The Story of the British Army

by Charles Cooper King

THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH

From an old print

But, more than this, an Englishman, the greatest of our national leaders, John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, Captain-General of the combined forces in the Netherlands, was not only to take a more prominent part in the coming war, was not only to enter into a campaign the theatre of which was to range from the Atlantic to the German Ocean, but was to command a more distinctly British contingent than in William’s reign, when British, Dutch, and even Danes fought under the same flag. And if the causes of the wars of the Dutch prince had been rather of a personal nature, as before remarked, those which now led the advisers of Queen Anne to take a vigorous offensive on the Continent, were to preserve that “Balance of Power in Europe,” which eventually became one of the special reasons advanced in the Mutiny Act for the continuous, large standing army in this country. The war was to check French oppression generally, for Europe’s sake, and to prevent a single small State from falling into her hands.

“The necessity of war is occasioned by the want of a supreme judge, who may decide upon the disputes of individuals.... In the failure of any perfect remedy, however, for the disorder of war, a corrector of its evils has been found in the system called the Balance of Power. Europe being divided into many separate states, it has been the established policy of all, that when any one by its aggrandisement, threatened the general safety, the rest should unite to defend their independence. Thus Louis XIV. was checked by England, Holland, and the Empire.”[19]

So the war-clouds again burst, with, on one side, a British, Dutch, and Austrian army under Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and a force of Spanish, Bavarians, and French under Tallard on the other; but the extension of the interest in foreign political war was not now confined only to the Continent, for seven regiments of infantry were also despatched to the West Indies, to attempt the capture of the enemy’s possessions in the Caribbean Sea and elsewhere.

There was much desultory fighting before the great battles whose names are borne on British colours were fought; for victories at Schellenburg, Bonn, Huy, etc., earned for the British general a dukedom before the battles of Blenheim, Ramilies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet were fought. Ramilies is remarkable for the fact that, though the contending forces were nearly equal, of the Allies only twenty-two battalions were English, and nine Scotch; and that Marlborough, by recognising that the French left was behind a marsh difficult to pass, neglected this side and attacked in strength the other flank with complete success. Here, too, an Irish regiment captured an English colour, which long hung in the Irish Benedictine Church at Ypres; and it was at Ramilies that the 25th King’s Own Borderers found the French had not to halt and fix the “plug” bayonet in the muzzle before charging, because they had adopted the socketed bayonet. Of the regiments that fought in these campaigns, the Coldstream Guards were at Oudenarde and Malplaquet only; the 28th and 29th at Ramilies; but all four of these great victories are borne on the colours of the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th Dragoon Guards, the 2nd Dragoons, the 5th Lancers, the Grenadier Guards, and the 1st, 3rd, 8th, 10th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 21st, 23rd, 24th, 26th, and 37th Regiments of the line.

At Oudenarde there was a slight superiority on the part of the French, and the battle is noteworthy for the presence and the gallant bearing of “the Prince Elector of Hanover,” who afterwards, as George II., fought at Dettingen. It was essentially an infantry battle, for the cavalry found little ground for their useful employment, and the artillery were scarcely engaged at all. The field was contested far into the darkness, and the French total loss in killed, wounded, and missing is reported to have amounted to 20,000 men.

Malplaquet ranks as the most sanguinary conflict of the four, and the loss of life almost exceeded the total of the other three. Among the distinguished historical names of the combatants is that of the “Chevalier de St. George,” who, as Marshal Boufflers says in his despatch, “behaved himself during the whole action with all possible bravery and vivacity,” and led twelve charges of the Household troops. Courage was common, therefore, to both aspirants for the British throne. The loss on both sides was heavy, that on the part of the Allies has been variously put at between 35,000 and 18,000 men (Villars); while the French loss was 15,000. Many of the veterans of these wars lived up to the present century, and one, Henry Francis of New York, died in 1820, aged 134.

Of all these battles, Blenheim offers the best type of the “order of battle” of the times. In a story that simply proposes to tell how our army came to be, and how and why it increased, any detailed reference to the causes of and even sequence of the successive wars is beyond its province. It will be sufficient, therefore, to recall to mind that the campaign in which Blenheim was the distinguishing feature arose, in the beginning, from the offensive action on the part of Louis XIV. in supporting the Stuarts, and in the support he gave to the claims of his grandson Philip to the throne of Spain. The odium theologicum was also a serious factor in the game. It was the ever recurring battle between the Catholicism of Rome and that of the other sections of Christianity antagonistic to the claims of the Romish Church.