The campaigns of Prince Eugene of Savoy in 1697 and the Duke of Marlborough in 1704 or two examples in warfare on the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries.

by 

Balázs Bocz 

(Second part)

 

 

In our age armies usually relied on the system of ‘contributions’, a practice initiated first at the 16^th century, and developed to a new level under Gustav Adolf of Sweden and Wallenstein. These contributions from the locals (a system, adequately called by the Imperial general Rabutin the practice of sacrificing the people ‘rather than the troops’) effectively meant, that the war (in Napoleons words) had to feed itself.[1] Armies could live ’off the land’, but that meant provoking an unceasing hostility from the local population, which sometimes could lead to very unpleasant consequences (such peasant rebellions as the one in Spain during the Peninsular War, or in Tyrol in 1809 are among the more notable ones). Peasants, armed with forks hunting scattered soldiers after a battle during the 17th century was not an uncommon sight. Commanders however usually had not much of a choice, for they couldn’t pay for the supplies they had to take. Before the advent of a modern bureaucracy, that could organize the collection and distribution of money (through taxes and wages respectively) no commander stood a chance of hiring merchants to provide some of the necessaries and to pay the peasants with hard coin for the rest. When an exception occurred, it usually led to great successes: Wallenstein and Gustav Adolf owed much of their triumphs to the way they managed the supplying of their armies, just as Cromwell did during his wars.[2] This fact owes most to the relation between plundering and morale: an army relying on the ’contributions’ from the locals was notoriously hard to be kept in line, while one fed and paid well by the central authority proved much more reliable. Then again, the lack of the institutional framework proved a very hard obstacle to overcome, even when the lack of the system (especially regular payment from monarchs, always putting more troops to the field, than they could pay for) lead to catastrophic strategical or political consequences, such as the Sacco of Roma or the ’Spanish fury’ at Antwerp in 1575. An alternative was for the Commander to play to role of the Quartermaster himself paying the whole army or to find someone (a merchant) to do the same, in exchange of paper promises.[3] The difference can easily be measured by taking a glance at the Habsburg and the English (or for that matter, the Dutch) system during the War of the Spanish Succession. Marlborough – as later Wellington – was in the lucky position, that he always had hard coin to spend, something that earned the trust of the locals more than anything else could (and by rendering plundering unnecessary, their goodwill as well), while Prince Eugene had to rely on ’living off’ the land in 1697 (which just managed to produce a great peasant rebellion during the course of the campaign). Military administration on the spot played as crucial a part, as the central one in the acquirement and distribution of goods. The French and the Ottoman systems were the most developed, the French intendant at Lille negotiating treaties with local authorities on the scale of contributions (and the parallel decrease in their taxes), employment of the locals on army tasks, local building projects to fit into the military’s needs, and a various other host of tasks.[4] When an army was operating outside the jurisdiction of the authorities of the monarch or state it belonged to, all the more important were the handpicked agents of the commander, who bore the responsibility for procurement and keeping the troops in order. Marlborough, during his march to the Danube for example employed about 3 men and a dozen clerks in that work (as a General Staff was missing, and will be in the British Army until the end of the 19^th century).[5] Transport was another problem, one that could hardly be solved efficiently int he absence of a modern road network. From the time of the fall of the Roman Empire until the mid 17th century, no systematic network of roads was being built up in Europe, and ’hard’ roads, that could be used in any season under any weather didn’t appear until the beginning of the 19th century. This meant that water still proved the most reliable means of transport, armies being escorted by large flotillas on the rivers as they moved (notable examples are Henry III’s campaign in Hungary in 1051, Sultan Suleiman’s in 1526).[6] Prince Eugene made good use of these himself, but Marlborough’s 1704 march provides an even better, seminar example. This method however pinned the armies to rivers: the ships could only follow the course of the water. If an army wished to leave the range of the river, it had to rely on the much slower method of transport with bullocks, whom Wellington valued very much personally (as they were very reliable and could pull a great deal of weight, and tolerate harsh circumstances).

William III’s army in the Spanish Netherlands during the Nine Years War needed 400.000 tons of supply a year. State bureaucracies – even in the West – could not shoulder the full burden of supplying and organizing troops, so they focused on the most essential food of all: bread for the soldiers. Contractors – if they were available – had to provide for the most: meat, vegetables, liquors and tobacco. Armies on the move usually could collect provisions – unless they marched through territories already devastated -, especially green fodder for the horses. In the Nine Years War each of the 80.000 horses of William III needed between 18 and 30 kilos of green fodder in the summer. Armies had to forage on every third or fourth day. Foraging was done in front and flanks of the armies, but as camps were close it could involve even the whole of the army, as foraging parties fought their own skirmishes. The military relied on Civilian contractors to save money. The most famous of those were Samuel Oppenheimer of Heidelberg (1630-1703), a financial and business genius, and Antonio Alvarez Machado and Jacob Pereira, a duo of Dutch Sephardic Jews.  They were the suppliers behind William III’s forces in the Franco-Dutch War and William’s English expedition in 1688.[7] Businessman and entrepreneurs were crucial in the system. Johann Andreas Kraut of Berlin, who dealt in luxuries until 1686 became the Great Elector’s official and continued to administrate the Hohenzollern War Treasury until Frederick William I’s ascension.  He or the Huguenot brothers of Amsterdam were still dwarfed in importance (and profit) by many of the ‘Court Jews’ of the German princes, like Behrend Lehmann of Halberstadt, who kept the Saxon armies of Augustus II in the field from 1701 in Poland. These businessman were heirs to such financers as the Medici, providers for Edward III of England or the Fuggers, whose financial empire was first shaken by their loans to Charles V and Ferdinand I, and ruined by their loans to Philip II of Spain. State officials relied on men like them as the state administrative machine was not yet able to handle all the tasks it had to face, while the business tycoons could make immense profits.[8] The burdens of war however usually proved too much for a state to bear. France, revitalized by the reforms of Colbert in the 1660s and 1670s, was ruined by continuous warfare. In 1715, the Regency Council, ruling in the name of the minor Louis XV was forced to declare ‘a peculiarly French form of bankruptcy, summoning a Chambre de Justice that tried financers for fraud and renounced much of what the monarchy really owed.’[9] Now we shall move on to overview the campaign of Prince Eugene in 1697.

The Imperial armies in Hungary in 1697 were exhausted by years of continuous warfare. Only with the greatest effort could the empty treasury in Vienna gather enough to assemble an army for the campaign in 1697. The troops had to contend with a desperate rebellion in the Northeast, a fitting response to the exhaustive application of system of ‘contributions’. Furthermore, they were in short of talented leaders, an essential for any army back then, when no staff existed to help keeping the army’s coherence. Louis of Baden, the last in the line of talented Imperial commanders in Hungary left for the Rhine in 1692, after which first the old Caprara, then the young Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxon led the army. They both proved incapable, even though Augustus eventually left his billiard-table and tennis court at home, an event that surprised the English diplomat Stepney very much. The officers constantly quarrelled, but all agreed with General Bussy de Rabutin, a French émigré (and military commander of Transylvania), that being an Elector did not in itself ‘produce the intelligence or talents of a captain’. The question of finance could not be helped then, but that of leadership could. At the behest of both Margrave Louis and that of Rüdiger Starhemberg, the President of the Hofkgriegsrat Prince Eugene of Savoy had been choosen as the deputy of the Elector. Augustus’ success in the Polish royal election soon removed him from the theatre of operations (but not his Saxon troops), a huge relief to Eugene and Starhemberg. Eugene arrived to the Army on 27 July at Peterwardein (Pétervárad), where he was greeted by the troops, whom he found in ‘incredible misery’. He had to borrow 1.000 guldens from one of his generals to pay for the most necessary expenses of the troops. The campaign had to be conducted in a land already devastated by previous campaigns; a ‘wastes’ as Eugene fittingly called it. On 19 August the Sultan crossed the Danube. Eugene showed his organizational abilities, when he injected some discipline into his troops, during a long march during the course of month, which saw various manoeuvres as the Sultan and the Prince followed each other’s moves. In the end the Sultan decided to move northwards and capture Szeged, after which he meant to move on to Transylvania, regaining this important country to Ottoman rule. Prince Eugene once again followed him up, when stumbled into a rare opportunity. He received news in the morning of 11 September, that the Ottoman army was crossing the Theiss at Zenta. He immediately set the army on the move, leading a personal reconnaissance at the head of some thousands of cavalry. Only a couple of hours before nightfall he discovered that the Ottoman infantry was left on the right bank of the river in a vulnerable position. With minimal preparation he set the army to attack. The battle of Zenta turned out to be an overwhelming victory with 20.000 Ottoman soldiers killed and 10.000 drowned. The victory was complete, as the Imperials realized the next day, when they crossed the river. The success of the Prince at the head of a starved out, exhausted and demoralized army in just two and half a months was admirable, showing once again how crucial leadership in war was.

The famous British military historian, Sir Basil Liddel Hart in his celebrated Strategy called the Spanish War of Succession the war a series of ‘futile direct approaches or only slightly more purposeful indirect approaches’, finding only one highpoint in it, the ‘brilliant indirect approaches, which are mostly connected to the glorious name of Marlborough.’[10] Marlborough’s march to the Danube (and the subsequent Battle of Blenheim) in 1704 was celebrated by contemporaries as the greatest victory yet won against the Sun King. The ‘annals of the British Army’ – concluded somewhat exaggeratingly Winston Churchill, Marlborough’s descendant – ‘contain no more heroic episode than this march from the North Sea to the Danube.’[11] It was an adventurous enterprise and one very risky at that; much depended on the French guessing his true purpose or failing to do so. The success of the march was vital, but it could only serve as a preliminary to the true challenge: beating the Franco-Bavarian army in open battle in such a fashion as to render them unable to charge at Vienna the next year – otherwise the whole operation was pointless, as the Captain-General was bound to return to the Netherlands, leaving Vienna once again exposed to danger. This importance of the campaign was recognized both by the Duke, and his Austrian counterpart, the Prince Eugene of Savoy, both seeking decision for the campaign at this point.

The campaigning season of 1704 didn’t promise much good for the allies. Two years before Cadiz defended itself successfully against an Anglo-Dutch force. In 1703, although the King of Portugal joined the Confederates, the military situation didn’t improve much. Marlborough’s ‘grand design’ (an encircling movement centred around Antwerp) collapsed into ruin by poor execution, Eugene had to leave Italy, with his successor Guido Starhemberg being barely able to hold his own, while in Hungary a minor peasant revolt turned into a wide scale rebellion after the success of the rebels at Dolha in August 1703. Marshal Claude de Villars, the most talented of Louis XIV’s marshals at the time took Landau and opened a passage for the French army to reinforce the forces of Elector Maximilian Emmanuel II of Bavaria, posing a direct threat to Vienna. The gravest danger lay there, in a possible joint operation of the Franco-Bavarian army and the kurucz rebels of Ferenc II Rákóczy in Hungary against Vienna. The Dutch minister wrote from Vienna to his government in January 1704: ’the monarchiy is on its last legs and will go down in a general military collapse unless there is some miraculous intervention of the Almighty’.[12] To resolve the difficulties, the Duke of Marlborough came up with a daring and ingenious plan. Marshal Tallard, head of the French army at the Rhine was just coming back to the left bank of the river, after successfully manoeuvring his army to meet the Elector and Marsin (commander of the French forces at the Elector’s side, handing over some gold and reinforcements to them (between 13 and 26 May), bypassing the great fort of Freiburg in the process when he heard that an allied army was at Koblenz. Marlborough began planning the eventual march to the Danube in the end of 1703. The extraordinary achievement of the march was not to be its length, but that it should require the troops to arrive fresh and ready to fight to the Danube.[13] Marlborough left England on 19 April in company of the Imperial envoy, the Count Wratislaw.  He had an Order in Council (a decision by the English Privy Council) with him, commanding him to march to the Danube. With the help of Antoine Heinsius, the Grand Pensionare of Holland (thereby being the most important person in the republic) and a trustee of the former Stadtholder William III, he put overbearing pressure on the provincial delegates, who finally acquiesced in the plan to march to the Moselle on 3 May. Thus the Estates of the Netherlands did not know what a large portion of their troops were to do (although the King in Prussia for example was well informed by the Captain-General). The troops their winter quarters on the following day. Marlborough in the meantime acquired the assistance of Prince Louis of Baden by an Imperial order, stressing to him that ‘The issue in this matter is victory or death.’[14] He also managed to convince the Emperor to release Prince Eugene for service in Germany, instead of keeping him back in Vienna or sending him to Italy. Crossing the Meuse 14 May, Marlborough left with 14 battalions and 38 squadrons, the English part of the allied army. He had 1.700 supply wagons and 5.000 draught horses. The march began at 3 am every day about 9 the army was already camped.[15] This force, not consisting much more than 10.000 men was to be augmented by reinforcements on the way: after crossing Coblenz he added 5.000 Prussians and Hanoverians, while the whole army reached about 40.000 when he joined up with Prince Louis. Marlborough knew all too well, that he had to move: ‘I am very sensible that I take a great deal upon me. But should I act otherwise, the Empire would be undone and consequently the Confederacy.’ – he wrote on 1 May to Godolphin.[16]  The Duke crossed the Main on 3 June and rested for 3 days. On 7 June the Duke crossed the Neckar and met up with Prince Eugene on 10 June. He joined up with the army of the Margrave of Baden on 22 June at Launsheim, completing his march of 250 miles, which took 5 weeks, losing only 1.200 men to sickness. Supplies were crucial to keep the army fresh, and moving, for mobility was a key part of the plan. The Duke achieved this by leaving his heavy guns behind in the Spanish Netherlands, thus precluding any serious siege in Bavaria (after the Austrians failed to amass the guns they promised) and by paying very through attention to supplies, for instance new pairs of boots awaited every soldier in Heidelberg.[17] The move was very risky: Marlborough couldn’t stay in Bavaria for the winter & the Dutch had to be defended, which meant that he had to return to the Spanish Netherlands in the winter, thus leaving Vienna undefended again. During the whole march he followed the line of rivers: the Rhine, the Main and the Neckar. Deception played a crucial part in the success, as the French didn’t know in which direction he would turn, until before a few days of his meeting with Eugene. After leaving Coblenz he could turn into Elsass, into Baden or the Danube (beginning the construction of a pontoon at the great fortress of Philipsburg). The leaders of the French armies, the minister of war and the King were in a lengthy correspondence, wasting time with indecisiveness. In the meantime Marlborough joined up with the Imperial armies. Villeroi followed from Flanders with a French army, but he was kept off the joint army of Marlborough and the Margrave by Eugene. The Franco-Bavarian army still held the line of the Danube, on which the allies had to gain a crossing. The allied army reached Donauwörth on 2 July, but not quickly enough to prevent it being reinforced by the Bavarians before the allies could make an attempt at crossing. Only the numerical superiority of the allied armies forced the crossing – with considerable losses. At any rate, a crossing point was acquired and Bavaria in turn was devastated to induce the elector into a premature attack. The usual manoeuvring followed, with the Margrave of Baden, whose personal pride – combined with his reluctance for a decisive battle – posed serious difficulties, leaving for the siege of Landau. At last the allies faced Tallard, Marsin and the Elector in a pitched battle on 13 August at Blenheim (Höchstadt). The battle was hard fought and the allied victory was nearly missed – but in the end it did come and it was complete. 12.000 Frenchman were cornered at the Danube, Tallard himself being captured (he was sent to England, where he used to be a Minister before the war, spending the rest of the conflict – in the absence of a prisoner of war equalling his status to be swapped with – in prison). The news of the triumph were in London by the next day – all the city erupting in celebration.[18]  The victory at once delivered Bavaria to the allies, ended the threat to Vienna once and for all, and made Marlborough and Prince Eugene celebrated heroes throughout confederate and neutral Europe. The battle – a great success in the carrier of both commanders, though Ramilies and Oudenarde on one hand, Zenta and Turin on the other are of the same calibre – concluded a particularly successful campaign for the Confederates.[19]

Eugene and Marlborough proved very efficient commanders, leading great armies in marches, taking great care to keep them shape for battle and ending their campaigns with resounding victories, changing the course of two wars. The way they conducted their operations bore witness for their superior organizational talents, and for the importance of adequate logistics for any army.  

 

Sources:

-          Acsády; Ignác: Magyarország története I. Lipót és I. József korában I/I. (The history of Hungary in the age of Leopold I and Josef I), Athenaeum, Budapest, 1898. = Acsády[20]

-          Black, Jeremy: Britain as a Military Power 1688-1815, London, 1999.

-          Childs, John: Warfare in the seventeenth century, London, 2001. = Childs.

-          Churchill, Winston: Marlborough. His Life and Times, New York, 1968 (abridged, one-volume edition of the 1930s original). = Churchill

-          Csikány, Tamás: A harmincéves háború (The Thiry Years War), Budapest, 2005. = Csikány

-          Creveld, Martin van: Supplying War. Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton, Cambridge, 1977. = Creveld

-          Keegan, John: A hadviselés története (A History of Warfare), Budapest, 2002. = Keegan

-          Lever, Tresham Sir: Godolphin: His Life and Times, London, 1952. = Lever

-          Liddel Hart, Basil Sir: Stratégia (Strategy), Budapest, 2002. = Liddel Hart

-           Lynn, John A.: Wars of the Age of Louis XIV, 1650-1715. An Encyclopedia of Global Warfare and Civilization, London, 2008. = Lynn 2008.

-          Lynn, John A.: The grand strategy of the grand siècle: Learning from the wars of Louis XIV. In: Williamson Murray-Richard Hart Sinnreich-James Lacey (ed.:) The Shaping of Grand Strategy. Policy, Diplomacy, and War, Cambridge 2011. = Lynn 2011.

-          Marczali, Henrik: Nagy Képes Világtörténet, IX. köt. (Az absolutismus kora), Budapest, é. n.

-          McKay, Derek: Prince Eugene of Savoy, London, 1977. = McKay

-          Tincey, John (llustrated by Graham Turner): Bleinheim 1704. The Duke of Marlborough’s masterpiece, Oxford, 2004. = Tincey

The New Cambridge Modern History (various studies in the volume), Vol. VI. The Rise of Great Britain and Russia 1688-1715/25, Cambridge, 1971. = NCMH

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