The Battle of Blenheim fought on 13 August [O.S. 2 August] 1704, was a major battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. The overwhelming Allied victory ensured the safety of Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army, thus preventing the collapse of the reconstituted Grand Alliance.
The Battle of Ramillies, fought on 23 May 1706, was a battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. For the Grand Alliance – Austria, England, and the Dutch Republic – the battle had followed an indecisive campaign against the Bourbon armies of King Louis XIV of France in 1705. Although the Allies had captured Barcelona that year, they had been forced to abandon their campaign on the Moselle, had stalled in the Spanish Netherlands and suffered defeat in northern Italy. Yet despite his opponents' setbacks Louis XIV wanted peace, but on reasonable terms. Because of this, as well as to maintain their momentum, the French and their allies took the offensive in 1706.
General John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, 1st Prince of Mindelheim, 1st Count of Nellenburg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, was an English soldier and statesman. From a gentry family, he served first as a page at the court of the House of Stuart under James, Duke of York, through the 1670s and early 1680s, earning military and political advancement through his courage and diplomatic skill. He is known for never having lost a battle.
The Battle of Malplaquet took place on 11 September 1709 during the War of the Spanish Succession, near Taisnières-sur-Hon in modern France, then part of the Spanish Netherlands. A French army of around 75,000 men, commanded by the Duke of Villars, engaged a Grand Alliance force of 86,000 under the Duke of Marlborough. In one of the bloodiest battles of the 18th century, the Allies won a narrow victory, but suffered heavy casualties.
James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick, 1st Duke of Liria and Jérica, 1st Duke of Fitz-James was an Anglo-French military leader and the illegitimate son of King James II and VII by Arabella Churchill, sister of the 1st Duke of Marlborough. Berwick was a successful general in the pay of Louis XIV of France.
The Battle of Oudenarde, also known as the Battle of Oudenaarde, was a major engagement of the War of the Spanish Succession, pitting a Grand Alliance force consisting of eighty thousand men under the command of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy against a French force of eighty-five thousand men under the command of the Duc de Bourgogne and the Duc de Vendôme, the battle resulting in a great victory for the Grand Alliance. The battle was fought near the city of Oudenaarde, at the time part of the Spanish Netherlands, on 11 July 1708. With this victory, the Grand Alliance ensured the fall of various French territories, giving them a significant strategic and tactical advantage during this stage of the war. The battle was fought in the later years of the war, a conflict that had come about as a result of English, Dutch and Habsburg apprehension at the possibility of a Bourbon succeeding the deceased King of Spain, Charles II, and combining their two nations and empires into one.
Lieutenant-General William Cadogan, 1st Earl Cadogan was an Irish-born British Army officer. He began his active military service during the Williamite War in Ireland in 1689 and ended it with the suppression of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion. A close associate and confidant of the Duke of Marlborough, he was also a diplomat and Whig politician who sat in the English and British Houses of Commons from 1705 until 1716, when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Cadogan.
The Battle of Schellenberg took place on 2 July 1704 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.
Anthonie Heinsius was a Dutch statesman who served as Grand Pensionary of Holland from 1689 to his death in 1720. Heinsius was a tough negotiator and one of the greatest and most obstinate opponents of the expansionist policies of Louis XIV's France. He was one of the driving forces behind the anti-France coalitions of the Nine Years' War (1688–97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14).
Henry, Count of Nassau, Lord of Overkirk was a Dutch military general and second cousin of King William III of England and his Master of the Horse. Lord of Ouwerkerk and Woudenberg in the Netherlands, he was called by the English "Lord Overkirk" or "Count Overkirk".
The Battle of Elixheim, 18 July 1705, also known as the Passage of the Lines of Brabant was a battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. The Duke of Marlborough successfully broke through the French Lines of Brabant, an arc of defensive fieldworks stretching in a seventy-mile arc from Antwerp to Namur. Although he was unable to bring about a decisive battle, the breaking and subsequent razing of the lines would prove critical to the allied victory at Ramillies the next year.
The siege of Lille was the salient operation of the 1708 campaign season during the War of the Spanish Succession. After an obstinate defence of 120 days, the French garrison surrendered the city and citadel of Lille, commanded by Marshal Boufflers, to the forces of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene.
General John Richmond Webb, of Biddesden House, Ludgershall, Wiltshire, was a British general and Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1695 to 1724. Politically he was a Hanoverian Tory who supported the Hanoverian Succession rather than the rival Jacobite movement.
The siege of Ghent was the last operation of the 1708 campaign season during the War of the Spanish Succession. After successfully taking Lille shortly before, the Duke of Marlborough moved his forces onto the town of Ghent where after a 12-day siege the town's governor, Count Charles de La Mothe-Houdancourt, surrendered.
The siege of Ostend took place during the War of the Spanish Succession. In the wake of the Allied victory over the French at the Battle of Ramillies in May 1706, town and cities across the Spanish Netherlands rapidly surrendered to the Duke of Marlborough's victorious forces often without a fight. Ostend, a port on the North Sea coast, offered more resistance.
Claude Frederic t'Serclaes, Count of Tilly, was a soldier and later general in the Dutch States Army. In the Dutch army he took part in the Franco-Dutch War, Nine Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession.
Charles, comte de la Mothe Houdancourt was a French Lieutenant-General.
Frederick Christiaan van Reede, 2nd Earl of Athlone, baron of Ginkel and Agrim, lord of Amerongen, was a Dutch general and diplomat in the service of the Dutch Republic during the Nine Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession.
The siege of Tournai was a siege of the city of Tournai, then part of the Kingdom of France, between 28 June and 3 September 1709. A Grand Alliance army under the British Duke of Marlborough successfully forced the surrender of the French garrison during the War of the Spanish Succession.
Daniël Wolf baron van Dopff was a prominent soldier in the Dutch Republic. He was, among other things, general of the cavalry of the Dutch States Army in the War of the Spanish Succession, Quartermaster general of that army, and later commander and governor of the fortress of Maastricht.
Great Britain 
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