rarely brought this about, and to live at all, whether on supplies
brought up from the home country and stored in magazines
(which had to be guarded) or on local resources, an army had
as a rule to maintain or to capture a large fortress. Sieges,
therefore, and manœuvres are the features of this form of war,
wherein armies progressed not with the giant strides of modern
war, but in a succession of short hops from one foothold to the
next. This was the procedure of the average commander, and
even when a more intense spirit of conflict was evoked by the
Luxemburgs and Marlboroughs it was but momentary and
spasmodic.
The general character of the war being borne in mind, nine-tenths of its marches and manœuvres can be almost “taken as read”; the remaining tenth, the exceptional and abnormal part of it, alone possesses an interest for modern readers.
In pursuance of a new aggressive policy in Germany Louis XIV. sent his troops, as a diplomatic menace rather than for conquest, into that country in the autumn of 1688. Some of their raiding parties plundered the country as far south as Augsburg, for the political intent of their advance suggested terrorism rather than conciliation as the best method. The league of Augsburg at once took up the challenge, and the addition of new members (Treaty of Vienna, May 1689) converted it into the “Grand Alliance” of Spain, Holland, Sweden, Savoy and certain Italian states, Great Britain, the emperor, the elector of Brandenburg, &c.
“Those who condemned the king for raising up so many enemies, admired him for having so fully prepared to defend himself and even to forestall them,” says Voltaire. Louvois had in fact completed the work of organizing the French army on a regular and permanent basis, and had made it not merely the best, but also by far the most numerous in Europe, for Louis disposed in 1688 of no fewer than 375,000 soldiers and 60,000 sailors. The infantry was uniformed and drilled, and the socket bayonet and the flint-lock musket had been introduced. The only relic of the old armament was the pike, which was retained for one-quarter of the foot, though it had been discarded by the Imperialists in the course of the Turkish wars described below. The first artillery regiment was created in 1684, to replace the former semi-civilian organization by a body of artillerymen susceptible of uniform training and amenable to discipline and orders.
In 1689 Louis had six armies on foot. That in Germany, which had executed the raid of the previous autumn, was not in a position to resist the principal army of the coalition so far from support. Louvois therefore ordered it to lay waste the Palatinate, and the devastation of the country around Heidelberg, Mannheim, Spires,Devastation of the Palatinate, 1689. Oppenheim and Worms was pitilessly and methodically carried into effect in January and February. There had been devastations in previous wars, even the high-minded Turenne had used the argument of fire and sword to terrify a population or a prince, while the whole story of the last ten years of the great war had been one of incendiary armies leaving traces of their passage that it took a century to remove. But here the devastation was a purely military measure, executed systematically over a given strategic front for no other purpose than to delay the advance of the enemy’s army. It differed from the method of Turenne or Cromwell in that the sufferers were not those people whom it was the purpose of the war to reduce to submission, but others who had no interest in the quarrel. It differed from Wellington’s laying waste of Portugal in 1810 in that it was not done for the defence of the Palatinate against a national enemy, but because the Palatinate was where it was. The feudal theory that every subject of a prince at war was an armed vassal, and therefore an enemy of the prince’s enemy, had in practice been obsolete for two centuries past; by 1690 the organization of war, its causes, its methods and its instruments had passed out of touch with the people at large, and it had become thoroughly understood that the army alone was concerned with the army’s business. Thus it was that this devastation excited universal reprobation; and that, in the words of a modern French writer, the “idea of Germany came to birth in the flames of the Palatinate.”
As a military measure this crime was, moreover, quite unprofitable; for it became impossible for Marshal Duras, the French commander, to hold out on the east side of the middle Rhine, and he could think of nothing better to do than to go farther south and to ravage Baden and the Breisgau, which was not even a military necessity. The grand army of the Allies, coming farther north, was practically unopposed. Charles of Lorraine and the elector of Bavaria—lately comrades in the Turkish war (see below)—invested Mainz, the elector of Brandenburg Bonn. The latter, following the evil precedent of his enemies, shelled the town uselessly instead of making a breach in its walls and overpowering its French garrison, an incident not calculated to advance the nascent idea of German unity. Mainz, valiantly defended by Nicolas du Blé, marquis d’Uxelles, had to surrender on the 8th of September. The governor of Bonn, baron d’Asfeld, not in the least intimidated by the bombardment, held out till the army that had taken Mainz reinforced the elector of Brandenburg, and then, rejecting the hard terms of surrender offered him by the latter, he fell in resisting a last assault on the 12th of October. Only 850 men out of his 6000 were left to surrender on the 16th, and the duke of Lorraine, less truculent than the elector, escorted them safely to Thionville. Boufflers, with another of Louis’s armies, operated from Luxemburg (captured by the French in 1684 and since held) and Trarbach towards the Rhine, but in spite of a minor victory at Kochheim on the 21st of August, he was unable to relieve either Mainz or Bonn.
In the Low Countries the French marshal d’Humières, being in superior force, had obtained special permission to offer battle to the Allies. Leaving the garrison of Lille and Tournay to amuse the Spaniards, he hurried from Maubeuge to oppose the Dutch, who from Namur had advanced slowly on Philippeville. Coming upon their army (which was commanded by the prince of Waldeck) in position behind the river Heure, with an advanced post in the little walled town of Walcourt, he flung his advanced guard against the bridge and fortifications of this place to clear the way for his deployment beyond the river Heure (27th August). After wasting a thousand brave men in this attempt, he drew back. For a few days the two armies remained face to face, cannonading one another at intervals, but no further fighting occurred. Humières returned to the region of the Scheldt fortresses, and Waldeck to Brussels. For the others of Louis’ six armies the year’s campaign passed off quite uneventfully.
Simultaneously with these operations, the Jacobite cause was being fought to an issue in Ireland. War began early in 1689 with desultory engagements between the Orangemen of the north and the Irish regular army, most of which the earl of Tyrconnel had induced to declare for King James. The northern struggle after a time condensed itself intoThe war in Ireland,
1689–1691. the defence of Derry and Enniskillen. The siege of the former place, begun by James himself and carried on by the French general Rosen, lasted 105 days. In marked contrast to the sieges of the continent, this was resisted by the townsmen themselves, under the leadership of the clergyman George Walker. But the relieving force (consisting of two frigates, a supply ship and a force under Major-general Percy Kirke) was dilatory, and it was not until the defenders were in the last extremity that Kirke actually broke through the blockade (July 31st). Enniskillen was less closely invested, and its inhabitants, organized by Colonel Wolseley and other officers sent by Kirke, actually kept the open field and defeated the Jacobites at Newtown Butler (July 31st). A few days later the Jacobite army withdrew from the north. But it was long before an adequate army could be sent over from England to deal with it. Marshal Schomberg (q.v.), one of the most distinguished soldiers of the time, who had been expelled from the French service as a Huguenot, was indeed sent over in August, but the army he brought, some 10,000 strong, was composed of raw recruits, and when it was assembled in camp at Dundalk to be trained for its work, it was quickly ruined by an epidemic of fever. But James failed to take advantage of his opportunity to renew the war in the north, and the relics of Schomberg’s army wintered in security, covered by the Enniskillen troops. In the spring of 1690, however, more troops, this time experienced regiments from Holland, Denmark and Brandenburg, were sent, and in June, Schomberg in Ireland and Major-general Scravemore in Chester having thoroughly organized and equipped the field army, King William assumed the command
