Abigail's Cousin (14 page)

As Tallard
surveyed the site of the previous year's engagement between Prussia
and Bavaria, he was inclined to agree with the Elector that should
the Franco-Bavarians dig in, it was up to Malbrouk to dislodge
them. It was a strong position not least because it was athwart the
high ground, where there were villages that could be occupied and
easily made strongly defensible, and in the valley below, the river
Nebel, although not large, would have to be crossed under his
cannon-fire with a swampy flood plain stretching many yards either
side of the river. There were even water-mills to enable both
French and Bavarian leaders to survey the battlefield with
advantage.

Tallard’s French army could occupy the
village of Blentheim while the Elector's headquarters would be
sited in Oberglau, the two villages though several miles apart
could be linked by means of mounted messengers. There were thick
woods either side of each village which gave Tallard great
satisfaction and he envied his cavalry commanders who would be able
to hide under cover of the trees and s
woop down on the enemy at will.

Tallard's
practised eye was already picking places for his cannon which could
wreak enormous damage to forces trying to cross the river and
having made his decision gave permission for foraging parties to
strip the surrounding countryside of any conceivable provision and
then to destroy barns, houses, mills other than the ones needed for
their own forces. He was aided and comforted by the Elector's news
that Marlborough had lost at least five thousand fighting men
instead of the actual figure of two thousand.

One of the
mills kept intact provides accommodation for the Comte de
Merode-Westerloo, general of the French. He and his aide-de-camp
had made some very comfortable lodgings for themselves, too
comfortable it would seem as a French musketeer almost in a panic
ascends the steps to the floor where the comte is asleep. He
carries a lighted torch which he uses to look for the sleeping men
though hears the snores soon enough hastening to the upper floor
where he rouses the aide-de-camp who bleary-eyed stumbles to the
lookout. He peers through the purpose-built slits in the upper
structure in order to view the valley below.

All he can see
is mist which envelops the valley floor and listens intently to
hostile sounds which he can faintly hear but without sighting of
the enemy has nothing much to report. He asks himself if the jangle
he can hear is horses. He starts as a faraway church bell sounds
and counts the booms, seven, and hurries to the general, shaking
him gently, whispering:

"Reveillez,
reveillez mon general!" The comte is opening his eyes, staring at
his aide. He mutters: "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" His aide speaks
hastily, urgency in his words: "Le Malbrouk, monsieur. Il est la,
il est la!"

The general,
in his dream, still at Court, does not grasp the impact of his
words. Still stupefied by sleep, he asks: "Ou est la?""Venez
monsieur c'est l'Anglais! C'est le Malbrouk." The aide gets up and
hurries over to the lookout, calling urgently:

"Venez-ici,
monsieur, s'il vous plait! Regardez!"

At last the general has got up and
stumbles over to where his aide is pointing and now the sounds are
unmistakeable, an army is approaching though still far off. The
general holds his head regretting the wine of the evening before
and can only mutter:
]

"Incroyable,
incroyable!" Then turning to the aide issues his first order:

"Envoyez mes
compliments a capitaine Theroux." He stops to think then adds:
"Tell him to sound recall of the foragers. Then bring me word from
the artillery commander about his readiness. Then inform his
excellency, the marquis of Clerambault of the approach of their
army. Allez-vite!"

As the aide
departed clattering down the steps of the mill, the general heard
another sound behind him and turning around found the trooper who
had awoken his aide. He called him over:

"Come soldier.
Take a look. Listen! Your ears are probably better than mine. How
far away are they?" The soldier put down his musket to peer into
the gloom, hearing the same sounds as his seniors and trying to
make something out, but apart from swirling vapour, he could see
nothing and the sounds came and went, sometimes a loud jangle but
mostly muffled by fog and distance.

"Well!"
demanded the general and the soldier eyeing his musket and trying
to be helpful said: "A musket ball might reach the vanguard,
monsieur le general."

"Dismiss!"
barked the comte disgusted, "take up your guard below," and the
soldier went downstairs while the general started putting on his
boots, adjusted his periwig, donned his military coat with the
epaulettes, and stamped around to ease his feet into his boots,
then removing his telescope placed it to his right eye and with a
disgusted, Bah!, pushed it shut and hurried downstairs.

Proceeding
round the base of the mill, the general entered a barn still gloomy
in the early morning and a whinny brought him to where his horse
was munching oats that a thoughtful trooper had placed around his
head, and removed the bag and spoke to the horse:

"We're away,
ma belle, to speak to le marechal. Venez!"

He silently
thanked his aide for saddling her as he climbed up and cantered to
the sentry, barking to him where his aide would find him and
trotted off, gently climbing the rise towards the headquarters of
Marshall Tallard, between the villages of Blentheim and
Oberglau.

-----------------------------------------

Everything the
Duke of Marlborough had advised - it was not his style to issue
commands - was, following his briefing to his generals in the
command marquee, carried out. Before leaving to make his final
calls upon each battalion and squadron, he had spoken to his
aide-de-camp with a view to his Pioneers scouring their own stores,
and surrounding countryside for materials such as straw and hay for
the purpose of soaking up the wet approaches to the river.

No detail escaped the duke and yet nobody
was at all put out by these arrangements. It was his ability to
anticipate problems such as shortages along a route march as when
in May long before the order had gone out to march to the Danube
that he had instructed his quartermaster to inventorise his
soldiers' boot sizes so that fresh supplies of new footwear would
be available at specified towns along the route from the camping
grounds in the Dutch republic to their destination, the upper
Rhine, a journey of five weeks, which saw his men as fit upon
arrival as the day they had left. There was also provision made by
his Commissariat to have supplies of bread, cheese, meat as well as
ample quantities of beer, wine and, of course,
water and feed for the horses.

The early
morning mist benefited the deployment of Marlborough's army and
even before the leading columns had reached the Nebel, Colonel
Cadogan and his engineers had sunk the pontoons, laid out fascines
and several spans constructed from wood of dismantled wagons, or
whatever planks the Pioneers had managed to rip from barns and
mills in the countryside around. Many had been laid in the early
hours before they had been bothered by early ranging shots of the
French artillery, and even the momentum of the first projectiles
lost momentum as they splashed in the marshy ground, overlooked by
Tallard in making his dispositions.

Prince Eugene
directed his foot across the marshy ground helped somewhat by the
forethought of Marlborough's pioneer corps scattering large
quantities of fodder in order to delay the development of what
undoubtedly would become a morass. Even so the men were soon up to
their waists in the water. Some had been ordered to cut down
thickets to make rafts although these were used to carry equipment
across. Men were more easily able to ford the river unencumbered by
muskets besides keeping their powder dry.

The moment the men had scrambled from the
water they were formed up cocking their weapon to be ready to cover
the crossing of the horses from a surprise attack from enemy
cavalry already forming up halfway up the slope partly hidden by
the trees but easily discernible by their movement alone. Many of
their horses were already across being defiled between the men and
as soon as they were across they were galloping to the right on
their way over the stubbly fields to take up their allotted station
opposite Oberglau, some three miles distant. Owing to the
unexpected steepness of the terrain cragged with sharp edged bluffs
impassable to horses, Prince Eugene's columns would have to detour
along the lower valley,
protected by cannon fire from those very bluffs occasioning
the detour, but it would delay their deployment.

The whole area
was heavily forested however and the cavalry had to be ever
watchful from surprise raids from clumps of trees that could easily
hide enemy cavalry. These delays in the deployment of Prince
Eugene's forces would give Marlborough many anxious moments as the
French fusillade got under way, improving with more accurate
ranging as the morning developed.

Through his
telescope Marlborough watched enemy soldiers carrying tables,
chairs, carts outside of the outlying houses to form a palisade
around the village of Blentheim their preparations momentarily
interrupted by one of Colonel Blood's cannonades, all too rare, as
otherwise he was in danger of firing across the allied front. The
French commander had also ordered his men to place obstructions
between the village and the Danube so as to prevent a flanking
attack as well as to protect the flank of his own cavalry which
were ordered to wait here as a reserve.

Marlborough sitting astride his white
charger was seemingly unperturbed by the cannon balls which could
be observed rising in a trajectory before bouncing across the
stubble of the cornfield. Even when a ball whistled towards him,
horse and rider scarcely moved yet he was alive to a constant
stream of officers reporting units in position and ready for
action, finally sending Parker in a gallop to Lords Orkney and
Cutts, to General Churchill, to
Major-general Wilkes and to General Wood, and when Parker
returned with satisfactory reports, the duke said aloud to
Parker:

"My compliments to
Colonel Blood, and if he would, where
possible, commence firing his heavy batteries on the villages of
Blentheim and Oberglau!"

"Even before
he had finished a cheer went up from the ranks to be quieted by a
sergeant: "Shut your gobs you 'orrible men. His lordship cannot
hear himself speak."

The duke
smiled, pointing to a few forward batteries, then spoke: "Advise
the colonel to load those with canister," and Parker was away
galloping first across the pontoon bridge to where the colonel
stood directing his sappers. Parker watched him trotting to each
battery in turn and intercepted him to convey the duke's message.
Then for Parker it was back across the pontoon as cannonballs from
the French continued to fall, to bounce, to sizzle across marsh
racing menacingly through ranks of soldiers before ending in a
cloud of steam in the Nebel. The duke watched as Parker assiduously
bore his messages then turned to a soldier, earlier referred
to:

"Would you
advise your battalion commander, sergeant, to let me have a word
with him," and within a short while the duke was advising him to
allow the men to lie down where he thought it advisable and allow
them to eat lunch provided they did not congregate. Within the next
fifteen minutes Parker had advised all the remaining battalion
commanders of the same message. Occasionally Marlborough put the
glass to his eye to observe the disposition of the enemy and
whether it had materially changed from his last sighting. His glass
rested on one particular figure on horseback.

Sighted by the
duke's telescope, the figure on horseback was the Marquis de
Clerambault. He was taking out a heavy fob-clock from his jacket,
turning to his adjutant. But that was the total of the duke's
sighting, and he would not have heard the marquis addressing his
aide:

"Il fait onze
heures, monsieur l'adjutant."
His adjustant turned to listen as his commanding officer
added: "Still Malbrouk has not begun his attack. He has lost any
advantage that he had, surely." Unseen by either another rider has
approached them, his opening sentence alerting both to Marshall
Tallard's presence:

"I had the honour, messieurs, to meet the
duke en Angleterre. A more perfect gentihomm
e does not inhabit the earth." The marquis
and his adjustant exchanged looks as if to think but not say, 'Is
this a soiree to which we have been invited? Perhaps this
battlefield is a dream!" They heard their marshal add:

"Le Malbrouk,
as good mannners dictate, is waiting for his eminence, the Prince
Eugene to be ready before he opens hostilities. The prince is
having difficulty with the thick forest and steep cliffs. It shows
poor scouting."

The marquis
was thinking, should we not exploit this advantage, but instead he
said obsequiously: "The prince will get a hot reception when he is
ready. Your Excellency is wreaking havoc all along Malbrouk's
front."

Tallard did
not disagree: "He is sustaining heavy casualties which works to our
advantage as we started with more men, more cavalry, and more
guns."

The adjutant
looked across at the marshal: "What a discipline, monsieur! I could
not wait so patiently to commence my attack," getting the expected
riposte which caused the adjutant a slight inward smile: "That is
the reason why he is a general and you are not."