Читать книгу Marlborough and the War of the Spanish Succession - G. W. L. Nicholson - Страница 10

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Before turning to Marlborough's campaigns on the Continent it may be useful to examine briefly the state of military science at the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession. Two types of operation, both generally carried out in accordance with certain set rules of procedure, dominated the military scene—the siege, and the large-scale pitched battle. The wasting struggles of the Thirty Years' War had encouraged a tendency to favour defensive methods of warfare. During the latter half of the seventeenth century the principle of offensive action as accepted today received little recognition; to be considered a successful commander it was less important to win victories than to guard against defeat. The numerous fortresses and fortified towns of Flanders furnished ample scope for the exercise of such non-aggressive tactics; securely garrisoned, they would serve as strong points about which a defending army might manœuvre almost indefinitely while holding off a superior force.

In attempting to reduce one of these fortresses the attacker must employ two armies—one to perform the actual investment, the other to cover the siege by warding off counter-blows from the defending field force. As one war after another flowed across this cockpit of Europe and these strongholds changed hands time and again, the procedure became so stereotyped that it was possible to predict with a high degree of accuracy the cost, in time and lives, of taking a particular fortress. Thus was Louis XIV able on occasion to move his Court in holiday mood to the scene of action in order to enjoy the operations from a safe distance and then participate in the capitulation ceremonies.

Custom had established just as definite a pattern for the conduct of the pitched battle. It was an operation to be entered upon only after careful deliberation. An army was a great political and moral asset which had been acquired at great expense; it might not be lightly risked in decisive action. In those days there were no well organized lines of communication moving a steady stream of reinforcements up to the front; a beaten army usually meant no more campaigning until an intervening winter had allowed its commander to go home and rebuild his forces. Thus the stakes were uncomfortably high. In a single battle two opposing armies with a combined strength of upwards of 200,000 men, fighting on a front restricted to three or four miles, might in a few short hours decide the issue of a year's campaign—if not of the whole war. Topographical conditions had to be just right. As we shall see, the manoeuvrability of an army in line of battle was very low; a hedge, a ditch, or any other comparatively minor irregularity might be enough to throw the advancing ranks into confusion. Accordingly battle was rarely joined unless the combat ground conformed closely to accepted standards of space and flatness; and, of greater importance, a considerable numerical advantage seemed to lie with the attacker. It was far less risky to wage war by the slower method of attrition and piecemeal absorption of territory (and there was then always the possibility of coming to terms with the opponent).

Campaigns had to be fought in the summer months, when forage was plentiful and the few roads had sufficiently recovered from the winter rains to allow the passage of troops. In this respect the Spanish Netherlands were particularly suited to conduct of war because of their rich plains furnishing abundant crops for the feeding of armies, and their navigable waterways which could be used for moving siege trains and other heavy material. Always the approach of winter ended hostilities for the year and the opposing armies would retire into winter quarters until the following spring. Many of the officers would return to their homes to spend the next six months recruiting replacements and preparing for the summer's campaign. For the commander-in-chief dependent upon foreign contingents to fill his army it was a time for making the rounds of his clients to ensure that each was going to live up to his commitment in the spring.

The composition of Marlborough's armies during his campaigns was never more than one-third British. This component was raised in the main by voluntary enlistment, each colonel being responsible for bringing his regiment up to strength. The officers whom he sent recruiting, when they had combed the countryside for likely yokels, could usually find in the jails and the debtors' prisons many willing candidates for the Queen's bounty; and they were further assisted by a series of Recruiting Acts passed from 1703 onward, which authorized certain limited forms of conscription (such as impressing able-bodied unemployed persons with no visible means of support).

The presence of the foreign contingents alongside his English force precluded any homogeneity in the structure of Marlborough's army. Nor was there anything approaching the systematic organization of modern times. Corps and divisional formations were unknown, and indeed were not to come into existence until the wars of the French Revolution. Not only did each national contingent retain its identity as a fighting force, but within each the troops of the various arms were kept segregated both for purposes of administration and for tactical employment. The absence of any established chain of command through which the commander-in-chief might delegate his authority meant that he had to exert personal control over the operations of all parts of his army. From a point of vantage overlooking the battlefield he would direct the progress of the action, keeping the position and role of every unit registered in his mind, and transmitting to each his verbal orders by means of specially trained liaison officers. It was a prodigious task, and one which required a rare combination of almost superhuman intellectual and physical qualities.

The seventeenth century had seen an important development in the tactics of battle—the change from fighting in column to fighting in line. During the Thirty Years' War it had been the custom for cavalry to charge in close column of six or more in depth, directing their attack against infantry drawn up in dense columns, with the pikemen in the centre flanked on either side by the musketeers in mutual support. One of the great contributions of Gustavus Adolphus to tactics had been to reduce the depth of both horse and foot formations; as a result, by the end of the century the cavalry charge was usually delivered in line three deep, and opposed by infantry formed in ranks not more than six deep. The cavalry continued to be the dominant arm in battle as long as the pike remained the chief infantry weapon. The principal weakness of the infantry lay in this necessity of having to employ pikemen to protect with their ten- or twelve-foot weapons the musketeer laboriously engaged with his slow-loading matchlock. The end of this cumbersome interdependence (not unlike that of the intermingled archers and dismounted men-at-arms of an earlier day) was foreshadowed by the introduction of the ring, or socket, bayonet in the 1680s. Its great advantage over the earlier plug bayonet, which blocked the muzzle of the musket, was in allowing the musketeer to fire his weapon right up to the instant of engaging the enemy with cold steel. By the turn of the century the ratio of pike to musket in English regiments had fallen as low as one to five. Before the battle of Blenheim the last pikes in Marlborough's armies had been replaced by firearms, although French infantry were still being trained in "le combat à la pique et au mousquet."

Musketry had further developed with the replacement of the matchlock by the much faster flintlock; by 1700 a man thus armed could fire at the previously unheard of rate of one shot a minute. The new musket[8] had the added advantage of requiring only about half as much space for loading and firing as the clumsier matchlock. The closing up of files which this made possible, the substitution of musketeers for pikemen, and the improved capabilities of the new weapon all contributed to the production of a greatly increased volume of fire on any given front. Marlborough made the most of these advances, believing that infantry "was not a thing that stood, but a thing that fired." He insisted on constant exercise in fire discipline and marksmanship, schooling his troops to fire by platoons, two or three men deep—a technique which permitted close control and achieved a more devastating volley than the system, which the French continued to use, of firing rank by rank.

As the War of the Spanish Succession opened, the ability to deliver the maximum volume of fire was being recognized as the most important factor in determining the order in which an army would be drawn up for battle. To secure the widest possible front for firing, the normal arrangement was to form up the infantry three deep in two long lines reaching across the centre. Deploying the troops into position from order of march was a complicated procedure, and in spite of lengthy parade ground training every winter took a considerable time, all wheeling having to be carried out at the halt. To maintain these ranks in perfect order throughout the battle, either when halted or when moving forward, was the aim to which much exacting drill and the exercise of rigid discipline were directed. A line once broken could rarely be repaired; any gap in that row of fire or in the array of advancing bayonets might afford the opposing cavalry squadrons a point of penetration to throw all into confusion.

The cavalry were posted on both flanks, also in two lines, and in the rear there might be a small reserve of horse and foot. In the seventeenth century it was the general practice on the continent for squadrons when charging to attack with carbine or pistol fire before drawing their swords. It was a manoeuvre of very dubious worth, for either the speedy motion of the horse made accurate shooting impossible, or should the rider draw rein in order to take proper aim the whole benefit of the momentum gained in the charge was lost. The great Gustavus however taught his Swedish horse to charge straight in, sword in hand, reserving their firearms for the ensuing mêlée; and this tactic had been copied by both Rupert and Cromwell in the English Civil Wars. Following this practice Marlborough's troopers charged with the sword as their only weapon, reaching their maximum rate of speed—a full trot—just before the moment of impact. As will be seen, this shock action gave the English cavalry a decided advantage over their French opponents, whose squadrons at Blenheim still halted to discharge their firearms.

Field artillery up to this time had played a relative minor role, partly because of the limited accuracy and range of the crude field-pieces then in use, and also from the fact that the work of moving these in and out of position was done not by soldiers[9] but by hired civilians with a natural disinclination to take any risk which might cause them to become casualties. It was customary for the guns, generally three-pounders weighing about eight hundredweight and firing round shot at long range and grapeshot at close quarters (although heavier pieces up to 24-pounders were in use), to be placed out in front of the infantry in order to cover the deployment into line of battle. Because of their lack of mobility their usefulness generally ended once the opposing forces had come to grips. As we shall see, the Duke of Marlborough attached great importance to artillery and made the most of the superiority in gun strength enjoyed by the English over the French (one estimate gives a ratio of 1.16 guns per 1000 men for the Allies against .91 for the French). Before a battle he would personally site each of his batteries, carefully co-ordinating his artillery fire with that of his infantry to thin the enemy's ranks and break up their counter-attack; and he did not hesitate to shift his guns to a more advantageous position as the operation developed. But although artillery was acquiring some mobility the heavy guns required for siege operations still remained. It is recorded that a siege train in Marlborough's day consisted of 100 guns and 60 mortars of all calibres up to 15 inches (only mortars and howitzers fired explosive bombs or shells), and more than 3000 wagons. It took 15,000 horses to move this cumbersome train, and its passage occupied more than fifteen miles of road space.[10]

It must not be imagined however that because battles of Queen Anne's day were generally fought by set formulas and with weapons inferior to those of modern times they were the less violent or sanguinary. Let a master of description paint the scene:

We do not think that the warriors of our time,[11] unsurpassed in contempt of death or endurance of strain, would have regarded these old battles as a light ordeal. Instead of creeping forward from one crater to another or crouching low in their trenches under the blind hail of death and amid its shocking explosions, Marlborough's men and their brave, well-trained opponents marched up to each other shoulder to shoulder, three, four, or six ranks deep, and then slowly and mechanically fired volley after volley into each other at duelling distance until the weaker wavered and broke. This was the moment when the falcon cavalry darted in and hacked and slashed the flying men without mercy. Keeping an exact, rigid formation under the utmost trial, filling promptly all the gaps which at every discharge opened in the ranks, repeating at command, platoon by platoon, or rank by rank, the numerous unhurried motions of loading and firing—these were the tests to which our forebears were not unequal. In prolonged severe fighting the survivors of a regiment often stood for hours knee-deep amid the bodies of comrades writhing or for ever still. In their ears rang the hideous chorus of the screams and groans of a pain which no anaesthetic would ever soothe.