Marlborough (103 page)

leads cavalry at Grammont, 174

aims to capture Kehl, 240

defeats Prince Louis at Friedlingen, 251

declines to offer battle at Sieck, 310

attacks Prince Louis on Rhine, 331–2

commands army on Rhine, 331

at battle of Ramillies, 341

forced to retreat after Ramillies, 348

appointed commander in Flanders (1709), 412, 417, 420

character, 412

deployment and manoeuvres in Flanders, 417–19, 422–3

on weak state of soldiers, 417

and Allied attack on Tournai, 418

given permission to fight, 421

reinforces Mons, 421

in battle of Malplaquet, 423, 425, 430–1

wounded, 431–2, 434

Marlborough writes to after Malplaquet, 434

in 1710 campaign, 450–2

on Charles III’s accession as Emperor, 452

throws up
Ne Plus Ultra
lines, 453–4, 457

captures Arleux, 454

Marlborough plans to attack, 455–7

letter from Ormonde, 462

victories against Eugène, 462

Villeroi, Marshal François de Neufville, duc de:

Eugène captures at Cremona, 224

commands in Lines of Brabant, 240–4, 246

captures Tongres, 241

forage supply, 244

Marlborough’s confidence of defeating, 256

and Marlborough’s march into Germany, 259–60

at Lines of Stollhofen, 278

Elector joins on Rhine, 305

in Brabant (1705–6), 310, 317, 331

sends snuffboxes to Marlborough, 311

counters Marlborough’s movements at Lines of Brabant, 312

defeated at Lines of Brabant, 315

opposes Allied crossing of Dyle, 320–1

besieges Leau, 331

deployment and defeat at Ramillies, 332–6, 339, 345, 346–7

casualties at Ramillies, 348

replaced by Vendôme after Ramillies, 349

Villiers, Barbara
see
Cleveland, Duchess of

Villiers, Elizabeth
see
Orkney, Countess of

Vimy Ridge, 455

Violaine, Brigadier de, 229

Voisin, Daniel François, 412

Vollant, Simon, 392

Vryberg, Martinus van, 325

Wade, Colonel Nathaniel, 112, 116, 124

Walcourt, battle of (1689), 160–2

Waldeck, Georg Friedrich, Prince of, 159–62, 173

Walker, Robert, 14

Waller, Sir Hardress, 210

Waller, Sir William, 40

Walpole, Horace, 235

Walpole, Sir Robert, 22, 416

Walter, Lucy, 77, 110

Wangé, château of, 314

warfare:

seasonal conduct of, 220

Warneton, 421

Wassenaer en Obdam (Opdam), General Jacob van Wassenaer, Count van, 227, 230–1, 242–6, 318

Webb, Major General John:

Toryism, 36, 413

commands arms convoy in Flanders, 399–401

and Wynendaele engagement, 399

in battle of Malplaquet, 400–1, 426

Webb, Stephen Saunders, 175, 184

Wedderburn, Major, 416

Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of:

compared with Marlborough, 2, 6

promotion after Moore’s death, 185

and discipline, 480

Wentworth, George, 24

Wentworth, Peter, 23

Wentworth, Thomas, 5th Baron, 48–9

Werden, Sir John, 95

Wermüller, Colonel, 341

Wesel, 240

Westonzoyland, Somerset, 120–3, 125 Wharton, Thomas, 1st Marquess of:

on voting in Lords, 29

political activities
and sympathies, 33–7

in conspiracy against James II, 136

supposedly writes lyrics to ‘Lillibulero’, 143

and Anne’s claim for grant, 164

earldom, 353

and Sarah’s differences with Anne, 408

in Cabinet, 413

Wheatcroft, Andrew, 1

Wheate, Sir Thomas, 223, 461

Whigs:

in Parliament, 32–3

junto, 35, 353

as party, 35–6

term adopted, 90

government (1705), 330

supports funding of war, 330

election success (1708), 364

ascendancy, 412, 437

Marlborough supports, 413

and peace terms, 441

government under Harley, 442

condemn light peace terms for France, 459

fear Jacobite invasion, 463

purged from army, 467

Whitehall, palace of, 56–7

Wild Geese (Irish), 130, 347

Wilkes, John, 459

Wilkes, Lieutenant General, 292

William I (the Silent), Prince of Orange, 67

William III (of Orange), King of England, Scotland and Ireland:

achievements, 1

appearance, 13

accession, 15, 156–7

favours and ennobles Dutch officers, 27, 172

composition of Parliament, 33

marriage, 52, 92

cultivates Hampton Court gardens, 57

opposes Louis XIV, 67

confirms sentence on Elnberger, 75

Marlborough confers with on French threat to Bruges, 89

at battle of Boyne (1690), 16, 93

and sinking of
Gloucester
, 98

nicknamed by Anne and Sarah, 105

and Monmouth rebellion, 114

and British military opposition to James II, 135

invasion of England and advance to London, 137, 142, 145–9, 155

issues
Declaration
, 145–7

appoints Feversham master of Royal Hospital, 155

tensions with Marlborough, 157

reforms army, 158–9

praises Marlborough for Walcourt victory, 162

suspected of homosexuality, 163

and Anne’s funding, 164

campaign in Ireland, 164, 166–9

praises Marlborough for Irish campaign, 171

and War of League of Augsburg, 173–4, 181–2, 210

dismisses Marlborough from appointments and court, 175–6

and Marlborough’s arrest and imprisonment, 180

Mediterranean strategy fails, 182–3

Shrewsbury urges to reinstate Marlborough, 185

and death of Mary, 186

Jacobite assassination plots against, 187, 193

recognised by Louis XIV as monarch, 188

reinstates Marlborough, 190–1

and succession to throne, 191

and War of Spanish Succession, 193

death, 194, 198

and government of United Provinces, 198, 200

and payments to Marlborough, 461

Wilson, Sergeant John:

as source, 8, 225–6

on march to Danube, 264, 268

at Donauwörth, 273

on plundering of Bavaria, 277

on battle of Blenheim, 294

on siege of Tournai, 420

in battle of Malplaquet, 427

disparages French fighting, 430

Winchester:

bishopric, 355

Windsor Castle:

Charles II at, 57

Windsor Great Park:

Ranger’s Lodge, 268, 473

Winston, Sir Henry, 40

Wissembourg, 249

Withers, Lieutenant General Henry, 75, 226, 264, 272, 423, 425–6, 428, 430–2

Witt, Jan de, 67

Wolfenbüttel, Prince of, 275

Wolseley, Field Marshal Garnet Joseph, Viscount, 79

Wood, Major General Cornelius, 275, 291, 431

Woodstock:

election (1710), 223

Woodstock manor, Oxfordshire:

given to Marlborough, 299

Wotton (house), Surrey, 14

Wratislaw, Johann Wenzel, Count, 252–3, 255, 302–3, 322, 362

Wren, Sir Christopher:

church designs, 14

loses post of surveyor general, 22

and development of Whitehall Palace, 57

designs Marlborough House, 408

Wren, Christopher, Jr, 408

Württemberg, Alexander, Prince of, 397

Württemberg, Carl Rudolph, Duke of, 264, 276, 280, 346

Württemberg, Ferdinand William, Prince of, 169–70, 210

Wycherley, William, 63

Wynendaele, battle of (1708), 21, 36, 399

Yarborough, John, 247

York, Anne Hyde, Duchess of, 29, 47, 83, 88

Young, Robert, 178, 180

Ypres, 393, 418, 454

Zandvliet, 326

Zenta, battle of (1697), 250

Zurlauben, Lieutenant General von, 292

Celebrated military historian and television presenter Richard Holmes is famous for his BBC series such as
War Walks
and
Wellington.
He is the author of the bestselling and widely acclaimed
Redcoat
and
Tommy
and more than a dozen other books, including
The Western Front
,
Dusty Warriors
and
Sahib.
He is general editor of the definitive
Oxford Companion to Military History.
He taught military history at Sandhurst for many years and is now a professor at Cranfield University and the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. He lives near Winchester in Hampshire.

English money at the time in which this book is set was reckoned in pounds, shillings and pence, with twenty shillings to the pound and twelve pence to the shilling: a guinea was worth thirty shillings prior to the recoinage in 1696, and twenty-one shillings thereafter. Simple multiplications do not catch the subtleties of the real value of money, although one reliable source suggests that £1 in 1700 was worth the equivalent of £125 in 2006. Scots money was worth rather less: in 1703 five dragoon broadswords cost £24 Scots, but just £2 Sterling. Soldiers and merchants had to take local currencies as they found them, and relative values were generally on the move. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the French livre was worth about twenty louis d’or, and one of the latter was worth about a guinea. The Dutch guilder contained twenty stivers, and a stiver roughly equated to an English penny. The Spanish pistole, widely used in the Spanish Netherlands, in which so much of Marlborough’s campaigning took place, was worth much the same as a louis d’or. There were other currencies about, their value easily reckoned up by those like the jovial Irishman ‘Captain’ Peter Drake (his rank stemming from self-granted courtesy, not formal commission) with an eye to the main chance. In 1702 he slit a corn bag in Nijmegen castle and found ‘a hundred silver ducatoons, value about five shillings and tenpence each, near £30 Sterling’.
¹

Incomes differed hugely. Near the top of the social scale, Sir William Cowper met lord treasurer Godolphin on 11 October 1705 and agreed to become lord keeper ‘on condition I had the same money for equipage (£2,000) and salary of £4,000 as my predecessor had, and a peerage next promotion’. Before he could take office he had to swear the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, paying a fee of £26 for each. In the period 1706–08 his income did not fall below £7,000 a year.
²
This was wealth indeed: in 1688 Gregory King estimated the yearly average income of noble families at £3,200 apiece. However, at the height of her power Sarah Marlborough made £9,500 a year from all her court offices
(that of groom of the stole alone was worth £3,000), and one apparently well-founded contemporary estimate put her husband’s total income in 1704 at the staggering sum of £54,825.
³
The merchant princes of the age, like Sir Peter Vansittart and Sir Theodore Jensen, left fortunes of more than £100,000, and most London merchants of the middling sort, bringing in £200–£400 a year, might leave £5,000–£15,000. It cost perhaps £1,000 to be sworn apprentice to a ‘Turkey merchant’ trading with the east, £400–£600 to other merchants, and £200–£300 to wholesale dealers like linen drapers.

In 1667 Bab May suggested that £300 a year was quite enough for any country gentleman, coming quite close to Gregory King’s 1688 estimate of £450 a year for the average annual income of esquires – the rank between knight and gentleman – and £280 for plain gentlemen.
⁴
Although King thought that ‘persons in greater offices and places’ averaged £240 a year, Samuel Pepys, a rising young official, had clearly done rather better. He reckoned himself worth £650 in 1662, £2,164 (and an inherited estate) in 1665, and £6,700 in 1667.