Battle of Luzzara, 1702: Prince Eugene against Vendôme on the Po

The battle was fought on a hot August afternoon in the flat, wet country of the lower Po, a land of mulberry trees, vines, dykes and ditches where cavalry could hardly move. For hours two armies fought for every hedge and embankment between the hamlet of Riva and the little walled town of Luzzara. When darkness fell, nothing had been decided, and both commanders sat down to write reports of victory.²

Background: Eugene in Italy

The War of the Spanish Succession, fought over the inheritance of the last Habsburg king of Spain, opened in northern Italy. In 1701 Prince Eugene of Savoy led an imperial army over the Alps, outmaneuvered Marshal Catinat, beat Marshal Villeroy at Chiari, and on 1 February 1702, in a daring raid on Cremona, captured Villeroy himself in his headquarters.³

Louis XIV answered by sending Louis Joseph, Duke of Vendôme, to Italy. With reinforcements his army grew far beyond Eugene's: the Enciclopedia Italiana writes of twice the imperial numbers, while Malleson, writing in 1888, has some 80,000 French by May against no more than 28,000 imperials. In May Vendôme opened a great offensive along both banks of the Po to relieve Mantua, which Eugene was blockading.⁴

The young Spanish king came to Italy in person to defend his Italian lands, and in July he joined Vendôme near Cremona. With him the Franco-Spanish army planned to relieve Mantua and envelop the imperials. Eugene, too weak to hold everything, gave up the blockade and drew his forces together, keeping his bridge over the Po at Borgoforte. The Kronoskaf project, however, has the blockade lifted under Franco-Spanish pressure rather than of Eugene's own accord.⁵

Santa Vittoria. In late July the king took nominal command of the army, and the campaign moved to the south bank of the Po. On 26 July Vendôme fell on an imperial cavalry corps under the Marquis Visconti, camped between the Crostolo and Tassone streams near Santa Vittoria with its horses out to graze. Caught unprepared, the imperial horsemen fled for the narrow bridges over the Tassone, and many drowned in its steep-banked channel before imperial dragoons came up and checked the pursuit.⁶

The disaster decided Eugene. Leaving a garrison in his entrenched camp at Borgoforte, he crossed to the south bank with the rest of his army and by early August had his headquarters at Sailetto, near Suzzara, watching for a chance to strike one of the separated enemy columns.⁷

Armies and commanders

On the imperial side Eugene commanded in person, with Count Guido Starhemberg and the Prince of Commercy as his chief lieutenants, and the young Prince Vaudémont leading cavalry. On the other side the nominal commander was Philip V, but the army was led by Vendôme, a bold and able general with a reputation for laziness that Eugene hoped to exploit.⁸

The numbers are uncertain. The Enciclopedia Italiana gives Eugene fewer than 30,000 men and 27 guns against a Franco-Spanish army about twice as strong in the field; Kronoskaf's Project WSS reckons that disease and desertion had cut the imperial army to some 19,600 effectives, against 49 battalions and 103 squadrons with 30 guns.⁹

The battle in phases

Vendôme at Luzzara. On 15 August Vendôme's vanguard reached Luzzara, whose castle was held by a small imperial garrison, and summoned it to surrender. When it refused he invested it and began to lay out a camp, meaning to fight, if at all, on a later day. His main army was still on the march.¹⁰

Eugene's gamble. Eugene, camped at Sailetto near Suzzara, heard of the enemy's approach and at once broke camp to strike before Vendôme could deploy, hoping to surprise an enemy he knew to be careless about scouting. The surprise did not quite come off: the imperial advance guard ran into the French outposts, the alarm was given, and Vendôme quickly brought his army into line. The imperial columns came into sight of Luzzara at about three in the afternoon, but they moved slowly through the hot, broken country, and it was half past four before Eugene's two wings were in place.¹¹

The attack on the left. At five o'clock the imperial guns opened fire. Eugene's plan was to turn the French left and cut it off from the Po. The Prince of Commercy led the first attack, and fell mortally wounded. Two more attacks with fresh regiments were thrown back. Eugene then rode over from the other wing, took command of his right in person and threw himself into the fight.¹²

The attack on the right. Almost at the same time, on the imperial left, Starhemberg attacked the Franco-Spanish right, where Philip V and Vendôme stood. The French infantry, in ditches and behind hedges, fired volley after volley, and the fighting there was as fierce as anywhere on the field.¹³

Turning point: night falls

What happened next is told differently. The Enciclopedia Italiana writes that just as Eugene's supreme effort seemed about to succeed, Vendôme threw in the fresh troops he still had in good numbers and restored the balance. Malleson, following the Austrian accounts, has Eugene's fourth attack break the French left and drive it back into its camp, while on the other wing Vendôme's personal rally was undone by a cavalry charge led by the young Vaudémont; and the Kronoskaf project likewise has the imperials gain ground on both wings, at a heavy cost, before the fighting died away.¹⁴

All agree that darkness ended it. Mantovauno has the fighting last until nine in the evening, Kronoskaf until about midnight; Malleson writes that the sun had set and a thick mist was rising from the river when a further advance became impossible. Neither army had been driven from the field, and both spent the night digging in where they stood.¹⁵

Aftermath

The next day each side claimed the victory. The losses were heavy, but the sources differ widely: the Enciclopedia Italiana gives about 10,000 dead in all, roughly equal on both sides; Mantovauno 4,600 imperial and 3,000 Franco-Spanish losses, with some 7,000 killed and wounded left on the field; and Kronoskaf about 2,700 imperial and 2,200 Franco-Spanish killed and wounded. Among the dead was the Prince of Commercy.¹⁶

For weeks the two armies faced each other from their entrenchments, cannonading and skirmishing but not fighting another battle. Vendôme claimed the day, pointing among other things to the heavier imperial losses. In November both armies went into winter quarters; the Franco-Spanish army had not relieved Mantua, and the imperials had not given way.¹⁷

Legacy and memory

Historians have weighed the result in Eugene's favor. The Enciclopedia Italiana calls the indecisive outcome a credit to him, given the odds, and its entry on Eugene says that Luzzara broke one arm of Vendôme's pincer. Malleson went further: if victory means baffling the enemy's main plan, he wrote, then Luzzara belonged to Eugene. Yet Eugene was too short of men and money to conquer the Duchy of Milan. Early in 1703 he went to Vienna to fight for resources, and in June he became president of the Imperial War Council.¹⁸ › Battle of Blenheim, 1704

Two years later Eugene and Marlborough won at Blenheim, and in 1705 Vendôme beat Eugene at Cassano; the war in Italy was decided only in 1706, when Eugene relieved Turin. Luzzara, between Cremona and Blenheim, is remembered as the hard, drawn fight that kept the imperial army alive in Italy.¹⁹ › 15 August in military history