WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.

On his encamping at Kupen on the 20th, he received an express from Auverquerque pressing him to halt, because Villeroy, who commanded the French army in Flanders, had quitted the lines which he had been occupying, and crossed the Meuse at Namur with thirty-six battalions and forty-five squadrons, and was threatening the town of Huys.

At the same time Marlborough received letters from the Margrave of Baden and Count Wratislaw, who commanded the Imperialist forces at Stollhoffen, near the left bank of the Rhine, stating that Tallard had made a movement, as if intending to cross the Rhine, and urging him to hasten his march towards the lines of Stollhoffen. Marlborough was not diverted by these applications from the prosecution of his grand design.

Conscious that the army of Villeroy would be too much reduced to undertake offensive operations, by the detachments, which had already been made towards the Rhine and those, which must follow his own march, he halted only a day to quiet the alarms of Auverquerque. To satisfy also the margrave, he ordered the troops of Hompesch and Bulow to draw towards Philipsburg, though with private injunctions not to proceed beyond a certain distance. He even exacted a promise to the same effect from Count Wratislaw, who at the juncture arrived at the camp to attend him during the whole campaign.

Marlborough reached the Rhine at Coblentz, where he crossed that river, and then marched along its left bank to Broubach and Mentz. His march, though rapid, was admirably conducted, so as to save the troops from all necessary fatigue; ample supplies of provisions were ready, and the most perfect discipline was maintained. By degrees Marlborough obtained more re-enforcements from the Dutch and the other confederates and he also was left more at liberty by them to follow his own course.

Indeed, before even a blow was struck, his enterprise had paralyzed the enemy, and had materially relieved Austria from the pressure of the war. Villeroy, with his detachments from the French Flemish army, was completely bewildered by Marlborough's movements; and, unable to divine where it was that the English general meant to strike his blow, wasted away the early part of the summer between Flanders and the Moselle without effecting anything.

Marshal Tallard, who commanded forty-five thousand French at Strasburg, and who had been destined by Louis to march early in the year into Bavaria, thought that Marlborough's march along the Rhine was preliminary to an attack upon Alsace; and the marshal therefore kept his forty-five thousand men back in order to protect France in that quarter. Marlborough skilfully encouraged his apprehensions, by causing a bridge to be constructed across the Rhine at Philipsburg, and by making the Landgrave of Hesse advance his artillery at Manheim, as if for a siege of Landau. Meanwhile the Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Marsin, suspecting that Marlborough's design might be what it really proved to be, forbore to press upon the Austrians opposed to them, or to send troops into Hungary and they kept back so as to secure their communications with France.

Thus, when Marlborough, at the beginning of June, left the Rhine and marched for the Danube, the numerous hostile armies were uncombined and unable to check him.

"With such skill and science had this enterprise been concerted that at the very moment when it assumed a specific direction the enemy was no longer enabled to render it abortive. As the march was now to be bent towards the Danube, notice was given for the Prussians, Palatines, and Hessians, who were stationed on the Rhine, to order their march so as to join the main body v in its progress. At the same time directions were sent to accelerate the advance of the Danish auxiliaries, who were marching from the Netherlands."

                                                              

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