The Battle of Blenheim was a major battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. It ended French plans of knocking Emperor Leopold out of the war. The battle was fought on the banks of the Danube in and around the small village of Blindheim, from which the English ‘Blenheim’ is derived.
About Battle of Blenheim in brief
The Battle of Blenheim was a major battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. It ended French plans of knocking Emperor Leopold out of the war. The French suffered catastrophic casualties in the battle including their commander-in-chief, Tallard, who was taken captive to England. The Allies had taken Landau, and the towns of Trier and Trarbach on the Moselle in preparation for the following year’s campaign into France itself. But the Grand Alliance’s army had to defend Liège from a French counteroffensive. The war raged on for another decade, with the French winning the war in 1704 and the Habsburgs in 1705. The battle was fought on the banks of the Danube in and around the small village of Blindheim, from which the English ‘Blenheim’ is derived. It was one of the battles that altered the course of thewar, which until then was favouring the French and Spanish Bourbons. The Duke of Marlborough, realising the danger to Vienna, resolved to alleviate the peril to Vienna by marching his forces south from Bedburg to help maintain Emperor Leopsold within the Grand alliance. He used the secrecy and guile of the Dutch to deceive his Dutch allies by pretending to move his troops to the Mosedle – but there would be no slip of the tongue. The only way to reinforce the Austrians was by the use of guile, but there was only one way to do it – and that was to reinforce them in the Dutch Netherlands, where the Dutch would not permit any major weakening of the forces of the French or Austrians.
In 1704, the Allies took Landau and Trier in the north, and later Landau in the south, and then Landau again in the east, and finally Landau on the east coast of the Rhine in the west. The Battle of Landau was the first major Allied victory over the French in the war, which was won by the Allies in 1703. The victory ensured the safety of Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army, thus preventing the collapse of the reconstituted Grand Alliance. It also ended French hopes of taking the Holy Roman Emperor’s capital, Vienna, to gain a favourable peace settlement with the Spanish and the Dutch. The Grand Alliance was re-established in 1708, but the war continued to rage on for the next decade and a half, with France winning the battle in 1713. The Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1714, ending the French-Spanish War of 1713 and the First French War of 1815. The Second French war of 1715 ended with the Treaty of Paris and the end of the First World War, but it was not until 1727 that the French were able to take control of the city of Vienna. The treaty was signed by King Louis XVI of France and the Spanish, and was followed by the Second French War, which ended in 1728.
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