardised muskets: these were interchangeable, all subject to the same drill, all taking the same ammunition. As a result of the demands of the Ministry of War, military manuals became hugely popular: Mallet’s Les Travaux de Mars, first published in 1672, was required reading for officers keen to stay abreast of their new duties. It was reprinted many times; a sign that central control was recognised, even if there were difficulties in imposing it upon an army whose traditions were rooted in amateurism and corruption.

The French Ministers of War and their intermediaries were faced with problems familiar to their counterparts throughout Europe. Of these, one of the deepest-rooted was the granting of exaggerated military rank to men of high social standing, regardless of merit. Louvois wanted his professional troops led by the ablest, not merely the noblest, generals. Certainly, deference still had its place, in what was the king’s army — Princes of the Blood would continue to outrank marshals in the field — but aristocrats and well-connected soldier-courtiers would have to prove their worth. Nearly five hundred officers were cashiered for incompetence between 1686 and 1693. Louvois’s rebukes for those who failed to meet his standards were feared throughout the armed forces:

‘Sir,’ said Louvois one day to M. de Nogaret, ‘your company is in a very bad state.’

‘Sir,’ answered Nogaret, ‘I was not aware of it.’

‘You have to be aware,’ said M. de Louvois, ‘have you inspected it?’

‘No, sir,’ said Nogaret.

‘You ought to have inspected it, sir!’

‘Sir, I will give orders about it.’

‘You ought to have given them: a man ought to make up his mind, sir, either to openly profess himself a courtier or to devote himself to his duty when he is an officer.’ [fn4]

No longer was it enough to buy a junior rank and then inexorably percolate upwards to high command. It was possible, from this point, to purchase up to a colonelcy, no further. A new officer hierarchy was created, based on earned seniority and merit rather than the accident of birth. In the wake of these reforms Vauban and Catinat, neither of patrician background, but both immensely talented, received marshal’s batons. Lower down the scale, new ranks were introduced into the French army that were within reach of those of modest means. By 1667 it was possible to become a brigadier-general in the French army without the expense of first buying a colonelcy.

It was not just the professionalism of officers, but also the lot of the ordinary soldier that preoccupied Louis and his reforming ministers. The king felt bound by a two-way contract with his troops, writing: ‘Just as the soldier owes obedience and submission to those who command him, the commander owes his troops care for their subsistence.’[fn5] Louvois concurred and made the provision of food and other essentials for the troops a prime concern. Using the superbly constructed fortresses of Marshal Vauban as magazines, he supplied the armies of the 1670s and 1680s with all their needs.

Each soldier of France was entitled to a daily ration of 24oz of bread, 1 lb of meat and a pint of wine, beer or cider. In the field, cintres — easily assembled mobile ovens — were crucial parts of the baggage train. A French munitions expert at the end of the seventeenth century calculated that an army consuming 50,000 rations per day needed constant access to twenty cintres. The bread was transported from these to the soldiers in huge wagon-borne waterproof chests, each containing loaves for 800 men. The soldiers assembled to collect their ration every two to four days — more frequently in hot weather. The cavalry received their loaves first, at 8 a.m., then the dragoons two hours later, followed by the infantry at noon. It was a massive operation, day in, day out, to give the Leviathan its daily bread.

Louis and Louvois also combined to provide care for the wounded. Previously the view in the army had been, ‘When a soldier is once down, he never gets up again’. In 1670, twenty years before London’s Chelsea Hospital and thirty-five years before the Prussians introduced the Invalidenkasse pension for wounded servicemen, France built its Hôtel des Invalides. Louis’s words at the time show how he believed himself obliged to tend his nation’s injured warriors: ‘It were very reasonable that they who have freely exposed their lives and lavished their blood for the defence and maintenance of this monarchy, who have so materially contributed to the winning of the battles we have gained over our enemies and who have often reduced them to asking peace of us, should enjoy the repose they have secured for our subjects and should pass the remainder of their days in tranquillity.’[fn6] It was an example of enlightened kingship, from an autocrat whose ambitions depended on the fruits of war.

The expense of providing for the soldiers of a nation invariably at war grew, as France’s military commitments multiplied. Until the end of the 1680s Louis’s will, allied to Louvois’s flair, ensured that this massive exercise of supply and provision succeeded. After Louvois died, in 1691, France had to face mounting problems without her ablest military administrator. This when the army’s demands had already cut deep.

In 1693, for the first time in Louis’s campaigns, the forward supplies for French troops were not in place at the start of the season. Tellingly, this allowed the Grand Alliance to take the field before the French. With his diligent servant dead, and the multi-fronted conflict demanding gargantuan levels of provision, Louis faced unprecedented problems. No longer was he able to supply troops at the front as smoothly as he had in earlier wars.

*

It was the same with the army’s manpower: an initial ability to cope with recruitment was followed by a stretching of resources and eventual crisis. Louis believed that upstanding men should fill his ranks, whenever possible, and forbad prisoners from being pressed into service because he wanted it to be an honour, not a punishment, to fight for him and his nation. Most recruitment took place in the bigger towns and cities, and their immediate surroundings. Before the War of the League of Augsburg the majority of soldiers were from solid working-class and peasant stock.

During the glory days of Louis’s reign, there was a glamour attached to service in the all-conquering army. There was also an opportunity for self-enrichment from bounty and from pillaging, both of which were sanctioned as the fruits of victory. Furthermore, in the beginning and middle of Louis’s reign, registering for military service was not a long-term commitment. Demobilisation took place at the end of each war; and a discharge was attainable after four years’ service, a right supposedly rendered inalienable by legislation in the mid-1660s. This could make a spell in the army an attractive alternative to the drudgery and poor pay of peasant farming or artisan apprenticeship.

The turning point came after 1685, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes resulted in a haemorrhaging abroad of Huguenot soldiers, leaving a worrying void in the ranks. Louis’s devastation of the Palatinate made widespread war ever more likely, so Louvois’s concerns multiplied. How could he manage to inflate the army further, to meet the enemy confederacy that William of Orange was assembling? War in several areas — against the Dutch, the Spanish, the Imperialists, various German peoples, and now the English — demanded recruitment on an unprecedented scale. But, with traditional reserves of cannon fodder already empty, where could the extra troops be found?

Louvois met the problem with a typically far-reaching and bold plan. In 1688, he instigated a system of militia throughout France. Each parish was to provide, clothe and pay a fully equipped militiaman for two years’ service. The resulting levy of 25,000 men was formed into thirty regiments, which were subject to full military discipline. Louvois initially intended to use these men to free regular soldiers from duties that were keeping them from the front line —garrisoning fortresses, guarding towns, and other time-consuming chores that semi-professionals could manage. However, the militiaman’s duty broadened spectacularly as the War of the League of Augsburg sucked France dry.

We must look briefly at the chronology of the conflict, to see how the military machine envisaged by the Sun King quickly overstretched itself. There was the customary litany of French military success in the early years, thanks largely to the brilliance of Luxembourg, the sole survivor from the trio of great marshals who had been the architects of victory through the years of conquest. The campaigns of 1691-3 were triumphant. France gained Mons, captured the supposedly impregnable Namur, marginally defeated William of Orange at Steenkirk, and won the slaughterous battle of Landen. However, Luxembourg died in the winter of 1694, and with him went an age of victory that was not to return during Louis’s reign. 1695, as if to illustrate the turning of the tide, was remarkable for that most rare of military phenomena, a warrior triumph for William, when he recaptured Namur.

The results on the sea were more clear-cut, the damage done to France’s navy hamstringing her war efforts for a generation. In 1692, a forty-four-strong French fleet was given a severe drubbing by ninety-nine ships of the Anglo-Dutch navy, off Cape La Hogue. For five days the allies continued their pummelling, sinking enemy warships before pursuing the defeated remnants into their harbours, where the destruction continued. Until this great battle Louis had fostered hopes both of invading England, and of dominating the oceans. After it, such aspirations were dashed. Winston S. Churchill called La Hogue ‘the Trafalgar of the seventeenth century’:[fn7] it put the seal on British maritime supremacy over the French for a generation.

Louis was particularly aggrieved by the loss of his talismanic flagship, the 110-gun Soleil Royal, for which he had personally paid £200,000. With typically flamboyant arrogance, he had decorated the captain’s cabin of his ship with a portrait depicting himself with ‘several European Kings and princes in chains under his feet’.[fn8] After La Hogue it was clear that, if Louis was ever to achieve such a triumphant pose, it was not going to be through mastery of the sea.

From the 1690s onwards, France was unable to find the money to re-create a powerful fleet. Between 1695 and 1698, the Anglo-Dutch navy was boosted by sixty-six fresh ships of the line, whereas the French received just nineteen vessels of similar calibre. For the remainder of his reign, Louis’s regular maritime forces were negligible. The efforts of French privateers, especially those based in Dunkirk, provided a modicum of consolation during a period of relative impotence.

Even as the French navy lay in the doldrums, there was a diminishment in calibre of Louis’s senior servicemen. Used to a bank of exceptional talent to call upon, in all spheres of public life, the king was now left with thinner pickings. This happened at a time when the habit of absolute power had begun to dull Louis’s judgement and abilities. Guizot, a historian of France, recognised the passing of the great men, and the advent of lesser successors: ‘Louis XIV had lost Condé and Turenne, Luxembourg, Colbert, Louvois and Seignelay; with the exception of Vauban, he had exhausted the first rank; Catinat alone remained in the second; the king was about to be reduced to the third: sad fruits of a long reign, of an incessant and devouring activity, which had speedily used up men and was beginning to tire out fortune; grievous result of mistakes long hidden by glory.’[fn9] His very longevity ensured that Louis experienced the downside of earlier years of acquisition and glory. He was to learn the dependence a ruler has on the quality of his lieutenants.

Courtiers at Versailles began to focus on the problems facing France, with critics attributing them to their monarch’s unfettered powers. There was no authoritative representative body capable of putting their concerns to the king. As a result, more roundabout means were employed to bring grievances to the attention of the Grande Monarque. Fenelon chose to vent his fears via anonymous correspondence: ‘The whole of France is no longer anything but one vast hospital,’ he protested. ‘The people who so loved you are beginning to lose affection, confidence and even respect; the allies prefer carrying on war with loss to concluding a peace which would not be observed. Whilst you in some fierce conflict are taking the battle-field and the cannon of the enemy, whilst you are storming strong places, you do not reflect that you are fighting on ground which is sinking beneath your feet, and that you are about to have a fall in spite of your victories.’[fn10] It was strong criticism and it was fair; but its message was ignored.

Increasingly, the king took on the responsibilities of government and generalship himself, with unhappy results. He charged men with positions that their fathers had held; a comforting tactic for a monarch keen to recapture past triumphs, but — apart from the shining examples of Le Tellier and Louvois — not successful. The appointment of the mediocre François Villeroi, a royal favourite and the son of Louis’s childhood governor, to replace Marshal Luxembourg, was a downgrading of quality that delighted France’s enemies. Equally, the transfer of the Ministry of War to a third generation of the Le Tellier family, in the hope that genetics would provide Louis with a further brilliant military organiser from the same stock, was doomed.

These promotions were indicative of Louis’s conviction, in middle age, that a long reign had imbued him with a multitude of talents. This was a development ridiculed by the Duke of Saint Simon in his secret Versailles diary, who wrote of Louis: ‘He wished to reign by himself … The superior ability of his early ministers and his early generals soon wearied him. He liked nobody in any way superior to him. Thus he chose his ministers, not for their knowledge, but for their ignorance; not for their capacity, but for their want of it. It was the same with his generals. He took credit to himself for instructing them; wished it to be thought that from the cabinet he commanded and directed all his armies. Naturally fond of trifles, he unceasingly occupied himself with the most petty details of his troops, his household, his mansions.’[fn11]

The king’s talent in his prime had been in deciding on a course, and then finding others to pursue it on his behalf. From now on, he would attempt to be both principal and agent.

*

By 1695, after half-a-dozen years of hardship and famine, and with no obvious benefit from the struggle, France was crying out for peace. The Te Deum was sung often to mark yet another military victory, but the excited, united, joy of the triumphant years was missing. The demands of war were felt on the home front with increasing pain.

Regular troops of the French army, short of supplies and low on morale, were denied their right to retire from service. Still, there were not enough soldiers. A dreaded drawing of lots after Sunday church helped fill the ranks of the militia, which was rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the main army. Young men of the parish were prepared to avoid the draft through self-mutilation, or by fleeing their homes. Significantly, recruitment for the militia was confined as much as possible to rural areas, because the authorities feared uprisings in cities and towns. The military machine was starting to overheat.

Meanwhile the suffering of France’s civilians was such that Marshal Vauban estimated that a tenth of the nation was reduced to begging for food. He beseeched Louis to lessen the load on his people. In return, the most talented marshal left to France was treated with harsh recriminations by a king aghast at his impudence. Deaf to Vauban’s pleas, Louis added to his people’s burden by imposing a new poll tax, the capitation. It garnered only half the projected revenue, while helping to incite further resentment against the war and its attendant demands.

In 1696, at last accepting that his people needed respite from warfare, Louis transformed four years of covert diplomatic soundings into a sustained quest for peace. The majority of the alliance arrayed against him were receptive, many of them equally concerned by the expense of long, inconclusive, campaigns. Some of the components of the Grand Alliance were also feeling the strain of their unnatural union, which only the diplomatic skill of William of Orange had held together for so long. ‘Both the imperial and Spanish courts felt a natural unease at allying with the Protestant states of northern Europe, especially since they were, in effect, supporting a Protestant usurper against the rightful Catholic king of England.’[fn12] Ironically it was William’s two nations, England and Holland, which were keenest to end the war, and Spain, which had shown herself militarily weak, which wished to continue the fight. With Swedish mediation, peace was signed in the Dutch town of Ryswick in the autumn of 1697. In London, news that nine years of war had ended was greeted with two months of public celebrations, the likes of which had not been seen since the Restoration.

The Peace of Ryswick marked a change in direction for Louis, for this was a treaty that was to deprive France of territory: she had to surrender her gains of the previous two decades in the Low Countries and the Holy Roman Empire, and she was also obliged to withdraw from Lorraine. A more personal humiliation was inflicted on Louis when he was forced to return the principality of Orange to William and to recognise his old foe as rightful king of England. Louis completed the climb-down by swearing no longer to assist any enemy of William’s. He was not specifically named, but the displaced James II could, if the terms of the Peace were observed, no longer be helped to retrieve his forfeited crown. Louis justified his acceptance of such terms by claiming that he was prepared ‘to sacrifice the fruits of my victory to the Repose of Europe’.[fn13]

William suspected a more sinister reason behind Louis’s eagerness for peace: perhaps Louis had calculated that a resumption of arms in a few years time would not involve such a mighty coalition against him? It must have seemed unlikely that anyone other than William could galvanise such diverse forces into a unified opposition to France; and the Prince of Orange was clearly unwell, a lifetime of conflict and responsibility draining his already poor constitution. In short, given breathing space and the right pretext, could France rise to the occasion yet again, and provide Louis le Grand with another generation of warriors? Could it be that the French were only withdrawing from this conflict to prepare for the next?

Chapter Five – The Spanish Succession

Carlos II, king of Spain, of Naples and of Sicily, sovereign of Flanders, of part of Italy, of several islands in the Ocean and the Mediterranean, of the Philippines in the Indian sea, emperor of Mexico and Peru; Carlos II, without children, languished, threatened by approaching death.

Histoire de France, by Anquetil, Paris, 1832

Carlos II was the wretch to whom heredity had bequeathed the throne of Spain. The royal gene pool from which he sprang had been soured by an unhealthily close blend: Carlos’s father, Philip IV, had married his niece, Mariana of Austria, to produce this boy, the only one of their nine children to outlive his father. Carlos was so inbred that he was ‘more a medical curiosity than a man’.[fn1] His features were cruelly pronounced versions of the distinctive Habsburg physiognomy: his eyes had a thin pallor, and his jaw was so prominent that he was unable to chew; his head so outsized and his balance so poor that during his first appearance at court, as a child, his nurse suspended him from strings to keep him from stumbling forward. It was apt, given his increasing reliance on powerful aristocrats and churchmen, that Carlos was presented to his people while hanging like a puppet.

Syphilitic, afflicted with dropsy and epilepsy, sick in body and mind, his wan features and jerky twitches betrayed a festering inner torment. Carlos became convinced that he was the Devil’s creation, a belief which fostered an obsession with death. He would linger in the royal crypt and gaze with melancholy into the opened coffins of his ancestors, before climbing into his own casket. He found solace from the trials of his earthly existence in contemplation of the afterlife. Beset by ignorant doctors and scheming advisers, his struggle through increasing infirmity was gloomily watched by some of his people, who called him Carlos the Sufferer. Others observed the plethora of his afflictions, and dubbed him Charles the Bewitched. He was never expected to see adolescence, let alone adulthood; but the invalid defied such predictions to limp into manhood, carrying the potential for massive diplomatic ructions on his frail back.

The rest of Europe was more sanguine about the deformed, feeble-minded Spaniard. The details of his treatments were titillating items of gossip — the chopped chicken giblets placed on his sternum; the brutally effective purges of his intestines; the infusions of milk and pulverised pearls. However, to the key figures in the Courts of Europe Carlos’s health, throughout the four decades of his life, was of paramount concern. No matter how weak Spain had become, she retained a core importance born of her days as the premier world power. She still possessed a cornucopia of colonies and dependencies as mementoes of her heyday, from the Spanish Netherlands, the Canary Islands, California, Cuba, Florida and Mexico, to Sicily, Sardinia, Naples and Milan, and the Philippines and much of South America. However, these lands had no direct heir, despite Carlos having taken first a French queen, Marie-Louise of Orléans; then a German one, Maria-Anna of Pfalz-Neuburg. Where these prizes were destined, after the invalid king’s demise, was the backdrop for some of the most complex and important diplomacy of the last decades of the seventeenth century.

*

Carlos’s imminent death had been anticipated ever since his birth in 1661. From his earliest boyhood, when he was crowned king, the powers of Europe tried to contain the expected fall-out from the end of the Spanish Habsburg line. They sought an acceptable and controlled deconstruction of the Empire. The first attempt at this, in 1668, was termed the Partition Treaty. However, as Carlos progressed into manhood its provisions were rendered obsolete.

What remained unchanged was a desire among outsiders to stop the passing of Spain’s possessions to a single heir, since this would destroy the balance of power in Europe. One point that France, England and the United Provinces seemed consistently to agree upon was the need to divide the spoils among the potential beneficiaries. This, it was hoped, would preclude the obvious alternative: pan-European warfare, as interested parties scrambled to gain for themselves what they could, before rivals beat them to the best prizes. How to achieve this controlled detonation, in both theory and practice, exercised the great diplomats and rulers of the day.

Towards the close of the century there were three prime candidates for the Spanish inheritance: France, the Empire, and the German Electorate of Bavaria, all of whom had strong blood links to the ailing Carlos.

The main aim of The Hague and London was to ensure that the crowns of France and Spain would remain separate and distinct. The French, for their part, feared that a union of Madrid and Vienna would leave them sandwiched between the two halves of the huge Habsburg Empire of old. The clash of interests between the great houses of Europe, Bourbon and Habsburg, left Bavaria as an intriguing option. Although powerful compared to other German states, the electorate was not in the first rank of nations; neither would she be able to seek European domination, even if festooned with Spanish dominions. Secondly, the Elector of Bavaria was son-in-law of the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, whilst also being related by marriage to Louis XIV. Therefore, although an Imperial candidate, his line was not intrinsically hostile to France. The Bavarians had the classic hallmarks of the compromise candidate: acceptable to all, and threatening to none.

In 1698, Carlos II was so ill that death once more seemed imminent. France, England and the United Provinces secretly agreed to what was later known as the First Partition Treaty. The three powers consented to support the Bavarian heir, Electoral Prince Joseph Ferdinand, as Carlos’s principal successor. France and the Empire would be awarded minor territorial gains, whilst England and Holland would receive generous trading rights overseas. There was a flaw in this neat dissection: neither Spain nor the Holy Roman Empire had been included in these negotiations. There was outrage in Spain when the secrecy around the First Partition Treaty was, inevitably, breached. It was quite unacceptable to the Spanish aristocracy and senior churchmen that their overseas’ possessions should be parcelled off to outsiders. It was even more outrageous that people they regarded as allies against Louis — the Dutch and English — should have secretly colluded with the enemy. The Court was split as to who was the most appropriate heir to the throne, but it was united in wanting the inheritance to remain undivided.

It may well have been poison, or it could perhaps have been illness. Either way, after displaying disturbing symptoms, the young Electoral Prince died very suddenly in February, 1699. He was taken violently ill one afternoon, lapsed into a coma, and was dead within hours. With him died the First Partition Treaty. The diplomats of France, England and the United Provinces urgently reconvened. Count Tallard, one of Louis’s favoured soldier-diplomats, headed the French delegation. The Earl of Portland — William’s intimate favourite, and a respected figure in Paris — represented Anglo-Dutch interests. The upshot was another theoretical division of Spain’s possessions: Leopold’s second son, the Archduke Charles, would become king of Spain, ruler of the Spanish Netherlands and lord of most of the overseas territories. In return, he would be required to guarantee that these gains would never be incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire. France was to be consoled with the bulk of Carlos II’s Italian lands, as well as Lorraine. England and Holland received their customary pay-off in the form of trading concessions.

Once Louis and William had approved Tallard’s and Portland’s draft terms, Emperor Leopold was presented with a fait accompli. He had been excluded from the Second Partition Treaty and was now given just two months to agree to the new negotiations. Angered, he dismissed the suggestion as impudent effrontery. Leopold knew that the century-and-a-half since Charles V’s division of his lands had been threaded through with marital alliances between the two Habsburg families. These had been open recognition of a deeper understanding: that, if one branch of the family died off, the other would succeed it. For others to interfere in family matters, and questions of sovereignty, was an outrage.

Despite the proposed strictures of the Second Partition Treaty, Leopold remained optimistic that his line would succeed that of his childless cousin. The Emperor had a powerful advocate in Maria-Anna of Pfalz-Neuburg, his sister-in-law and Carlos’s queen. She urged her ailing husband to leave his lands to Archduke Charles, her nephew and Leopold’s son from his third wife. Maria-Anna had displayed her loyalties on learning about the Second Partition Treaty: she ‘flew into such a towering rage that she smashed up the furniture in her apartment, paying special attention to the mirrors and other ornaments that were of French origin’.[fn2] The queen followed her tantrum with ceaseless intercessions on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire.

Louis XIV had influence and spies in every European Court. Nowhere were they more active than in Spain. The coded despatch that arrived at Fontainebleau, near Paris, on the morning of 9 November 1700 was from Blécourt, the French ambassador in Madrid, and it contained the news that two generations of Europeans had awaited: Carlos II had died. More excitingly, Blécourt reported, near the end, the dying monarch had signed a new Will in which he had left his territories in their entirety to Philip of Anjou, Louis’s younger grandson. Sustained French lobbying and some selective bribery had helped secure this result. However, the influence of Spanish churchmen tending the king was significant. They insisted on keeping the German queen away from Carlos’s deathbed while they worked on their victim. The invalid’s attentions were elsewhere: ‘The king of Spain was beginning to see the things of this world by the light alone of that awful torch which is lighted to lighten the dying.’[fn3]

Free from Maria-Anna’s interference, the Spanish Establishment focused Carlos’s distracted mind on maintaining the integrity of the empire. John Evelyn wrote in his diary that ‘the Spanish Counsels dreaded nothing so much as the dismembering of [their] dominions, & this ’tis believed, induced them to make the King settle it by Will.’[fn4] If this meant a French prince being brought in as their king, then that was preferable to seeing their overseas territories cut up and distributed to a variety of different rulers. Alexander Stanhope, the English ambassador, believed that the Spanish ‘would rather deliver themselves to the devil, so that they could all go together, rather than be dismembered.’[fn5] Besides, the grandees and churchmen detested the Austrians — they had been too influential in Spain for too long. Louis was unique among the rulers of Europe in having the power to guarantee the Spanish status quo, and Carlos believed it his duty to hold his inheritance together. When he looked for vindication for favouring the French, Pope Innocent XII assured him this was indeed the right choice.

The Will was signed at the beginning of October. Carlos added a codicil, asking that Anjou marry an Imperial princess, in the hope that this might avert warfare. The king then stumbled to his ancestors’ tombs to plead forgiveness for handing their empire to France, the historic enemy. Four weeks later he joined them in the mausoleum, finally at peace in his longed-for coffin.

Louis now had to decide whether to honour the Second Partition Treaty and reluctantly decline his grandson’s proffered inheritance, or to accept the terms of the Will, and gain huge swathes of territory. The nineteenth-century historian, Sir Edward Creasy, argued that all Louis’s earlier conflicts throughout Europe were mere preludes to this crescendo, for, ‘It must be borne in mind that the ambition of Louis in these wars was twofold. It had its immediate and its ulterior objects. Its immediate object was to conquer and annex to France the neighbouring provinces and towns that were most convenient for the increase of her strength; but the ulterior object of Louis, from the time of his marriage to the Spanish Infanta in 1659, was to acquire for the house of Bourbon the whole empire of Spain.’[fn6] After more than four decades, the opportunity to achieve his ultimate ambition had arrived. However, acceptance of the prize was bound to lead to war with Emperor Leopold.

Louis was unable to see a clear way forward. He summoned his three closest advisers, as well as his mistress Madame de Maintenon, and his heir the Dauphin, to examine the options and their implications. They concentrated on the proviso in Carlos’s Will that passed everything to the Austrian Archduke Charles, should Anjou decline the inheritance. The Marquis de Torcy, Louis’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs, argued that acceptance of the Will was the right course, since war with Austria seemed inevitable either way. It would therefore be folly to decline the bequeathed empire. The Dauphin agreed. Beauvillier, governor to the royal children, took a more legalistic approach. He advised Louis that he should honour the Partition Treaty, because he had given his solemn undertaking to do so. Pontchartrain, the Chancellor, merely itemised the arguments for and against each decision, without concluding which one he believed to be preferable.

Louis still could not decide. He pondered the crucial question for a few days, taking soundings from others whose opinions he valued. There was much to consider: could he persuade himself that the union of France and Spain was justifiable; that his duty as a good Christian monarch was to unite the two nations in a way that could guarantee peace in Europe in general, even if it led to a duel with Austria?

There was a further consideration. Over the previous 150 years the Habsburgs had usually held the whip hand over France. His father and grandfather had both fought off Spanish invasions, as had he, early in his reign. Was this Will therefore not a unique opportunity to put an end to the threat from across the Pyrenees, as well as from the Spanish Netherlands? Practicality, honour, logic and temptation jostled for position in Louis’s mind.

On 16 November, Versailles rippled with excitement. Louis, whose daily rituals were the fulcrum of court life, broke with tradition and invited all to hear his pronouncement on Carlos’s bequest. The king stood by the opened double doors of his study. ‘Then he ran his eyes majestically over the numerous company. “Gentlemen,” he said, showing them the 17-year-old Duc d’Anjou, “here is the King of Spain. His birth called him to this crown, the late king also, by his Will. The Spanish nation has wished it and has demanded it of me: it was the command of heaven; I have granted it with joy.”’[fn7] And thus the king of France recognised his grandson, previously a secondary figure at Versailles, as his regal equal.

While the courtiers digested the ramifications of Louis’s decision, Castel del Rey, the Spanish ambassador, fell to his knees before his new master. His utterance captured the enormity of the moment: ‘Il n’y a plus de Pyrènées’ — The Pyrenees are no more.

Louis continued, turning to Philip and exhorting him to: ‘Be a good Spaniard, that is now your first duty, but remember that you were born a Frenchman to bring about the union of the two nations; that is the way to ensure both their happiness and the peace of Europe.’[fn8] Was this simply advice to an inexperienced grandson, encouraging him to forego aggression? Or was it a veiled threat as Louis asserted his dominance over a vassal, ordering Philip to rule for France’s benefit? To the Courts of Europe, French control of Spain was a huge concern, running counter to thirty-five years of complex diplomacy.

William of Orange was in no doubt as to the correct interpretation of recent events in Madrid and Paris. He was dining at Hampton Court when informed of Louis’s decision. He leaned forward, pulling his hat hard against his features to cover an angry flush. When he regained composure he received the French ambassador to London, Count Tallard, who confirmed his master’s intent. The count had been one of the architects of the now worthless Second Partition Treaty. ‘Tallard did not utter a single word on handing me his sovereign’s letter, the contents of which are the same as of that which the States [the Dutch Parliament] have received. I said to him that perhaps I had testified too eager a desire for the preservation of peace, but that, nevertheless, my inclination in that respect had not changed. Whereupon he replied: “The king my master, by accepting the will, considers that he gives a similar proof of his desire to maintain peace.” Thereupon he made a bow and withdrew.’[fn9]

There was little that William could do. He wrote bitterly to Grand Pensionary Heinsius, the Dutch president: ‘I have never had much dependence on treaties with France, but that this solemn undertaking should be torn up in the eyes of all the world I never would have believed possible.’[fn10] William recognised that his two nations would accept Louis’s reneging on the Second Partition Treaty. The United Provinces showed no inclination for another war; indeed, its stock market rose at the news that the Spanish succession had been settled. Meanwhile the English Parliament was more openly hostile to its own king than to France’s. It contained a resentful Jacobite contingent, which intensely disliked the Dutchman on the Stuart throne. Some moderate MPs were alienated by the revelation that their foreign monarch had secretly — and, in their view, unconstitutionally — agreed the Second Partition Treaty, without reference to them.

The Tories, in power since displacing the Whigs in 1699, had little wish to become embroiled in Continental affairs. The landowners and farmers at the core of their vote had been battling with a run of poor harvests since 1693. The four-shilling in the pound tax imposed during the War of the League of Augsburg was not an experience they were keen to repeat. They were for isolationism. The Whigs appeared to be equally wary. They feared a large, peacetime, standing army, primarily on constitutional grounds. When the Peace of Ryswick drew a line under the War of the League of Augsburg, Parliament insisted that William disband his forces.

MPs were so aggressively determined about this that they almost precipitated William’s abdication and return to the United Provinces. From a war footing of 87,000 soldiers Parliament ordered the English army to be scaled down to 20,000 men. Of these, a maximum of 7,000 could be stationed in England and Scotland. William pleaded for the retention of at least 30,000 troops, but he was ignored. In a symbolic rejection of the alien king and his foreign wars, the elite Dutch Guard were ordered to quit England. William ‘was aghast. Every fibre in his nature revolted at the baseness, cruelty, and ingratitude with which his faithful troops were treated, at the same time he felt his whole European nation undermined by the blotting out of England as a military factor. But he was powerless.’[fn11]

Just before Christmas 1700, Count Tallard triumphantly reported to Louis that London and The Hague were prepared to recognise Anjou as king of Spain. This showed that the Dutch placed peace and trade above international politics. It was also proof that the English were prepared to believe Louis’s promise that France and Spain’s crowns would never be united. A Parliament composed of resentful Tories and assertive Whigs contemptuously ignored William’s warnings about French duplicity. Some of the more extreme Whigs even questioned the raison d’être of monarchy. By 1701, the relationship between king and Parliament was so strained that a French agent was able to report: ‘The Royal authority is so enfeebled that England cannot but be regarded as a Republic, and her king as an officer authorised to carry out what Parliament has ordered in the intervals between its sessions.’[fn12] William was no longer able to exert influence even in his own kingdom, let alone across Europe.

Anjou’s succession was recognised throughout the Continent except, predictably, in Vienna. The Holy Roman Emperor railed against the usurping of what he maintained was his son’s rightful inheritance. France had little to fear from Austria standing alone, though; such a conflict could only have one result. Austria would need allies. However, William, the wily enemy of French domination, could not rouse his peoples, let alone his confederates of old, to war.

*

Louis’s hubris tore away the mantle of peace cast over most of Europe. Philip V was received in his new kingdom of Spain with genuine enthusiasm, but the well-meaning youth had no experience or training in statecraft. In 1701, the Spanish Regency Council asked Louis to guide him. It should have been clear that such an overt intermeshing of French and Spanish interests would alarm the rest of Europe, yet a flattered Louis was blind to the likely consequences and accepted the invitation.

With the same disregard for international opinion, Louis sent troops to the Barrier Fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands, claiming them on his grandson’s behalf. However, the 1678 Peace of Nijmegen stipulated that Dutch and Spanish forces should jointly garrison this score of important towns on the River Meuse. The arrangement had been made when the United Provinces and Spain were joined against France. Now the Spanish occupants of the Barrier Fortresses opened up town after town to their new allies, the French. Twenty-two battalions of Dutch troops — 15,000 men — meekly quit their postings, leaving the fortifications in Louis’s hands. Apart from the well-garrisoned Maastricht, all of the Meuse defences, including Mons, Namur and Venlo, surrendered. Within weeks, the fruits of William of Orange’s campaigns and diplomacy had been lost, without a shot being fired. He cried out in despair: ‘For twenty-eight years I have toiled unceasingly to preserve this barrier for the State and now I have to watch it swallowed up in one day without a single blow being struck.’[fn13]

There was further unease when the electorate of Cologne became a French puppet state. This shift in allegiance threatened lines of communications between the Dutch and the Emperor. The United Provinces realised that the loss of the Barrier Fortresses, added to Cologne’s position, was ominous. They prepared to defend themselves.

England was also forced to rethink its pacifism. There was fury, in mercantile circles, when France and Spain agreed that Louis’s ships should enjoy favourable trading rights in South America. The most contentious issue was the granting to the French of a monopoly of the ‘Assiento’, the trade in slaves. This brought to an immediate end the informal agreement that had allowed English and Dutch merchant ships to trade between Cadiz and Spanish America. Could this development be a precursor to something similarly damaging in the Mediterranean? If so, the merchant class thought, war would be a price worth paying.

Louis provoked his neighbours further by announcing that Anjou could remain in the French line of succession, despite ruling Spain. Louis, rejecting all that generations of diplomats had strived to achieve, proudly displayed the letters patent confirming his decision. Such arrogance lent credibility to William, who had predicted that Louis would renege on his word in this way. It seemed that those who had demonised William as a self-serving scaremonger had been a little hasty. He was now seen as the one man who had not been gulled by the manipulations of the Sun King.

*

War was already probable, but Louis’s continued arrogance rendered it inevitable. The eleven-year-old Duke of Gloucester, Princess Anne’s last surviving child, died in July 1700. The boy had suffered from hydrocephalus — water on the brain. (Twelve of Anne’s seventeen children had miscarried, and the remaining five died young.) Gloucester was carried by servants, to protect him from bumps and falls. However, no one could protect him from a deadly attack of smallpox. After Gloucester’s death it was considered unlikely that the 35-year-old Anne would produce any more children, let alone healthy ones.

There were various candidates to succeed Anne, herself the heir to King William. Few Englishmen considered welcoming back the former James II, although a handful thought a return to the main line of the Stuarts was both possible and desirable. In Jacobite eyes the exiled king’s son, James Francis Edward, was the preferred future ruler. Might he not be raised by William as a Protestant prince, combining the true bloodline of England’s kings with the religion demanded by her people? However, most shrunk from this proposal, fearing a return of the discord that had marred earlier Stuart reigns. Foreign monarchs had a limited appeal, a fact underlined by William’s unpopularity, but there were no other credible English candidates, so it was necessary to look at overseas royal families with Stuart blood.

The dukes of Savoy had a strong claim, being descended from Charles I’s popular daughter, Minette. However, they were Catholic. They were also distrusted, because Savoy had deserted the Grand Alliance for Louis’s cause in the War of the League of Augsburg.

The house of Hanover presented a more attractive possibility. The Electress Sophia was a granddaughter of James I, giving her claim to the throne parity with Savoy’s. Furthermore, Sophia was staunchly Protestant. With more pragmatism than joy, Hanover was accepted as a sound solution to a delicate conundrum. In March 1701, the Act of Settlement was agreed: the crown of England would pass to Sophia and her descendants, if Princess Anne remained without her own, direct, heir.

*

Six months after the English succession was agreed, the deposed James II collapsed while at prayer in his private chapel at St Germain. Louis was told to hurry to the bedside of his friend and beneficiary. He arrived to find James unconscious, surrounded by his court-in-exile. Louis had a residual affection for his deposed cousin, and reacted to the deathbed scene with pity. This, and his belief in the divine right of kings, prompted Louis to promise that he would help James’s son to regain the English throne. The gasps of gratitude from the ousted queen and her attendants were as nothing compared to the intake of breath that greeted Louis’s pledge, across the Channel.

The outrage that swept England surprised Louis. However, when his advisers suggested he recant his commitment to James’s son, he refused. The Peace of Ryswick specifically forbad Louis from aiding William’s enemies, while acknowledging the Dutchman as England’s lawful king. Despite that, Louis dared to assert his views in direct contravention to the will of the English people, as expressed by the recent Act of Settlement. Louis’s judgement that day at St Germain was appalling. Stanhope, England’s ambassador in Vienna, wrote of the French king’s folly: ‘Whom God designs to destroy he infatuates first, and makes them do their own business themselves.’[fn14]

At the end of 1701, a new Parliament met in London. Sir Edward Seymour, a Tory leader who had witheringly dismissed William’s calls against France in the past, now moved that a clause be added to the Grand Alliance’s stated aims. As a result it was agreed that the war would continue until Louis XIV recognised the Protestant succession in England. Louis’s arrogance and inflexibility had once again united disparate forces against him. Leading these foes, as ever, was the Prince of Orange.

Part Two – The War

Chapter Six – Taking Sides

France had never before found herself in such a favourable position for making war upon her enemies; not only could she count upon being able to keep Philip V upon his Spanish throne, but it seemed as if the stubbornness of the House of Austria would furnish her with the best of opportunities for fresh conquests.

Memoirs of Monsieur de la Colonie, detailed in The Chronicles of an Old Campaigner, 1692-1717

William maximised the moment. He terminated diplomatic relations between France and England, closing his embassy in Paris, and banishing Count Tallard from the Court of St James’s. Diplomacy continued elsewhere, however, with real urgency, as William contacted potential allies against France and Spain: the Empire, England and the United Provinces would head the second Grand Alliance; but support was also needed from as many of the German and Italian nations as possible. William secretly wrote to the Emperor Leopold, encouraging him to pursue Archduke Charles’s claims, and in particular: ‘to make an immediate effort in Italy, with the hope that a momentary success would encourage the well-intentioned, and rouse the European states, in defence of their independence’.[fn1]

The first Grand Alliance had been too weak to defeat Louis. Now Spain and other members of the former confederacy were on the French side. Versailles was confident that, despite Louis’s blundering into this war, there were enough allies to guarantee French victory. ‘The whole universe had borne witness to the power of France. This Monarchy had fought single-handed with almost the whole of Europe leagued against her, and had been victorious,’ wrote Monsieur de la Colonie, a French army officer: ‘I say this, as the whole Germanic body — [and] England, Holland, Spain, Portugal, and Savoy — had combined forces against Louis XIV, and this Prince had invariably defeated them. France now thus found herself in a very favourable position, for she had just added to her forces those of Spain, Portugal, [and] Savoy.’[fn2]

Since the second Grand Alliance was less numerous than its predecessor, it demanded greater contributions from its leading members. In particular, England could no longer act merely as an adjunct of the Dutch; she must now become a driving force within the confederacy. When the three main powers agreed their contributions to the Grand Alliance, the Emperor committed 82,000 and the Dutch 100,000 men. William watched with satisfaction as England promised 40,000 soldiers, and a similar number of sailors.

Aware of his ailing health, William looked for someone who would keep England in the coming war after his death. Despite concerns at Marlborough’s flirtation with Jacobitism, William recognised that here was the man to continue his crusade against Louis. The king knew Princess Anne’s succession would establish the Marlboroughs as the most powerful couple in the land, and in 1701 William passed on his mantle, promoting Marlborough to commander-in-chief of the English forces in Holland, and ambassador extraordinary to the United Provinces.

Marlborough’s experience as a general had been restricted by William’s distrust, both of him personally and of his compatriots in general. Only two of the six lieutenant-generals in the standing army of 1691 were native Englishmen. However, the few opportunities afforded him since Sedgemoor had confirmed that here was a soldier of special talent. Marlborough commanded the English sector of the Anglo-Dutch-Spanish army at the Battle of Walcourt in 1689. Waldeck, the allied commander-in-chief, had already seen Marlborough transform his unpromising detachment of Englishmen into ‘the finest in the Dutch army’, through assiduous training. During the battle, Marlborough headed the charge of the Household Cavalry in the decisive moment of the engagement. Waldeck reported to William: ‘the Earl of Marlborough is assuredly one of the most gallant men I know’.[fn3]

In Ireland the following year, after James II’s defeat by William at the Battle of the Boyne, Marlborough again showed exceptional skill. He led masterly attacks on the Irish ports of Cork and Kinsale, through which the French supplied James’s remaining supporters. Cork fell within a week, with Kinsale surrendering in the same month. This Irish campaign also demonstrated Marlborough’s diplomacy as leader of a multi-national force: his 5,000 men included Huguenot, Dutch and Danish troops. One of the foreign generals was the Duke of Württemberg, who expected his social superiority to give him supreme authority over the combined forces. Marlborough, however, was not prepared to lose his command. Neither did he want to upset his ally. He therefore proposed that he and Württemberg should lead the army on alternate days, and the duke accepted the compromise. This was an early example of Marlborough’s flair for diplomacy, a gift that was to prove invaluable during the Blenheim campaign.

The successes in Ireland won William’s strong approval. His view was that: ‘No officer living who has seen so little service as my Lord Marlborough is so fit for great commands’.[fn4] The Prince de Vaudemont reinforced the good impression, telling William in 1691 his estimation of England’s senior officers: ‘Kirke has fire, Lanier thought, Mackay skill, and Colchester bravery; but there is something inexpressible in the Earl of Marlborough. All their virtues seem to be united in this single person. I have lost my wonted skill in physiognomy, if any subject of your Majesty can ever attain such a height of military glory as that to which this combination of sublime perfections must raise him.’[fn5]

Despite his potential, Marlborough’s career had stalled. After his Irish successes, he had hoped to be created a Knight of the Garter. Instead, in 1692, he was relieved of all his offices, without explanation. John Evelyn wrote in his diary of the commonly believed reason behind the fall from grace: ‘The Lord of Marboro, L:Gen: of K.William’s Army in England, Gent. Of Bedchamber, etc. dismissed from all his Charges Military and other; & given to divers others: for his excessive taking bribes & Covetousness & Extortion upon all occasions from his inferior officers.’ Evelyn enjoyed the fall. ‘Note this was the Lord who being entirely advanced by K. James, the merit of his father being the prostitution of his Daughter (this Lord’s sister) to that King: is now disgraced; & by none pitied, being also the first who betrayed & forsook his Master K. James.’[fn6]

Marlborough was imprisoned in the Tower for treachery, in 1692. Although found innocent of the convoluted charges, Marlborough remained sidelined as a soldier for the rest of the War of the League of Augsburg. William had reason to be suspicious of Marlborough, however: like many powerful contemporaries, he communicated with James’s court-in-exile, insuring against a second Stuart Restoration. The most serious charge levelled against Marlborough was that he betrayed English plans for an ill-fated attack on the port of Brest in 1694. Although it was eventually established that the French already had this intelligence from another source, Marlborough was indeed guilty of giving the enemy secret information. He endeared himself to nobody by applying for the position left vacant by General George Tollemache, the Brest expedition’s commander, who died during the raid.

Marlborough’s questionable loyalty, both past and present, damaged his position. However, the prime reason for tension between the king and the earl was his wife’s hold over her mistress. William and Mary blamed the pronounced difficulties between their Court and that of Princess Anne on Sarah Marlborough’s manipulations. Mary demanded that her sister dismiss this disruptive influence, but Anne repeatedly refused. When Sarah offered her resignation, Anne declared she would ‘rather live in a cottage with you than reign Empress of the world without you’.[fn7]

Their relationship never graduated to the cordial, but William and Anne were brought closer by Queen Mary’s sudden death from smallpox in 1694. This gave closure to a bitter sisterly rivalry. Marlborough, however, remained in the wilderness during the remainder of the War of the League of Augsburg. Sarah heard of the high English casualties at William’s defeats, and gave thanks that her husband’s disgrace had kept him from the front line.

The king’s respect for Marlborough grew after the Peace of Ryswick. He was one of the few willing to listen to and agree with William’s fear of France. This reassured the king that Marlborough was sound. In the summer of 1698, William agreed to the earl’s appointment as governor to the Duke of Gloucester, Anne’s surviving son. ‘My Lord,’ said William, ‘teach him but to know what you are, and my nephew cannot want for accomplishments.’[fn8] At the same time, he restored Marlborough to his Court and army ranks. He had regained his position independent of aid from either political party. His subsequent command of the English army, and his ambassadorial status, put the seal on a remarkable comeback.

*

Louis’s impetuosity had laid bare his continued threat to Protestant Europe, and to all the nations whose lands bordered French territory. The Dutch States-General welcomed Marlborough to The Hague, hoping that he would assemble an alliance strong enough to deter French aggression. If Louis could not be diverted from conflict, though, the United Provinces appreciated the need for a strong confederacy to stand against France. The Dutch installed Marlborough in the palatial Mauritshuis. This was the venue for intense diplomacy as the earl encouraged, cajoled and bribed potential signatories to join the second Grand Alliance. It was difficult and unpredictable work. Winston S. Churchill characterised this era in European history as a time of the most treacherous self-interest: ‘It was an epoch of divided loyalties, of criss-cross ties, of secret reserves and much dissembling.’[fn9]

Of no individual was this truer than the colourful Maximilian II Emmanuel, the Elector of Bavaria. Known as the White Knight, because of his personal valour, Maximilian had succeeded the Duke of Lorraine as Supreme Commander of the Imperial armies against the Turks in 1688. Success then had been followed by a leading role against the French in the War of the League of Augsburg: the Elector of Bavaria had been the Imperial commander who had helped William to capture Namur in 1695.

Maximilian Emmanuel’s proven abilities as a general and the strength of his army made Bavaria’s services desirable to Louis and the Grand Alliance. However, it was his nation’s location — his domain also included the dukedom of the Upper Palatinate, and the county of Palatine of the Rhine — that made him an ally of particular interest to France. The Elector’s compliance would give France a base deep inside the Empire, within striking range of the capital, Vienna. Louis sent one of his foremost diplomats, the Marquis de Ricous, to alert Maximilian Emmanuel to the many benefits that friendship with France could bring.

The Elector, was, by definition, one of the standard-bearers of the Holy Roman Empire. However, he contemplated an alliance with Louis because he believed France would win this war, and win it quickly. He had a matchless knowledge of the weakness of the Imperial forces, and he expected the Habsburg dynasty to fall during the conflict. The death of his young son before he could succeed Carlos II had deprived the Elector’s family of the Spanish Empire. However, maybe there was now a chance to secure another Imperial crown, albeit as the vassal of Louis XIV, by defeating and replacing Emperor Leopold and his line?

Maximilian had been created Viceroy of the Spanish Netherlands after the War of the League of Augsburg. The Emperor had welcomed the appointment, believing his able commander would help to control this sensitive area. However, when the French overwhelmed the Barrier Fortresses, Leopold discovered that Maximilian Emmanuel was in cahoots with the Franco-Spanish. Philip V had guaranteed the Elector’s continuance as viceroy, provided he allow the Barrier Fortresses to fall to Louis.

Many lesser German princes were reluctant to follow the Emperor into battle against the strength of France. They now looked to Maximilian Emmanuel to lead their cause. ‘Every day the highest dignitaries of the Empire besought him to return to his own territory, as he was regarded as a prince capable of leading those who were opposed to the violent policy with which Germany was threatened by the Court of Vienna, backed by England and Holland.’[fn10] Maximilian Emmanuel returned to Munich, the Bavarian capital, to hear these representations in person. However, it was soon evident that peace was not an option: the Emperor was determined on armed conflict to eject Philip V from Spain, in favour of Archduke Charles. Leopold secured the votes of the three bodies that constituted the Diet of Ratisbon — the seven electors; the hereditary Imperial princes; and the Free Cities of the Empire — then declared war against France.

Maximilian Emmanuel was now left with a stark choice: he could either support his nephew, the new king of Spain; or side with his father-in-law, Emperor Leopold. As he dithered, Louis’s envoy, the Marquis de Ricous, proposed a treaty that was temptingly generous to the Elector. In return for his generalship and 45,000 troops, France would share her Germanic acquisitions in the coming war equally with Bavaria. In the very unlikely circumstance that the Grand Alliance made territorial gains inside the electorate, Maximilian Emmanuel would be compensated with sovereignty elsewhere; either in Burgundy, or in the Spanish Netherlands. These terms were agreed but they were to remain secret: the Elector would only declare his hand once he could pretend that war had been forced upon him.

Unaware that a covert deal had been reached between Maximilian Emmanuel and Louis, the Grand Alliance offered Bavaria a selection of bribes and threats. So keen was the Emperor to secure the return of the Elector to his cause, that he offered him the Supreme Commander’s role in Italy. Maximilian Emmanuel pretended to be intrigued. William was unsettled by this inscrutability, declaring: ‘It is time that he lifts the mask and that he openly opposes liaisons so contrary to the good of the Empire of which he is a member.’[fn11]

Meanwhile Joseph Clement of Bavaria shared his electoral brother’s leanings. In 1688, he had been installed by the Emperor as the archbishop and elector of Cologne, to block Louis’s candidate, Cardinal von Fürstenberg. His strongholds on the Meuse and the Rhine were considerable: Bonn, Huy, Kaiserwerth, Liège, and Rheinberg. However, he felt no lasting gratitude for these acquisitions. Joseph Clement shared Maximilian Emmanuel’s view that France would win the conflict, and that further advancement lay in alliance with the victor. Self-interest held sway over historic ties to a notional overlord, whose days were surely numbered.

With the Bavarian princes failing to come to his colours, Marlborough worked harder to win over other potential allies in Germany. Each had a self-serving agenda. For the Elector of Brandenburg, the quid pro quo was enhanced status. He knew that the services of the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Hanover had been secured in the previous war, by making him the ninth Imperial Elector. Frederick of Brandenburg was a mediocrity figure whose obsession with pomp and ceremony made him an avid admirer of Louis XIV’s Court life. Contemporaries sneered at him as ‘Louis’s monkey’, and mocked him for his superficiality. However, he controlled a hardy and professional army of 43,000 men. When the price of his assistance was set at elevation from elector to king, Leopold reluctantly agreed to pay.

The Hanoverian forces had a special reason for joining the Grand Alliance, for their electoral family was in line for the English throne. They were among the first Germans to commit to the cause, providing 10,000 troops before the terms of their involvement were finalised. Their keenness for the fray was further demonstrated when they attacked their neighbours, the princes of Saxe-Gotha and Wolfenbuttel, who had been raising troops for Louis. After Hanover’s intervention, they stood down their forces, and Louis lost the services of 12,000 men.

Self-interest, greed, self-aggrandisement and fear confronted Marlborough as he did William’s diplomatic bidding. No wonder Marlborough called his efforts at this time ‘tormenting’. However, William had chosen his special envoy wisely. Lord Chesterfield, looking back on Marlborough’s career, believed the graciousness that he brought to his diplomatic missions was the key to his overall success: ‘It was by this engaging graceful manner that he was enabled, during all the war, to connect the various and jarring Powers of the Grand Alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of the war, notwithstanding their private and separate jealousies and wrong-headedness. Whatever Court he went on (and he was often obliged to go to restive and refractory ones) he brought them into his measures. The Pensionary Heinsius, who had governed the United Provinces for forty years, was absolutely governed by him. He was always cool, and nobody ever observed the least variation in his countenance; he could refuse more easily than others could grant; and those who went from him the most dissatisfied as to the substance of their business, were yet charmed by his manner, and, as it were, comforted by it.’[fn12] These were the attributes that helped Marlborough to forge the Grand Alliance on William’s behalf: Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, Hanover, Baden, and Hesse-Cassel joined the Imperialists, the Dutch and the English. Between 1701 and 1704 England was to sign fifty treaties and conventions with her allies.

*

William called on his adoptive people to prepare for war. In January 1702, Parliament received one of his more impassioned speeches. He lashed Louis for his presumptuousness, and urged the English to stand up to the threat he represented: ‘I have no doubt that the late proceedings of His Most Christian Majesty and the dangers which threaten all the powers of Europe have excited your most lively resentment. All the world have their eyes fixed upon England; there is still time, she may save her religion and her liberty, but let her profit by every moment, let her arm by land and sea, let her lend her allies all the assistance in her power, and swear to show her enemies, the foes of her religion, her liberty, her government and the king of her choice, all the hatred they deserve!’[fn13]

William died two months afterwards. He broke his collarbone in a fall from his horse, and his physical weakness left him prey to complications, including pneumonia. Incompetent physicians sped his passing. The reactions to the death of Protestantism’s champion was mixed: in England, Jacobites toasted the mole whose molehill had caused William’s mount to stumble; in Holland, consternation was widespread, and church bells were rung thrice a day, in doleful respect; in France, Louis allowed no official mourning, in order not to offend his exiled Stuart protégés at St Germain; but he equally allowed no rejoicing at the death of a respected adversary.

Louis was disappointed if he hoped that England would now revert to isolationism: the new monarch, Queen Anne, rushed to reassure her privy council that vigorous opposition to France, and the stout defence of the Church of England, were her twin priorities. She then wrote to her allies, confirming her readiness for war, and England’s acceptance of a lead role in the coming conflict. In mid-March, she wrote to the Elector Palatine and his son: ‘Therefore in very friendly manner we ask and invite Your Highness and Your Highness Elect to enter into the same Alliance, and to add strength and endurance by your accession. By which act, you will be joining with His Imperial Majesty, with the most high estates of the Dutch Allies, who are very zealous for the Public Good, and especially with Ourselves, who have now solely turned Our attentions, and are about to exert all Our energies, to the end that We may vindicate the common liberty of Europe against the immoderate power of the French.’[fn14] Anne joined her allies in committing to a fight with France on 4 May 1702. When Louis was informed, he quipped: ‘I must be getting old, if ladies are now declaring war on me.’

The new queen enjoyed the full support of her people, but there were unspoken fears that this war was against an invincible enemy. France had not lost a significant land engagement for two generations, during which time Louis XIV’s professional armies had established a reputation for brilliance. However, surely the five years since the Peace of Ryswick had not been long enough for Louis’s forces to regain their pre-1688 strength? The War of the League of Augsburg may have seemed a costly stalemate to the constituents of the first Grand Alliance, but it had pulled some of France’s teeth. William III had fought Louis at his peak: often unsuccessfully, but always with determination. He had blunted the French military machine, imperceptibly but indubitably, and in the process sharpened up the troops under his own control. In particular, as Louis’s armies had begun to wane, English forces were on the rise.

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