The Campaigns and History of the Royal Irish Regiment, [v. 1,] from 1684 to 1902

by G. le M. Gretton

As soon as Marlborough saw that the defence of Tournai was weakening, he marched a large force towards the lines of La Bassée; again demonstrated against de Villars, whom he puzzled completely, and then, after a march of forty-nine miles in fifty-six hours, in pouring rain over roads knee-deep in mud, swooped upon Mons, a town important to the French, though at that time only weakly held. When de Villars slowly realised that the Duke had no intention of wasting his strength in storming highly fortified lines, he advanced with 95,000 men, and entrenched himself at the Trouée d’Aulnoit, one of the few gaps in a belt of woodland which lay a few miles to the south of Mons. He outnumbered the Allies so greatly that they decided not to attack him until the troops left to level the siege-works at Tournai had rejoined headquarters, and thus made Marlborough’s numerical strength equal to that of his opponent. These troops, among which were the XVIIIth and several other British regiments, were ordered up at once, but while they were on the march de Villars, by working night and day, rendered his position very formidable. His right rested on the forest of Laignières, half a mile from the village of Malplaquet,[59] which has given its name to the battle of the 11th of September, 1709: his centre ran across the southern end of the gap, which was open, fairly level, and about 2000 yards in width: his left was thrown forward into the continuous series of woods known respectively as those of Taignières, Blangies, and Sart. Across his centre he built long lines of trenches, gun emplacements, chains of abattis, and many strong redans; the woods on his flanks were similarly protected, and when the attackers had forced their way through the abattis which fringed the edges they came under the fire of field-works hidden in the depths of the forest. The weak point of the position was that cavalry could only act offensively on the plain—i.e., the gap between the woods; and as this open ground was covered with defences Villars had to draw up his Horse in rear of the rest of his troops, where they would be unable to come into action unless the Allies broke through some part of the front line.

For the attack of this position, which from the nature of its fortifications had virtually become a fortress, the Duke issued the following orders: The Prince of Orange with thirty-one battalions, most of which were Dutch, was to make a demonstration against the right of the French line; sixty-eight battalions were to assail the northern and eastern faces of the woods of Taignières and Sart; while General Withers, with five British and fourteen foreign battalions, was to strike and turn the extreme left of the enemy’s line at the village of La Folie. As the pressure on the French left became intense, the Duke expected (as did actually happen) that de Villars would draw largely from his centre to reinforce the point of danger; then fifteen British battalions and other infantry, till then held back in the centre, were to be launched at the works in the gap, capture them, and thus win a passage for the allied cavalry, which was then to crash through Villars’ centre and cut his army in twain. The heavier guns were massed into two great batteries—one playing on the enemy’s right, the other on his left.

Though the advanced parties of the hostile armies watched each other throughout the night at little more than a musket’s shot distance, nothing happened to disturb the few hours’ rest which the Duke allowed his men.[60] Long before daylight the troops were under arms, and when morning service had been read at the head of every regiment, the Duke rode through his army, correcting faulty dispositions and sending to their places in the line of battle the horse and dragoons who during the night had arrived from Tournai. They had left behind them on the road the infantry, who came on as best they could, the last to reach the battlefield being the Royal Irish, whose march was retarded by the slow-moving guns they had to escort.[61] After an hour’s artillery duel Marlborough began to carry his plan into effect, and launched his infantry columns against Villars’ flanks. At first things went well. His right made some progress, though in the woods of Taignières and Sart the French fought superbly, disputing every inch of ground, and by vigorous counter-attacks often sending their assailants reeling back upon their supports; and on his left the Prince of Orange kept the enemy occupied in the forest of Laignières by his feigned attack. Suddenly, in direct defiance of his orders from the Duke, this General took upon himself to attack in real earnest; but the French fell upon his column with such resistless energy that the Dutch, stubborn fighters as they were, were driven back with hideous slaughter. Marlborough received this startling news with composure; he directed the Prince of Orange to content himself with holding the French without again attacking them; and confident of ultimate success, in no way altered his original dispositions.

While the Prince of Orange was being buffeted on the left, Eugene, who commanded on the right flank, was forcing the French backwards through the woods. The process, though slow and very costly, was sure; and when de Villars, who had taken charge of the French left, heard that the red-coats of Withers’ column were appearing on his flank at La Folie, he did exactly what Marlborough expected him to do, and weakened his centre to reinforce his left. Three brigades, one of them composed of the Irishmen who had done so well at Blenheim, hurried up to de Villars’ help, plunged into the wood, and drove the Allies back on their supports. In this charge the Irish Brigade with reckless valour pursued so far that they lost their formation, and the whole or part of one of its battalions found itself alone in a glade, where it was attacked by the Royal Irish. The XVIIIth had come so late into action that it had been sent off to the extreme right of the whole army, where, in modern phraseology, it seems to have acted “on its own,” and according to Parker marched on till it came

“to an open in the wood. It was a small plain, on the opposite side of which we perceived a battalion of the enemy drawn up. Upon this Colonel Kane who was then at the head of the regiment, having drawn us up and formed our Platoons, advanced gently towards them, and the six Platoons of our first fire made ready. When we had advanced within a hundred yards of them, they gave us a fire of one of their ranks, whereupon we halted, and returned them the fire of our six Platoons at once; and immediately made ready the six Platoons of our second fire, and advanced upon them again. They then gave us the fire of another rank, and we returned them a second fire, which made them shrink; however they gave us the fire of a third rank after a scattering manner, and then retired into the wood in great disorder, on which we sent our third fire after them, and saw them no more. We advanced cautiously up to the ground which they had quitted and found several of them, killed and wounded; among the latter was one Lieutenant O’Sullivan, who told us the battalion we had engaged was the Royal Regiment of Ireland in the French service.”

In this skirmish the XVIIIth, or Royal regiment of Foot of Ireland, had but few casualties; while the Iro-Gallic regiment, as “their opposite number” in Louis’ army was termed, is said to have lost several officers and about forty men.[62]

While the Irishmen were settling their quarrel, the climax of the battle was approaching. Eugene had rallied his infantry in the wood of Taignières, and was struggling to hold his own against the fresh troops which de Villars in person led against him. Both generals were wounded—Eugene was struck on the head by a musket-ball, but refused to leave the fighting line to have his injury attended to by a surgeon; de Villars, hard hit in the leg, made a gallant effort to direct the battle from a chair, but swooning from pain was carried away insensible to the nearest village. Though deprived of their leader, the French fought obstinately, and on the right of the allied line the combat raged without any decisive result, neither side knowing that when the three brigades were moved from the centre to the left of de Villars’ line, Marlborough had ordered the Dutch forward on his left, and had hurled himself against the heart of the French position. Orkney’s fifteen battalions of British infantry, who for many hours had been waiting for their chance, were let loose against the redans across their front, and carrying them after a sharp fight, promptly lined with marksmen the reverse parapets—i.e., those looking backwards into the enemy’s second line. On the left, the Dutch infantry atoned for their mistake in the morning by capturing not only the wood of Laignières, but the abattis and trenches connecting it with the works now in the hands of the red-coated battalions, and the Dutch cavalry poured through the openings won by their infantry comrades. But in the scramble over shelter trenches and abattis their ranks became disordered, and before they had time to re-form they were attacked by the Gendarmerie, and forced to take shelter under the muskets of Orkney’s battalions, whose steady shooting beat off the French and gained time for Marlborough to come up with the British and Prussian horse. These were driving the Gendarmerie backwards, when a splendid counter-attack of the French Household troops crashed through their first line, penetrated the second, and threw the third into confusion. At that moment Eugene, dashing up bloodstained from his wound, threw his last squadrons against the enemy’s flank; Louis’ Bodyguard wavered and gave way, and de Boufflers, on whom the command had devolved after de Villars was wounded, seeing that his centre was pierced, his right dislodged, and his left beaten though not routed, ordered a retreat.

His retirement was quite unmolested by the Allies, who were too much exhausted to pursue an enemy who after such a desperate struggle was still able to retire in good order. Marlborough had begun the engagement with about 95,000 troops, but by three o’clock in the afternoon twenty thousand of his men were killed or wounded. Millner’s analysis of the casualties shows that the Germans lost 5321 officers and men; the Prussians, 1694; the Hanoverians, 2219; the Dutch (thanks to the Prince of Orange’s untimely movement), 8680; and the British, 1783. In the British contingent 32 officers were killed and 111 wounded; among the other ranks, 492 were killed and 1073 wounded. Of the XVIIIth, two officers were wounded, four men killed and six wounded.[63] Though the French lost the day, only twelve thousand of their men fell; and the only trophies of the victory left in the hands of the Allies were sixteen guns, five hundred prisoners, and many standards.

Three days after the battle the Duke resumed the siege of Mons, where the Royal Irish were among the regiments of the covering force, and when the fall of the fortress brought the campaign to an end, the XVIIIth returned to its usual winter quarters in the town of Ghent.