the arliament, and an augmentation of 10,000 hen to the army in the Netherlands, he set sail n the 15th of January for the Hague, where, on he 19th, he arrived, and proceeded instantly to oncert measures with the pensionary and the states-general.

Maintaining the same cautious silence here which he had preserved at home, he succeeded, after a good deal of opposition, in wringing from the states a reluctant consent to what was represented and believed to be a partial change of system. It was agreed, for example, that Marlborough, with the British troops and part of the "foreign auxiliaries, should open a campaign upon the Moselle; while Overkirk, with the Dutch and the rest of the auxiliaries, should act defensively in the Netherlands. At the same time the states were prevailed upon to advance subsidies for the maintenance of the corps acting under the princes Louis of Baden and Eugene, as well as to take into their pay 4000 Wirtemberg troops, in the room of certain detachments sent off to Portugal. The duke of Savoy, likewise, was encouraged to hold out, both by pecuniary remittances and assurances of speedy support; the elector palatine was amused with promises; and the king of Prussia cajoled by a show of confidence, both to open a negotiation with the elector of Bavaria, and to increase the amount of his own contingent. In a word, every precautionary measure was adopted which appeared in any degree calculated at once to divert public attention from the important blow about to be struck, and to render it, when it did fall, irresistible and deci

sive.

In conducting these negotiations, Marlborough spent the interval between the 19th of January and the 21st of February; he then reimbarked for England, where affairs scarcely less urgent or less complicated demanded his attention. The discontented state of Scotland, joined to the differences which prevailed in the cabinet itself relative to the bill of occasional conformity, had by this time induced Nottingham to bring matters to a crisis, by requiring the immediate dismissal of Somerset and Devonshire as the price of his own continuance in office. Serious alarm was entertained both by Godolphin and Marlborough, that her majesty, whose partiality to Nottingham was well known, might yield to this demand; but Anne, though strong in her personal predilections, was a princess of high spirit, and sensitively alive to insult. Instead of entering into any discussion with the minister who had thus trampled upon her dignity, she threw herself at once into the arms of his opponents; and, accepting his resignation, transferred her whole confidence to the party of which Marlborough was at the head. No delay was exhibited by Marlborough and Godolphin in turning this act of their mistress to account. Shaking themselves entirely free from the high tory faction, they at the same time studious

ly avoided even the appearance of coalition with the whigs, and formed an administration devoted, as was believed, to their own views, by advancing Harley to the office which Nottingham had quitted, and creating Henry St. John secretary

at war.

These important arrangements were yet incomplete, when, on the 19th of April, Marlborough embarked at Harwich, accompanied by his brother, general Churchill, the earl of Orkney, lord Cutts, and other officers of distinction. He reached the Hague on the 21st, and devoted nearly a month to the removal of numerous difficulties which still encumbered his designs. Among other happy measures, he contrived to rid himself of the presence of the field-deputies, by making from the states no demand except for the auxiliary troops; and he blinded both them and the margrave of Baden, by affecting to approve of a plan which the latter sent in for the campaign on the Moselle. All these points were adjusted while he yet sojourned at the Hague. On the 5th of May we find him at Utrecht, on the 10th at Maestricht, and on the 18th in presence of his assembled army at Bedburg. He reviewed his troops here, which amounted in all to fifty-one battalions and ninety-two squadrons; and having previously instructed the Prussians, Lunenburgers, and Hessians from the Rhine, as well as eleven Dutch battalions at Rothwell, where to join, he began on the morning of the 20th, his eventful and well disguised march.

Our limits will not permit us to follow, stage by stage, the daring and skilful movement which carried the allied army, in the course of ten days, from Bedburg to Mentz. We must content ourselves, therefore, with stating, that neither the fears of Overkirk, excited by Villeroi's passage of the Meuse, nor intelligence that Tallard had crossed the Rhine, detained the duke of Marlborough more than a few hours, or diverted him from his purpose. He still kept his eye steadily fixed upon the relief of Austria; and still, by the excellence of his arrangements, led both friends and foes to imagine, that Bonn was to form the base of his ultimate operations. Thus, while the French were marching columns at one moment towards the Moselle, and another in the direction of Alsace, the roads leading to the Danube were left unguarded; and every facility of communication between prince Eugene, the margrave, and Marlborough was happily obtained and secured.

From Mentz, after a halt of some days, during which he gradually opened out his designs to the heads of the allied corps, Marlborough took the direction of Ladenburg. Here he crossed the Neckar by bridges which he had ordered previously to be constructed, and advancing as far as Erpingen, he despatched urgent instructions to the princes Louis and Eugene that they should watch the Rhine, so as to hinder the threatened passage of Villeroi and Tallard, whose armies

were understood to be on the eve of forming a junction. Meanwhile, he himself pressed on to Gross Gartach, where he again traversed the Neckar, and arriving on the 10th at Mondelsheim, received there a visit, for the first time, from Eugene and count Wratislaw. They remained with him three days, before the expiration of which prince Louis likewise came in ; when all the arrangements necessary to their future operations were definitively settled. It was determined that Eugene should observe the Rhine, his own corps being reinforced by the addition of the Danish division; while Louis, who claimed the privilege by right of seniority, should act in union with Marlborough, the generals assuming the chief command each on alternate days.

On the 14th the columns were again in motion, the allied generals having departed to their respective commands; and the same evening Marlborough established his head-quarters at Ebersbach. Here he was compelled to halt during six entire days, in anxious expectation of the arrival of prince Louis, against whom the elector of Bavaria, after sending his baggage to Ulm, was reported to have made a movement across the Danube. Nor was this the only unpleasant rumour which tended to harass a mind already supplied with more than adequate employment. Information arrived that Overkirk, after penetrating the enemy's lines near Wasseige, had been compelled, by the timidity of his colleagues, to fall back; that the states-general were in the utmost alarm, in consequence of the expected return of Villeroi to the Netherlands; that Villeroi and Tallard were actually in contact at Landau ;and that some great enterprise was inevitable. These, it must be confessed, were rumours not calculated to raise the hopes of a general situated as Marlborough then was, with the long and rugged defile of Gieslingen between him and the only force to which he could look for co-operation or support. Nevertheless, they either did not or appeared not to discompose, in the slighest degree, the order of his thoughts. While, to satisfy the states, he issued instructions for the assembling of a flotilla of boats upon the Rhine, he busied himself in forming magazines at Heidelsheim and Nordlingen; after which he made ready to advance with his cavalry and lighter infantry to the assistance of prince Louis. On the 20th, however, more accurate intelligence arrived, that Louis was in full march upon Westerstetten: instantly the troops were ordered under arms, and the pass being cleared on the 21st, by noon on the 22d the long wished-for junction was effected between Launsheim and Ursprung.

While Marlborough was thus bringing to maturity his able and patiently-devised project, the elector of Bavaria, who had been reinforced, so early as the 19th of May, by a strong corps of French troops from Tallard's army, kept principally within his entrenched camp at Ulm. One

or two movements he had indeed made, chiefly with a view to facilitate the approach of his allies; but these, besides that they were followed by no memorable results, gave little proof of energy or talent either on his side or on the side of the mar grave of Baden, in whose presence they were ef fected. The case was widely different now. No sooner was the veil withdrawn, which, during sơ protracted a period had concealed the object of Marlborough's movements, than the elector became greatly alarmed, and removed with all haste from Ulm, to a line still more defensible between Lawingen and Dillingen. The latter change of ground took place on the 24th of June, the very day when the allied generals arrived at Elchingen and Langenau; and Marlborough was, in consequence, enabled to pass without risk, on the 26th, as far to the eastward as Herbrechten. In this position he halted till the reserve of his infantry, under general Churchill, came up; and it was found, on reviewing the whole army, that it mus tered 96 battalions, 202 squadrons, with a train of 48 pieces of cannon, and 24 pontoons.

The hostile armies were now within two leagues of one another; yet the movements made on both sides plainly indicated that a decisive battle, if fought at all, would not take place on the arena already occupied. On the one hand, the allies, filing to the right, exhibited a disposition to seize Donawerth, and to convert it into a place d'armes, preparatory to an invasion of Bavaria; on the other hand, the elector seemed willing to run the utmost hazards rather than witness the accomplishment of a design so formidable. A corps of 10,000 infantry, supported by 2500 cavalry, was accordingly despatched from his lines, with orders to fortify and hold to the last extremity the heights of Schellenberg; while messenger after messenger was sent out to hurry the advance of marshal Tallard, who from his quarters at Strasburg had promised to support the elector. Marlborough was not kept long in ignorance of these precautionary measures. Convinced that all now depended on oelerity of movement, he passed the electoral camp in column of march, on the 1st of July, and halted that night within fourteen miles of the unfinished works on Schellenberg.

Though it was yet the height of summer, a succession of heavy rains had so broken up the roads, that not artillery and baggage only, but the infantry themselves, found it a hard matter to proceed. Multitudes of stragglers were continually left behind. Nevertheless, Marlborough perceived, that if he hoped to force the passage of the Danube at all, an attempt to do so must be made ere the enemy's entrenchments should be rendered perfect, and themselves reinforced by numbers superior to his own. Under these circumstances, he selected 130 men from each battalion, amounting in all to 6000 infantry; added to them thirty squadrons of choice cavalry, and three regiments of imperial guards, and putting himself at their

ble, but the arrival of a strong reinforcement would have placed the passage of the Danube beyond his reach, and thus defeated the main end of all his previous movements. Victory, on the other hand, laid open the rich and hitherto uninjured plains of Bavaria to his foragers; it disconcerted all the arrangements of the enemy; gave fresh courage to his own troops, as well as to his allies, and furnished him with an excellent base for ulterior operations. With one drawback, however, it certainly was attended. The coldness which had all along subsisted between prince Louis and the British general, and to which the dissimilarity of their natural tempers gave rise, ripened into positive aversion. Nevertheless, this misfortune, if such it could be termed, was more than compensated to Marlborough by the applause both of friends and enemies. From the latter he received the highest compliment which a successful general can expect, by becoming to them an object both of dread and abhorrence; while the former, especially the emperor, openly spoke of him and addressed him as the preserver of Germany, and the greatest hero of his age.

The immediate consequence of this victory was the abandonment of Donawerth by the elector, after an abortive attempt to destroy the magazines, and his hasty retreat to Augsburg. He was induced to leave thus exposed the whole of his own territory, from an apprehension that if he endeavoured to cover even Munich, Marlborough might succeed in throwing himself upon the line of road by which Tallard was advancing, and, while he prevented a junction between the French and Bavarian armies, act against each with his whole force, and destroy them in detail. There cannot be a doubt that, so long as he looked to a determined continuance of the war, sound policy pointed to this mode of proceeding; yet it brought heavy calamities upon a country which for the space of sixty years had not witnessed the presence of an enemy. Marlborough lost no time in repairing the bridge over the Danube; he laid his pontoons judiciously upon the Lech; and by the 7th was in possession of Neuburg, into which he threw a garrison of 3000 men. Thus were ample supplies of bread from the rich province of Franconia secured, while, extensive depots being established at Donawerth, all risk of privation was averted.

The elector had left 400 men in the small but strong town of Rain, which, standing upon the main road from the Lech, threatened seriously to incommode the allied communications. On the 13th, the place was invested by a detachment upder the count de Frise, and on the 16th it surrendered. The army now began its progress into the interior; and halting on the 18th at Aicha, occupied Friedberg, within an easy march of Augsburg. Unfortunately, however, a train of battering cannon, for which Marlborough had repeatedly applied, and which the margrave had long ago

promised to furnish, failed to arrive; and as without it any effort to obtain possession of Munich would have been futile, Marlborough resolved to try with the elector the effect of negotiation. But though his propositions were at first so well received as to excite hopes of an ultimate accommodation, they were suddenly broken off ere any arrangements could be made; and Marlborough, in obedience to the barbarous system of warfare prevalent at the time, ravaged the whole of Bavaria up to the very gates of the capital.

Meanwhile marshal Tallard, to whom advices of the critical situation of the elector had been transmitted, broke up from his encampment on the Rhine, and, after a fruitless effort to reduce Villingen, forded the Danube at Mosskirk, and emerged into the plains between Ulm and Memmingen. Leaving Ulm to the north-west, he pushed rapidly upon Biberbach, where patrols from the Bavarian army met him; and his line being extended, the two corps became soon after united. His march, however, was neither unnoticed nor disregarded by prince Eugene: that officer, apprehensive for the consequences, instantly moved in a parallel direction, and arrived with his corps of 18,000 men on the plains of Hochstadt, almost at the very moment when the French opened their first communications with the elector. Nevertheless, the chances were decidedly in favour of the enemy, had they known how to take advantage of them. Their position was central, commanding the string of the arc, at the extremities of which Marlborough and Eugene were posted; and it required but a prompt and bold movement to place them between the allies. Happily for the renown of our great commander, they allowed the fortunate moment to pass; and neither Marlborough nor Eugene were men likely to permit a moment of such hazard to return.

Equally unwilling to relinquish the fruits of past successes, and indisposed to sacrifice Eugene, Marlborough formed the daring resolution of marching by Aicha towards Neuburg: his camp was accordingly pitched at a place called Eknach, where he was met by prince Eugene; and a council of war being held, the chiefs came to the conclusion that neither should Eugene's corps be drawn absolutely into Bavaria, nor that of Marlborough carried across the Danube, till the designs of the enemy had become more perfectly developed. In the mean while, however, it was agreed that prince Louis should be detached with a sufficient force to undertake the siege of Ingolstadt, and that the ground between the Paar and the Lech should be occupied as a defensive position, in order to cover that operation, and protect the bridges at the confluence of the Lech and Danube. Such were the arrangements entered into on the 7th of August. On the 9th, the margrave took his departure, and on the same day Marlborough, alarmed by intelligence that the enemy were looking towards the Danube, moved upon Exheim.

Here every doubt was removed as to the intentions of Tallard and the elector; for they were ascertained to be in full march upon Dillingen, from whence they could at any moment attack and overwhelm the small force left on the plains of Hochstadt.

All now depended upon celerity of movement on the part of Marlborough, and a judicious disposition of his troops on that of Eugene. To have retreated towards the Rhine would have doubtless secured the safety of the latter; but then the bridges and depôts must be abandoned; and Marlborough, cut off from his supplies, would be left to maintain himself as he best could in a country every where hostile. Trusting, therefore, to the well-known activity of his colleague, Eugene fell back no farther than the Kessel, in rear of which, having a range of difficult ground before him, he took post. In the mean time, Marlborough was making vigorous efforts to sustain him. At midnight on the 9th, a corps of twentyeight squadrons, under the duke of Wirtemberg, set out from the camp, with orders to pass the pontoon bridge at Merxheim and unite with the prince's cavalry: two hours later, general Churchill, with twenty battalions and the whole of the artillery, followed by the same route; and by dawn on the 10th, the duke himself with the remainder of the army set forward. They encamped that night between Mittelstadt and Peuchingen, not far from Rain.

Marlborough had just thrown himself upon his bed, when an express arrived from Eugene, to announce that the enemy had crossed the Danube, and that the prince was in hourly expectation of being attacked. Another and another messenger followed, each bringing reports more and more urgent, that the line of the Kessel was indefensible, that the cavalry alone watched it, that the infantry were falling back upon Schellenberg, and that nothing short of an immediate junction could save the army of the Rhine from destruction. Instantly the troops were under arms, the baggage packed, and the tents struck; and ere midnight the whole were moving in two columns, one by the route of Merxheim and the pontoon bridge, the other across the Lech and Danube, upon Donawerth. At six the same evening the patrols from the several divisions fell in with Eugene's army, and by ten o'clock at night the armies were united and in position, with their left upon the Danube, their right at Kessel-Ostheim, and the river Kessel covering their front. At an early hour on the morning of the 12th (the baggage having come up during the night,) Marlborough and Eugene, who had determined on occupying a position in the vicinity of Hochstadt, pushed forward under the escort of the grand guards, to reconnoitre. They had proceeded as far as Schweningen, when they came suddenly in presence of some squadrons; and, in order to ascertain the exact force of the party, they mounted the tower of Dapfheim church. VOL. V.-7

From that commanding station they beheld the staff of the enemy's army marking out an encampment at the distance of something less than three miles in their front. The ground was strong by nature, being every where elevated, rendered shaggy here and there with underwood, and protected by the defile of Dapfheim; it was advantageously covered, too, by the river Nebel, which, though narrow, is difficult of passage, in consequence of the muddiness of its channel and the marshy nature of its banks; whilst two or three water mills, as well as the villages of Blenheim, Oberglauh, and Lutzingen, offered admirable points of defence both to the flanks and the centre. It seemed, indeed, as if any effort to turn such a line must inevitably fail; for while the Danube swept along the right with a deep and broad stream, the left was scarcely less efficiently protected by precipitous ravines and impenetrable thickets. Nevertheless both Marlborough and Eugene determined upon an attack. As it seemed, moreover, to them that every moment's delay would serve to render a position, sufficiently formidable in itself, more and more secure, they resolved that the decisive step should be taken immediately; and they hurried back to the camp, to issue the necessary orders, and to superintend such prelimi.. nary measures as, under the circumstances of the case, appeared advisable.

The whole of the 12th was occupied in levelling certain inequalities of ground, in constructing bridges across the rivulets, and particularly in filling up a ravine formed by the course of the Reichen, not far from the village of Dapfheim. A sharp skirmish, likewise, between the enemy's cavalry and the piquets and covering party which protected these operations, gave animation to the scene, and produced some excitement; but in other respects all seemed quiet, both in the allied camp and within the enemy's lines. The scene was widely different as soon as midnight passed. Then it was that Marlborough, who had solemnly received the sacrament from the hands of his chaplain, issued orders for the troops to muster, and in two hours afterwards the baggage being sent back to Reitlingen, the tents were left standing, and the allied army began its march.

The combined corps of Marlborough and Eugene, which was estimated as not exceeding 52,000 men, with fifty-two pieces of cannon, moved from their ground, and passed the Kessel in eight columns of attack. On the right were two divisions of infantry, supported by their guns, and followed by a like distribution of cavalry, which, amounting in all to eighteen battalions and seventy-four squadrons, acted under the orders of prince Eugene. To them the task was allotted of driving the enemy from Lutzingen, either by penetrating through the woods, or by direct assault; while at the same time they were instructed to threaten Overglauh, and occupy the attention of the corps drawn up between that post and 193