Battle of Malplaquet (1709): Marlborough's Costliest Victory

The Battle of Malplaquet, fought on 11 September 1709 near Mons on today’s French-Belgian border, was the largest and bloodiest battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. The Allied army under the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy forced Marshal Villars’s French army to retreat, but at the cost of roughly twice as many casualties as the French. The slaughter turned many in Britain against the war and helped bring about Marlborough’s fall.

Background

By 1709 France had suffered a series of defeats in the War of the Spanish Succession, including Blenheim in 1704, Ramillies in 1706 and Oudenarde in 1708. The country was also devastated by the Great Frost of 1709 and the famine that followed.

Louis XIV opened peace talks in the spring of 1709 and was ready to make major concessions. The Allies, however, demanded that he help remove his own grandson, Philip V, from the throne of Spain by force if necessary. Louis refused, and the war went on.

In the summer of 1709 Marlborough and Eugene took Tournai and then moved against Mons. Villars, France’s most aggressive commander, was ordered to prevent its loss. He took up a strong position near the hamlet of Malplaquet, in a gap between two woods, and spent two days fortifying it with earthworks and barricades of felled trees.

The battle

The Allies had around 86,000 to 90,000 men against roughly 75,000 to 80,000 French troops. Marlborough and Eugene planned to attack both French wings in the woods, drawing in Villars’s reserves, and then break through the weakened centre.

The fighting began early on 11 September. On the Allied right, Eugene’s troops fought their way slowly through the Wood of Taisnières in brutal close-quarters combat. On the left, Dutch troops under the young John William Friso, Prince of Orange, attacked the French right with great courage but were cut down in large numbers by fire from the entrenchments.

As the morning went on, Villars weakened his centre to support his left. He was then badly wounded in the knee and carried from the field, and command passed to the elderly Marshal Boufflers. In the early afternoon British infantry stormed the redoubts in the French centre, and Allied cavalry poured through the gap.

A fierce cavalry struggle followed, with the French household cavalry charging several times. Boufflers finally ordered a retreat, which was carried out in good order. The exhausted Allies were unable to pursue. By evening they held the battlefield, but the ground in front of the French entrenchments was covered with dead and wounded, and Marlborough himself described it in a letter to his wife as “a very murdering battle”. Many of the wounded lay untreated for days.

By the numbers

Figures are estimates from standard modern histories; contemporary reports varied widely.

Consequences

The Allies captured Mons on 20 October 1709, but Malplaquet did not break France. Villars, who had kept his army intact, is said to have written to the king that a few more such defeats would destroy the enemy. The French saw the battle as a sign that their army could still fight the Allies to a standstill.

In Britain the casualty lists caused shock. Tory writers accused Marlborough and the Whigs of prolonging the war for profit and glory. After the trial of the preacher Henry Sacheverell in 1710 set off a wave of Tory feeling, the Tories won the general election of that year and began secret peace talks with France. Marlborough was dismissed as captain-general on 31 December 1711, and the war ended for Britain with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

Key people

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722) was the leading Allied commander and never lost a battle, but Malplaquet was the costliest of his victories. Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736), the Habsburg general, was his close partner and was slightly wounded in the head during the battle.

Claude-Louis-Hector de Villars (1653–1734) prepared the French defence and later defeated the Allies at Denain in 1712. Louis-François de Boufflers (1644–1711), though senior to Villars, had volunteered to serve under him and directed the retreat.

Timeline

• 1709, spring: Peace talks at The Hague fail when Louis XIV rejects the Allied terms.
• 1709, 3 September: The citadel of Tournai surrenders to the Allies.
• 1709, 9–10 September: Villars fortifies his position at Malplaquet.
• 1709, 11 September: The Battle of Malplaquet is fought; the French withdraw.
• 1709, 20 October: Mons surrenders to the Allies.
• 1710, October: The Tories win the British general election.
• 1711, 31 December: Marlborough is dismissed from his command.

Why it matters

Malplaquet showed the limits of military victory in the War of the Spanish Succession. The Allies won the field but lost so many men that the battle strengthened the case for a negotiated peace, helping to end Marlborough’s career and to shape the compromise settlement at Utrecht.