Battle of Malplaquet: Encyclopedia - Battle of Malplaquet

Battle of Malplaquet

The Battle of Malplaquet was a battle of the War of the Spanish Succession that took place on September 11, 1709 between France and a British–Austrian alliance (known as the Allies).

The Dutch-British army (the Dutch forming the vast majority of the troops) and Austrians were led by the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugène of Savoy, while the French were commanded by Marshal Villars and Marshal Boufflers. Each side had about 90,000 troops, and were encamped within cannon range of each other near the Belgian border. The Austrians attacked at 9am, pushing the French back into the forest behind them. The Dutch broke off to attack the French right flank and succeeded with heavy casualties to distract Boufflers enough so that he could not come to Villars' aid.

Villars was able to regroup his forces, but Marlborough and Eugène attacked again and forced Villars to retreat by 3pm. The Allies had suffered so many casualties in their attack that they could not pursue him. By this time they had lost 20,000 men, twice as many as the French. It was the bloodiest battle of the war, and prevented the Allies from moving on towards Paris.

Category: Battles of the War of the Spanish Succession

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Battle of Malplaquet", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki