When was the Battle of Blenheim?

It was fought on 13 August 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession. English sources of the time date it 2 August, because England still used the Julian calendar.

Blenheim is the English name for Blindheim, a village on the north bank of the Danube near Höchstädt in Bavaria, Germany. German and French accounts often call the battle the Second Battle of Höchstädt.

How many men were lost at Blenheim?

The National Army Museum gives about 12,000 Allied killed and wounded, and for the French and Bavarians at least 20,000 casualties and 14,000 prisoners; Fortescue gives 4,500 Allied killed and 7,500 wounded, and puts the French and Bavarian loss in killed, wounded and prisoners at little short of 40,000, with 11,000 prisoners.

Why is Blenheim Palace named after the battle?

Queen Anne rewarded Marlborough with the royal manor of Woodstock near Oxford and money to build a house there. The palace, designed by Sir John Vanbrugh, was named Blenheim after the victory.

Was Winston Churchill related to the Duke of Marlborough?

Yes. Winston Churchill descended from the victor of Blenheim, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. His grandfather was the 7th Duke, and he was born at Blenheim Palace on 30 November 1874.

Battle of Blenheim, 1704: Marlborough and Eugene save Vienna

Q: Who won the Battle of Blenheim?

The Grand Alliance won. The Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy defeated the French and Bavarians under Marshal Tallard, Marshal Marsin and the Elector of Bavaria, and Tallard was taken prisoner.

Q: Why was the Battle of Blenheim important?

It saved Vienna, kept the Grand Alliance together and knocked Bavaria out of the war. It also ended the belief that a French army in the field could not be beaten, and began the partnership of Marlborough and Prince Eugene.

John Wootton, The Battle of Blenheim (about 1742), National Army Museum, London, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Quick answer

Who won the Battle of Blenheim?

The Grand Alliance won the Battle of Blenheim, fought on 13 August 1704 by the Danube near Höchstädt in Bavaria. The Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy broke the French and Bavarian army of Marshal Tallard, Marshal Marsin and the Elector of Bavaria, captured Tallard, saved Vienna and knocked Bavaria out of the war.¹

The war began over a will. When King Charles II of Spain died in 1700 he left his crown and his empire to Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France. England, the Dutch Republic and the Austrian Habsburgs feared a France and a Spain under one family, formed the Grand Alliance and backed the Habsburg claimant, Archduke Charles. In 1702 Bavaria took the French side.²

Blenheim is the best-known battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. It came six weeks after Marlborough stormed the Schellenberg and eleven days before the sea fight off Málaga, and three years before the Allied defeat at Almansa in Spain.

The march to the Danube

By 1704 the Bavarians and their French allies held the Upper Danube, from where they threatened Vienna, and with it the whole alliance. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, commander of the English and Dutch forces in the Low Countries, answered with one of the boldest moves of the age. According to the National Army Museum he marched about 40,000 British, Dutch and German troops some 250 miles (400 km) in five weeks, using dummy bridges on the Rhine to make the French think he was heading for Alsace.³

On 2 July he stormed the heights of the Schellenberg above Donauwörth. According to Coxe, the Elector then ordered the town's garrison to withdraw, and the Allies entered Donauwörth as it was leaving. Marlborough then laid waste to Bavarian land to force the Elector Maximilian II Emanuel into battle or terms. Marshal Camille de Tallard brought a second French army over the Black Forest to join the Elector and Marshal Ferdinand de Marsin, while Prince Eugene of Savoy brought an Imperial army to join Marlborough.⁴ › Battle of the Schellenberg, 1704

A position no one expected them to attack

The French and Bavarians camped behind the Nebel, a marshy stream that runs into the Danube, on a front of about four miles. Their right rested on the river and the village of Blenheim (Blindheim), their left on the village of Lutzingen and wooded hills, with the village of Oberglau between. The National Army Museum notes that they did not expect Marlborough and Eugene to attack them there, and believed the Allies would withdraw north as their supplies ran out; Fortescue writes that Tallard had no idea of offering battle and meant to wait until want of supplies forced the Allies to leave.⁵

The numbers were close, and the sources differ. The National Army Museum puts the French and Bavarians at no fewer than 60,000 men with about 90 guns against 56,000 Allies with 66. Fortescue gives the Allies 52,000 men and 52 guns, and the French and Bavarians ninety guns.⁶

Fog, bridges and the fight for the villages

The morning of 13 August was foggy, and much of the French cavalry was out foraging. When the fog rolled away at seven o'clock the French saw the Allied columns in full view across the Nebel, and signal guns and drums called the foragers back. Eugene needed hours to work his men into place on the broken ground of the right, and it was half past twelve when he reported ready.⁷

Lord Cutts then sent his British and German infantry against Blenheim. Brigadier Row led them forward under orders not to fire until he struck the barricade with his sword; he did, and fell, along with a large part of his brigade. The village did not fall, but Tallard fed more and more infantry into it, until the battalions packed inside could hardly move. In the center the Prince of Holstein-Beck was thrown back from Oberglau, and on the right Eugene's Imperial troops were repulsed three times by the Elector's men.⁸

The cavalry charge in the center

These attacks were not wasted. They fixed the French and Bavarians in their villages and left the open ground between Blenheim and Oberglau, where Tallard's and Marsin's armies met, thinly held. Marlborough had the stone bridge repaired and pontoon bridges laid, and he brought his main force over the Nebel in an unusual formation that mixed lines of infantry and cavalry, so that each arm could cover the other. French horse struck the leading squadrons while they were still disordered by the crossing, and Prussian and Austrian cavalry helped to drive them off.⁹

Late in the afternoon Marlborough launched his massed cavalry at the French center. Tallard's horse broke and fled toward Höchstädt and the Danube, and the marshal himself was taken prisoner, wounded in one hand according to Hare's journal as quoted by Coxe. The National Army Museum puts the number drowned in the river at over 3,000. Seeing the center gone, Marsin and the Elector set fire to Oberglau and Lutzingen and retreated.¹⁰

The surrender in Blenheim village

The French infantry crammed into Blenheim was now cut off. As General Charles Churchill, Marlborough's brother, prepared to storm the village, the French proposed a capitulation, and Churchill insisted on unconditional surrender. Fortescue counts 24 battalions of infantry and four regiments of dragoons that laid down their arms, and Coxe 24 battalions and twelve squadrons; Marlborough himself, in a letter to Secretary Harley dated 14 August, wrote of twenty-six battalions and twelve squadrons of dragoons. Fortescue and Coxe both record that the Regiment of Navarre burned its colors rather than hand them over.¹¹

How many died at the Battle of Blenheim?

The sources differ. The National Army Museum gives about 12,000 Allied killed and wounded, and at least 20,000 French and Bavarian casualties with 14,000 prisoners. Fortescue counts 4,500 Allied killed and 7,500 wounded, and puts the French and Bavarian loss in killed, wounded and prisoners, in the battle and the pursuit, at little short of 40,000.¹²

Why was the Battle of Blenheim important?

Blenheim saved Vienna and kept the Grand Alliance together. In the months that followed the Allies took Ulm, Ingolstadt, Augsburg and Munich, and in November 1704 the Treaty of Ilbersheim took Bavaria out of the war. It destroyed the myth of French invincibility and began a partnership between Marlborough and Eugene that would bring a string of further victories.¹³

At home Queen Anne gave Marlborough the royal manor of Woodstock, where Blenheim Palace was built in the battle's name.¹⁴

The war itself went on until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, under which, according to the National Army Museum, Philip of Anjou was confirmed as King of Spain. But the French and Bavarian plans for an advance on Vienna died at Blenheim, together with the belief that a French army in the field could not be beaten.¹⁵ › Battle of Almansa, 1707

Notes

A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.

William Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, vol. I; National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”; J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I. ↩
National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”; J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I; National Army Museum, “War of the Spanish Succession”. ↩
National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”; Hilaire Belloc, The Battle of Blenheim; J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I. ↩
National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”; William Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, vol. I; Hilaire Belloc, The Battle of Blenheim; J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I. ↩
National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”; J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I. ↩
National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”; J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I. ↩
J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I; Hilaire Belloc, The Battle of Blenheim. ↩
J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I; National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”. ↩
National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”; J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I. ↩
National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”; J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I; William Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, vol. I. ↩
J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I; William Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, vol. I; George Murray, The Letters and Dispatches of John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough, from 1702 to 1712, vol. I. ↩
National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”; J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I. ↩
National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”; William Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, vol. I. ↩
National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”; William Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, vol. I. ↩
National Army Museum, “War of the Spanish Succession”; J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I; Hilaire Belloc, The Battle of Blenheim; National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”. ↩

Sources

William Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, vol. I, new edition revised by John Wade (London: George Bell and Sons, 1876), pp. 169-170, 178-179, 207-210, 238-239, 252
National Army Museum, “Battle of Blenheim”
J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army, vol. I (London: Macmillan, 1899), pp. 397, 406, 418-444, 552
National Army Museum, “War of the Spanish Succession”
Hilaire Belloc, The Battle of Blenheim (London: Stephen Swift, 1911), pp. 34, 78-80, 115-116, 141-144
George Murray (ed.), The Letters and Dispatches of John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough, from 1702 to 1712, vol. I (London: John Murray, 1845), pp. 390-392