Marlborough (42 page)

On 7 March Marlborough warned Heinsius that ‘If England and Holland do not assist the Empire by sending an army early to the Moselle the whole Empire must be undone,’ and suggested that he should send his generals to the Meuse to ensure that the army was ready
to move in time. He followed up by regretting the death of old Coehoorn, and recommending that it would be no more than justice to give his regiment to one of his sons, for ‘had he died one year sooner, any nation might have been proud of such a subject’.
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There were still major difficulties with the Dutch. Their lieutenant general Johan van Goor, serving under the Margrave of Baden, had fallen out with that gentleman, whom he thought dilatory, and was summoned back to the United Provinces, bringing his men with him. A horrified Wratislaw told Marlborough that this would leave Tallard free to throw ‘a new and large reinforcement into Bavaria’, and begged him to persuade the Dutch to change their orders. Marlborough said that he would do his best, but begged Wratislaw to accompany him to The Hague to put the case to the Dutch leaders in person.

The outlines of alternative plans were discussed at The Hague in April. Both Prince Louis and the Dutch favoured what we might term the small solution, an offensive in the Moselle valley, linked with an attack on Landau. Marlborough and Prince Eugène, however, favoured the big solution, an advance all the way to the Danube. Archdeacon Coxe suggests a secret understanding on the subject between Marlborough and Eugène, but the written record is silent on the subject. As a senior Imperialist officer Eugène would naturally have found the strategy more appealing than the small solution, and we know that he had a high regard for Marlborough, writing: ‘We similarly loved and esteemed each other. He was indeed a great general.’
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However, that is as far as we can legitimately take the argument, and a long message sent by Marlborough to Eugène in February through the medium of the British ambassador in Vienna does not even mention the Danube strategy.

Indeed, Marlborough’s first letters to Godolphin after his return to the Low Countries in April imply that there was no early agreement: the Dutch were unhelpful, and typically, ‘my head aches so extremely that I must leave off writing’. His headache was still bad three days later, and news from Germany, suggesting that Tallard and the Elector had just joined forces at Ulm, was likely to worsen it. ‘I shall use my utmost endeavours to get them all the help I can from hence,’ he wrote, ‘being fully persuaded that we shall be undone if we can’t get the better of them in that country. I am afraid I shall want the Queen’s help in this matter.’
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He already had broad permission from the cabinet to ‘go to the aid of the Emperor’, and had discussed the campaign’s possible development with Godolphin, but it is not until 18 April OS that he
confirmed his plan, although he made it clear that it had not been fully agreed at the Hague conference.

My intentions are to march all the English to Koblenz, and to declare here that I intend to command on the Moselle; but when I come there to write to the States, that I think it absolutely necessary for saving the Empire to march with the troops under my command to join those in Germany that are in her Majesty’s and Dutch pay, in order to take measure with Prince Louis for the speedy reducing of the Elector of Bavaria. The army I propose there would consist of upwards of 40,000 men. If I should act in any other manner than what I now tell you, my design would be immediately known to the French, and these people [the Dutch] would never consent to let so many troops go so far from their frontiers; for the preservation of which and their garrisons, I propose to leave 100 battalions and 110 squadrons … What I now write I beg may be known to nobody but her Majesty and the Prince.

He went on to gratefully acknowledge the queen’s kindness in making him colonel of 1st Foot Guards.
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Planning the campaign was exhausting. On 5 May Cadogan told Lord Raby that his work ‘has left me hardly time to eat or sleep’. He emphasised that it was ‘absolutely necessary to hasten putting into execution the project of reducing the Elector of Bavaria before he can receive a greater succour … in order to do it there will be an army left in the Lines of Stollhofen to prevent the French forcing them or passing the Rhine below Philipsburg’.
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Despite his desire to conceal his full intentions from the Dutch, Marlborough was open with Heinsius. On 11 May he wrote from Maastricht to say that he had now met Goor, who must logically have been apprised of the plan, for, helpfully, he had proposed that the twenty Dutch cannon at Koblenz should join the march, and on 21 May Marlborough told Heinsius that he hoped to be at Koblenz on the twenty-fifth and then at Mainz on the twenty-ninth. He was confident that if Villeroi shadowed his march with a strong force to the west, as he expected, ‘they will hardly be able to leave the name of an army behind them’, and that would enable the Dutch to send more troops ‘as might make me succeed against the Elector of Bavaria’.
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A private shadow hung over public endeavour. By the opening of the campaign Marlborough’s relations with Sarah had broken down almost completely, and they were certainly living apart. Although there had already been marked differences of opinion over politics, for John was
too much his father’s son to approve of Sarah’s relentless whiggery, the most probable cause of her coldness was her belief that Marlborough was having an affair. Sarah’s biographers suggest that the thirty-year-old Elizabeth Cromwell, wife of Lord Southwell, joint commissioner of the privy seal, was the most probable subject of her ire. It is impossible to say, after this passage of time, whether or not she had cause for it, although the case would fit a diagnosis of menopausal jealousy very closely. On an unspecified date in April, evidently before his departure for the Continent, Marlborough told Sarah:

Your carriage to me of late is so extraordinary, that I do not know how to behave myself. I thought you used me so barbarously that I was resolved never to send or speak, but I love [you] too well to be able to keep in that resolution. Therefore I desire that you will give me leave to come to you tonight, so that I may know in what it is I have thus offended. I am sure really in thought I have not, for I do love you with all the truth imaginable.

Another letter admitted that:

As I know your temper, I am very sensible that what I say signifies nothing. However, I can’t forebear what I said yesterday, which is that I never sent to her [the unspecified ‘mistress’] in my life, and may my happiness in the other world depend upon the truth of this. If there be aught that I could do to let you know my innocency, I should be glad to do it … You say that every hour since I came from St Albans has given you fresh assurances of my hating you, and that you know I have sent to this woman. These two things are so barbarous, for I have not for these many years thought myself so happy by your kindness as for these last five or six days, and if you could at that time think I hated you I am most miserable. And for the last which you say you are sure of, may I and all that is dear to me be cursed if ever I sent to her, or have had anything to do with her, or have endeavoured to have.
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They were at least communicating by the time he reached The Hague, and he begged her to let him know how she would like him to rewrite his will to reflect Blandford’s death: ‘As I hope for happiness in the next world and this, I will follow your directions exactly, and take it as kindly as if you have reprieved me from death.’
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She wrote to him soon
afterwards, but ‘you write very much with the spleen, which makes me uneasy’. It was not until 24 April that she at last forgave him.

Your dear letter of the 15th came to me but this minute. My Lord Treasurer’s letter in which it was enclosed, by some mistake was sent to Amsterdam. I would not for anything in my power it had been lost, for it is so very kind, that I would in return lose a thousand lives if I had them to make you happy. Before I set down to write this letter I took yours that you wrote at Harwich out of my strong box, and have burnt it; and if you will give me leave, it will be a great pleasure to me to have it in my power to read this dear letter often, and that it may be found in my strong box when I am dead. I do this minute love you better and with more tenderness than ever I did before. This letter of yours has made me so happy, that from my soul I do wish that we could retire and not be blamed … I have pressed this business of carrying an army into Germany, in order to have left a good name behind me, wishing for nothing else but good success. I shall now add to that, of having a long life that I may be happy in your dear love.
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The great march began at Bedburg, west of Cologne, on 19 May. The weather had been terrible, but one cavalry officer remembered: ‘Notwithstanding the rainy weather that happened at the same time, [the army] made a most glorious appearance.’
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Marlborough started the march with some 19,000 men in English pay, 5,000 Prussian and Hanoverian troops met him at Koblenz on the twenty-sixth, and other streams flowed in to join the torrent as it rolled southwards. Apart from Marlborough and a few senior officers nobody knew the army’s destination. On 11 May he had written to congratulate Henry St John, a protégé of Robert Harley’s, who had just taken over from old Blathwayt as secretary at war, telling him that his army would shortly head for the Moselle, but ‘I may venture to tell you (though I would not have it public as yet) I design to march a great deal higher into Germany.’
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There was a two-day halt at Koblenz, ‘After which,’ says Richard Kane,

to the surprise of all, we crossed the Moselle and Rhine both at this place, and marched through the country of Hesse-Cassel, where we were joined by the Hereditary Prince of that country with a body of Hessians, which completed the Duke’s army to about 40,000. Having
passed through Hesse, we marched through the Electorate of Mainz, and so through the Palatinate of the Rhine, till we came to Heidelberg; here we halted four days, nor was it publicly known, till we came here, what the Duke designed.
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The French were as mystified as Captain Kane. Villeroi knew that Marlborough had moved south, and duly shadowed him, but was then ordered by Louis to take station at Offenburg, across the Rhine south-east of Strasbourg, with forty battalions and sixty-eight to seventy squadrons (some of them later sent on to Tallard), and to react as required, blocking Marlborough if he came up the Rhine, turning on him if he entered Alsace, or following him to the Danube. Tallard, with forty battalions and fifty squadrons, was to operate in Bavaria, and Coigny, with a tiny force composed largely of Swiss regiments whose contracts did not oblige them to cross the Rhine, remained in Alsace. Thus while the French were not completely wrong-footed by Marlborough’s march, their response at this stage was wholly reactive, and in the event Villeroi was, through no fault of his own, to be no use on either the Brabant or the German front.

Although some historians detect real tension between Marlborough and Overkirk, left behind to command Dutch troops in front of the Lines of Brabant, it is evident that relations between the two generals were actually very good. Cadogan makes it clear that ‘Monsieur Overkirk’ was the only Dutch general to have backed Marlborough when he wished to penetrate the Lines of Brabant the previous year, suggesting that the real problem was Dutch generals and not field deputies, and that ‘the deputies here … are extremely for it’.
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There was a moment of concern in early May when Cardonnel reported to John Ellis, under-secretary of state, that the French

are getting all the boats they can together at Namur and landing cannon with ammunition and instruments for removing of ground and give out that they design to besiege Huy, though ’tis believed they will hardly attempt it, and that they make these preparations rather to hinder or retard our march into Germany.
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However, Marlborough correctly deduced that if he moved south Villeroi had no choice but to follow, and on 21 May he assured Overkirk that Villeroi had indeed been ordered to take a very strong detachment from Brabant to follow him wherever he went: as this order had been
issued by Louis XIV in person, it is an index of the quality of Marlborough’s intelligence. He added in a postscript that this force included thirty-six battalions and forty-five or forty-six squadrons, including the
Maison du Roi
, Louis’ household troops: these latter were to be sent on to Tallard in Germany. Three days later he told Overkirk that progress was good, and repeated letters assured Overkirk that operations were going according to plan and that there was no chance of Villeroi breaking back to attack the Dutch in Brabant. Marlborough helped confound confusion by ordering a bridge of boats to be thrown across the Rhine at Philipsburg, implying that Landau might really be his objective, and it was not until he crossed the Main on 3 June that this possibility could be ruled out by the French.

We can see, from the correspondence between Louis and his generals, that they were consistently a move behind Marlborough in the game. On 4 May Louis told Villeroi that enemy movements still did not betray ‘their real intentions for the campaign: it seems only, by all the information … that they have no other object but a definite concentration in Flanders and Brabant’. Villeroi replied that ‘Rumour is rife … that they are going to raise a considerable army on the Moselle, and that the Duke of Marlborough will command it.’
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Tallard and Marsin were concerned about establishing the time and place of their rendezvous, and the only hint that all might not be perfect came when Tallard told Chamillart that his planned manoeuvres in Bavaria, so far from the fount of French strength, might prove tricky ‘if things do not turn out as we hope’.
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