1704 - Political Events

Political Events

Thorn falls to Sweden's Karl (Charles) XII after an 8-month siege in which he has lost only 50 men. Karl has his ambassador at Warsaw use bribery and intimidation to secure the election July 2 of Stanislaw Leszczynski, 37, to succeed the elector of Saxony Augustus II as king of Poland (see 1705).

The Cossack hetman Mazepa helps Russia's Peter I in the Volhynian campaign as the Great Northern War continues. Peter's onetime orderly Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov, 30, demonstrates his military prowess and will ultimately be elevated to the rank of field marshal.

The Battle of Donauworth (Schellenberg Heights) on the Danube in Bavaria July 2 ends in victory for England's duke of Marlborough, who commands a 52,000-man army in the continuing War of the Spanish Succession. Marlborough has marched his 10,000 British and 42,000 Allied troops up the Rhine to relieve Franco-Bavarian pressure on Vienna, burning 300 villages in an effort to provoke Maximilian II Emanuel, elector of Bavaria, to come out and fight. He storms the Schellenberg Heights near Donauworth, sustaining 5,400 casualties while killing, wounding, or capturing 6,000 of the enemy's 12,000-man defending force, commanded by Count d'Arco. The Bavarian elector waits for French reinforcements, but Austrian troops occupy Munich and will remain for a decade (see Sendlinger massacre, 1705).

Gibraltar (Jebel-al-Tarik) falls to English forces August 4 (see 1702); Admiral George Rooke wrests the rocky fortress from the Spanish, and the British will hold the entrance to the Mediterranean for centuries.

The Battle of Blenheim (Blindheim, or Hochstadt) in Bavaria August 13 gives England's duke of Marlborough a stunning victory over the French-Bavarian-Prussian coalition. Supported by Eugene of Savoy (whose realm is overrun in his absence by French forces under the duc de Vendôme), Marlborough's 10,000 English infantry and cavalry are augmented by 42,000 allied troops to face 56,000 under the command of Count Camille de Tallard, 52. Marlborough himself leads the cavalry charge that breaks the enemy's resistance. He drives his foes into the Danube, hundreds drown, 4,500 of the Franco-Bavarian army die, and 7,500 are wounded. The English and their allies lose 670 plus 1,500 wounded. Marlborough and Eugene take 11,000 prisoners, including Marshal de Tallard, with 24 battalions of infantry and four regiments of dragoons that include the finest in the French army. The French and Bavarians lose 100 guns, and the French survivors retreat first to the Rhine, then to the Moselle. Only 16,000 French survivors return home, and the loss brings dismay to France's wives and mothers as well as to Louis XIV, whose military supremacy is gone forever.