What happened at the Battle of Staffarda?
On 18 August 1690, near the Cistercian abbey of Staffarda in southern Piedmont, the French army of Nicolas Catinat defeated the Austro-Piedmontese army of Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, who had just broken with Louis XIV. A flanking march through the marshes of the Po and a bold placing of the French guns broke the duke's army, which lost about 4,000 men. Cavalry under the young Prince Eugene of Savoy covered its retreat toward Turin.1
The duke of Savoy was twenty-four and had just defied the most powerful king in Europe. Ten weeks later he took the bait of a French flank march and gave battle by an old abbey on the upper Po. It was the first of two great victories Catinat would win over him, and the start of six hard years of war for Savoy.2
Background: Savoy breaks with France
For decades the dukes of Savoy had lived in the shadow of France. French troops held the fortress of Pinerolo inside Piedmont, and Nicolas Catinat had served as its governor; in 1686 he led the campaign against the Protestant Waldensians in the Alpine valleys. Victor Amadeus II had grown up under a regency headed by his mother, who followed a pro-French policy, and he had married a niece of Louis XIV.3
When the coalition later called the Grand Alliance formed against Louis XIV, the young duke saw his chance to throw off French domination, Carlo Morandi writes in the Enciclopedia Italiana. In the spring of 1690 Louis demanded French garrisons in the duke's fortresses, the citadel of Turin and Verrua among them. Victor Amadeus refused, had the French ambassador in Turin arrested, and on 4 June joined the alliance against France alongside the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs.4 › Battle of Beachy Head, 1690
The emperor and Spain promised help: Malleson writes of a contingent of 5,000 imperial and 10,000 Spanish troops, the imperial part under Eugene. But the duke, eager for battle, would not wait for the reinforcements, which were still on the march when he fought.5
Armies and commanders
Nicolas Catinat, born in 1637, was the son of a magistrate, a president of the Paris parlement, and had risen in the French army by merit rather than wealth or birth. He had fought in Flanders in 1676 to 1678 and in 1690 was given command of the French army in Italy.6
His opponent was Victor Amadeus II, born in Turin in 1666, at the head of an army of Piedmontese troops with Spanish and imperial contingents. With him came his cousin, Prince Eugene of Savoy, born in Paris in 1663, who had left France in 1683 to serve the emperor and had made his name against the Turks. In 1690 he was a general of imperial cavalry sent to Piedmont.7 › Battle of Blenheim, 1704
The figures for the armies differ. The Enciclopedia Italiana gives the duke about 15,000 men, slightly more than Catinat's 12,000 or so. Rousset counts Catinat's army as twelve regular battalions, seven of militia and forty-seven squadrons, all well below strength from sickness; by his reckoning it numbered seventeen or eighteen thousand before the battle and only eleven or twelve thousand a month after it.8
The battle, in phases
The bait. Through the summer the duke held an entrenched camp. Catinat needed a battle before the allies grew stronger, Malleson writes, and before his own army wasted away from disease, Rousset adds. On 17 August he marched for Saluzzo and its magazines, deliberately exposing his flank to the Piedmontese army; Rousset quotes his letter to the king that day, promising to turn and fight if the enemy came out. Victor Amadeus took the bait, left his camp and followed him to the abbey of Staffarda. The Enciclopedia Italiana tells it differently, with Catinat marching from southern Piedmont toward Turin when the duke moved against him.9
The ground. On the morning of 18 August Catinat reconnoitered the allied position. It was a strong one. The right rested on the abbey and a group of farmhouses behind a marsh, with hedges and double ditches in front; the left was covered by more marshes running down to the Po. Rousset adds that the narrow open ground between them was closed with palisades and chevaux de frise, behind which stood the Spanish infantry. A frontal attack, Malleson writes, was not to be thought of.10
Noon: the guns and the advance. Catinat brought his army forward in good order, covered by his guns firing steadily in front; Rousset counts sixteen pieces. By noon the battle was joined along the whole line. The Enciclopedia Italiana singles out this bold placing of the French artillery as one of the two keys to the victory.11
The flank. The other key was the outflanking move. Catinat massed infantry on one flank, got it across the marshes, ditches and hedges in spite of the palisades, and took the Piedmontese line in flank, and the surprised infantry fell back. Rousset, working from the French war archives, describes half of the Grancey brigade wading through the reeds by the Po and bursting out of the marsh covered in mud, with bayonets and swords.12
Turning point: the reserve at four o'clock
The farmhouses by the abbey, held by Spanish and Piedmontese infantry, were the hardest nut. Malleson has the French carrying the farmyards before throwing their whole force on the enemy; in Rousset's account the struggle there lasted two hours, and at four o'clock, with the duke's forces committed, Catinat still had a brigade in reserve. In his own report, which Rousset quotes, Catinat describes how the regiments of La Sarre, Clérambault and du Plessis made a fine and vigorous charge, how the cavalry of the left found a way through the marsh, and how the charge carried ditches, hedges, houses and chevaux de frise together. He also praised a large red battalion of Spaniards that kept rallying though driven from its posts.13
By five o'clock the allies were giving way everywhere. All the accounts credit Prince Eugene with saving the army: the Enciclopedia Italiana describes a few cavalry regiments maneuvering boldly under his command to protect the retreat on Turin, Rousset writes that without his squadrons the defeat would have become a true rout, and Malleson that he performed prodigies of valor to cover the flight. Piero Pieri adds that Eugene could only cover the withdrawal with the duke's gendarmerie. The beaten army fell back as far as Moncalieri, just south of Turin.14
Aftermath and consequences
The allies lost about 4,000 men, according to the Enciclopedia Italiana, Rousset and Malleson, and eleven guns, which Rousset says were all the duke's artillery; he adds 1,500 prisoners and five colors. On the French side the sources disagree. The Enciclopedia Italiana calls the losses very light, but Catinat's own report of 20 August, which Rousset prints, counts 591 killed and 1,576 wounded without the cavalry, whose losses Rousset estimates at another 500.15
Saluzzo fell at once. Catinat then let his army loose on the duke's lands: the Enciclopedia Italiana records that, following his instructions from Paris, he had Saluzzo and the nearby villages sacked and dealt cruelly with peasants who resisted, Malleson writes of looting and burning in all directions, and Rousset prints Louvois's order that armed peasants should not be spared. Disease, meanwhile, was wasting the French army.16
The allies recovered slowly. The duke rebuilt his army at Moncalieri, joined there by Eugene's corps and later by the Spaniards. The next summer Eugene showed what he could do: when the French laid siege to Cuneo in June 1691, he rode to its relief with a column of cavalry, and the besiegers lifted the siege before he arrived.17
Staffarda was only the first of the duke's defeats. Catinat conquered Savoy that year, beat Victor Amadeus again at Marsaglia in 1693 and was made a marshal of France. In 1696, after Spain refused him Milan, the duke made a separate peace with France on favorable terms.18
Legacy and memory
The 1911 Britannica counted Staffarda and Marsaglia among the greatest victories of their time. Yet Catinat's later career ended in disappointment: in the next war he was beaten by his old opponent Eugene at Carpi in 1701 and replaced.19
The two defeated princes did better in the long run. Victor Amadeus changed sides again in the War of the Spanish Succession, saw the French beaten before Turin in 1706, won a royal crown at Utrecht in 1713 and ended as king of Sardinia. Eugene became one of the greatest soldiers of his generation, the victor of Blenheim with Marlborough and of Zenta and Belgrade against the Turks.20
Visiting the battlefield today
The abbey of Santa Maria di Staffarda still stands in its hamlet of the town of Revello, on the left bank of the Po about 12 kilometers north-northwest of Saluzzo. The Enciclopedia Italiana dates its foundation to around the middle of the twelfth century; its present owner, the Fondazione Ordine Mauriziano, gives 1122 to 1138. Its church and Gothic cloister and chapter house survive, and the foundation runs guided tours.21
