King William’s Nemesis - The Life and Times of Francois-Henri de Montmorency- Boutteville, Duke of Luxemburg, Marshal of France Synopsis In a purple passage in his once famous History of England, Lord Macaulay referred to ‘the hunch backed dwarf who urged forward the fiery onset of France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of England’. The words are part of a florid description of the battle of Landen which took place in July 1693, and resulted in a French triumph. The victorious commander was the Marshal-Duke of Luxemburg, the subject of this book, the vanquished was William, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the United Provinces, and King of England, Scotland and Ireland. The preceding two decades had seen many battles contested by armies led by the two, and the title above implies the usual outcome. In total, they were directly opposed in nearly a dozen major engagements, and King William never achieved a victory, though such was his resilience that he was never forced to leave the field for long. He was a towering figure of his age, changing British and European history not least by checking the ambitions of Louis XIV, but it was his fondest wish to be remembered as a great general; he is not, largely because he so often came up against one who was, namely the Marshal-Duke of Luxemburg. This is an account of Luxemburg’s long and almost entirely successful military career, which began in the train of another great French general, the Prince of Condé, in 1647 and ended in 1694 with a well conducted campaign of manoeuvre, a few months before his sudden death. However, other parts of his life rarely ran smoothly; his deformity has been highlighted in Macaulay’s words, he was born the posthumous son of a minor noble disgraced and executed for duelling, and he spent a considerable part of his life in revolt against the French King, or under a cloud of royal disfavour. King Louis XIV never liked or wholly trusted him, but was forced to employ him because there was no French general of near comparable ability, once the aforementioned Condé and Marshal Turenne had departed the scene. The book describes Luxemburg’s many battles and campaigns, and seeks to set them in context, because the wars of which they formed a part are not well known to most English speaking readers. Other major episodes of the life are chronicled, especially involvements in the Fronde and the Affair of the Poisons, either of which might ended his career, and even led to a premature death. This is the first biography in English of one of the great generals of the 17th Century. 1 King William’s Nemesis - The Life and Times of Francois-Henri de Montmorency- Boutteville, Duke of Luxemburg, Marshal of France Contents 1. Introduction 2. Birth, Antecedents, and Early Life, 1628-1648 2.1 An Inauspicious Start to Life 2.2 The War between France and Spain and Condé’s Meteoric Rise 2.3 The Start of Luxemburg’s Military Career 3. The Fronde and Its Aftermath, 1648-1659 3.1 Preamble 3.2 The Fronde of the Parliaments 3.3 Uneasy Peace 3.4 The Princely Fronde 3.5 Condé’s Alliance with Spain, Luxemburg’s Burgundian Campaign 3.6 The Campaign in the Spanish Netherlands 3.7 Dunkirk and the End-Game of Condé’s Revolt 4. Reconciliation without Recognition, 1659-1672 4.1 A Marriage of Convenience 4.2 Luxemburg’s Stuttering Pursuit of Royal Favour 4.3 Resumption of Luxemburg’s Military Career 5. The Dutch War, 1672-1673 5.1 The Background to France’s Dutch War 5.2 Preparations for War 5.3 The Invasion of Holland 5.4 Luxemburg in Command at Utrecht 5.5 The First Confrontation between Luxemburg and William of Orange 5.6 Stalemate in Holland 6. The European War, 1673-1678 6.1 Luxemburg’s Retreat from Utrecht 6.2 Quarrels with Louvois and the Battle of Seneffe 6.3 Luxemburg, Marshal of France 6.4 The Philippsburg Debacle 6.5 Rehabilitation 6.6 The Last Stages of the War 2 7. Indiscretion, Imprisonment, and Disgrace, 1678-1688 7.1 The Prospect of Peace 7.2 Background to the Affair of the Poisons 7.3 The Circumstances Leading to Luxemburg’s Entanglement 7.4 Imprisonment and Trial 7.5 The Aftermath of the Affair 8. Triumphant Return, 1688-1691 8.1 The Lead-up to the War of the League of Augsburg 8.2 Luxemburg’s Recall 8.3 The Battle of Fleurus 9. The Last Great Victories, 1691-1693 9.1 The Campaign of 1691 and the Battle of Leuze 9.2 The Campaign of 1692 and the Battle of Steenkirk 9.3 The Campaign of 1693 and the Battle of Landen (Neerwinden) 9.4 The Turning Point in the War 10. The Final Chapter, 1693-1695 10.1 A Failed Conspiracy 10.2 Luxemburg’s Last Campaigns at Court and in Flanders 10.3 The Death of the Marshal-Duke of Luxemburg and the Aftermath 10.4 A Final Appraisal Timeline Appendix 1 – Some 17th Century Battlefield Facts References 3 King William’s Nemesis - The Life and Times of Francois-Henri de Montmorency- Boutteville, Duke of Luxemburg, Marshal of France List of Figures 1. Francois-Henri de Montmorency-Boutteville, Duke of Luxemburg, Marshal of France 2. Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Condé 3. The Main Battleground during Luxemburg’s Career (Northern France and the Spanish Netherlands) 4. Francois-Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois 5. Prince William of Orange, later King William III of England 6. The Battle of Fleurus 7. The Battle of Steenkirk 8. The Battle of Landen (Neerwinden) 4 King William’s Nemesis - The Life and Times of Francois-Henri de Montmorency- Boutteville, Duke of Luxemburg, Marshal of France 1. Introduction A real turning point of modern British history occurred in 1689, when their new monarch, King William III brought his three kingdoms into the war, variously named as the War of the League of Augsburg, King William’s War, the Nine Years War, or the War of the English Succession. Although well documented in Macaulay’s History of England, this conflict has since attracted much less British attention than its successor, the War of the Spanish Succession, which followed it after an interval of four years of peace. Perhaps this is not surprising, because in contrast to Marlborough’s succession of victories, successes were few and far between in the earlier war for the alliance formed against Louis XIV’s France by King William. Ireland was secured for the King, but English naval forces suffered their worst ever defeat against France, off Beachy Head, while in Flanders, a series of major battles were lost and many fortified towns surrendered. That the tide turned for the allies, was in large part due to internal conditions in France, with famine in 1693 presaging shortages of money which constrained the sizes of the armies and fleets that France could muster, but the death in early 1695 of the French commander in Flanders, the Marshal-Duke of Luxemburg, was a significant factor, as he proved irreplaceable. Luxemburg’s victories in the early 1690s were the culmination of a military career which had begun promisingly enough almost fifty years before, in the war with Spain which established France as the paramount state in Europe, and he was to stumble rarely thereafter in purely military terms. Like his elder cousin and mentor, the Great Condé, whose victories at Rocroy and Lens in the 1640s ended Spanish claims to invincibility, Luxemburg showed from the start, the ability to think coolly in the heat of battle, and the indomitable will that allows victory to be conjured from unpromising circumstances. There is no doubt that, especially in his younger days, he was proud to excess, hot-headed, and unthinking of the consequences of his actions, and these characteristics, tolerable if channelled by a respected leader in war, were rather less compatible with the mores of Court life in 17th century France. Perhaps it was fortunate for Luxemburg that he hardly knew peace during the years of his youth, and had calmed down a bit when it eventually came, but even then he was to find it very difficult to keep out of trouble, despite the best efforts of Condé and other loyal friends and relatives to protect him. The royal favour, essential if he was to be given opportunities to command, was obtained with the utmost difficulty, and then almost tossed away on several occasions, because he could not guard his tongue or control his activities between campaigns. By the 5 end of his career Luxemburg had become indispensable to King Louis XIV who had little choice but to ignore provocations which would have cost anyone else his command and position at Court, but in earlier years Luxemburg paid for some of his indiscretions. Another key official relationship during a large part of his career, that with the Marquis Louvois, the great French Minister of War, began as a friendship marked by the exchange of dry, sarcastic letters which both seemed to enjoy, but almost inevitably given their personalities, degenerated into bitter enmity, with Louvois seeking disgrace or worse for his one-time friend during the ‘Affair of the Poisons’ in the early 1680s. Apart from his fiery temperament and military capabilities, there were two other matters that shaped opinions of Luxemburg during his lifetime, and afterwards. Firstly, he was a small, twisted hunchback, a ‘Bossu’, and this was certainly a factor in his King’s dislike of him.