CHAP. I. During the winter of 1701-2 George, Prince of HesseDarmstadt, recently Viceroy of Catalonia, was the guest of William III. in London. Deposed by the government of Philip V. in February, 1701, he was accredited by the emperor to William III. as adviser upon the contemplated expedition to Spain. He maintained a correspondence with all the imperialist partisans in that country and generally inspired the allies in their Spanish policy. It was upon his recommendation that, shortly before William III.'s death, it was determined to undertake a joint sea and land expedition against Cadiz, the principal naval arsenal of Spain and the port of its transatlantic colonies. The fleet of the allies, which sailed from Spithead on July 12/23, 1702, consisted of fifty of the line, thirty English and twenty Dutch, ten frigates, fifty transports, and other ships, nearly 200 in all, under Admiral Sir George Rooke. The Duke of Ormonde, a soldier of experience, commanded the troops, consisting of a handful of dragoons, 7,100 foot, 2,400 marines, and 300 engineers and gunners with twenty heavy guns, sixteen mortars, and ten field-pieces.1 There was also a Dutch contingent of 4,000 men. The instructions to Rooke were “to reduce and take the town and island of Cadiz," or if this were impracticable, "to proceed to Gibraltar or take on your way home Vigo, Ponte Vedra, Corunna or any other place belonging to Spain or France". After the capture of Cadiz or Gibraltar he was to dispatch a squadron and 2,000 troops to the West Indies. The real object of the capture of Cadiz was to make it a naval base for operations against Toulon, whereby to obtain command of the Mediterranean. Cadiz was defended by nine regiments of foot, 1,000 horse, and a coast-guard of militia. In the harbour, which was obstructed by a chain. boom, were seven French men-of-war and eight galleys. The defence was entrusted to a skilful soldier, the Marquis de Villadarias, who had already earned a reputation by his defence of Charleroi against the French in 1693. On arriving before Cadiz, Ormonde was for landing the 1" The Duke of Ormonde told me," writes Burnet, "he had not half the ammunition that was necessary for the taking Cadiz, if they had defended themselves well." This is to some extent corroborated by an official letter from the office of ordnance to Prince George of Denmark, lord high admiral, of June 6, 1702. See R.O., MS., State Papers, Anne, bundle 1, no. 52. 1702 EXPEDITION AGAINST CADIZ. 13 I. troops under cover of a bombardment by the fleet, and сар- CHAP. turing the town by assault. Rooke insisted on the strength of the garrison, and the inability of the fleet to render effective aid if it should come on to blow. He proposed instead the capture of Port St. Mary, slightly inland and on the other side. of the bay, as well as the coast town of Rota, still more to the west, and the fort of Santa Catalina. The expedition against Cadiz thereupon degenerated into a predatory foray among sea-side villages. Soldiers and sailors plundered Port St. Mary, even robbing the churches, a pastime in which Lord Nugent's Irish "Rapparees," as they were called, specially distinguished themselves.1 Prince George, whose mission was to conciliate the Andalusians,2 dispatched a complaint to Vienna, implicating in this orgy of plunder Sir Henry Bellasis, second in command of the army. At the same time he addressed to Rooke, who was suffering from gout, and from the first had no heart in the expedition, a protest stating in plain terms that "the methods which have been taken hitherto seem not directed to do anything but to find out some pretence, after some unanswerable delays, to go with the first fair wind for England". Nevertheless, Rooke and the other admirals were unanimous in deciding against an attempt upon any other Spanish port, a proposal on which the military opinion was divided, Ormonde and both the Dutch generals recommending a fresh adventure. On September 9, N.S., the expedition sailed for England, Prince George in disgust retiring to Portugal. In London the street ballads were already besmirching Rooke as an incapable coward. He owed the rescue of his naval reputation to a fortunate accident. On October 3 Captain Wishart, with a detachment of the fleet, put into Lagos to water, the admiral continuing his homeward course. At Lagos, Wishart heard a report of the arrival at Vigo of the French admiral, Château-Rénault, conveying Spanish trea 1O'Nija to Ormonde, Lisbon, Oct. 23, 1702, Ormonde MSS., p. 766, Hist. MSS. Comm., 7th Rep., App. He accompanied the expedition as representative of the emperor to receive such Spaniards as were disposed to declare themselves "as good subjects of the emperor, which might be of good example and influence other places too". Nottingham to Ormonde, June 25, O.S., 1702, ibid., p. 763. 3 Letter of Bonet, the Prussian Resident, November 21, 1702, Von Noorden, i., 304, n. 2. I. CHAP. sure galleons from the West Indies. At once sailing after Rooke, on the 17th Wishart overtook him with the intelligence. Rooke knew in July that the treasure ships were on the way. As a matter of fact, the admiralty had already sent him a dispatch, which had not yet reached him, ordering their interception. It had also commissioned Sir Clowdisley Shovell with a fleet, which had left England on October 4, to watch for them off the west coast of France. Rooke was ill and indisposed to attack, but the Dutch admiral, Van Almonde, insisted. On October 11-22 the fleets came to anchor off Vigo Bay. Rooke being confined to his bed, the attack was in the hands of Vice-Admiral Hopsonn. The seventeen galleons within the harbour were protected by a boom, by two batteries of twenty and forty guns respectively, and by sixteen French and three Spanish ships of the line. The attack was begun on October 23, N.S., by Ormonde, who, having landed in command of 2,500 troops, took the larger battery by assault. Hopsonn, in his ship, the Torbay, broke the boom, captured or destroyed almost the entire hostile fleets, and secured a booty to the value of about £1,000,000. The victory eclipsed the failure of Cadiz. Simultaneously with the expedition to Cadiz, a squadron under Vice-Admiral Benbow was operating in the West Indies. His force consisted of seven ships, and on July 11, 1702, he sailed from Port Royal in Jamaica with the object of intercepting the French admiral Ducasse, who was conveying the Duke of Albuquerque, the new Spanish viceroy of Mexico, to his government. Benbow engaged in a running fight for six days; but four of his captains having given him very inadequate assistance and finally refusing further to support him, he was obliged to draw off, having lost a leg in the action. On his return to Jamaica he ordered the four captains to be tried by court-martial for cowardice, breach of orders, and neglect of duty. Two of them were condemned to death and were shot at Plymouth in the following April; the third was cashiered, the fourth died before trial. Benbow himself died on November 4, 1702, partly of his wounds, partly of disappointment in having been frustrated, as he declared, in the total destruction of the French squadron. A treaty with the Dutch for the reinforcement of the army 1703 MARLBOROUGH'S SECOND CAMPAIGN. 15 I. in the Netherlands by 11,000 men, including four regiments of CHAP. English infantry, having been signed on March 12, 1703, N.S., the enlistment of troops in Germany began forthwith. Boufflers had now been joined by the more enterprising Villeroy, but the instructions of the French commanders were to wage a defensive campaign upon the Lower Rhine. The main action of the French was reserved for the Upper Rhine. Boufflers and Villeroy, therefore, with no more than 37,000 men, intrenched themselves behind the Mehaigne. Antwerp and Bruges were covered by two corps, together 10,000 men, under the Spanish general, the Marquis Bedmar and Count de la Mothe. Marlborough opened his second campaign with a heavy heart, for on February 20 he had lost his only surviving son, Lord Blandford. He outnumbered the French by 30,000 men, and his desire was to attack the French army in the field. The Dutch adhered to their creed that the object of war was the capture of fortresses. It was apparent to Marlborough that some more energetic action must be taken against the French than a mere succession of sieges in the Netherlands. During some months the emperor had been making urgent representations to the English government that the French army of the Upper Rhine and the Elector of Bavaria were meditating a campaign which should end in Vienna itself. But the nervousness of the Dutch for their own frontier and Marlborough's restricted powers made help for the present impossible. All that could be done was to effect a diversion to the west so menacing that the French would be obliged to reinforce their army from the Upper Rhine. In the event of a marked success Marlborough hoped to be able to spare some reinforcements for the imperialists, and for their aid on the Upper Rhine he at once detached twenty battalions and eight squadrons of horse. During a month after the reduction of Bonn on May 15, 1703, Marlborough, encamped upon the Meuse, was concerting with Heinsius a plan of operations which he cloaked with the phrase, “our great design". Great importance was attached in England to the capture of the seaports held by the French, above all Antwerp and Ostend, and the consequent revival of English trade. Marlborough's plan was to converge upon the French lines in Flanders from three directions. But the "great design" mis CHAP. carried through the disobedience to orders of the Dutch I. commanders. The Dutch general Opdam rashly attacking the French lines was routed at Eckeren on June 26, and Marlborough became the butt of the Dutch pamphleteers. His jealousy of the Dutch generals and his new-fangled and incompetent strategy were believed to have combined to bring about the disaster. Marlborough soon felt the effects of this state of public opinion. His friend and supporter, the Grand Pensionary Heinsius, dared not incur the responsibility of authorising an attack projected by him upon the French lines before Antwerp. He reverted, therefore, to his former plan of preparing the way for a campaign on the Moselle in the following year. He marched back to the Meuse and on August 7-16 invested Huy, a fortress important as covering Liège and commanding the navigation of the river. After the capture of Huy, which held out only a few days, Marlborough, again anxious to meet and crush the French army by his superior numbers, proposed an attack on the yet unfinished intrenchments of Villeroy and Boufflers behind the Mehaigne. But the Dutch field-deputies positively forbade the enterprise, and Marlborough was compelled to content himself with a protest to the States-general. The capture of Limburg and Guelders in the autumn ended the campaign of 1703. It had lacked brilliancy, and had been accompanied by one disaster. Its main success had been the reduction of Spanish Guelderland, which relieved the Dutch from apprehension of an inroad on that side. On the other hand, Villeroy and Boufflers had fulfilled their instructions, and by occupying a series of defensive positions had kept the superior numbers of the allies at bay. While in the west the French had maintained the defensive throughout the campaign of 1703, they had laid their plans for a concerted attack by their army of the Upper Rhine and that of the Elector of Bavaria upon Suabia, Franconia, and Austria itself. In this they were to be aided by offensive diversions from Piedmont upon the emperor's possessions in North Italy and in the east by the Hungarian insurgents. At the beginning of the campaign the army of Villars, who had replaced Catinat, numbered 60,000 men and a reinforcement of 30,000 men was promised. The Elector of Bavaria was at the head of 40,000 |