Battle of the Dunes (1658)

Background

In the 1650s the Franco-Spanish war along the Flanders frontier was still undecided: the Spanish, with the rebel Prince of Condé in their service, had beaten Turenne's lines at Valenciennes in 1656. Cardinal Mazarin looked for help from an unlikely quarter, Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate, then itself at war with Spain. Under their alliance an English contingent of 6,000 landed in Flanders in 1657, and the coastal fort of Mardyke was taken and handed to the English. The price of English help was Dunkirk, the Spanish privateering base that preyed on English shipping.

The exiled Charles II had made his own alliance with Spain and raised a small army at Bruges from English, Scottish and Irish exiles. The winter of 1657–58 was hard on both sets of Englishmen: sickness cut the Cromwellian contingent to 3,000. A new treaty in March 1658 renewed the league, about 3,300 reinforcements crossed, and Lockhart, Cromwell's ambassador in Paris, was made general of the English forces.

Turenne invested Dunkirk in late May 1658 with an army of at least 25,000, the English under Lockhart covering the west side towards Mardyke. An English fleet of more than twenty men-of-war under Montagu and Goodson blockaded the harbour and landed supplies. The town had only about 2,200 foot and 800 horse, under the able Marquis de Lede, and was short of food. The Spanish commanders in Brussels had expected an attack on Cambrai and were slow to react; their army was unpaid and under strength. At the beginning of June Don Juan José collected what men he could at Ypres and marched to relieve the town.

The armies

Turenne took about 15,000 men out of his lines to fight, about 6,000 horse and 9,000 foot, leaving 5,000–6,000 behind to hold the trenches and watch the garrison. His cavalry stood on both wings, Castelnau's on the left by the sea with Schomberg in the second line, Créquy's on the right, with French and Swiss Guards and old regiments such as Picardy in the centre. The left of the infantry was the English contingent: 4,000–5,000 redcoats in seven battalions, each a single regiment, with 400 picked 'firelocks' posted among the French horse on the beach. Lockhart was ill and travelled to the field in his coach; the veteran Major-General Thomas Morgan was with the regiments.

The Spanish army was about 14,000–15,000 strong but unbalanced: some 8,000 cavalry and only 6,000–7,000 infantry. Its infantry was a mixture of half a dozen nations: four battalions of veteran Spaniards, Germans, Walloons, Condé's partly French foot, and about 2,000 of Charles II's men, in three composite battalions under the Duke of York. York's own troop of horse guards fought beside them. The army had come up so fast that its artillery train, slowed by bad roads, was left behind, and it had no tools to entrench. Its commanders did not much mind: they expected Turenne either to lift the siege or to be beaten as at Valenciennes.

The battle

CDB90 records the battle as a single engagement, number 30 (THE DUNES), from 08:00 to 12:00 on 14 June.

12–13 June: the approach. On the 12th some 4,000 Spanish horse probed the French positions, and in the skirmish Marshal d'Hocquincourt was mortally wounded. On the 13th the whole Spanish army camped on the sand-hills north-east of Dunkirk, close to Turenne's lines. That evening an escaped prisoner confirmed it was all there, and Turenne decided at once to attack next morning. Lockhart's English marched through the night from the west side of the siege.

About 04:00–08:00: deployment. At dawn Spanish outposts reported French horse coming out. York rode forward and saw the whole French army forming, horse and guns on the wings and, near the sea, the red coats. The Spanish leaders chose to fight where they stood. Their infantry held a crescent of sand-hills from the beach almost to the Furnes canal, with the cavalry behind it in the hollows; Condé and the rest of the horse were on the left, where the dunes fell to the meadows across the Furnes road. There was no cavalry on the strand to cover the right. A French engineer recorded the reasons given: the great dune seemed a fortress in itself, the tide was expected to rise over the beach, and the English ships might fire on horse posted there. Turenne advanced slowly and halted at about 08:00 on a lower ridge some 500–600 yards away.

The great dune. The key to the Spanish line was the highest sand-hill, on the extreme right, held by Don Gaspar Boniface's Spanish regiment with 100 picked Royalists; a French officer put it at 150 feet, inaccessible on two sides. The English, cheering as they came, outmarched the French and would not halt until they were within musket shot of it. Two Spanish volleys hit them; rather than fall back they attacked, apparently without orders. The firelocks fired into the hill's flanks while Lockhart's regiment, supported by Lillingston's, climbed the front, the men crawling up on hands and knees. Lieutenant-Colonel Fenwick fell mortally wounded, but the regiment reached the top and drove the Spaniards off with pike and clubbed musket. Boniface's men left seven of their eleven captains dead on the hill.

York's charges. As Lockhart's regiment came down the far side, York charged it with his own troop and Don Juan's. He was beaten off, then rallied, attacked again in the flank and broke into the battalion, but its men fought on individually until French horse arrived. English accounts give the decisive blow to French cavalry under Schomberg after the dune fell; French accounts credit a flank attack by Castelnau along the beach. One account has English ships firing on the Spanish right and keeping its cavalry off the strand.

Rout of the right and centre. Castelnau's cavalry swung round the open Spanish flank and broke Don Juan's horse. In the centre the French and Swiss foot drove off the Walloons and Germans with little resistance, though Condé's own regiment fought well. Charles II's Guards held their ground until surrounded and forced to surrender; York's Irish were cut down as they retired; only Grace's battalion got away in order.

Condé's stand and the end (to about 12:00). On the left Condé held off Créquy's cavalry and led one successful charge, but his horse was killed under him in a second and he was twice nearly captured. With the right and centre gone he rallied what horse he could and fell back to Furnes. By noon the battle was over.

Aftermath

The beaten army lost about 1,000 killed and 4,000 or more taken prisoner, 500 of them officers; modern compilations put its total loss at 6,000–8,000. The veteran Spanish infantry was destroyed, and Charles II's little army was cut down to 700–800 men, ending any hope of a Royalist landing in England. Turenne lost no more than 400, nearly half of them English.

Dunkirk was now lost. Its garrison had sallied during the battle and burnt part of the English camp, but the siege was pressed for ten more days. Lede was mortally wounded, and his successor capitulated on 24 June. On the 25th Louis XIV entered the town in state at midday and that evening handed the keys to Lockhart, as the treaty required; French officers resented it, but Mazarin kept faith. Morgan led four English regiments on with Turenne to Bergues and Ypres, while the redcoats were praised in both armies.

In England the victory was proclaimed from the pulpits, and Marvell later wrote of the 'sandy mountain Fenwick scaled'. Cromwell died that September, Charles II came home in 1660, and in 1662 he sold Dunkirk to France for £320,000. The war with Spain ended in the Treaty of the Pyrenees in November 1659. The Royalist King's Guards and York's troop survive in the lineage of the Grenadier Guards and the Life Guards.

The main argument is over credit: English accounts make the storming of the dune decisive, French ones Castelnau's cavalry on the beach.

Wargaming it

The Dunes is a compact, half-day battle of about 15,000 a side on a front a few miles wide, between the sea and the Furnes canal. It suits pike-and-shot rules at battalion and squadron level, with turns of 15–20 minutes from the 08:00 halt to noon.

The terrain is the game. A crescent of sand-hills breaks up formations and gives the defender height; the great dune on the Spanish right is a fortress in miniature, steep on two sides. The beach is open going for cavalry, but its width should change with the tide, which the Spanish expected to rise, and an English ship or two offshore can add harassing fire. The meadows and road on the Spanish left give Condé room for cavalry.

The Spanish player has more horse but no guns, a thin, mixed infantry line and no cavalry on his right. The French have guns, steadier infantry and a contingent of English who may attack before ordered: a rule that makes the redcoats hard to halt gives the French player Turenne's real problem. York's Royalists facing Cromwellians make a good small scenario on their own.

The what-ifs: Spanish horse on the strand; the artillery train arriving in time; the Spanish entrenching overnight; Turenne waiting in his lines instead; or the garrison's sortie turning into a serious attack on the siege works.

Maps and pictures