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| combatant2 = | commander1 = | commander2 = | strength1 = | strength2 = | casualties1 = | casualties2 = }} The Battle of Schellenberg, also known as the Battle of Donauwörth, was fought 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 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. Once the Elector and his co-commander, Marshal Marsin, knew of the Allies' objective, they dispatched Count d'Arco with an advance force of 12,000 men from their main camp at Dillingen to strengthen and hold the Schellenberg heights above the town. Rejecting a protracted siege, Marlborough decided in favour of a quick assault, before the position could be made impregnable. After two failed attempts to storm the barricades, the Allied commanders, acting in unison, finally managed to overwhelm the defenders. It had taken just two hours to secure the bridgehead over the river in a hard fought contest, but following the victory, momentum was lost to indecision. The deliberate devastation of the Elector's lands in Bavaria failed to bring Max Emanuel to battle or persuade him back into the Imperial fold. Only when Marshal Tallard arrived with reinforcements to strengthen the Elector's forces, and Prince Eugene of Savoy arrived from the Rhine to bolster the Allies, was the stage finally set for the decisive action at the Battle of Blenheim the following month. == Background == (詳細はGrand Alliance's campaign of 1704 to prevent the Franco-Bavarian army from threatening Vienna, the capital of Habsburg Austria. The campaign began in earnest on 19 May when the Duke of Marlborough began his 250-mile (400 km) march from Bedburg near Cologne towards the Elector of Bavaria's and Marshal Marsin's Franco-Bavarian army on the Danube. Marlborough had initially deceived the French commanders – Marshal Villeroi in the Spanish Netherlands and Marshal Tallard along the Rhine – into thinking his target was Alsace or the Moselle farther to the north. However, when the Elector was notified on 5 June of Marlborough's march from the Low Countries, he had correctly predicted that it was his principality of Bavaria that was the Allies' real target.〔Spencer: ''Blenheim: Battle for Europe,'' 173.〕 Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I was keen to lure the Elector back into the Imperial fold after he had switched allegiance to fight for King Louis XIV before the war. Given this duplicity, Marlborough thought the best way to secure Bavaria for the Alliance was to negotiate from a position of strength by invading the Elector's territories, hoping to persuade him to change sides before he could be reinforced.〔Trevelyan: ''England Under Queen Anne: Blenheim,'' 356. An agent of the King of Prussia was still in the Bavarian camp, negotiating with the elector for this purpose.〕 By 22 June Marlborough's army had linked up with elements of the Margrave of Baden's Imperial forces at Launsheim; by the end of June their combined strength totalled nearly 80,000 men (''see map on right''). The Franco-Bavarian army camped at Ulm were numerically inferior to the Allies, and a large part of the Elector's troops were scattered about garrisons in his territories as far as Munich and the Tyrolese frontier, but his position was far from desperate: if he could hold out for a month, Tallard would arrive from the Rhine with French reinforcements.〔Trevelyan: ''England Under Queen Anne: Blenheim,'' 355.〕 Once the Allies had combined their forces, the Elector and Marsin moved their 40,000 troops into the entrenched camp between Dillingen and Lauingen on the north bank of the Danube. The Allied commanders – unwilling to attack such a strong position rendered impregnable by redoubts and inundations – passed round Dillingen to the north through Balmershofen and Armerdingen in the direction of Donauwörth.〔 If captured, the bridgehead at Donauwörth (overlooked by the Schellenberg) would offer new communications with the friendly states in central Germany by way of Nördlingen and Nuremberg, as well as providing a good crossing-place over the Danube for re-supply when the Allies were south of the river. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of Schellenberg」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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