Tuesday 29 October 2013

A Female Soldier - Mother Ross II


Campaigning in Bavaria
Battle of Schellenberg
In March 1703 Marlborough returned to the Netherlands for the beginning of the spring campaign and by 24th April the army was preparing to besiege Bonn[i]. The French capitulated on 12th May when the walls had been breached, prior to the assault planned for the following day.

The troops then marched to join the main Allied army at Maastricht, following the manoeuvres of Boufflers and Villeroy. The Dutch army was defeated at the Battle of Ekeren on 30th June; but much of the summer was spent observing the French.
The following campaigning season saw the Allied army divided into two; one under Field Marshall van Nassau Ouwerkerk was to fight the French in the Low Countries[ii]. The other under Marlborough set off for the Danube. During the march the Duke of Marlborough took soldiers, unable to march further, into his own coach. Villeroy took 20,000 men to reinforce the Elector of Bavaria, who installed himself in a strong position at Donauwörth[iii].

Duke of Wurttemberg
The Battle of Schellenberg was fought on 2nd July 1704; Marlborough’s intention was to reduce the threat of Villeroy’s army to Vienna.
‘The slaughter, which was very great, had lasted above an hour, when the Duke of Wirtenberg had the good fortune, with seven squadrons, to enter the enemy’s trenches, by the covered way of Donawert, and fell upon their rear.’[iv]
During the fighting Christian was wounded;

 ‘In the second attack, I received a ball  in my hip, which is so lodged between the bones that it can never be extracted; to this day the wound is open, and has almost deprived me of the use of my leg and thigh.’[v]
Christian was taken to a hospital near Schellenberg, but the issue of her sex was not discovered by her doctors. She received her share of the plunder, which the Duke of Marlborough had ordered was to be distributed amongst all the soldiers.

Blenheim and After
Battle of Blenheim
Following this victory the Allies took the towns of Rain and Aicha[vi] and laid waste to the Bavarian countryside. The French arrived at Augsburg at the beginning of August. The Allies were joined by Prince Eugene of Savoy, who had been shadowing the French troops. Part of the army besieged Ingolstadt, drawing the French from their entrenched positions. The resultant battle at Hochstadt[vii] ensured that the French would not capture Vienna.
Christian was used to guard prisoners after the battle, having survived coming under heavy fire. The prisoners were marched towards Breda; en route the column halted, allowing the prisoners to refresh themselves. The prisoners and their guards were greeted by their womenfolk; one of whom caressed a man who Christian thought she recognised.

‘I observed a woman, with visible joy in her face, make up to a man, whom, by his side face, I fancied I had known……and perfectly knew him, to my unspeakable grief, to be my perfidious husband.’[viii]
With the realisation that her husband did not know that she had been searching for him since 1693, albeit desultorily, Christian overcame her sorrow. She told her comrades that she had just caught sight of her brother, to explain her confusion. One of them approached Richard Welsh for her, who had been fighting in the Earl of Orkney’s foot regiment, to ascertain his identity. At this point the prisoners were ordered to fall in; the march to Breda restarted.

Face to Face
There were so many prisoners that many were placed in work houses. Many of the Allied soldiers were housed in public houses. Going to the public house where Richard Welsh was quartered, Christian found him with his Dutch partner. Hiring a private room Christian had Richard shown in to see her. Recognising his wife Richard was, naturally, astounded.

‘’Oh heavens!’ cried he. ‘Is this possible? Is it not a delusion? Do I really see my dear Christian? May I believe my eyes?’ He ran to me, clasped me in his arms, kissed me in raptures, and bedewed my cheeks with tears of joy.’[ix]
Richard was engaged to marry the Dutch woman and Christian informed her that Richard was already married with three children. Once the poor woman had departed in floods of tears, Christian informed her husband that she enjoyed soldiering and was resolved to stay in the army, passing as her husband’s brother.

Richard was not pleased that Christian was not prepared to take up her duties as his wife again
‘[I] gave my husband a piece of gold, telling him, he would find me a kind and generous brother, but that he must not think of enjoying his wife, while I could remain concealed, and the war lasted.’[x]
To Winter Quarters

Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria
After the great victory at Hochstadt imperial troops were left to invest Ulm[xi], whilst leaving a detachment of the Allied army continuing the siege at Ingolstadt. Marlborough and Prince Eugene moved on to Landau, which was invested on 13th September. Gradually the Elector of Bavaria’s possessions were seized from him and his family were taken prisoner. The Electorate was placed under the imperial governor, Count Löwenstein-Wertheim.
Christian was involved in this despoiling of the region;

‘We miserably plundered the poor inhabitants of this electorate, I had left the hospital time enough to contribute to their misery, and to have a share in the plunder. We spared nothing, killing, burning, or otherwise destroying whatever we could carry off. The bells of the churches we broke to pieces that we might bring them away with us.’[xii]
The dragoons went into winter quarters in Holland, while Richard was left in Germany with his fellow foot soldiers. Christian visited Den Haag, flirting with a pretty girl on the boat to Delft and thence to Amsterdam[xiii].

The 1705 Campaign
Liege
The 1705 campaigning season started with the fall of Huys to the French and their besieging Liège. The main Allied army had marched off to the Moselle, to join the Germans. On arrival in the Moselle area the Duke of Marlborough found a want of ordinance; this coupled with the news from the Low Countries resulted in him returning back with his troops.
With the arrival of the Allies the French raised the siege of Liege and withdrew back behind their lines. Huys was retaken in a few days. An attack by the Allies on the French lines in late July caused the French to retreat towards Namur and Louvain.

At the end of August the Allies invested Leeuwen[xiv], which capitulated on 5th September. Sanduliet[xv] was besieged on 26th October and three days later too capitulated. The Dutch were turning against the war; much of the fighting was taking place on their lands. Many of the engagements this season were inconclusive and Marlborough was battling his Tory enemies at home, only too willing to belittle his achievements. 
Campaigning in 1706

Leopold Duke of Lorraine
The French had been reinforcing their entrenchments over the winter and when Marlborough arrived in Holland on 25th April he received a letter from the Duke of Lorraine, who hoped that his country would be left in peace. Lorraine claimed to have no interest in the Spanish succession and hoped to avoid the horrors of war and the resultant loss of income.
The Allies were not inclined to accept the Duke’s proposition, being aware that the French had been fortifying Nancy. Garrisons were placed in all the region’s fortified towns and the Duke was obliged to pay the French subsidies towards the cost of the war.

Prince Eugene of Savoy
In Italy Prince Eugene and the imperial army were being held in Turin, while the French overran Savoy and were laying siege to Eugene’s capital Turin. The loss of Savoy would leave the French able to concentrate the majority of their forces on fighting in the Low Countries and Germany. But Marlborough was unable to overcome the logistical problems of transporting an army overland nearly one thousand miles and had to leave Savoy to fight on his own.
Discovery

Initial Positions
The French advance in the Low Countries, under the generalship of Villeroy, led them to Ramillies[xvi].The battle, which was fought on 23rd May, was the second of Marlborough’s great victories. The French lost 13,000 dead and 6,000 prisoners, to the Allies 1,066 dead and just over 2,500 wounded; one of whom was Christian.
‘I escaped unhurt, though in the hottest of the battle, till the French were entirely defeated; when an unlucky shell from a steeple, on which, before the battle, they had planted some mortars and cannon, which played all the time of the engagement, struck the back part of my head, and fractured my skull.’[xvii]
Christian was carried to a small town near Louvain, where she was trepanned; taking ten weeks to recover.

‘Though I suffered great torture by this wound, yet the discovery it caused of my sex, in the fixing of my dressing, by which the surgeon saw my breasts, and, by the largeness of my nipples, concluded I had given suck, was a greater grief to me.’[xviii]
News of the discovery rapidly spread and it was not long before Lord John Hay visited Christian and then questioned her closest comrade, who had no suspicion of Christian’s gender. Lord John then cross questioned Richard Welsh, who recounted his and his wife’s adventures. Lord John ordered that Christian’s pay be continued while she recovered from her wound.

Bibliography
Mother Ross – Daniel Defoe, Oakpast Ltd 2011

Queen Anne – Edward Gregg, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1980
The Marlboroughs – Christopher Hibbert, Penguin Books 2002

Marlborough – Richard Holmes, Harper Perennial 2009
Marlborough – JR Jones, Cambridge University Press 1993



[i] The Elector of Cologne had allowed the French to garrison the city
[ii] The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg
[iii] In Swabia, where the Danube and Wörnitz rivers meet
[iv] Mother Ross- Defoe
[v] Ibid
[vi] These two towns, along with Neuberg and Donauwörth, gave the Allies flexible means of crossing the Danube and Lech rivers
[vii] Known in England as the Battle of Blenheim
[viii] Mother Ross – Defoe
[ix] Ibid
[x] Ibid
[xi] Which capitulated once the besiegers batteries were in place
[xii] Mother Ross - Defoe
[xiii] Claiming to be a virtuous girl of good family, a friend of Christian’s unmasked the girl as a prostitute, much to Christian’s annoyance
[xiv] A former municipality in Dutch Gelderland; now divided into two villages
[xv] In Flanders, presumably in the vicinity of Herentals; I have been unable to positively identify where this town and the town of Huys were located.
[xvi] In the Walloon province of Brabant
[xvii] Mother Ross - Defoe
[xviii] Ibid

Tuesday 22 October 2013

A Female Soldier - Mother Ross

Supporting King James


Battle of the Boyne
When James II was driven out of England, following the Glorious Revolution he took his cause to Ireland, supported by the troops and cash of the king of France, Louis XIV. Many of his former subjects rallied to the cause, among them the father of one Christian Cavanagh.
‘The Battle of the Boyne put an end to all my father’s hopes for King James; for his army was there defeated, and he, with the rest of the shattered troops, trusted their safety to the swiftness of their horses’ heels, rather than to the strength of their own arms.’[i]
For his support of the former king, the Cavanagh family lost all their not inconsiderable property[ii]. Christian refused an offer from her mother’s first cousin, informing him that he could do better than marry a penniless woman. But Christian inherited a public house in Dublin from an aunt and was able to run the business prosperously. She attracted the attention of one of her servants, a Richard Welsh, who was able to successfully press his suit upon his mistress.
The Loss of a Husband
According to Christian the Welsh’s lived happily together for four years, having two children and another on the way. Richard Welsh then disappeared one night with 50 livres[iii] in his pocket. His wife assumed that he was dead and the money stolen.
It was a year later that Christian received a letter from Richard, claiming that he had been carried off and gotten drunk by a friend, Ensign C-m. He had found himself on a recruiting vessel, ready to take fresh fodder to fight in King William’s wars on the continent.
‘I was not sensible of what was doing upon deck. In the interim, the wind sprung up fair, the captain set sail with what recruits were on board, and we had so quick a passage, that we reached Helvoet Sluys[iv], before I had recovered from the effects of the liquor.’[v]
Richard, finding himself penniless in a foreign land, had been forced to sign up to fight in the English army, now involved in the Nine Years War against the expansionist policies of Louis XIV.
A Trip to the Continent
Christian Welsh aka Christopher Welsh
Being slender and of a similar size to her husband Christian decided to dress in one of her husband’s suits and make her way to the continent to be re-united with her husband. Her two elder children were left in the care of her mother and the youngest was placed with a nurse.
‘I cut off my hair, and dressed me in a suit of my husband’s, having taken the precaution to quilt the waistcoat, to preserve my breasts from hurt, which were not large enough to betray my sex.’[vi]
Christian informed the recruiting officer that her name was Christopher Welsh and she was enlisted in Captain Tichbourne’s company of foot.
One of Christian’s first duties, upon arrival in Holland, was to stand guard at the door of the Elector of Hanover. Shortly thereafter Christian was involved in the fighting at the Battle of Landen, on 29th July 1693. The Allied army was forced into retreat; Christian was wounded before the fighting began and it took two months to recover from the graze from a musket ball.
Duke of Berwick
During the summer of 1694 Christian was taken prisoner during a foraging expedition. The former Queen Mary arranged for the English prisoners to be well treated and given an allowance, food and drink. The prisoners were visited by the Duke of Berwick[vii], who tried to persuade them to swap sides and fight for the French.
After nine days Christian was freed in an exchange of prisoners; she had considered the possibility of declaring herself to her cousin, Captain Cavanagh who was fighting for the French and visited the prison on a number of occasions. Believing that discovery of her identity would hamper her search for her husband, Christian did not approach her cousin, who did not recognise her amongst the prisoners.
The Duel
The winter of 1694-5 was spent at Gorcum[viii], and Christian paid court to a burgher’s daughter. She later came to regret this masquerade as the poor girl fell in love, seeing Christian as a potential husband. A sergeant of the same regiment also had designs on the poor girl and attempted to rape her.
The young woman asked Christian to avenge her honour and the sergeant and Christian set to. Christian wounded her superior.
‘The first thrust I made, gave him a slight wound in his right pap, which had well-nigh done his business. He returned this with a long gash on my right arm…..but before he could recover his guard, I gave him a thrust in the right thigh, about half a span from the pope’s eye.’[ix]
When the duel was stopped Christian was taken off to prison. She passed a message on to the burgher, whose daughter’s honour she had been defending. Within four days the burgher managed to get a pardon from King William and Christian was discharged from the regiment.
La Fille du Regiment
Lord John Hays
Almost immediately Christian re-enlisted into Lord John Hays’ regiment of Dragoons. When the army broke winter quarters Christian’s regiment was sent to fight at the Siege of Namur. King William invested the town, but not before Marshal Duc de Boufflers had quartered himself and seven regiments in the town[x], which capitulated on the 1st September 1695.  
Duc de Villeroy
In attempt to divert William from Namur the French, under Marshal Duc de Villeroy, had bombarded Brussels to no avail. The Namur garrison marched out on 5th September;
‘The garrison, which still consisted of five thousand one hundred and sixty eight men, marched out at the breach, with drums beating, matches lighted, colours flying, six pieces of cannon and two mortars, through a lane of thirty battalions of our troops.’[xi]
 
 
Seige of Namur
During the siege of Namur the French had captured the towns of Diense and Dixmunde and had refused to ransom the garrisons. In return Boufflers was arrested, his incarceration was short as Louis agreed to release the two garrisons in return for Boufflers’ release.
Christian’s regiment went into winter quarters at the Boss where, when visiting a brothel with fellow officers, she was approached by one of the denizens of the house[xii]. When Christian refused to have sex with her, the female had her revenge by claiming, having given birth a short time later, that she the child was Christian’s. Rather than expose the impossibility of this claim Christian agreed to fund the baby, which died within a month of being born.
It does not appear that Christian was involved in any fighting after that and, following the Peace of Ryswick signed on 20th September 1697, she was discharged and returned to Dublin, still dressed in male garb. Arriving home Christian discovered that, having been absent a lot longer than planned, she owed the nurse looking after her youngest child a lot of money that she did not have. In the circumstances, having ascertained that the family were well, Christian decided not to reveal herself.
Back to War
Christian took a job in Dublin, while husbanding what capital she had. When the English joined the War of the Spanish Succession in May 1702[xiii], Christian again joined up to fight. William III had recognised Louis XIV’s grandson Philip as the new king of Spain, but Louis’ ambitions went beyond a Bourbon hegemony in France and Spain and this was unacceptable to the English.
Queen Anne
William’s death[xiv] in March 1702 did not stop the English fears of France overrunning the whole of continental Europe. Queen Anne’s ministers Sidney Godolphin and James Churchill, Earl of Marlborough[xv], were able to persuade her to declare war. Churchill was given command of the joint Anglo-Dutch army, beating the claims of many rivals.
‘As the only general who could command the respect of them all, Marlborough was given command of the British, Dutch and hired German forces of the Grand Alliance at a salary of £10,000[xvi] a year.’[xvii]
Although relatively inexperienced[xviii], he was the husband of his monarch’s bosom friend Sarah Churchill. It was fortunate for his country that he turned out to be one of England’s most successful generals.
Duc de Boufflers
Christian Davies joined her old regiment, Lord John Hays’ dragoons. She was involved in the battle of Nijmegen. The fighting covered the retreat of the Dutch army, following an attack by Boufflers’ troops. Christian was among a number of dragoons who put to rout a superior force of French cavalry.
‘We….put them to the run, with a considerable loss on their, and very little on our, side. I had here the good fortune, though in the thickest of the engagement, to escape without hurt, and to be taken notice of by the officers.’[xix]
A detachment of troops besieged Venlo, which capitulated on 23rd September. The French were pushed back to Maastricht; the Allies appearing before the town of Liege on 14th October and carried the attack on 23rd. Christian picked up some booty in the sack of the citadel.
‘I got but little of the plunder……a large silver chalice, and some other pieces of plate, which I afterwards sold to a Dutch Jew for a third part of their value.’[xx]
The troops were quartered at Venlo and Christian was one of those chosen to escort the Earl of Marlborough along the banks of the Maas. During the march the soldiers took possession of five pigs and Christian got into altercation with a Corporal Taylor over one of them. He struck at her with a knife and cut the sinews of her little finger, while she hit him with her pistol, knocking out one of his eyes.
While in winter quarters Christian recommenced her somewhat dilatory search for her husband, but of him she found no trace.
Bibliography
Mother Ross – Daniel Defoe, Oakpast Ltd 2011
Queen Anne – Edward Gregg, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1980
The Marlboroughs – Christopher Hibbert, Penguin Books 2002
Marlborough – Richard Holmes, Harper Perennial 2009
Marlborough – JR Jones, Cambridge University Press 1993
William and Mary – John van der Kiste, Sutton Publishing 2003
William and Mary – Henri and Barbara van der Zee, The History Book Club 1973



[i] Mother Ross - Defoe
[ii] Mr Cavanagh had been a maltster and brewer, employing twenty servants
[iii] To pay for the beer purchased for the public house
[iv] In the province of South Holland
[v] Mother Ross – Defoe
[vi] Ibid
[vii] James II’s illegitimate son by Arabella Churchill, the sister of the Duke of Marlborough
[viii] In the province of South Holland
[ix] Mother Ross – Daniel Defoe
[x] Bringing the total of defenders to 14,000
[xi] Mother Ross- Daniel Defoe
[xii] Who was in the later stages of pregnancy
[xiii] The war between France and the majority of the continent commenced in July 1701 when Prince Eugene of Savoy, leading the Austrian forces, invaded the Duchy of Milan
[xiv] Queen Mary died in December 1694
[xv] Churchill was made Duke of Marlborough in December 1702
[xvi] In 2011 worth £1,340,000.00 using the retail price index or £18,500,000.00 using average earnings www.measuringworth.com
[xvii] The Marlboroughs - Hibbert
[xviii] He had never commanded a large army in the field
[xix] Mother Ross – Daniel Defoe
[xx] Ibid