11 July in military history: Battle of Oudenarde, 1708

11 July 1708 · 318 years ago

Ghent lost, Oudenaarde threatened

The Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum describes the battle as one fought in present-day Belgium between the Grand Alliance of Britain, Holland and Austria and the France of Louis XIV, in the War of the Spanish Succession. That summer the French army in Flanders took Ghent and Bruges. Fortescue writes that French gold had done its work: both towns opened their gates within twenty-four hours, and the navigation of the Scheldt and the Lys was lost to the Allies. According to the museum, Marlborough was now threatened with being cut off from the sea, and Oudenaarde, “the last remaining British fortress in the region”, had to be held at all costs. On 9 July French detachments invested the town.¹

In Fortescue’s words the French army in Flanders numbered “little less than a hundred thousand men”, against Marlborough’s eighty thousand. The museum gives 100,000 French in 130 battalions and 216 squadrons against 90,000 Allied troops in 112 battalions and 197 squadrons. Burgundy and Vendôme shared the command and did not get on. With the French rode the Stuart Pretender, who called himself the Chevalier de St. George. Marlborough was ill with fever, and Eugene had come on ahead of his own army, which had not yet arrived.²

The race to the Scheldt

At two in the morning of 9 July the Allied army marched off. That night Cadogan’s advance guard seized Lessines and bridged the Dender, and the French found the Allies there before them. They turned toward Gavre to cross the Scheldt there.³

Early on 11 July Cadogan set off again to bridge the Scheldt below Oudenaarde, and by half past ten his men had reached the river. The French were crossing six miles downstream, unaware of him. Fortescue reckons that by the time they came into action, at two o’clock that afternoon, the troops had covered fifty miles and crossed two rivers since Monday morning. Taylor describes them marching “as if every man hoped to avenge a private quarrel” for the loss of Ghent and Bruges.⁴

Two princes on the field

As the first Allied infantry came up, Cadogan’s men, led by Sabine’s British brigade, stormed the village of Eyne and killed or captured its defenders. Hanoverian cavalry then charged and routed the French squadrons beyond it. With them rode the Electoral Prince of Hanover, whom Fortescue identifies as the future King George II. His horse was shot under him. The next day Marlborough wrote to the Elector of Hanover that the Electoral Prince had greatly distinguished himself, charging at the head of the troops and spurring them on by his example.⁵

Taylor quotes a popular ballad, Jack Frenchman’s Lamentations, which praised “Young Hannover brave” for fighting on foot when his war-horse was shot. He adds that the Whigs spread a slanderous report that the Pretender had watched the battle from a windmill, although he had done his duty with the French Household Cavalry.⁶

From hedge to hedge

The battle proper began at about five o’clock, Marlborough told the Elector, and was fought hotly, above all by the infantry, until nightfall. According to Fortescue, thirty French battalions came down on Groenewald, held only by two Prussian battalions of Cadogan’s. Taylor writes that the Prussians, outnumbered three to one, threw back the first attack. The Duke of Argyll came up with twenty battalions, and fresh battalions kept arriving to lengthen the line. The ground was so enclosed that the fighting broke up into duels between single battalions.⁷

The French left stayed idle beyond the Norken. Taylor writes that Burgundy held it back after being told, wrongly, that a swamp barred the way. Marlborough gave Eugene the right and led the Dutch and Hanoverian infantry forward on the left himself. Seeing that the French right flank was in the air, he sent Marshal Overkirk with Dutch and Danish troops round the high ground near Oycke to fall on its rear.⁸

The museum quotes a British eyewitness who described how the enemy were driven “from ditch to ditch, from hedge to hedge and from out of one scrub into another in great hurry, confusion and disorder”. At about nine o’clock Marlborough and Eugene ordered their men to cease firing, for fear that their converging troops would fire on each other in the dark. Then the Allied drums beat the French retreat while Huguenot officers in the Allied army called out “A moi, Picardie!” and “A moi, Roussillon!”, and the French soldiers who answered were taken prisoner. According to the museum, only the coming of darkness prevented an even heavier French defeat; Fortescue writes that the harvest of prisoners another hour of daylight would have brought was lost.⁹

Retreat to Ghent

Fortescue writes that Vendôme tried in vain to keep the army together until morning, but Burgundy gave the word to retreat. Taylor, following Saint-Simon, has Vendôme find himself alone at a council of war and give way: “Very well, gentlemen,” he exclaimed, “I see clearly that you all wish it. So we must retreat”. The French streamed off toward Ghent in disorder through a wet night.¹⁰

Counting the cost

The museum gives the French loss as 15,000 soldiers, including 8,000 prisoners, and 25 guns, and the Allied casualties as fewer than 3,000, of whom 250 were British. Fortescue puts the French loss at 6,000 killed and wounded and 9,000 prisoners, and the Allied loss at about 3,000 killed and wounded. Coxe estimates the Allied loss at about 3,000 killed and wounded and the French at no fewer than 4,000 killed, 2,000 wounded and 9,000 prisoners, including 700 officers.¹¹

Taylor gives at least 6,000 French killed and wounded and 9,000 prisoners “by Berwick’s admission”, but, citing Sergeant Millner’s journal, ten captured guns; he puts the Allied casualties at 3,000 or rather more, with no more than 230 killed and wounded in the British regiments. On 12 July Marlborough wrote to the Duke of Savoy that 6,000 prisoners had been brought into the town, besides nearly 500 officers. Four days later he told his wife that the governor of Oudenaarde counted above 7,000, besides 700 officers; Coxe notes that this count covered only the prisoners held in Oudenaarde.¹²

Two more hours of daylight

Writing to Godolphin the day after the battle, Marlborough explained that he had been resolved to seek a battle, “thinking nothing else would make the queen’s business go on well”, and added: “This reason only made me venture the battle yesterday, otherwise I did give them too much advantage”. He closed: “My head aches so terribly that I must say no more”. On 16 July he wrote to his wife: “If we had been so happy as to have had two more hours of day-light, I believe we should have made an end of this war”.¹³

Within days Count Lottum forced the French lines running from Ypres toward the Lys, and the Allied army camped on French soil. The Allies then besieged Lille, whose citadel surrendered in December.¹⁴