Battle of Schellenberg - Background

Background

The Battle of Schellenberg was part of the Grand Alliance's campaign of 1704 to prevent the Franco-Bavarian army from threatening Vienna, the capital of Habsburg Austria. The campaign began in earnest on 19 May when the Duke of Marlborough began his 250 mile (400 km) march from Bedburg near Cologne towards the Elector of Bavaria's and Marshal Marsin's Franco-Bavarian army on the Danube. Marlborough had initially deceived the French commanders – Marshal Villeroi in the Spanish Netherlands and Marshal Tallard along the Rhine – into thinking his target was Alsace or the Moselle farther to the north. However, when the Elector was notified on 5 June of Marlborough's march from the Low Countries, he had correctly predicted that it was his principality of Bavaria that was the Allies' real target.

Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I was keen to lure the Elector back into the Imperial fold after he had switched allegiance to fight for King Louis XIV before the war. Given this duplicity, Marlborough thought the best way to secure Bavaria for the Alliance was to negotiate from a position of strength by invading the Elector's territories, hoping to persuade him to change sides before he could be reinforced. By 22 June Marlborough's army had linked up with elements of the Margrave of Baden's Imperial forces at Launsheim; by the end of June their combined strength totalled nearly 80,000 men (see map on right). The Franco-Bavarian army camped at Ulm were numerically inferior to the Allies, and a large part of the Elector's troops were scattered about garrisons in his territories as far as Munich and the Tyrolese frontier, but his position was far from desperate: if he could hold out for a month, Tallard would arrive from the Rhine with French reinforcements.

Once the Allies had combined their forces, the Elector and Marsin moved their 40,000 troops into the entrenched camp between Dillingen and Lauingen on the north bank of the Danube. The Allied commanders – unwilling to attack such a strong position rendered impregnable by redoubts and inundations – passed round Dillingen to the north through Balmershofen and Armerdingen in the direction of Donauwörth. If captured, the bridgehead at Donauwörth (overlooked by the Schellenberg) would offer new communications with the friendly states in central Germany by way of Nördlingen and Nuremberg, as well as providing a good crossing-place over the Danube for re-supply when the Allies were south of the river.