James Falkner - Ramillies 1706 Year of Miracles

It seems strange that no single individual written work has been devoted to such a significant event as the Battle of Ramillies. Few battles were as sudden and exciting, or victory more complete and astonishing, while such profound and lasting effects on European history would seem to have merited at least one book before now. Perhaps the events on the Sunday in May were so stark, so stunning in their impact, the success so incontrovertible, that there was not much more to say, beyond stating the bald facts. Well, that is not the case there is plenty to ponder over when considering the catastrophe that overtook Marshal Villerois fine army, and eminent authors such as Frank Taylor, Winston Churchill and David Chandler have in their own ways devoted extensive chapters to the battle in their published works, which are listed below.

All battles have within their complex details some small mysteries, and Ramillies is no exception, even leaving aside the rather large mystery of why it took Villeroi so long to realize what Marlborough was up to (the lie of the ground doesnt entirely explain it). There is considerable, well-documented, comment on the timely arrival of the Danish cavalry who took such a prominent part in the destruction of the French right Wing. However, rather less is known, or commented on, about the Danish infantry who also took part in the fighting that day. That they did so is not in doubt, for they provided the depth battalions during Orkneys attack on Offuz and Autre-Eglise, but their presence with the Dukes army, when their mounted compatriots were, until a very late stage, absent and waiting for their arrears of pay, is a puzzle. The foot soldiers could hardly have kept pace with their mounted comrades on the march to join the Dukes army. However, John Millner in his Compendious Journal (pp. 171 and 177), who took part in the fighting that day on the right flank, refers to the Danes Foot and says that they joind and fell in with six battalions and three squadrons of Danes more than the first number before given [Wrttembergs twenty-one squadrons of cavalry]. Major Peter Verneys voluminous notes on the orders of battle of the armies also refer to the Danish infantry being in action, as does David Chandler in one of his footnotes to the John Deane memoirs (p. 33), so it seems that there was a second, later, reinforcement by the Danes, not usually mentioned in accounts of the campaign.

Prominent amongst the handful of available eye-witness accounts of the Ramillies battle is that left by Colonel Jean-Martin De La Colonie, whose erudite and informative memoirs were translated into English by W C Horsley and published in 1904 as the Chronicles of an Old Campaigner. Although this valiant French soldier was mostly engaged in the heavy fighting at the southern end of the Ramillies battlefield (without a great deal of success), his reminiscences of the events that rapidly overtook, and overwhelmed, the French and Bavarian armies that Sunday are vivid, interesting and valuable.

Alison, A, Life of John, Duke of Marlborough , 1852

Atkinson, C T, Marlborough and the Rise of the British Army , 1921

, Ramillies Battlefield , Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research ( JSAHR ), 1960

Barnett, C, Marlborough , 1974

Belloc, H, The Strategy and Tactics of the Great Duke of

Marlborough , 1933

Bishop, M, Life and Adventures, 1701 1711 , 1744

Burn, W, A Scots Fusilier and Dragoon Under Marlborough , JSAHR , 1936

Burrell, S (ed), Amiable Renegade: Memoirs of Captain Peter Drake , 1960

Burton, I, The Captain General , 1968

Chandler, D, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough , 1983

, Marlborough as Military Commander , 1984

(ed), Journal of John Deane , JSAHR , 1984

(ed), Captain Robert Parker and the Comte de Merode-Westerloo , 1968

Churchill, W S, Marlborough: His Life and Times , 1947

Coxe, W, Memoirs of John, 1st Duke of Marlborough , 1848

Crockatt, J, Marlborough , 1971

Dickson, P, Red John of the Battles , 1973

Drake, P, Memoirs , 1755

Falkner, J, Great and Glorious Days , 2002

, Blenheim, 1704 , 2004

, Marlboroughs Wars: Eye Witness Accounts , 2005

Fortescue, J, History of the British Army , 1901

(ed) , Life and Adventures of Mrs Christian Davies , 1929

Horsley, W (ed), Chronicles of an Old Campaigner , 1904

Kane, R, Campaigns of King William and Queen Anne , 1745

Lediard, T, Life of John, Duke of Marlborough , 1736

Liddell Hart Centre, Papers of Major Peter Verney (relating to Orders of Battle at Ramillies)

Millner, J, A Compendious Journal , 1733

Murray, G (ed), Letters and Dispatches of the Duke of Marlborough , 1845

Orkney (Hamilton), G, Letters of 1st Earl Orkney , English Historical Review , 1904

Parker, R, Memoirs , 1747

St John, B (ed), Memoirs of the Duc de St Simon , 1878

Taylor, F, The Wars of Marlborough , 1921

Tindal, N, Continuation of Rapins History of England , 1738

Trevelyan, G, Ramillies and the Union with Scotland , 1932

Wykes, A, The Royal Hampshire Regiment , 1968