THE ALLIES REDUCE BONNE.
The confederates were more successful on the Lower Rhine and in the Netherlands. The duke of Marlborough crossed the sea in the beginning of April, and assembling the allied army, resolved that the campaign should be begun with the siege of Bonne, which was accordingly invested on the twenty-fourth day of April. Three different attacks were carried on against this place: one by the hereditary prince of Hesse-Cassel; another by the celebrated Coehorn; and a third by lieutenant-general Fagel. The garrison defended themselves vigorously till the fourteenth day of May, when the fort having been taken by assault, and the breaches rendered practicable, the marquis d’Alegre, the governor, ordered a parley to be beat; hostages were immediately exchanged; on the sixteenth the capitulation was signed; and in three days the garrison evacuated the place in order to be conducted to Luxembourg. During the siege of Bonne, the mareschals Boufflers and Villeroy advanced with an army of forty thousand men towards Tongeren, and the confederate army, commanded by M. d’Auverquerque, was obliged at their approach to retreat under the cannon of Maestricht. The enemy having taken possession of Tongeren, made a motion against the confederate army, which they found already drawn up in order of battle, and so advantageously posted, that, notwithstanding their great superiority in point of number, they would not hazard an attack, but retired to the ground from whence they had advanced. Immediately after the reduction of Bonne, the duke of Marlborough, who had been present at the siege, returned to the confederate army in the Netherlands, now amounting to one hundred and thirty squadrons, and fifty-nine battalions. On the twenty-fifth day of May, the duke having passed the river Jecker in order to give battle to the enemy, they marched with precipitation to Boekwren, and abandoned Tongeren, after having blown up the walls of the place with gunpowder. The duke continued to follow them to Thys, where he encamped, while they retreated to Hannye, retiring as he advanced. Then he resolved to force their lines: this service was effectually performed by Coehorn, at the point of Callo, and by baron Spaar, in the county of Waes, near Stoken. The duke had formed the design of reducing Antwerp, which was garrisoned by Spanish troops under the command of the marquis de Bedmar. He intended with the grand army to attack the enemy’s lines on the side of Louvaine and Mechlin: he detached Coehorn with his flying camp on the right of the Scheldt towards Dutch Flanders, to amuse the marquis de Bed-mar on that side; and he ordered the baron Opdam, with twelve thousand men, to take post between Eckeren and Capelle, near Antwerp, that he might act against that part of the lines which was guarded by the Spanish forces.
ANNE, 1701—1714
BATTLE OF ECKEREN.
The French generals, in order to frustrate the scheme of Marlborough, resolved to cut off the retreat of Opdam. Boufflers, with a detachment of twenty thousand men from Villeroy’s army, surprised him at Eckeren, where the Dutch were put in disorder; and Opdam, believing all was lost, fled to Breda. Nevertheless, the troops rallying under general Schlangenburg, maintained their ground with the most obstinate valour till night, when the enemy was obliged to retire, and left the communication free with fort Lillo, to which place the confederates marched without further molestation, having lost about fifteen hundred men in the engagement. The damage sustained by the French was more considerable. They were frustrated in their design, and had actually abandoned the field of battle; yet Louis ordered Te Deum to be sung for the victory; nevertheless Boufflers was censured for his conduct on this occasion, and in a little time totally disgraced. Opdam presented a justification of his conduct to the states-general; but by this oversight he forfeited the fruits of a long service, during which he had exhibited repeated proofs of courage, zeal, and capacity. The states honoured Schlangenburg with a letter of thanks for the valour and skill he had manifested in this engagement; but in a little time they dismissed him from his employment on account of his having given umbrage to the duke of Marlborough, by censuring his grace for exposing such a small number of men to this disaster. After this action, Villeroy, who lay encamped near Saint Job, declared he waited for the duke of Marlborough, who forthwith advanced to Hoogstraat, with a view to give him battle; but at his approach the French general, setting fire to his camp, retired within his lines with great precipitation. Then the duke invested Huy, the garrison of which, after a vigorous defence, surrendered themselves prisoners of war on the twenty-seventh day of August. At a council of war held in the camp of the confederates, the duke proposed to attack the enemies’ lines between the Mehaigne and Leuwe, and was seconded by the Danish, Hanoverian, and Hessian generals; but the scheme was opposed by the Dutch officers, and the deputies of the states, who alleged that the success was dubious, and the consequences of forcing the lines would be inconsiderable; they therefore recommended the siege of Limburgh, by the reduction of which they would acquire a whole province, and cover their own country, as well as Juliers and Gueldres, from the designs of the enemy. The siege of Limburgh was accordingly undertaken. The trenches were opened on the five-and-twentieth day of September, and in two days the place was surrendered; the garrison remaining prisoners of war. By this conquest the allies secured the country of Liege, and the electorate of Cologn, from the incursions of the enemy; before the end of the year they remained masters of the whole Spanish Guelderland, by the reduction of Gueldres, which surrendered on the seventeenth day of September, after having been long blockaded, bombarded, and reduced to a heap of ashes, by the Prussian general Lottum. Such was the campaign in the Netherlands, which in all probability would have produced events of greater importance, had not the duke of Marlborough been restricted by the deputies of the states-general, who began to be influenced by the intrigues of the Louvestein faction, ever averse to a single dictator.
PRINCE OF HESSE DEFEATED BY THE FRENCH.
The French king redoubled his efforts in Germany. The duke de Vendôme was ordered to march from the Milanese to Tyrol, and there join the elector of Bwaria, who had already made himself master of Inspruck. But the boors rising in arms, drove him out of the country before he could be joined by the French general, who was therefore obliged to return to the Milanese. The Imperialists in Italy were so ill supplied by the court of Vienna, that they could not pretend to act offensively. The French invested Ostiglia, which, however, they could not reduce; but the fortress of Barsillo, in the duchy of Beggio, capitulating after a long blockade, they took possession of the duke of Modena’s country. The elector of Bwaria rejoining Villars, resolved to attack count Stirum, whom prince Louis of Baden had detached from his army. With this view they passed the Danube at Donawert, and discharged six guns as a signal for the marquis D’Usson, whom they had left in the camp at Lavingen, to fall upon the rear of the imperialists, while they should charge them in front. Stirum no sooner perceived the signal than he guessed the intention of the enemy, and instantly resolved to attack D’Usson before the elector and the mareschal should advance. He accordingly charged him at the head of some select squadrons with such impetuosity, that the French cavalry were totally defeated; and all his infantry would have been killed and taken, had not the elector and Villars come up in time to turn the fate of the day. The action continued from six in the morning till four in the afternoon, when Stirum, being overpowered by numbers, was obliged to retreat to Norlin-gen, with the loss of twelve thousand men, and all his baggage and artillery. In the meantime the duke of Burgundy, assisted by Tallard, undertook the siege of Old Brisac, with a prodigious train of artillery. The place was very strongly fortified, though the garrison was small and ill provided with necessaries. In fourteen days the governor surrendered the place, and was condemned to lose his head for having made such a slender defence. The duke of Burgundy returned in triumph to Versailles, and Tallard was ordered to invest Landau. The prince of Hesse-Cassel being detached from the Netherlands for the relief of the place, joined the count of Nassau-Weilbourg, general of the Palatine forces, near Spires, where they resolved to attack the French in their lines. But by this time Mons. Pracon-tal, with ten thousand men, had joined Tallard, and enabled him to strike a stroke which proved decisive. He suddenly quitted his lines, and surprised the prince at Spirebach, where the French obtained a complete victory after a very obstinate and bloody engagement, in which the prince of Hesse distinguished himself by uncommon marks of courage and presence of mind. Three horses were successively killed under him, and he slew a French officer with his own hand. After incredible efforts, he was fain to retreat with the loss of some thousands. The French paid dear for their victory, Pracontal having been slain in the action. Nevertheless they resumed the siege, and the place was surrendered by capitulation. The campaign in Germany was finished by the reduction of Augsburg by the elector of Bwaria, who took it in the month of December, and agreed to its being secured by a French garrison.