he close of the
preceding year to appease the insurrection in the Cevennes, and his
measures were at once so vigorous and conciliatory, that before the
end of the following winter the disturbances were entirely appeased.
In consequence of this, the forces employed in that quarter became
disposable; and by this means, and the immense efforts made by the
government over the whole kingdom, the armies on the frontier were so
considerably augmented, that Villeroi and the Elector of Bavaria took
the field in the Low Countries at the head of seventy-five thousand
men, while Marshal Marsin on the Upper Rhine, covered Alsace with
thirty thousand. Those armies were much larger than any which the
Allies could bring against them; for although it had been calculated
that Marlborough was to be at the head of ninety thousand men on the
Moselle on the 1st May, yet such had been the dilatory conduct of the
States-general and the German princes, that in the beginning of June
there were scarcely thirty thousand men collected round his standards;
and in Flanders and on the Upper Rhine the enemy's relative
superiority was still greater.

The plan of the campaign of 1705, based on the supposition that these
great forces were to be at his disposal, concerted between him and
Prince Eugene, was in the highest degree bold and decisive. It was
fixed that, early in spring, ninety thousand men should be assembled
in the country between the Moselle and the Saar, and, after
establishing their magazines and base of operations at Treves and
Traerbach, they should penetrate, in two columns into Lorraine; that
the column under Marlborough in person should advance along the course
of Moselle, and the other, under the Margrave of Baden, by the valley
of the Saar, and that Saar-Louis should be invested before the French
army had time to take the field. In this way the whole fortresses of
Flanders would be avoided, and the war, carried into the enemy's
territory, would assail France on the side where her iron barrier was
most easily pierced through. But the slowness of the Dutch, and
backwardness of the Germans, rendered this well-conceived plan
abortive, and doomed the English general, for the whole of a campaign
which promised such important advantages, to little else but
difficulty, delay, and vexation. Marlborough's enthusiasm, great as it
was, nearly sank under the repeated disappointments which he
experienced at this juncture; and, guarded as he was,