among whom were three Irish corps of celebrated veterans. The
communication between Blenheim and Oberglau was kept up by a screen
consisting of eighty squadrons, in two lines, having two brigades of
foot, consisting of seven battalions, in its centre. The left, opposite
Prince Eugene, was under the orders of Marshal Marsin, and consisted of
twenty-two battalions of infantry and thirty-six squadrons, consisting
for the most part of Bavarians and Marshal Marsin's men, posted in front
of the village of Lutzingen. Thus the French consisted of sixty-nine
battalions and a hundred and thirty-four squadrons, and were posted in a
line strongly supported at each extremity, but weak in the centre, and
with the wings, where the great body of the infantry was placed, at such
a distance from each other, that, if the centre was broken through, each
ran the risk of being enveloped by the enemy, without the other being
able to render them any assistance. This danger as to the troops in
Blenheim, the flower of their army, was much augmented by the
circumstance, that if their centre was forced where it was formed of
cavalry only, and the victors turned sharp round towards Blenheim, the
horse would be driven headlong into the Danube, and the foot in that
village would run the hazard of being surrounded or pushed into that
river, which was not fordable, even for horse, in any part. But though
these circumstances would, to a far-seeing general, have presaged
serious disaster in the event of defeat, yet the position was strong in
itself, and the French generals, long accustomed to victory, had some
excuse for not having taken sufficiently into view the contingencies
likely to occur in the event of defeat. Both the villages at the
extremity of their line had been strengthened, not only with
intrenchments hastily thrown up around them, thickly mounted with heavy
cannon, but with barricades at all their principal entrances, formed of
overturned carts and all the furniture of the houses, which they had
seized upon, as the insurgents did at Paris in 1830, for that purpose.
The army stood upon a hill or gentle eminence, the guns from which
commanded the whole plain by which alone it could be approached; and
this plain was low, and intersected on the right, in front of Blenheim,
by a rivulet which flows down by a gentle descent to the Danube, and in
front of Oberglau by another rivulet, which runs in two branches till
within a few paces of the Danube