In the afternoon of that Monday the whole of Marlborough's
command was passing the Wornitz, and long after sunset, following upon a
march which had kept the major part of the great host afoot for more than
twenty hours, Eugene and Marlborough were together at the head of 52,000
men, established in unison, and defending, with now no possibility of its
interruption, the line of communications from the north.

Every historian of this great business has justly remarked the
organisation and the patient genius of the man who made such a
concentration possible under such conditions and in such a time, without
appreciable loss, at hurried notice, and with a complete success.

It is a permanent example and masterpiece in that inglorious part of war,
the function of transport and of marching orders, upon which strategy
depends as surely as an army depends on food.

Fully accompanied by his artillery, Marlborough's force could not have
accomplished the marvel that it did; yet even this arm was brought up, in
the rear of the army, by the morning of Tuesday the 12th, and from that
moment, given a sufficient repose, the whole great weapon under the two
captains could act as one.

On that same morning, Tuesday the 12th, the Franco-Bavarian army under
Tallard and the Elector were choosing out with some deliberation a camp so
situated as to block any movement of their enemy up the valley of the
Danube. The situation of the camp was designed to make this advance up the
Danube so clearly impossible that nothing would be left but what the
strategy of the last few days had imposed upon Marlborough, namely, a
retreat upon his base northward, away from the Danube, towards Noerdlingen.
It was not imagined that the two commanders of the imperial forces would
attack this Franco-Bavarian position, and so risk a general action; for by
a retreat upon Noerdlingen their continued existence as an army was
assured, while an indecisive result would do them far more harm than it
would do their opponents. Did Marlborough and Eugene force an action, it
is doubtful whether Tallard had considered the alternative of refusing it.

At any rate, on this Tuesday, the 12th of August, Tallard and the Elector
had no intention but to take up a position and camp which would make a
retreat up the Danube impossible to Marlborough and Eugene; and certainly
neither imagined that any attempt to force the camp would be made, since
an alternative of retreat and complete