On 23 May 1706, Whit Sunday, the Duke of Marlborough's allied army defeated the Franco-Spanish-Bavarian army of Marshal Villeroi and the Elector of Bavaria at Ramillies in the Spanish Netherlands. By evening the French were in flight, and within weeks the allies held Brussels, Bruges and Antwerp. On 23 May 1568 Dutch rebels won at Heiligerlee.
Battle of Ramillies
23 May 1706 · 320 years ago
Whit Sunday on the plateau
Ramillies, now in Belgium, was fought in the War of the Spanish Succession, after Marlborough's victory at Blenheim. According to the Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum, Louis XIV, who wanted peace on reasonable terms, ordered Villeroi to attack in the Spanish Netherlands, aiming for a victory that would open the way to a "fair" peace. Villeroi left his lines on the Dyle, and Marlborough, who had not expected the French to come out, marched to meet him. He shared command with the Dutch field marshal Overkirk. The Franco-Spanish-Bavarian army was commanded by Villeroi and Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria.1
At one in the morning of 23 May the quartermaster-general, Cadogan, rode ahead with 600 horse through rain and fog. When the fog lifted around ten, the whole French army was in sight, forming on the plateau between the Mehaigne and the Little Geete. Robert Parker, an officer of the Royal Regiment of Foot of Ireland who was there, dates that day "Whitsunday the 12th of May, O. S.", and Fortescue gives both dates, 12 and 23 May.2
Villeroi drew up his army along a concave line about four miles long, through the villages of Taviers, Ramillies, Offus and Autreglise, with most of his cavalry, the Maison du Roi in its first line, on the open ground between Ramillies and the Mehaigne. Coxe and Taylor estimate the allies at about 60,000 men and the French at 62,000; the Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum gives the figures the other way round, and Atkinson takes sixty thousand apiece as approximately correct.3
A feint on the right
Marlborough saw that the concave line let an attacker move troops across the chord faster than the defender could move them along the arc, and that the marshes that covered the French left would also keep it from attacking. He opened with a threat to that left: the British, Dutch and German infantry of his right marched down toward Offus and Autreglise. Villeroi took troops from his center and right to reinforce the threatened wing.4
Taylor and Atkinson, who both used the letters of the Earl of Orkney, commander of the British foot there, write that his battalions crossed the marsh and pushed toward Offus until orders called them back. In both historians' quotations Orkney wrote that he "never had more shot about my ears" and "I confess it vexed me to retire".5
Back on the heights, one line stayed on the crest in full view of the French while the other, hidden by the fold of the ground, marched away to strengthen the left. Parker's regiment was in the line that stayed. It "stood looking on without firing a shot; and as we were posted on an eminence, and were disengaged, we had a fair view of the whole Battle on the Plain".6
The duke unhorsed
The guns opened at about half past one. Dutch infantry cleared Franquinay and stormed Taviers, and the dragoons and Swiss sent to support its garrison were cut up by Danish horse. Twelve battalions under General Schultz attacked Ramillies. Overkirk's Dutch cavalry broke the first line of the French horse but were thrown back by the second.7
Marlborough sent for every squadron of his right except the British and rode in to rally the Dutch. French horsemen recognized him; thrown at a ditch, he was ridden over. Taylor and Atkinson write that General Murray brought up two Swiss battalions to cover him. His aide-de-camp, Captain Molesworth, gave him his own horse. A cannon ball then took off the head of his equerry, Colonel Bingfield, who was holding the stirrup: as Marlborough mounted Molesworth's horse in Coxe, Taylor and Atkinson, and as he changed back to his own in Parker and Fortescue, who, like Atkinson, spell the name Bringfield.8
At eleven the next morning Marlborough wrote to the Duchess that "on Sunday last we fought, and that God Almighty has been pleased to give us a victory". He went on: "Poor Bingfield, holding my stirrup for me, and helping me on horseback, was killed. I am told that he leaves his wife and mother in a poor condition".9
The French line breaks
The Duke of Württemberg's Danes rode round the French right along the Mehaigne, the allied horse reached the plateau by the tomb of Ottomond, and the French household cavalry was broken. Schultz's battalions carried Ramillies. Villeroi and the Elector tried to form a new front with cavalry from their left, but their baggage stood in the way. The allies advanced along the whole line, British troops on the right crossed the marsh to take Autreglise from the rear, and the French retreat became a rout.10
Accounts of its length differ. Coxe writes that the battle had lasted three hours and a half when the allied cavalry paused to re-form, and Taylor puts the collapse at six o'clock, with three hours of daylight left. Marlborough told Bishop Burnet, as Taylor quotes him, that the actual fighting "lasted not above two hours", and the Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum writes that the French were routed in less than four hours.11
The British cavalry, still fresh, led the pursuit through the night to Meldert, and Orkney with a few squadrons pressed on toward Louvain. According to Taylor, the Elector wrote to the Comte de Bergeyck on 23 May, in Taylor's English: "we had the finest army in the world. . . . But the defeat is so great, and the terror among the troops so horrible, that I know not what the morrow will bring forth".12
Counting the cost
According to Coxe the allies acknowledged 1,066 killed and 2,567 wounded, and Taylor and the Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum give the same figures. Fortescue puts the allied loss at four to five thousand killed and wounded, Atkinson at a little over four thousand casualties, and Parker at more than 5,000 killed and wounded.13
Coxe, Fortescue, Taylor and the museum put the French loss at 13,000 killed, wounded and prisoners. Desertion after the battle raised it, to 15,000 men in Coxe, to over 15,000 in Taylor and by full two thousand more in Fortescue; Atkinson gives fifteen thousand French casualties. Parker writes that the enemy had at least 7,000 killed and that their whole loss, with desertion, "was computed to be upwards of 30,000". For the guns, the museum gives 52, Fortescue 50 and Parker 60 cannon and 8 mortars, while Coxe writes of almost the whole French artillery and Taylor of all their cannon.14
From the Meuse to the sea
The French gave up Louvain and the line of the Dyle, and the magistrates of Brussels came to Marlborough to submit. Ghent and Bruges followed, and Antwerp surrendered soon after. Fortescue writes that within a fortnight almost all of Flanders and Brabant had fallen to the allies, and calls the campaign "one of the most brilliant in the annals of war".15
The Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum calls 1706, the year in which Prince Eugene also won at Turin, the high water mark for the alliance in the war. Marshal Villars, as Taylor translates him, called Ramillies "the most shameful, the most humiliating, the most deadly of defeats".16
Battle of Heiligerlee, 1568: the first victory of the Dutch Revolt
23 May 1568 · 458 years ago
Dutch rebels led by Louis and Adolf of Nassau, brothers of William of Orange, invaded Groningen and met the Duke of Aremberg's royal army at Heiligerlee. The rebels won the first Dutch victory of the Eighty Years' War, but Adolf was killed.
Read the full story of Battle of Heiligerlee, 1568: the first victory of the Dutch Revolt ›
