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11 May in military history: Battle of Fontenoy, 1745

Military history · 11 May · War of the Austrian SuccessionFull calendar

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Map marking the battle site: Fontenoy near Tournai, Belgium
Location: Fontenoy near Tournai, Belgium. Location map: © Echoes of Battle (data: Natural Earth, public domain)
Quick answer

On 11 May 1745, at Fontenoy near Tournai, Marshal Maurice de Saxe's French army, with Louis XV present, beat off the Duke of Cumberland's Allied army. A British and Hanoverian column broke into the French camp, but guns, cavalry and infantry, the Irish Brigade among them, drove it back. Also on 11 May: Yellow Tavern, 1864, and Monte Cassino, 1944.

Battle of Fontenoy

11 May 1745 · 281 years ago

A siege and a relief march

At the end of April 1745 Marshal Maurice de Saxe laid siege to Tournai, and the Allied army under the Duke of Cumberland marched to relieve it. The Allies were British, Hanoverian, Austrian and Dutch troops. On the evening of 9 May Cumberland's army came within sight of the French outposts. Louis XV had joined Saxe's army with his son, the Dauphin.1

The armies are counted differently. Pierre Gobert, in Encyclopædia Universalis, gives Saxe 75,000 men around Tournai and the Allies 55,000. Francis Skrine counts 46,800 Allied soldiers with 80 guns, and writes that Saxe left 21,550 men in the siege trenches and kept 53,000 for the battle. John Fortescue puts Cumberland's force at less than 50,000 against 56,000.2

Fortescue's history gives the day as both 30 April and 11 May, and the relation of the action that Cumberland sent home dated it "the 11th May 1745, n.s.", that is, New Style.3

Saxe's redoubts

Saxe waited on a ridge with his right on the village of Antoing and the Scheldt, his center on Fontenoy and his left on the wood of Barry. He fortified the villages, built three redoubts between Fontenoy and Antoing and two more at the edge of the wood, among them the Redoubt d'Eu. Guns on the far bank of the Scheldt covered the approach to Antoing.4

Between Fontenoy and the wood lay open ground with no redoubt of its own, 620 yards wide in Skrine's account and about a thousand yards in Fortescue's. Saxe's best infantry, the French and Swiss Guards among them, held it. The Allied plan was for the Dutch to attack Fontenoy and Antoing, for a brigade under Brigadier Ingoldsby to take the Redoubt d'Eu, and for the British and Hanoverian infantry to advance through the gap.5

A morning of failures

The British began to march out of camp at two in the morning. Their infantry formed up under artillery fire from Fontenoy and the Redoubt d'Eu. Ingoldsby hesitated and never delivered his attack on the redoubt. He was later tried by court-martial. Fortescue writes that he was acquitted of everything but an error of judgment; Skrine, citing the sentence of 17 July 1745, writes that the court found the charge of disobedience proved, put his failure down to an error of judgment and not want of courage, and suspended him.6

The Dutch attacks on Fontenoy and Antoing broke down under fire from the village, the redoubts and the guns across the Scheldt, and some of the Dutch cavalry fled the field.7

Thirty paces

Cumberland then put himself at the head of the British and Hanoverian infantry and led them up the slope between Fontenoy and the wood, under fire from both flanks. Skrine numbers them at 16,000. Near the French line Lord Charles Hay of the First Guards stepped out in front, drank to the French from a flask and taunted them with having swum the Main at Dettingen. In Skrine's account, which follows a letter Hay wrote to his brother less than three weeks after the battle, he shouted: "We are the English Guards, and we hope you will stand till we come up to you, and not swim the Scheldt as you did the Main at Dettingen!"8

The best-known version of the moment is Voltaire's: Skrine calls it proverbial, and Fortescue calls it the legend everyone knows. In his Précis du siècle de Louis XV, Hay calls out "Messieurs des gardes françaises, tirez." The Comte d'Auteroche answers: "Messieurs, nous ne tirons jamais les premiers; tirez vous-mêmes" ("Gentlemen of the French Guards, fire"; "Gentlemen, we never fire first; fire yourselves", our translation). British reports say the French fired first. Ligonier wrote: "We got up to the enemy, however, and received their discharge at 30 paces without firing a shot", and Fortescue, taking Ligonier's account as final, quotes him: "We received their fire". Gobert writes that an outdated regulation required French infantry to receive the enemy's first fire, and the editor of the Garnier edition of Voltaire calls it the custom of the French infantry.9

The British volleys swept away the French front rank. Fortescue writes that 19 officers and 600 men of the French and Swiss Guards fell at the first discharge; Skrine gives 700 officers and men killed and wounded. The British pushed on some 300 yards into the French camp.10

Fire from three sides

Under fire from both flanks, the British lines closed into a single dense mass. Gobert counts 15,000 men in it. Saxe was ill with dropsy. Fortescue writes that he was too weak to ride and was carried about the field in a wicker litter. In Skrine's account he was too weak at dawn to sit his horse and was drawn by grenadiers in a wicker chair to the left, but later that morning he mounted and rode, and when the British broke through he galloped back to rally his cavalry. He now sent his cavalry against the column, and charge after charge was beaten off by musketry. The Dutch gave no further help, and the column stood alone in the French camp.11

Saxe brought guns forward to fire into the mass. He then threw his rallied infantry and his reserves against it, the Irish Brigade among them. Skrine counts the brigade at 3,870 men. Cumberland ordered a retreat. In his letter from Ath the next day he wrote that the retreat was judged necessary at about one o'clock; in Skrine's own narrative the last French attack and the retreat come after half past one in the afternoon. The infantry fell back in good order, turning to fire on the pursuing cavalry, and the army retired to Ath.12

The cost

Skrine gives the Allied loss as 7,545 officers and men, with 1,237 killed and 2,425 wounded in the British regiments, and the French loss, from Voltaire's count, as 7,137. Fortescue writes that nearly 6,000 of the 15,000 British and Hanoverian infantry were killed or wounded, and that French losses were never made public but were put by contemporary accounts at fully 10,000. Gobert gives 15,000 for the Allies and 7,000 for the French.13

Fortescue writes that Saxe owned he had never dreamed any general would attempt such a stroke. In Skrine's account the marshal, carried to the king in his wicker chair after the battle, said: "I ought to have placed one more redoubt between Barri Wood and Fontenoy, but I could not believe that any general would dare to hazard an attack at that point".14

Tournai and Flanders

Tournai fell soon after the battle. In Skrine's account the town was handed over late in May and the garrison of the citadel marched out in June. The French went on to take Ghent. Gobert writes that Fontenoy won Louis XV the conquest of Flanders and stayed popular in France as the only battle of modern times that a French king won in person against the English. In the autumn, Fortescue writes, practically the whole British army, Cumberland included, was recalled to England. Saxe's campaigns in the Low Countries went on; see our article on Rocoux, 1746.15

Also on this day

Battle of Bantry Bay

11 May 1689 · 337 years ago

An English fleet under Arthur Herbert attacked a French squadron under Châteaurenault in Bantry Bay, southern Ireland, as it landed supplies for the deposed James II. The French finished unloading and damaged Herbert's ships, though the clash is judged in different ways.

1864: At Yellow Tavern, near Richmond, Virginia, Union cavalry fought the Confederate cavalry of Major General J. E. B. Stuart. The American Battlefield Trust's account names Major General Philip Sheridan as the Union commander and calls the battle a Union victory. As Michigan troopers of George Armstrong Custer's brigade fell back from a charge, one of them shot Stuart. Stuart died in Richmond on the evening of 12 May.16

1944: At 11 p.m. Allied artillery opened fire, on the German positions at Monte Cassino among others. Fisher counts 1,060 guns on the Eighth Army's front and 600 on the Fifth Army's, firing from Cassino to the Tyrrhenian Sea at the start of the offensive called Diadem. The Polish II Corps attacked in the first hours of 12 May, at 1 a.m. in Fisher's account and 1:30 a.m. in Gąsiorowski's, and on 12 May, after heavy losses, was ordered back. See our article on Monte Cassino.17

Frequently asked questions

When and where was the Battle of Fontenoy?

It was fought on 11 May 1745 (New Style) near the village of Fontenoy, outside Tournai in what is now Belgium, while the French were besieging Tournai.

Who won the Battle of Fontenoy?

The French, under Marshal Maurice de Saxe, with Louis XV present. The Allied army of the Duke of Cumberland, made up of British, Hanoverian, Austrian and Dutch troops, retreated to Ath.

Did the French Guards really invite the British to fire first?

That is Voltaire's version. British reports, Ligonier's among them, say the French fired first, and Skrine follows a letter by Lord Charles Hay, in which Hay taunts the French Guards instead.

How many men were lost at Fontenoy?

Figures differ by source. Skrine gives 7,545 Allied and, from Voltaire's count, 7,137 French losses; Gobert gives 15,000 and 7,000; Fortescue puts British and Hanoverian infantry losses at nearly 6,000 killed or wounded.

Why did the British attack fail?

The brigade sent against the Redoubt d'Eu never attacked and the Dutch attacks on Fontenoy and Antoing broke down, so the British and Hanoverian column was left alone under fire from front and flanks.

Notes

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

  1. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”; Pierre Gobert, “Bataille de Fontenoy (1745)”. ↩
  2. Pierre Gobert, “Bataille de Fontenoy (1745)”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”; J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”. ↩
  3. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”. ↩
  4. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”. ↩
  5. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”. ↩
  6. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”. ↩
  7. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”. ↩
  8. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”. ↩
  9. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”; Voltaire, “Précis du siècle de Louis XV”; Pierre Gobert, “Bataille de Fontenoy (1745)”. ↩
  10. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”; Pierre Gobert, “Bataille de Fontenoy (1745)”. ↩
  11. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”; Pierre Gobert, “Bataille de Fontenoy (1745)”. ↩
  12. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”; Pierre Gobert, “Bataille de Fontenoy (1745)”. ↩
  13. Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”; J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Pierre Gobert, “Bataille de Fontenoy (1745)”. ↩
  14. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”. ↩
  15. J. W. Fortescue, “A History of the British Army”; Francis Henry Skrine, “Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741-48”; Pierre Gobert, “Bataille de Fontenoy (1745)”. ↩
  16. Daniel T. Davis, “Lost Battlefield”; Henrico County, “The Battle of Yellow Tavern and Stuart’s Mortal Wound”. ↩
  17. Ernest F. Fisher Jr., “Cassino to the Alps”; Teodor Gąsiorowski, “„Karpaty” pod Monte Cassino”. ↩

Sources

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