The Battle of Malplaquet, 11 September 1709: the capture of the French standards, 1713-14 (oil...

In 1713 Louis Laguerre was commissioned to decorate the walls of the main hall and the two flanking staircases of Marlborough House, the London residence of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. The subject was to be the significant battles of the Spanish Wars of Succession (1701-14); led by the Duke of Marlborough, Britain and the Allies saw victories at Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), Oudenard (1708) and, less decisively, Malplaquet (1709). The murals were to be 'the only signs of bravura or ornamentation in a house that was otherwise very plain and simple' (John Charlton, Marlborough House, 1978). Laguerre was paid £500 for them. The murals have had a chequered conservation history and parts have been almost entirely repainted. The staircase to the left of the main central hall (Blenheim Saloon) is decorated with scenes from the battle of Malplaquet (RCINs 408438-40); and a scuffle on the fringes of the battle (RCIN 408441). Laguerre chooses to show the most symbolically decisive moment of this most indecisive battle, with tattered French and Bavarian standards forming the focus of this cavalry and infantry action. However, the grenadiers in the act of moving the felled logs to clear a path for the guns alludes to one of the more difficult practical aspects of the battlefield, where advances were frequently blocked by trees. Meanwhile, the smoke in the background combines with the foliage to evoke the disorientation and confusion of the battle, while the assassination of the naked figures – who, without their uniforms, could be either Allied or French – demonstrates the violence of this battle, from which few prisoners emerged alive. These figures mirror the soldiers being stripped on the opposite wall (RCIN 408438), and both echo the record of Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Blackader, writing the morning after Malplaquet, that: '…in all my life, I have not seen the dead bodies lie so thick as they were in some places among the retrenchments, particularly at the battery the Dutch guards attacked. For a good while I could not go among them, lest my horse should tread on the carcasses that were lying, as it were, heaped on one another.’ Some figures here seem reused, for example the figure on horseback shooting the terrified figure at left, who is repeated on the figures adjacent and on the other side. The poses of the bodies, similarly, are reused from the opposite panel, and also from the Ramillies staircase (RCIN 408434).