further
reserve of at least eleven battalions. Of his thirty-six battalions,
therefore, only nine remained to support his cavalry over the whole of the
open field between Blenheim and Oberglauheim, a distance of no less than
3500 yards. Consequently, this great gap had to be held in the main by his
insufficient and depleted cavalry. Eight squadrons of these (of the
red-coated sort called the Gendarmerie) formed the first section of this
line, stretching from Blenheim to the neighbourhood of the main road and a
little beyond it. Further along, towards Oberglauheim, another ten
squadrons of cavalry were lined up to fill the rest of the gap. In a
second line were ten more squadrons of cavalry under Silly; and the nine
battalions of infantry remaining, when those in and near Blenheim had been
subtracted, lay also in the second line, in support of the cavalry of the
first line.

Such was Tallard's disposition, of which it was complained both at the
time and afterwards that in putting nearly the whole of his infantry upon
his right in the village of Blenheim and behind it he far too greatly
weakened the great open gap between Blenheim and Oberglauheim. His chief
misfortune was not, however, lack of judgment in this, but the character
of the man who commanded the troops in Blenheim. This general officer,
whose name was Clerambault, was of the sort to be relied upon when orders
are strict and plain in their accomplishment: useless in an emergency; but
it is only an emergency that proves the uselessness of this kind of man.
The army of the Elector and Marcin, which continued the line, similarly
disposed their considerable force of cavalry in front, along the banks of
the stream; their infantry lay, in the main, in support of this line of
horse and behind it; they had also filled Oberglauheim with a mass of
infantry; but the disposition of this left half of the French line is of
less interest to the general reader, for it held its own, and contributed
to the defeat only in this, that it did not at the critical moment send
reinforcements to Tallard upon the right.

In general, then, we must see the long French line set out in two main
bodies. That on the right, under Tallard, had far the greater part of its
infantry within or in support of Blenheim,[12] while the cavalry, for the
most part, stretched out over the open centre of the field, with Silly's
ten squadrons and what was left of the infantry in reserve. That on the
left, u