Newdigate House - Castle Gate - Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
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SMacB
N 52° 57.042 W 001° 09.129
30U E 624144 N 5868384
Newdigate House, where Marshal Tallard, commander of the French Army at the Battle of Blenheim, lived on parole between 1705 and 1711 after his capture.
Waymark Code: WMW8CN
Location: East Midlands, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 07/23/2017
Views: 3
Fronting Newdigate House, are iron railings thought to be by Francis Foulgham who worked in Nottingham from about 1710 until his death in 1749.
On the front of the house is a gilt decorated plaque:
'In this house lived
MARSHAL TALLART,
from 1705 to 1711
while prisoner of war
after
the Battle of Blenheim 1704'
The house, built and named after the Newdigate family, was occupied by Marshal Tallard between 1705 and 1711. Tallard was commander of the French Army at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704 and lived in Nottingham on parole after being captured by the English general, Duke of Marlborough. It was, so tradition records, Tallard that was responsible for teaching the people of Nottingham to bake French (white) bread and for introducing celery to England. He was familiar with the plant in his native country and when he found it growing wild in the Lenton marshes, he cultivated it in his garden here.
"Camille d'Hostun de la Baume, duc de Tallard (14 February 1652 – 20 March 1728) was a French noble, diplomat and military commander, who became Marshal of France.
Tallard’s military career reached its height during the War of the Spanish Succession. On 7 September 1703 the duc de Burgundy and Tallard took the town of Breisach. Tallard proceeded to invest Landau in mid October. A relief force under the Prince of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) was roundly defeated by Tallard’s force at the Battle of Speyerbach on 15 November. As a result, Landau fell two days later. Shortly after, Tallard was created Marshal of France.
In 1704, Tallard was sent to reinforce Maximilian II Emanuel's and Marshal Marsin's Franco-Bavarian army on the Danube, which was under threat from the Duke of Marlborough's and Prince Eugene's allied army. Tallard set out on 1 July from Strasbourg, but although the six day siege of Villingen proved abortive, (abandoned on 22 July), the French Marshal was able to bring 34,000 men through the Black Forest, reaching Ulm on 5 August.
Tallard was placed in overall command of the combined Franco-Bavarian army, but the subsequent Battle of Blenheim on 13 August 1704 resulted in complete destruction of his forces. Decisively beaten, he was captured and taken back to England and housed on parole in Nottingham. The writer Daniel Defoe reported that his small, but beautiful parterre, after the French fashion was one of the beauties of Nottingham.
On his release in 1711 he returned to France. Despite the calamity of Blenheim, Louis appeared to bear the Marshal no ill will. Tallard was made a duke in 1712 and became a Peer of France in 1715. In King Louis XIV's testament, Tallard was appointed to the Council of Regency but the duc d'Orléans had the testament nullified. He was elected president of the Académie des Sciences in 1724 and, in 1726, he became a French minister of state. He died in 1728."
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