50. Armies
“Since invention of money, all other forms of a gratitude became unnecessary”
“Dancing w kwaterze Hitlera”
Havover
In 1705 army of Hanover and Celle included 20 battalions (750 each) and 32 squadrons (350 each) totaling 15,000 infantry and 11,200 cavalry. Out of that number 5 battalions had been rented to the Dutch and 5 to the Brits.
Denmark
At the start of the LNW Denmark had an army of 35,000. After the
peace of Travendal the large Danish army prepared for a major war against Sweden, became a major burden on the Danish economy, when it couldn't, as anticipated, live off the enemy's land. Downsizing the army was not possible, since the Danish king wanted to retain the option of going to war with Sweden at some future date, in order to regain the provinces lost in the
treaty of Roskilde 1658 and disposal of the thousands of troops had its own problems. The Danish king therefore decided to make more than half of the Danish army, two-thirds of which were enlisted in Germany, available to the Allied powers during the
War of the Spanish Succession. Political goodwill thus gained, could in addition be useful in any future war with Sweden and Holstein-Gottorp.
These troops had been, in turn, split two ways:
1.
Danish Auxiliary corps in Hapsburg service [1]. 8,000 troops with 2,000 more troops recruited in Germany. As compensation, Denmark would within six years receive the million
rixdollars that the Habsburg emperor owed the Danish king since 1674. If a Habsburg prince would become king of Spain another million would be transferred to the Danish treasury. These troops marched to Italy to fight under command of Prince Eugene and suffered heavy casualties which left only a half of the initial force by the end of 1702. In the spring, the corps marched through the Tyrol to
Linz where reinforcements arrived from Denmark. After the arrival of the 1703 reinforcements, the Danish corps consisted of a cavalry regiment, a dragoon regiment, and four infantry regiments. It remained in Linz until the spring of 1704 when it marched to
Hungary where it took part in the suppression of Rákóczys's Hungarian insurgency. The winter of 1704-1705 was spent living off the land in hostile
Bavaria, where its maintenance did not burden the Habsburg treasury. In 1705, the corps returned to Hungary and renewed heavy fighting. The following year, the corps combat value fell significantly when the Habsburg emperor no longer could afford to pay it.
At that point Frederick IV, who seemingly did not believe in love without a compensation, began the diplomatic efforts to extricate his troops from the Hapsburg service and by 1709 the Danish corps left Hungary. Frederick had enough money to restore this corps to its initial strength but majority of the soldiers were now Germans and Hungarians.
2.
Danish Auxiliary corps in Anglo-Dutch service [2]. 12,000 had been made available in 1701 for the service in the British and Dutch armies. The terms had been much more generous than with the Hapsburgs [3]. The corps was under command of the duke Carl Rudolf of Wurttemberg who was seemingly very good in extracting the money promised by the allied by refusing to march until the payments had been received.
Of these troops, three thousand would be horse, one thousand dragoons, and eight thousand foot. As compensation Denmark received 540,000
rixdollars as levy money, as well as 300,000 rixdollars annually as long as the war lasted. [4]
Previous monetary claims on Denmark were dropped by the powers. The Danish auxiliary corps would be paid and provisioned according to Dutch regulations, and the pay disbursed by Danish
paymasters. At the end of each year's campaign season the Danish corps would receive the same recruitment money as the Dutch army, in order to replace its manpower losses. If a company or regiment would be destroyed, its commanding officer would receive recruitment money sufficiently enough to re-raise it. The agreement expired in ten years. If twelve thousand soldiers were not enough, the Danish king would put another four thousand soldiers at the disposal of the powers. In 1703 two additional regiments, one dragoon and one foot, were raised in the name of the minor
dukes of Württemberg-Oels. But they were raised by Denmark and formed part of the Danish auxiliary corps, and when the regiments were disbanded after the end of the war, the soldiers were transferred to Danish service.
On a route to the theater these troops looted Bavaria and joined the allied force in time to take part in the Battle of Blenheim where they lost 2,300 by killed and wounded. In 1704-08 the corps had been fighting under Marlborough command (providing the money had been paid) and participated in a number of sieges and battles (2,200 soldiers and 1,300 horses lost in 1706, 3,500 in 1708 ) but hiring the new recruits during the winters. In 1709 the corps remained in the winter quarters until June, awaiting the one million
guilders owed by the Dutch Republic, then joined and lost 1,300 at Malplaquet. In 1712 Britain made peace with France and the corps was taken over by the Dutch
In 1713, the "English" units of the corps returned to Denmark, and in 1714 the rest. In a meantime Frederick IV raised 17,000 militia for the anticipated war with Sweden.
As a personal observation. while the duke Carl clearly was very good in looking for the Danish financial interests and,
seemingly, in recruitment as well, his performance as an
independent military commander is not necessarily up to the same standard and the same goes for the Danish troops in general (
this is based strictly upon the OTL performances but there is no reason to consider it improving noticeably in this TL).
Prussia
Prussia had an army of 40,000 out of which 8,000 had been sent to Italy and 5,000 to the Netherlands. Individual parts of the army took part in a total of 56 battles during the war in Italy and on the Rhine front, which of course improved their quality even if it made it difficult to conduct the future recruitment in the Prussian provinces.
Leopold von Anhalt Dessau brought about a significant increase in the performance of his troops through a new drill and other organizational changes. Due to the early autonomy of the regiment owners, the equipment of the army was very different and each regiment drilled according to its own rules. Organized chaos was the result. Von Dessau was turning the Prussian infantry into an uniform body in which every shooter carried, loaded and fired his weapon with the same precision and speed. Prince Leopold had also recognized that the rhythmic march made it possible to fire while moving. The aim of the regular training measures in the Prussian corps was to achieve the absolute
superiority of the thin infantry lines in combat against the enemy army line. The Prussian drill had the effect that the soldiers were trained off every initiative of their own until they functioned like machines even under the greatest loads.
Introduction of an iron ramrod was, definitely, a great innovation which was not unnoticed by Charles and Peter.
As far as these goals had been involved, von Dessau achieved almost a complete perfection and the system produced the impressive results on the battlefields of the WoSS where both sides had been playing by the same rules. [5]
An interlude
In 1711 Britain and France were already in a process of the separate peace negotiations but the military activities kept going on. In July Marlborough outmaneuvered Villars and penetrated French Lines of Ne Plus Ultra [6] and went to besiege the fortified town of Bouchain.
To defend the town Bouchain's governor, de Ravignau, had some 5,000 men against Marlborough's besieging army of 30,000 (on the schema it is a fortified camp North of the city) and the advantage of one of the strongest fortresses left to France, surrounded by the marshy land of the confluence of the rivers Scheldt and Sensée.
In addition, Villars' strong army had taken up position to the west of the allied camp, and had managed to open a tenuous link to the besieged garrison. In total, Marlborough had 85,000 (55,000 in a camp South from the town) and Villars 90,000 (in the camps to the West of the city). The siege was going on along the ….er… “classic rules”. The besiegers had been digging the parallels, Villars was trying to establish communication with the town across the swamps (“N” on the map) and Marlborough was preventing him from doing that. Strictly speaking, Villars was under the orders of LXIV not to risk, which made the whole exercise rather meaningless: after certain amount of digging and shooting any fortress was supposed to capitulate [7].
After a while Villars decided to ignore the royal orders (or just to define what “risk” means in that case) and quietly moved the bulk of his forces to his northern camp out of which he marched during the night by the Valenciennes road (North of the besieging army) and established strong batteries opposite to the crossings connecting besiegers with the main army (“L” on the map). The bulk of his force launched a direct attack against the outside earthworks and, especially, the opening on their right side. 5 out of 7 bridges had been destroyed which made help the besieging army quite difficult. The allied troops in the left part of the besieging camp had been trapped, and while the desperate cavalry charges from the main camp across the river helped to extricate some of them, most of the rest was pretty much an useless bloodbath. Marlborough had to abandon the siege losing 7,000 killed and wounded and up to 10,000 captured, plus all sieging artillery. Villars lost between 6 and 7,000.
Not that strategically this made a serious difference because by that time the Brits already had been looking for the way out of the war. But politically ot made certain difference providing the French with a better bargaining position in Utrecht, which had been used on the very important item of the Asiento de Negros. France had previously got from Phillip V the Asiento de Negros, allowing French slave traders to supply 5,000 slaves to the Spanish Empire each year. The Brits wanted it for themselves but now had to compromise. As a result, each side got a right for 2,500 for 10 years, instead of 30, as the Brits insisted. This was a serious blow because The British government sought to reduce its debt by increasing the volume of trade it had with Spain, which required gaining monopolistic access to the Asiento de Negros. Which, as far as this TL is involved, meant that for the next few years Britain is going to be very careful with the subsidies and involvements in the foreign adventures not directly involving its interests. [8]
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[1]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_Auxiliary_Corps_in_Habsburg_service_1701–1709#Background
[2]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_Auxiliary_Corps_in_Anglo-Dutch_service_1701–1714
[3] No surprise there: the Brits and Dutch had much more money to spread around than the Hapsburgs who could not pay regularly even their own troops.
[4] To
@von Adler we seemingly undersold the Swedes and now it is too late (or were the Swedish numbers in £££?). Why didn’t I find these numbers earlier? 🤑🤑🤑
[5] A car, which shows the best performance on a highway is not necessarily the best on a dirt road.
[6] While Vauban was, unquestionably, the outstanding military engineer, IMO the whole idea of the fortified lines was pretty much a massive waste of the resources because, unless you can strongly garrison the whole perimeter, sooner or later an energetic opponent is going to find an undefended place (I wonder if the Great Wall of China ever stopped any serious invasion). The same goes for his system of the fortifications. He designed a series of the strongly fortified places and then explained to everybody how they can be taken with the minimal risk, making the sieges one more “game by the rules”: it was well-known to
both sides how much time it should take between starting the first parallel and the point by which the citadel becomes exposed to the direct fire and its garrison can honorably surrender saving besiegers and besieged unnecessary losses related to storming the walls, fighting inside the fortress and other uncivilized nonsense.
[7] Which did happen in OTL. The fortress capitulated after a month of a siege. The next year Villars took it back after 18 days of siege.
[8] In practical terms, no cart blanche for the future King George in his adventures as Elector of Hanover. 😜