The Field of Blenheim

Extract

On a sunny morning in August I walked out of Donauworth and took the straight tree-lined road which leads up the Danube valley towards Ulm. The time was still one for harvesting; peasants dotted the wide and open plain, piling bullock waggons with their sheaves, or eating the midday ration in the shade.

A warm silence hung over contented fields. Geese gossiping down the village street, a white church rising among its cottages—these were the things of yesterday and tomorrow, the gentle ornaments of peace.

In my mind’s eye, as drew nearer the battlefield of Blenheim, I saw other and less soothing symbols: English red-coats, lively with the rumour of action, tramping along the same road, with their heavy cannon lumbering behind.

From the church tower at Tapfheim, on the evening of August the twelfth, 1704, Marlborough and Prince Eugene were watching the infantry of France, as they moved without suspicion of alarm to their encampment on the vast plain before them. And even I, walking through Tapfheim in the year 1933, could sense a little of their exaltation.