{ "slug": "malplaquet", "title": "Battle of Malplaquet", "status": "draft", "era": "1600–1760", "date_text": "11 September 1709", "start": "1709-09-11", "end": "1709-09-11", "war": "War of the Spanish Succession", "cdb90_war": "WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION", "place": { "name": "Malplaquet, near Taisnières-sur-Hon, Nord, France (on the Belgian border south of Mons)", "lat": 50.3361, "lon": 3.8764, "wikidata": "Q316897" }, "lede": "On 11 September 1709 Marlborough and Eugene stormed Villars' entrenched line between the woods at Malplaquet and drove the French from the field, at roughly twice the French loss. It was the bloodiest battle of its age and a victory the Allies could not exploit.", "result": "Pyrrhic Grand Alliance victory", "result_cdb90": "attacker win", "belligerents": [ { "role": "attacker", "name": "Grand Alliance army (Dutch, Imperial, British, Prussian, Danish, Hanoverian, Hessian and Swiss troops)", "commanders": [ "Duke of Marlborough", "Prince Eugene of Savoy", "John William Friso, Prince of Orange" ], "strength": { "value": 100000, "low": 86000, "high": 110000, "source": "s3" }, "casualties": { "value": 22000, "low": 20000, "high": 25000, "source": "s1" } }, { "role": "defender", "name": "French army (with Bavarian, Irish and Swiss units)", "commanders": [ "Marshal Villars", "Marshal Boufflers" ], "strength": { "value": 80000, "low": 75000, "high": 90000, "source": "s4" }, "casualties": { "value": 11000, "low": 11000, "high": 14000, "source": "s1" } } ], "sections": { "background": "By 1709 the War of the Spanish Succession had been going badly for Louis XIV for five years. Blenheim, Ramillies and Oudenarde had cost France its field armies and much of the Spanish Netherlands, and the Great Frost of that winter brought famine and mutinies in the French garrisons. Louis sought peace, but talks at The Hague broke down in late April. The sticking point was the Allied demand that French troops help remove his grandson, Philip V, from the Spanish throne.\n\nMarshal Villars, given command in Flanders, built a line of entrenchments along the Scarpe to cover the frontier fortresses. Marlborough and Prince Eugene chose not to attack it. Instead they besieged Tournai, which held out from late June until 3 September. They then moved east against Mons. A Hesse-Kassel detachment closed round the town on 6 September and the main army arrived the next day.\n\nLouis told Villars to save Mons at all costs. The aged Marshal Boufflers joined him, although he was senior to Villars, and agreed to serve under him; his arrival lifted French morale. On 9 September Villars took up a position south-west of Mons, across the gap of Malplaquet between two large woods. Marlborough wanted to attack at once. Other Allied generals and the Dutch field deputies preferred to wait for Withers' troops coming up from Tournai. The day's delay let Villars entrench. The Allies could not simply march round him without giving up the siege, so they attacked him head-on.", "forces": "These were among the largest armies of the war. The Allies had roughly 86,000 to 110,000 men and 100 guns; the French had perhaps 75,000 to 90,000 and 80 guns. One modern count gives 128 Allied battalions and 253 squadrons against 121 French battalions and 260 squadrons. The Allied army was largely Dutch and Imperial, with British, Prussian and Danish contingents. Swiss regiments served on both sides, and the French had Irish and Bavarian units.\n\nEugene commanded the Allied right, with about 30,000 German and Danish infantry under Lottum, Schulenburg and Finckenstein. Marlborough held the centre, where the Earl of Orkney had about 8,000 mostly British infantry, with the bulk of some 30,000 cavalry behind him. On the left the Prince of Orange led 18,000 Dutch infantry, with 10,000 cavalry under the Prince of Hesse-Kassel.\n\nVillars took the French left himself and Boufflers the right, where most of the infantry stood. The French infantry held a continuous line of earthworks and redans across the open centre and into the woods on both flanks, backed by artillery. The cavalry, including the Maison du Roi, waited behind the entrenchments.", "course": "CDB90 records the battle as a single engagement, number 53 (MALPLAQUET), from 08:00 to 15:00. The French line ran roughly south-east to north-west, about 2.5 miles of entrenchments. Their right rested on the wood of Lanière. Their left was in the wood of Taisnières, which Wikipedia calls the Bois de Sars. Between the woods lay the open ground of the gap, with Blairon farm in front of the French right.\n\n**The cannonade and Eugene's attack (07:00–about 11:30).** The Allied guns opened at about 07:00. At about 08:30 the infantry of the right, under Lottum, Schulenburg and Finckenstein, attacked into the wood. The trees broke up the columns, and the French gave ground slowly from one line of defences to the next. After about three hours both sides had suffered terribly; one estimate puts the losses in the wood alone at about 7,000. Eugene was slightly wounded but stayed on the field. The pressure made Villars draw battalions from his centre to hold the left.\n\n**The Dutch attack (from about 09:00).** On the Allied left Fagel led 13 battalions, including Swiss regiments and the Scots Brigade, against Boufflers' entrenchments. When they were repulsed, the Prince of Orange and the field deputy Goslinga sent in 17 more. The Dutch took Blairon farm, but French reinforcements drove them back to their start lines under cover of their cavalry. The Dutch lost more than 5,000 men in this phase, including many senior officers; one account gives about 6,000 for Orange's attack. Boufflers had more than 60 battalions on this wing but did not counter-attack. For about ninety minutes the fighting here sank to musketry and cannon fire, which cost the badly placed Maison du Roi heavily.\n\n**Withers and the French centre (late morning to about 13:00).** Withers' 21 battalions from Tournai came up too late to support the Dutch. Instead they marched round the north of the French line through the wood of Sars. The move took more than two hours, but it forced Villars to send twelve more battalions to his left. By midday the French centre had only nine battalions and sixty squadrons, facing twenty-three battalions and eighty squadrons. Around this time Villars was badly wounded in the knee by a musket ball and carried from the field. Boufflers took overall command and Puységur took the left.\n\n**The breakthrough and the cavalry battle (early afternoon).** Orkney's infantry stormed the redans in the centre. Behind them the Allied cavalry, Grovestins' Dutch squadrons among them, poured through into the French rear. Boufflers led the Maison du Roi against them and drove them back, six times by one account, until Orkney's infantry stopped the French horse. Wikipedia calls it the largest cavalry action of the 18th century. The Prince of Orange renewed his attack on the right, while Withers and Schulenburg finally broke the French left, and Puységur ordered it to withdraw.\n\n**The retreat (15:00).** At about 15:00 Boufflers judged that his cavalry could hold no longer and ordered a general retreat towards Le Quesnoy, some 25 km away. It went in good order. The exhausted Allies held the field but did not pursue.", "aftermath": "Malplaquet was the bloodiest battle of the century: perhaps 20,000 to 25,000 Allied killed and wounded against 11,000 to 14,000 French. The National Army Museum compares the shock it caused across Europe to that of the Somme and Verdun two centuries later. The Dutch infantry on the left alone lost more than 8,000 men. The Dutch army never really recovered, and Dutch enthusiasm for the war faded.\n\nThe Allies had won the field, and Mons surrendered on 21 October, but they were too badly hurt to march on Paris. The National Army Museum calls it a strategic victory for France. Villars, writing to the king, put it this way: \"If it please God to give your majesty's enemies another such victory, they are ruined.\" Boufflers' report dwelt on French glory rather than on the defeat. For the French army, Malplaquet restored a confidence lost in the defeats of 1704–1708.\n\nIn Britain the casualty lists fed opposition to Marlborough. It was the only one of his four great victories for which Queen Anne sent him no letter of thanks. The Tories won a landslide in 1710, began to press for withdrawal from the war, and replaced Marlborough with Ormonde in 1711. Some historians argue that Malplaquet helped Louis XIV win better terms at Utrecht in 1713. In the Dutch Republic the blame fell variously on Marlborough's tactics, on Withers and on the Prince of Orange. The battle is still a standard case of a Pyrrhic victory.", "wargaming": "Malplaquet is a huge battle on a narrow front, and that makes it unusual. The whole field is only a few kilometres wide, so at brigade level, with turns of about 30 minutes, it fits a large table. At battalion and squadron level it splits naturally into three scenarios: Eugene's grinding fight in the wood of Taisnières; the Dutch attack on Blairon farm and the Lanière wood; and Orkney's assault on the centre redans, followed by the great cavalry battle.\n\nThe terrain is everything. Woods that break up formations and slow movement anchor both French flanks. The open centre is cut by redans and entrenchments that infantry must take before the cavalry can pass. The rules need to make attacking field works expensive, or the Allied player will win too cheaply.\n\nThe decisions are about timing and reserves. Should the Allies wait a day for Withers, or attack before Villars can dig in? Should Orange press his attack after the first repulse, or hold back as a feint? Villars must decide how far to strip his centre to save his left. Boufflers can test the obvious \"what if\" by counter-attacking the shattered Dutch with his 60 battalions. A random event for Villars' wound, and the handover to Boufflers, adds tension. Victory conditions should weigh casualties, not just ground, so that a Pyrrhic Allied win scores as one." }, "images": [ { "file": "File:BattleOfMalplaquet.jpg", "kind": "map", "caption": "Dispositions at Malplaquet: the Allied army (upper right) facing the French entrenchments between the woods (lower left).", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/BattleOfMalplaquet.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "thumb": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/BattleOfMalplaquet.jpg/960px-BattleOfMalplaquet.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail", "page": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BattleOfMalplaquet.jpg", "licence": "CC BY-SA 2.0 fr", "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en", "artist": "The original uploader was Victor falk at French Wikipedia .", "credit": "Transferred from fr.wikipedia to Commons.", "width": 1502 }, { "file": "File:Low Countries 1700 and entrenched lines.png", "kind": "map", "caption": "The French northern frontier and its fortress belt, showing where Tournai, Mons and Malplaquet lay.", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Low_Countries_1700_and_entrenched_lines.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "thumb": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Low_Countries_1700_and_entrenched_lines.png/960px-Low_Countries_1700_and_entrenched_lines.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail", "page": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Low_Countries_1700_and_entrenched_lines.png", "licence": "CC BY-SA 3.0", "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0", "artist": "Rebel Redcoat", "credit": "Own work", "width": 1520 }, { "file": "File:Copy after Jan van Huchtenburgh (Haarlem 1647-Amsterdam 1733) - 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Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667–1714 (Longman, 1999)", "url": null, "kind": "book" }, { "id": "s7", "title": "Richard Holmes, Marlborough: England's Fragile Genius (HarperPress, 2008)", "url": null, "kind": "book" }, { "id": "s8", "title": "David Chandler, Marlborough as Military Commander (Batsford, 1973; Spellmount reprint 2003)", "url": null, "kind": "book" }, { "id": "s9", "title": "Simon MacDowall, Malplaquet 1709: Marlborough's Bloodiest Battle (Osprey Campaign 355, 2020)", "url": null, "kind": "book" } ], "cdb90": [ 53 ], "order": 24, "url": "https://battles.georgewyrd.com/malplaquet/", "oob": [ { "code": "709IAA", "doc": "709iaa", "title": "British Forces, Battle of Malplaquet, 11 September 1709", "kind": "engagement", "nations": [ "United Kingdom" ], "date": "1709-09-11", "pdf": "https://www.generalstaff.org/NAF/Pt_I_1600-1783/709iaa.pdf", "use": "battle" } ], "oob_lwtv": [], "scenarios": [], "orbat": null, "orbat_lwtv": null, "reading": { "prose": [], "history": [], "fiction": [], "poetry": [] }, "reading_lwtv": { "prose": [], "poetry": [] }, "photos": [], "photos_kind": "photographs", "newspapers": null }