the number of six-and-twenty battalions. Thus
concluded this great battle, in which the enemy had 5900 more than
the Allies,[12] and the advantage of a very strong position,
difficult of attack."[13]

In this battle Marlborough's wing lost 3000 men, and Eugene's the same
number, in all 6000. The French lost 13,000 prisoners, including 1200
officers, almost all taken by Marlborough's wing, besides 34 pieces of
cannon, 26 standards, and 90 colours; Eugene took 13 pieces. The killed
and wounded were 14,000 more. But the total loss of the French and
Bavarians, including those who deserted during their calamitous retreat
through the Black Forest, was not less than 40,000 men,[14] a number
greater than any which they sustained till the still more disastrous day
of Waterloo.

This account of the battle, which is by far the best and most
intelligible which has ever yet been published, makes it quite evident
to what cause the overwhelming magnitude of this defeat to the French
army was owing. The strength of the position consisted solely in the
rivulets and marshy grounds in its front; when they were passed, the
error of Marshal Tallard's disposition of his troops was at once
apparent. The infantry was accumulated in useless numbers in the
villages. Of the twenty-six battalions in Blenheim, twenty were useless,
and could not get into action, while the long line of cavalry from
thence to Oberglau was sustained only by a few battalions of foot,
incapable of making any effective resistance. This was the more
inexcusable, as the French, having sixteen battalions of infantry more
than the Allies, should at no point have shown themselves inferior in
foot soldiers to their opponents. When the curtain of horse which
stretched from Blenheim to Oberglau was broken through and driven off
the field, the 13,000 infantry accumulated in the former of these
villages could not avoid falling into the enemy's hands; for they were
pressed between Marlborough's victorious foot and horse on the one side,
and the unfordable stream of the Danube on the other. But Marlborough,
it is evident, evinced the capacity of a great general in the manner in
which he surmounted these obstacles, and took advantage of these faulty
dispositions; resolutely, in the first instance, overcoming the numerous
impediments which opposed the passage of the rivulets, and then
accumulating his horse and foot for a grand attack on the enemy's
centre, which, bes