Battle of Schellenberg

Battle of Schellenberg
Part of the War of the Spanish Succession
The Battle of Schellenberg by Jan van Huchtenburg
Date 2 July 1704[a] Location Donauwörth, Bavaria 48°43′5″N 10°48′0″E / 48.71806°N 10.80000°E / 48.71806; 10.80000 Result Grand Alliance victory
Belligerents
Grand Alliance:  England  Dutch Republic  Holy Roman Empire  Prussia  Scotland	Bavaria  France
Commanders and leaders
Marlborough Louis William of Baden Limburg Stirum † Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg  † Van Goor † General Beinheim  †	Comte d'Arco Marquis de Maffei de Léc
Strength
22,000 [1]	12,000 men, 8 guns [2]
Casualties and losses
5,000 killed or wounded[3]	5,000 killed, wounded or captured[4]

The Battle of Schellenberg^[b] took place on 2 July 1704 ^[a] during the War of the Spanish Succession. The engagement was part of the Duke of Marlborough's campaign to save the Habsburg capital of Vienna from a threatened advance by King Louis XIV's Franco-Bavarian forces ranged in southern Germany. Marlborough had commenced his 250-mile (400 km) march from Bedburg, near Cologne, on 19 May; within five weeks he had linked his forces with those of the Margrave of Baden, before continuing on to the river Danube. Once in southern Germany, the Allies' task was to induce Max Emanuel, the Elector of Bavaria, to abandon his allegiance to Louis XIV and rejoin the Grand Alliance; but to force the issue, the Allies first needed to secure a fortified bridgehead and magazine on the Danube, through which their supplies could cross to the south of the river into the heart of the Elector's lands. For this purpose, Marlborough selected the town of Donauwörth.

Once the Elector and his co-commander, Marshal Marsin, knew of the Allies' objective, they dispatched Count d'Arco with an advance force of 12,000 men from their main camp at Dillingen to strengthen and hold the Schellenberg heights above the town. Rejecting a protracted siege, Marlborough decided in favour of a quick assault, before the position could be made impregnable. After two failed attempts to storm the barricades, the Allied commanders, acting in unison, finally managed to overwhelm the defenders. It had taken just two hours to secure the bridgehead over the river in a hard-fought contest, but following the victory, momentum was lost to indecision. The deliberate devastation of the Elector's lands in Bavaria failed to bring Max Emanuel to battle or persuade him back into the Imperial fold. Only when Marshal Tallard arrived with reinforcements to strengthen the Elector's forces, and Prince Eugene of Savoy arrived from the Rhine to bolster the Allies, was the stage finally set for the decisive action at the Battle of Blenheim the following month.

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