Fontenoy 1745 by Michael McNally & Seán Ó'Brógáin

Author:Michael McNally & Seán Ó'Brógáin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472816269
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

A soldier’s perspective of the early morning battlefield. This panorama clearly shows how the battlefield would have looked to men from both sides, their view obscured by a heavy mist that burned off before the Allied left wing could reach its objectives.

Around Fontenoy itself, Waldeck’s battalions had by now closed with the enemy and were engaged in a desperate fight to break into the village but unsupported, and, in order to prevent his being counterattacked on his, by now open, flank he threw his second line into the attack so that his men were fully engaged against the ‘hook’ of the French line, although with Cronström seemingly unable or unwilling to advance farther he was now isolated and success had to come quickly or not at all.

It is at this point that the first of many contradictions enters into the accounts of the battle as some sources cite that the leading elements of Ilten’s Hanoverian brigades led by their converged grenadiers, now attacked the farther end of the village, engaging the Beauvoisis Regiment and one of the battalions of Brigade du Roi. The problem with this contention is that the Hanoverians were still to the rear of the right wing and thus were unlikely to be in a position to go into action that early. The likelihood is that these commentators have merged the two Dutch attacks into a single event.

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