A History of the British Army, Vol. 2 / First Part—to the Close of the Seven Years' War

by Sir J. W. Fortescue

On the 19th of June King George at last arrived from Hanover and took over the command of the army, which was encamped, as he had ordered, on the right bank of the Main, the English and Hanoverians lying about Aschaffenburg. In the hope of securing forage on the other bank, a battery had been erected on the bridge of Aschaffenburg, but Noailles, moving up to the river, erected a redoubt at his own end of the bridge and put an end to all such hopes. Meanwhile he seized a post further up the river to intercept all supplies from Franconia, and threw two bridges over it below Aschaffenburg at Seligenstadt, by which his troops could cross and cut off the Allies from their magazines at Hanau. For a week the King remained helpless in this camp, unwilling to retreat though his peril increased every day. The result was that he found himself in command of a starving army. It was impossible to keep the soldiers from plunder, and discipline became seriously relaxed. At last, on the 26th of June, it was perforce resolved that the army must retreat to Hanau that very night.

June 16 27 .

Meanwhile Noailles had not been idle. The ground on which the Allies were encamped is a narrow plain pent in between the Spessart Hills and the Main. These hills are densely wooded, and the forest appears at that time to have descended lower into the plain than at present. When therefore the Allies retired to Hanau, as Noailles knew that inevitably they must, it would be impossible for them to keep out of range of cannon posted on the opposite bank of the Main, and accordingly the marshal had erected five different batteries to play upon them during their march. At one o'clock on the morning of the 27th intelligence was brought to him that the Allies were in motion. This was the moment for which he had been waiting. Instantly galloping to Seligenstadt, he ordered Count Grammont to cross the Main with twenty-eight thousand men by the two bridges which he had laid for the purpose, and to take up a position about a mile up the river by the village of Dettingen. At that point a rivulet runs down across the plain from the Spessart Hills to the Main, through a little boggy dale which was uncrossed by any bridge except by that of the high road to Hanau. There Grammont was bidden to wait and to make an end of the Allies as they defiled over the bridge. He took up his position accordingly, and Noailles returned to the opposite bank of the Main to direct his operations against King George's flank and rear.

It was four o'clock in the morning before the Allied army was fairly in motion. The British cavalry led the way, followed by the Austrian, then came the British infantry and the Austrian infantry after them; and last of all came a strong rear-guard composed of the British Guards, the choicest of the German infantry, and the Hanoverian cavalry; for it was in the rear that an attack of the French was most looked for and most to be dreaded. The apprehensions of a French advance on Aschaffenburg were soon seen to be well founded. The march of the Allies from that town lay across a bend of the Main to the village of Klein Ostheim, and as they approached the river they could see the French on the opposite bank in full march to cross the river behind them and cut off their retreat up the stream. Thus Noailles's dispositions were complete. These troops were to block the Allies to the south, impenetrable woods shut them off from the east, the Main barred their way on the west, and Grammont stood before them at Dettingen on the north. Noailles had caught them, as he said, in a mouse-trap, and might reasonably feel certain that they could not escape.

On arriving about seven o'clock at Klein Ostheim, the whole army of the Allies was obliged to file through it by a single road. The cavalry, therefore, when it had passed through the village was halted and wheeled round with its face to the river to wait till the infantry should come up. This again Noailles had foreseen, and he had planted his cannon in exactly the right place to play upon the Allies when they should advance beyond the village. For an hour the cavalry stood halted before the march could be resumed; and now came intelligence from an advanced party in Dettingen that Grammont was in order of battle in front and that an immediate engagement was inevitable. King George hastened to set his army likewise in order of battle; but all the baggage had been massed between the first and second divisions of the column of route, and the confusion for a time was very great. Meanwhile the French troops bound for Aschaffenburg had by this time cleared the front of the first of Noailles's batteries and left the guns free to open fire. The shot soon came humming thick and fast into the heavy mass of waggons and baggage-animals, and the confusion increased. Guns were sent for in frantic haste to silence the French cannon, but the artillery being far in the rear was long in making its appearance: and meanwhile the King capered about on horseback in great excitement, staff-officers galloped to and fro, and the troops marched and counter-marched into their positions, always under the deadly fire of the French battery. Gradually, though with infinite difficulty, the troops were shuffled into their places, for the stereotyped order of battle was useless in a plain that permitted a frontage only of twenty-three battalions and a few squadrons at most. So passed a terrible hour and more, until at last the British guns came into action and replied effectively to the French batteries; and then a push was made to shift the baggage into a place of safety. In the middle of the plain between Klein Ostheim and Dettingen stood a wood flanked on each hand by a morass. Two lines of cavalry were moved forward towards this wood, the baggage followed them, the infantry followed the baggage, and the troublesome waggons were at last stowed away securely under cover of the trees, while the cavalry and the Austrian infantry made haste to form the right of the Allies' line of battle.

It was high time, for it was now almost noon, and Grammont, tired of remaining where he had been bidden to wait on the north side of Dettingen, or believing (as he himself said) that the Allies had already passed him and that only their rear-guard was left, had advanced beyond the ravine to take up a fresh position. So far as the Allies could see, he was manœuvring to move troops down under cover of the forest upon their right flank. By this time, however, King George's line was formed, and on its extreme left were seen the scarlet coats of the British battalions. To the left of all, and within a furlong of the river, stood the Thirty-third Foot, and to its right in succession the Twenty-first Fusiliers, Twenty-third Fusiliers, Twelfth, Eleventh, Eighth and Thirteenth Foot. On the right of the Thirteenth stood an Austrian brigade, and then in succession the Blues, Life Guards, Sixth Dragoons, and Royal Dragoons. All of these were in the first line. In the second line, in rear of their comrades on the left, were posted the Twentieth, Thirty-second, Thirty-seventh, Thirty-first, and the Buffs; and in rear of the cavalry on the right, the Seventh Dragoon Guards, King's Dragoon Guards, Fourth and Seventh Dragoons, and the Scots Greys. Opposite to them the French were ranged in two lines with a reserve in third line, the infantry being in the centre and the cavalry on the flanks, so that the famous French Household Cavalry,[175] in its place of honour on the extreme right, stood opposed to the British battalions on the Allied left. General Clayton, who commanded on the left, observing the mass of cavalry that confronted him, sent hastily for the Third Dragoons to fill up the gap between the Thirty-third and the river, and therewith the British dispositions were complete.

The whole of the first line then advanced, the King, who had with difficulty been prevented from stationing himself on the extreme left, waving his sword and shouting words of encouragement with a broad German accent. Fortunately the French were themselves in great disorder and confusion. The corrupt dealing in the appointment and promotion of officers, which fifty years later was to set the French army on the side of the Revolution, was already undermining efficiency and discipline. Grammont on advancing beyond the ravine had thought out no new order of a battle. Not a brigadier was competent to draw up his brigade, and the Household Cavalry kept manœuvring about in front of the infantry without a thought except for the fine figure that it was cutting in the sight of both armies. The advance of the Allies was necessarily slow, for some of the English regiments, whose way lay through the morasses, were knee-deep in mire. The whole line was presently halted to take breath, and the British, evidently a little shaken by the previous hurry and confusion and by the gesticulations of the King, broke into a feeble and irregular cheer, a sound which Lord Stair heard with great displeasure. The line was dressed and the advance was resumed in better order, though the French batteries on the other bank of the Main never ceased to rain destruction on the Third Dragoons and on the unfortunate battalions on the left. The men were not yet quite steady, for some undisciplined spirits, fretting at the incessant parade of the French Household Cavalry, opened an irregular fire all along the line. Then, as it seems, came the most comical incident of the day. King George's horse, frightened by the crackle of the musketry, took the bit in his teeth and bolted away to the rear, His Majesty, with purple face and eyes starting out of his head, pulling desperately at him with both hands but unable to stop him. Ultimately the animal's career was checked, and the King returning to the right of the line dismounted and resumed his gestures on foot, utterly fearless, as are all of his race, and confident that his own legs, at least, would carry him in the right direction. The line was again halted to load, there being fortunately still time to repair previous faults, and the advance was again resumed with greater steadiness.

Then the French infantry of the Guard on Grammont's right centre advanced likewise, cheering loudly, and opened a fitful and disorderly fire. The British, now thoroughly in hand, answered with a regular, swift, and continuous fire of platoons, the ranks standing firm like a wall of brass and pouring in volley after volley, deadly and unceasing—such a fire as no French officer had ever seen before.[176] The French Guards staggered under it and the British again raised an irregular cheer. "Silence," shouted Stair imperiously, galloping up. "Now one and all together when I give the signal." And as he raised his hat the British broke into the stern and appalling shout which was to become so famous on the fields of the Peninsula. The French Guards waited for no more when they heard it, but shrank back in disorder in rear of their horse, which now advanced in earnest against the extreme British left.

Clayton saw the danger. His left flank in the general confusion had never been properly secured, and though the fire of the French batteries by the river had ceased lest it should destroy their own troops, yet the Third Dragoons and the Thirty-third had been much weakened by it during their advance. Despatching urgent messages for reinforcements of cavalry, he put a bold face on the matter, ordered the Dragoons, Thirty-third, Twenty-first, and Twenty-third forward to meet the French attack, and prepared to stand the shock. Down came the flower of the French cavalry upon them, sword in hand, at high speed. The Third Dragoons were the first to close with them. They were but two weak squadrons against nine squadrons of the enemy, their depth was but of three ranks against eight ranks of the French; but they went straight at them, burst into the heart of them and cut their way through, though with heavy loss. The Thirty-third faced the attack as boldly, never gave way for an inch and brought men and horses crashing down by their eternal rolling fire. Next to them the two regiments of Fusiliers were even more hardly pressed. The Gendarmerie came down upon them at full trot with pistols in both hands and swords dangling by the wrist. Arrived within range they fired the pistols, dashed the empty weapons in the faces of the British, and then fell in with the sword; but the Fusiliers, as it was said, fought like devils, their platoon-fire thundering out as regularly as on parade, and the French horse fell back repulsed.

Still, gallantly as this first attack had been met, the numerical superiority of the French cavalry was formidable, and there was imminent danger lest the British left flank should be turned. The Third Dragoons had suffered heavily, after their first charge, from the bullets of a battalion posted in support of the French horse, but they rallied, and twice more, weak and weary as they were, they charged ten times their numbers and cut their way through them. But after the third charge they were well-nigh annihilated. All the officers except two, and three-fourths of the men and horses had been killed or wounded; two of the three standards had been cut to atoms, both silk and staves, by shot and shell, and in the last charge the third had dropped from a cornet's wounded hand and lay abandoned on the ground. A trooper of the regiment, Thomas Brown by name, was just dismounting to recover it when a French sabre came down on his bridle-hand and shore away two of his fingers. His horse, missing the familiar pressure of the bit, at once bolted, and before he could be pulled up had carried his rider into the rear of the French lines. There Dragoon Brown saw the standard of his regiment borne away in triumph by a French gendarme. Disabled as he was he rode straight at the Frenchman, attacked and killed him; and then gripping the standard between his leg and the saddle he turned and fought his way single-handed through the ranks of the enemy, emerging at last with three bullet-holes through his hat and seven wounds in his face and body, but with the standard safe.