d of fifty battalions, and sixty squadrons of their best troops,
had arrived at Strasburg, and were using the utmost diligence to reach
the Bavarian forces through the defiles of the Black Forest.

This brilliant opening of the German campaign was soon followed by
substantial results. A few days after Rain surrendered, Aicha was
carried by assault; and, following up his career of success, Marlborough
advanced to within a league of Augsburg, under the cannon of which the
Elector of Bavaria was placed with the remnant of his forces, in a
situation too strong to admit of its being forced. He here made several
attempts to detach the Elector, who was now reduced to the greatest
straits, from the French alliance; but that prince, relying on the great
army, forty-five thousand strong, which Marshal Tallard was bringing up
to his support from the Rhine, adhered with honourable fidelity to his
engagements. Upon this, Marlborough took post near Friburg, in such a
situation as to cut him off from all communication with his dominions;
and ravaged the country with his light troops, levying contributions
wherever they went, and burning the villages with savage ferocity as far
as the gates of Munich. Thus was avenged the barbarous desolation of the
Palatinate, thirty years before, by the French army under the orders of
Marshal Turenne. Overcome by the cries of his suffering subjects, the
Elector at length consented to enter into a negotiation, which made some
progress; but the rapid approach of Marshal Tallard with the French army
through the Black Forest, caused him to break it off, and hazard all on
the fortune of war. Unable to induce the Elector, by the barbarities
unhappily, at that time, too frequent on all sides in war, either to
quit his intrenched camp under the cannon of Augsburg, or abandon the
French alliance, the English general undertook the siege of Ingolstadt;
he himself with the main body of the army covering the siege, and Prince
Louis of Baden conducting the operations in the trenches. Upon this, the
Elector of Bavaria broke up from his strong position, and, abandoning
with heroic resolution his own country, marched to Biberbach, where he
effected his junction with Marshal Tallard, who now threatened Prince
Eugene with an immediate attack. No sooner had he received intelligence
of this, than Marlborough, on the 10th of August, sent the Duke of
Wirtemburg with twenty-seven squadrons of horse to reinforce the prince;
a