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Updated: June 1, 2025
The campaign of 1703 closed disastrously for the allies. Europe was never in greater peril. Bavaria united with France and Spain to crush Austria. The Austrians had only twenty thousand men, while the Bavarians had forty-five thousand men in the centre of Germany, and Marshal Tallard was posted, with forty-five thousand men, on the Upper Rhine.
A thick haze covered the ground, and it was not until the allied right and centre had advanced nearly within cannon-shot of the enemy that Tallard was aware of their approach. He made his preparations with what haste he could, and about eight o'clock a heavy fire of artillery was opened from the French right on the advancing left wing of the British.
Tallard, with his head stretched forward, sucked in, so to speak, all the Regent's words as they were proffered, and those of the declaration, as the Keeper of the Seals read them. Noailles, inwardly distracted, could not hide his distraction; Huxelles, entirely occupied in smoothing himself, forgot to frown. I divided my attention between the declaration and these persons.
During the transactions of the last session, the negotiation for a second partition treaty had been carried on in London by the French minister Tallard, in conjunction with the earls of Portland and Jersey, and was soon brought to perfection.
The French embassy made as magnificent an appearance m England as the English embassy had made in France. The mansion of the Duke of Ormond, one of the finest houses in Saint James's Square, was taken for Tallard.
Tallard and Marsin had forty-five thousand Frenchmen under them, all veterans and all trained to act together; the Elector's own troops also were good soldiers. Marlborough, like Wellington at Waterloo, headed an army of which the larger proportion consisted, not of English, but of men of many different nations and many different languages.
He was admitted to Blansac, to whom he said that the Duke of Marlborough had sent him to say that he had forty battalions and sixty pieces of cannon at his disposal, with reinforcements to any extent at command; that he should surround the village on all sides; that the army of Tallard was in flight, and the remains of that of the Elector in retreat; that Tallard and many general officers were prisoners; that Blansac could hope for no reinforcements; and that, therefore, he had better at once make an honourable capitulation, and surrender, himself with all his men prisoners of war, than attempt a struggle in which he was sure to be worsted with great loss.
The earl of Portland, by his majesty's order, had communicated to Secretary Vernon the principal conditions which the French king proposed; he himself wrote a letter to lord chancellor Somers, desiring his advice with regard to the propositions, and full powers under the great seal, with blanks to be filled up occasionally, that he might immediately begin the treaty with count Tallard.
All this weighed heavily upon Frejus by the rebound. Despite the apparent tranquillity of his visage, he appeared confounded. He replied by a silence of respect and commiseration in which he enveloped himself; nevertheless, he could not do so to the Duc de Villeroy, the Marechal de Tallard, and a few others.
They had ninety guns, while the allies had but fifty-one; while out of the 60,000 troops under Marshal Tallard 45,000 were the best troops France could produce. The allied army was a motley assembly, composed of nearly equal numbers of English, Prussians, Danes, Wurtemburghers, Dutch, Hanoverians, and Hessians.
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