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The 'Battle of Malplaquet', fought on September 11 1709, was one of the main battles of the War of the Spanish Succession, which opposed the Bourbons of France and against an alliance whose major members were the Habsburg Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Provinces.

Contents

Prelude

Battle

Aftermath

External links

Prelude

After a late start to the campaigning season owing to the unusually harsh winter preceding it, the allied campaign of 1709 began in mid June. 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 concentrated instead on taking the fortresses of Tournai and Ypres. Tournai fell after an unusually long siege of almost 70 days, by which time it was early September, and rather than run the risk of disease spreading in his army in the poorly draining land around Ypres, Marlborough instead moved eastwards toward the lesser fortress of Mons, hoping by taking it to outflank the French defensive lines in the west. Villars moved 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 manoeuvres, the two armies faced each other across the gap of Malplaquet, south-west of Mons.

Battle

The allied army (the vast majority of the troops Dutch and Austrian) were led by Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy, while the French were commanded by Villars and Marshal Boufflers, officially Villars' superior but voluntarily serving under him. Each side had about 90,000 troops, and were encamped within cannon range of each other near the Belgian border. The Austrians attacked at 9am, pushing the French back into the forest behind them. The Dutch broke off to attack the French right flank and succeeded with heavy casualties to distract Boufflers enough so that he could not come to Villars' aid.
Villars was able to regroup his forces, but Marlborough and Eugène attacked again, assisted by the advance of a detachment under General Withers advancing on the French right flank, forcing Villars to divert his reserves to confront them. At around 1 pm Villars was badly wounded by a musket ball which smashed his knee, and command passed to Boufflers. The decisive final attack was made in the centre by infantry under the command the Earl of Orkney, and by 3 pm Boufflers, realising that the battle could not be won, ordered a retreat, which was made in good order. The Allies had suffered so many casualties in their attack that they could not pursue him. By this time they had lost over 20,000 men, twice as many as the French.

Aftermath

Boufflers claimed that a few more such French defeats would destroy the allied armies, but the attempt to save Mons failed, and the fortress fell on the 20th October. Nonetheless, news of Malplaquet, the bloodiest battle of the eighteenth century, stunned Europe, and for the last of his four great battlefield victories, Marlborough received no personal letter of thanks from Queen Anne. Richard Blackmore's ''Instructions to Vander Beck'' was virtually alone among English poems in attempting to celebrate the "victory" of Marlborough at Malplaquet, while it moved the English Tory party to begin agitating for a withdrawal from the alliance as soon as they formed a government the next year.
Together with victories such as at Denain, it allowed France to avoid total defeat and unacceptable terms at the Treaty of Utrecht.

External links

★ Battle of Malplaquet at ''Battlefield Anomalies''.

★ The French Army 1600-1900

★ Battle of Malplaquet at BritishBattles.com