The French Defeats of the War of the Spanish Succession, 1704-1708 ; Les défaites françaises de la guerre de Succession d'Espagne, 1704-1708

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Abstract

The war of the Spanish Succession is the last war fought by Louis XIV. It begins with a succession of astonishing defeats: Blenheim (Bavaria, 1704), Ramillies and Turin (Brabant and Piedmont, 1706), Audenarde (Flanders, 1708). The method known as "new battle-history" lets us temper the traditional vision, which claims that French have been defeated because their armies where led by courtiers that faced two military geniuses: John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, and Prince Eugene of Savoy. This historiographic approach focuses on the battle as an event, and seeks to treat it in all its dimensions: political, strategic and tactical aspects; logistics; how soldiers fight and what they feel; shock wave.Early eighteenth-century warfare is in many ways limited: armies highly rely on their supply sources. Eugene and Marlborough, thanks to their audacity and their talent, are able to speed up the operations, but without changing the way war is fought. There is no single "decisive" battle: the war of the Spanish Succession remains as a war of attrition. Battles are rare and formidable events where a singular fighting experience takes place; all contemporary kinds of combat and violence are to be observed. The importance of a battle is not immediately obvious. Its image takes time to come out. Versailles' courtiers need to compare official news, private letters, French or foreign gazettes, in order to understand what happened. The king conducts investigations to identify the generals and units that have served well, and those that have not. In the end, it is writers and artists who are in charge of fixing what image of these battles will be left for posterity. ; La guerre de Succession d'Espagne, dernière guerre du règne de Louis XIV, est marquée par une série de défaites retentissantes : Blenheim (1704, Bavière), Ramillies et Turin (1706, Brabant et Piémont), Audenarde (1708, Flandre). L'approche qualifiée de « nouvelle histoire-bataille » permet de relativiser la vision traditionnelle qui explique ces défaites par le ...