THE BATTLE AROUND
THE CASTLE OF LUCENTO
While at noon the Prussians on
the right were forcing the enemy entrenchments, on the left a second assault
was launched against the French left wing. The purpose of this action was
clear: the attack on Lucento was undertaken solely to keep the French left
occupied without being able to force the enemy trench, until such time as the German
cavalry succeeded in forcing the entrance; then, overwhelming the French with
the superiority of mounted troops, and striking them first in the flank and
then in the rear, no further thought would be given to the field camp.
The French had received
reinforcements: thirty squadrons of dismounted dragoons had arrived from the
Po–Dora Riparia sector, together with two infantry battalions. The two
battalions belonged to the Royal des Vaisseaux
Regiment, probably the 1st battalion , and to the Lyonnais Regiment, 1st battalion. The other three
battalions, two of the Royal des Vaisseaux and two of the Lyonnais, remained on
the left bank of the Dora Riparia.The Allied attack was repulsed; the fire
coming from the entrenchments was too intense for them to be overrun. Marshal
Marsin, who had already had his horse killed beneath him, was on the
entrenchments encouraging the soldiers when a musket ball struck him in the
thigh, mortally wounding him. Marsin was wounded during the second Allied
attack on the left wing, after the Duke of Orléans' action with the Rouvaÿ
Brigade, during which the Duke received a wound to the hip, but before he
himself was struck in the arm during the third enemy assault. See the Duke of
Orléans' letter to the King.
Marsin,
wounded in the thigh, was transported to his headquarters at Cascina La Losa,
where he remained a prisoner without speaking. The Duke of Savoy sent him a
surgeon, who amputated the gangrenous leg. However, the operation did not
improve his condition, and the Marshal of France died on the morning of 8
September 1706.
At 12:30 p.m. another attempt
was made, which also ended in failure. The assaults launched by Baron Rehbinder
and Prince Saxe-Gotha against the entrenchments and the Castle of Lucento were
intended to gain time and engage enemy troops, a task in which they were
actually doing rather well. However, the attacks were not launched
simultaneously; the poor condition of the terrain and the different objectives
assigned to them—a powerful fortified structure for Prince Saxe-Gotha and a
stretch of entrenchments for Rehbinder—meant that the two Allied commanders
coordinated their efforts against the French defensive system rather poorly.
The
sturdy walls of Lucento Castle, upon which the defense of the Allied left wing
was based, together with the auxiliary defenses erected to protect it,
represented a deadly obstacle for any enemy cavalry unit that might have
ventured near without the support of infantry. They constituted an impregnable
defense for the Allied infantry regiments deployed there. Rehbinder and
Saxe-Gotha could do little more than send cavalry against them, which was in fact
what was done on the French left. The strength, size, and complexity of Lucento
and its associated buildings, together with the size of the garrison, made the
castle almost impossible to capture. The defense of Lucento became a harsh battle. Fought throughout the day by two sizeable formations that
had practically no interest in what was happening elsewhere on the battlefield,
the struggle for the castle was not decided by a direct enemy offensive action,
but rather by the gradual abandonment of the position by its own defenders.
During the third assault on the entrenchments,
led by Rehbinder, one of his brigade commanders, Field Marshal Lieutenant Georg
Friedrich Freiherr von Kriechbaum, was wounded, but the Allies had nevertheless
succeeded in scoring a fortunate hit. A musket ball had struck the left forearm
of the Duke of Orléans. It was not a serious wound, but it was sufficient to
put him out of action.⁹⁸ The French command was effectively disrupted at that
moment.
The news that the Allies had broken through on
the right and the pain in his arm persuaded the Duke of Orléans to abandon the
battlefield. Considering the battle already lost, he ordered Saint-Frémont to
withdraw beyond the Dora Riparia and evacuate Lucento, and then moved away to
have his wounds treated. Marsin also withdrew at that moment. Seeing that he no
longer had any means of recovering the situation, His Royal Highness, after
having Marshal Marsin’s wounds dressed, ordered me, before departing, to gather
whatever troops I could and conduct a rearguard action. With me remained only
Monsieur le Chevalier de Luxembourg, who was of great assistance in carrying
out one of the finest rearguard actions ever witnessed.
Prince Eugene then arrived at the Allied lines.
Having seen General Visconti’s cuirassiers already engaged with the enemy, he
hastily rode to the right toward the Dora and brought the victorious left wing
fresh news. He encouraged his men to launch a new assault, with which they
finally overran the remaining enemy entrenchments.
As the French withdrew, the Allies succeeded,
at the fourth assault, in carrying the entrenchments. It was about one o’clock
in the afternoon, an hour and a half after the first attack. Saint-Frémont now
had to manage as efficiently as possible the traffic across the two bridges he
intended to use in order to move his troops onto the opposite bank.
On
the right bank of the Dora Riparia, Saint-Frémont still had 14 infantry
battalions and 52 squadrons. He possessed sufficient forces to offer effective
resistance; however, he had to act quickly, since there was no guarantee that
the entire Allied army would not soon descend upon his troops.
Shortly after one o’clock, confirming his
concerns, the battalions of the Bonneval Brigade and infantry from the Turin
garrison began arriving in the area. They attacked the French troops deployed
around Cascina Scaravella, where they captured Lieutenant General Philippe de
Valois de Villette, Marquis de Murcey.
The French commander accelerated the withdrawal
and evacuation operations, determined to leave as little material as possible
to the Allies.
“While withdrawing from the slopes of Lucento
Castle and from the two bridges over the Dora River, I ordered all the guns
that were in the Lucento redoubts to be withdrawn; afterwards I had the two
bridges destroyed and arranged my forces for battle, moving closer to the
troops that Monsieur de Chamarande had drawn up along an embankment i.e. the
right bank of the River Dora.²
The 22 squadrons of cavalry that still had their
horses encountered little difficulty in crossing the Dora, as the river was low
and fordable. The 30 squadrons of dragoons that had been dismounted, however,
lost all of their mounts, though they nevertheless succeeded in reaching the
right bank.¹⁰³
The infantry suffered more heavily. Of the 14
battalions present, three failed to disengage and were partly destroyed and
partly taken prisoner.
The 2nd Battalion of the Piedmont Regiment,
instead of retreating toward the Dora, had remained cut off while still
defending the works of Lucento Castle, which in the meantime had been set on
fire, together with a battalion of the Normandie Regiment, probably the 3rd.
A battalion of the Royal des Vaisseaux Regiment
(probably the 1st), which had been positioned on the left bank of the Dora, had
been assigned to the defense of the bridges. Barricaded in Cascina Tana and in
the nearby redoubts, it too was eventually captured.
These units succumbed for several reasons. The
bridges were crowded with retreating troops, equipment, and artillery.
Saint-Frémont had decided to save the artillery stationed at Lucento and in the
auxiliary field fortifications. In doing so, he prevented his troops from
making use of the bridges and deprived the units assigned to defend the
bridgehead of the powerful artillery support that until that moment had proved
highly effective in repelling enemy attacks.
The confusion, the retreat, and the congestion
at the bridges also dealt a severe psychological blow to those units that had
courageously defended Lucento until then. Being forced to abandon to the enemy
a territory so bitterly contested made them particularly inclined to surrender.
Furthermore, during this rearguard action it
was in fact possible for the three French units to save themselves and cross
the bridges in turn. When Saint-Frémont realized that there was no longer any
possibility for the three battalions to escape enemy pressure, he destroyed the
bridges. At that point the isolated units, cut off from the rest of the army,
ceased all resistance that had by then become entirely useless. The Allies,
too, were now slowing their efforts against the bridgehead. Orders were given
to the infantry of the right wing not to attack Lucento. Although it was
already under fire, since the enemy had begun to flee, the troops refrained
from doing so.
At
1:30 p.m., the French entrenchments between the Stura and the Dora Riparia were
completely in Allied hands.
