The Allies had suffered so terribly from hardship and exposure during this winter's expedition that it was two months before they were again fit to take the field;[377] and the French, partly from the same cause, partly owing to the magnitude of their preparations, needed little less time than they. The Court of Versailles had, in fact, resolved to make a gigantic effort and to close the war forthwith by employment of an overwhelming force. The army of the Rhine was raised to one hundred thousand men, under the Prince of Soubise, and that of the Main to sixty thousand men under Broglie. Soubise was to advance from the Rhine against Ferdinand early in May; thus forcing the Prince either to abandon Westphalia, together with Münster and Lippstadt, in order to gain time for recuperation of his army, or to march with his troops, still weakened and exhausted by the winter's campaign, to fight him. His task in fact was simply to keep Ferdinand's army in motion until Broglie's troops were refreshed, and ready to advance either into Hanover or to Hameln on the Weser. When Broglie thus occupied the attention of Ferdinand, Soubise would find himself with a free hand in a free field. The weak point of the plan was that the two French armies were to act independently, and that the stronger of them was entrusted to Soubise, an incompetent commander but a favourite with Madame de Pompadour. But in any case the outlook for Ferdinand was formidable, since at the very most he could muster but ninety-three thousand men against one hundred and sixty thousand of the French.
April.
May 14.
Soubise duly arrived at Frankfort on the 13th of April and summoned Broglie to discuss matters with him. Then, instead of taking the field early in May, he remained motionless behind the Rhine on various pretexts until the beginning of June. Further, he determined, contrary to the advice given to him at Versailles, to pursue operations to the south of the Lippe, and between that river and the Ruhr, in order to effect a junction with Broglie. The motives that may have dictated this resolution are unknown; but it was conjectured that he shrank from engaging so formidable an adversary as Ferdinand without a colleague to share the risk and responsibility. Meanwhile Ferdinand, selecting the least exhausted of his troops, sent a corps under the Hereditary Prince to Nottuln, a little to the west of Münster, to watch Soubise, and by great exertions contrived within ten weeks to render both his army and his transport fit to take the field. Soubise's army was known to be encumbered by a vast train of baggage; one troop of Horse Guards, for instance, with a strength of one hundred and forty men, travelling with no fewer than twelve hundred horses attached to it. So all the forage about Münster was destroyed, the inhabitants and their herds being provided for by the King's commissaries, and every step was taken to embarrass the French in their advance to the east.
June.
July 1-2.
July 3.
July 4.
July 6.
At length on the 13th of June Soubise crossed the Rhine at Wesel, and arrived ten days later at Unna, a few miles to eastward of Dortmund, where he entrenched himself, with his front to the east. Ferdinand thereupon concentrated his army on the 19th at Paderborn, leaving twenty thousand men under Spörcke on the Diemel to watch Broglie, and a smaller corps of observation before Göttingen. On the 20th he marched westward, and on the 28th encamped over against Soubise, where he was joined by the corps of the Hereditary Prince. Finding that the French position was too formidable to be attacked, he determined on a bold stroke, made a forced march of thirty hours round Soubise's left flank by Camen, and appeared suddenly at Dortmund full in his rear and across his line of communication. The movement left Soubise free to unite with Broglie; but this was rather an advantage than otherwise to Ferdinand, since the two commanders being on bad terms might neutralise each other, whereas each of them independently was at the head of a stronger army than Ferdinand's. On the 4th of July Ferdinand advanced against the rear of Soubise's camp; whereupon the French General at once moved on, always with the Allies close at his heels, to Soest, where Broglie came to concert with him the junction of the two armies.
July 10.
July.
Broglie himself had on the 29th of June advanced to the Diemel and obliged Spörcke to abandon Warburg and to retreat, not without loss of part of his artillery. He had then turned westward upon Paderborn, which he had occupied, and thence to Soest, where his army joined that of Soubise on the 10th of July. The joint strength of the two armies at Soest, after deducting the detachments made from both of them, was just about one hundred thousand men. Ferdinand's force, after the arrival of Spörcke, who had made his way to him from the Diemel with all haste, amounted to no more than sixty thousand men. Even with such odds against him, however, Ferdinand stood firm, refusing to cross to the north bank of the Lippe and abandon Lippstadt, as the French commanders had hoped. He was determined that they should fight him for Lippstadt; and they, knowing their adversary, were not too eager to hazard the venture.
After sundry small changes and shiftings of position between the 7th and 11th of July Ferdinand made the following dispositions. General von Spörcke with about eight thousand men was left on the north bank of the Lippe at Hersfeld, to watch Prince Xavier of Saxony, who lay with a corps in the vicinity of Paderborn. The main army was encamped on the south bank of the Lippe, with its left resting on the river; from whence the left wing extended to the village of Kirchdünckern on the Ase, a brook impassable except by bridges. Vellinghausen, Ferdinand's headquarters, lay midway between the Ase and the Lippe at the foot of a declivity called the Dünckerberg. From the Lippe to Vellinghausen the ground was occupied by Wutgenau's corps, of seven battalions and five squadrons, all of them German troops. From Vellinghausen to Kirchdünckern the heights were held by Granby's corps, consisting of two battalions of British grenadiers, the Fifth, Twelfth, Twenty-fourth and Thirty-seventh Foot under Brigadier Sandford, Keith's and Campbell's Highlanders, six foreign battalions, the Greys, Seventh and Eleventh Dragoons in one brigade under General Harvey, and eight foreign squadrons, together with a regiment of Hanoverian artillery. From the Ase the position was prolonged to the right along a similar line of heights by the villages of Sud Dünckern and Wambeln to the rear of Werle at Budberg, the whole of the front being covered by a marshy brook called the Salzbach. From the Ase to Wambeln the ground was occupied by Anhalt's corps of ten German battalions and the First, Sixth, and Tenth British Dragoons; to the right of Anhalt stood Conway's corps, of three battalions of British Guards with their grenadiers massed into a fourth battalion, Townsend's brigade of the Eighth, Twentieth, Twenty-fifth, and Fiftieth Foot, and the First, Third, and Seventh Dragoon Guards; to the right of Conway stood Howard's corps, consisting of Cavendish's brigade of the Eleventh, Twenty-fifth, Twenty-third, and Fifty-first Foot, two German battalions, the British light batteries and two brigades of Hessian artillery; and finally the extreme right from Wambeln to Hilbeck was held by the Hereditary Prince's corps of twenty-five battalions and twenty-four squadrons of Germans. The Salzbach was an obstacle well-nigh insuperable, the only passage by which the French could cross it being by the village of Scheidingen, opposite to Conway's corps, where an old redoubt, dating from the days of Turenne, still remained to bar the way. The weak point of the position was its right flank which, though more or less protected by marshy ground, lay practically in the air, and could have been turned with little difficulty.
July 15.
The plan of the French commanders, though it took no advantage of this defect, was not ill conceived. Broglie was to attack the corps of Wutgenau and Granby, but particularly that of Granby between the Lippe and the Ase, with his whole force; while Soubise kept the rest of the Allies distracted by an attack on Scheidingen, at the same time sending a cloud of light troops round the right flank of the Allies to Hamm, five miles in their rear, so as to create confusion and embarrass their retreat. The attack was fixed for the 13th but was deferred for two days; and it was not until the evening of the 15th that Ferdinand was apprised of the advance of the French in force against his left. For some reason Wutgenau's corps had been encamped a thousand yards in rear of its position in the line of battle; and although it had received orders at noon, in consequence of suspicious movements by the French, to strike tents and march forward, yet this order had been cancelled. Thus Broglie's attack came upon it as a complete surprise. Granby's corps had only just time to seize its arms and turn out, leaving the tents standing; the Highlanders indeed hardly emerging from their tents before the French guns opened fire on them. Yet there was no confusion, and Granby's dispositions were so good that he was able to hold his own till Wutgenau's troops came up. The two corps then made a fine defence until darkness put an end to the combat; but none the less the French had succeeded in taking Nordel, a village on Granby's right front, and had made good their footing in Vellinghausen.