Claude Louis Hector de Villars

Breisach, the "key" to Southern Germany, falls into enemy hands together with many supplies, guns and ammunition.

Situated along the Rhine, Breisach had been integrated into the French state in the course of the politics of Reunions from 1670, but had in 1697 under the Treaty of Ryswick been returned to the Holy Roman Empire.

Johann Phiipp D'Arco, born in Arco, Trentino, already has thirty years distinguished service when he is ordered by Louis William, Margrave of Baden-Baden in 1703, to defend Breisach to the last man against a French attack under Villars.

The city is well defended and d'Arco disposed of sufficient soldiers to hold the city for a considerable time, but he capitulates on September 6 after only thirteen days of siege.

D'arco is charged with treason for surrendering Breisach, and beheaded on February 18, 1704, at Bregenz.

His second in command Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli is stripped of all honors and his sword is broken over him.

The allied campaign of 1709 had begun in mid June after a late start owing to the unusually harsh winter preceding it.

Unable to bring the French army under Marshal Villars to battle, owing to strong French defensive lines and the Marshal's orders from Versailles not to risk battle, the Duke of Marlborough has concentrated instead on taking the fortresses of Tournai and Ypres.

Tournai had fallen after an unusually long siege of almost seventy days, by which time it is early September, and rather than run the risk of disease spreading in his army in the poorly draining land around Ypres, Marlborough instead moves eastwards towards the lesser fortress of Mons, hoping by taking it to outflank the French defensive lines in the west.

Villars moves after him, under new orders from Louis XIV to prevent the fall of Mons at all costs – effectively an order for the aggressive Marshal to give battle.

After several complicated maneuvers, the two armies face each other across the gap of Malplaquet, southwest of Mons.

The allied army, mainly consisting of Dutch and Austrian troops, but also with considerable British and Prussian contingents, is led by Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy, while the French and a contingent of Bavarians are commanded by Villars and Marshal Boufflers.

Boufflers is officially Villars' superior but is voluntarily serving under him.

The allies have about eighty-six thousand troops and one hundred guns and the French have about seventy-five thousand and eighty guns.

They are encamped within cannon range of each other near what is now the France/Belgium border.

At 9.00 AM on September 11, the Austrians attack with the support of Prussian and Danish troops under the command of Count Albrecht Konrad Finck von Finckenstein, pushing the French left wing back into the forest behind them.

The Dutch under command of John William Friso, Prince of Orange, on the Allied left wing, attack the French right flank half an hour later, and succeed with heavy casualties in distracting Boufflers enough so that he cannot come to Villars' aid.

Villars is able to regroup his forces, but Marlborough and Eugène attack again, assisted by the advance of a detachment under General Withers advancing on the French left flank, forcing Villars to divert forces from his center to confront them.

At around 1.00 PM, Villars is badly wounded by a musket ball that smashes his knee, and command passes to Boufflers.

The decisive final attack is made on the now weakened French center by British infantry under the command of the Earl of Orkney, which manages to occupy the French line of redans.

This enables the Allied cavalry to advance through this line and confront the French cavalry behind it.

A fierce cavalry battle now ensues, in which Boufflers personally leads the elite troops of the Maison du Roi.

He manages no less than six times to drive the Allied cavalry back upon the redans, but every time the French cavalry in its turn is driven back by British infantry fire.

Boufflers, realizing by 3.00 PM, that the battle cannot be won, finally orders a retreat, which is made in good order.

The Allies have suffered so many casualties in their attack that they cannot pursue him.

By this time, they have lost over twenty-one thousand men, almost twice as many as the French.

By the norms of warfare of the era, the battle is an allied victory, because the French withdraw at the end of the day's fighting, and leave Marlborough's army in possession of the battlefield, but with double the casualties.

In contrast with the Duke's previous victories, however, the French army has been able to withdraw in good order and relatively intact, and remains a potent threat to further allied operations.

Villars claims that a few more such French defeats will destroy the allied armies; and the historian John A. Lynn in his book The Wars of Louis XIV 1667-1714 terms the battle a Pyrrhic victory, but the attempt to save Mons fails, and the fortress falls on October 20.

Nonetheless, news of Malplaquet, the bloodiest battle of the eighteenth century, stuns Europe.

The rumor that even Marlborough had died becomes one of the most popular French folk songs, Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre.

Marlborough receives no personal letter of thanks from Queen Anne for the last of his four great battlefield victories.

Richard Blackmore's Instructions to Vander Beck is virtually alone among English poems in attempting to celebrate the "victory" of Marlborough at Malplaquet, while it moves the English Tory party to begin agitating for a withdrawal from the alliance as soon as they form a government the next year.

The War of the Spanish Succession has raged since 1701.

France, after eleven years of war, is in a dark period, both financially and militarily.

The early victories of Marshal Villars at the Battle of Friedlingen and the Battle of Höchstadt have been followed by numerous defeats to the Allied forces, most notably the armies under Prince Eugene of Savoy and the Duke of Marlborough.

After the rout of Oudenaarde in 1708, nearly all the strongholds of northern France had come under the control of the Austro-English coalition.

There had also been an economic crisis (the winter of 1708-1709 is one of the most rigorous of the eighteenth century) leading to famine and high mortality in the populace.

The command of the French northern army had gone to Marshal Villars in 1709, who had wasted no time in seeing to its reorganization.

When the Allied campaign led by Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough engaged the French at Malplaquet, Villars had been wounded and the French retreated from the field, but the Allies had suffered twice as many casualties and their campaign had soon sputtered out.

France's precarious position has been stabilized, the Allies are unable to achieve their goal of forcing harsh terms on the Bourbons, and the war continues.

Villars in May 1712 prepares to take the offensive.

The French have gathered an army of two hundred thousand men on the northern border, stretching from Arras to Cambrai.

The Allied northern army is positioned along the Scarpe between Douai and Marchiennes, occupying the communes of Denain and Landrecies.

The successful but controversial Marlborough had recently been relieved of his command and the English forces are now under the leadership of the Duke of Ormonde, who is under secret orders not to fight alongside the Allies under the Prince of Savoy.

Prince Eugene besieges and captures Le Quesnoy in June.

The Duke of Ormonde had withdrawn his forces during the siege, leading to a rift between the English and the rest of the Allies.

After a detailed examination of the enemy dispositions, Villars decides in the greatest secrecy to attack Denain.

Elements of the French cavalry are sent to seize the various bridges crossing the river Selle which runs through le Cateau to join the Scheldt opposite Denain.

A French detachment also takes up positions during the evening of July 23 around a mill at Haspres, blocking the river crossing there.

The French infantry begins that night to march towards Prince Eugene’s forces at Landrecies.

Prince Eugene reinforces Landrecies in response to this threat, weakening the Allied right wing (under the Earl of Albemarle) holding Denain.

At dawn, however, Villars swings the line of advance of his army and aims it (behind the cover of the Selle) in three columns at Denain.

Villars and his principal lieutenants at five o'clock in the morning draw up their plan of attack at Avesnes-le-Sec, choosing the windmill there as a vantage point for observation of the surrounding lowland.

The French infantrymen reach Neuville-sur-Escaut at seven o’clock and are immediately ordered to seize the bridges across the Scheldt.

The Allies are surprised at eight o’clock to discover the large French presence in the area.

The Earl of Albermarle, at the head of the Dutch garrison in and around Denain, warns Prince Eugene, but the Prince of Savoy is not greatly concerned at the time.

The attack has developed by one in the afternoon, o the point of an assault on the palisade at Denain.

The French sappers lead the infantry against heavy fire and take Denain at the point of the bayonet.

Many defenders are killed and the remaining Dutch infantry attempts to escape across the mill bridge, but it collapses during the retreat and hundreds of Allied troops drowned.

Prince Eugene, realizing the gravity of the situation, attempts to force his way across the Scheldt at Prouvy to help Albemarle.

French regiments under the command of the Prince de Tingry hold the bridge at Prouvy against repeated Austrian attacks; finally, as the day draws to a close, the French destroy the bridge to prevent it falling into the hands of the enemy.

This leaves the Prince of Savoy's army blocked on the left flank by the Scheldt and the Allies cannot counterattack to retake Denain.

Here, Albemarle and his staff are taken prisoner, together with some forty-one hundred troops.

The battle is not immediately recognized to be as decisive as it turns out to be; most of Prince Eugene's army is relatively unscathed.

With the loss of Denain the Allied position begins to unravel, however, and the French over the next few months will recover most of the towns they had lost in the region in previous years.

Villars attempts to interest Don Carlos of Parma in joining the expedition against Mantua, but Carlos is focused on the campaign into Naples.

Villars begins to move against Mantua, but Charles Emmanuel resists, and the army makes little progress.

In early May, an Austrian army of forty thousand under Count Claude Florimond de Mercy crosses the Alps and threatens to close in on the French army's rear by a flanking maneuver.

Villars responds by retreating from Mantua and attempts without success to interrupt the Austrian army's crossing of the Po River.

Villars, frustrated by Charles Emmanuel's delaying tactics, quits the army on May 27. (He will fall ill on the way back to France and on June 17 will die in Turin.)

The Austrians, upon Charles Emmanuel's final withdrawal of most of the allied army to Cremona, advance on the north bank of the Po as far as the Adda before both armies enter winter quarters in December 1734.