WIFT & CO., LTD., 10 John St., Adelphi
Footnotes:
[1] It was this success which to Marlborough's existing earldom added the
high dignity of Duke, by letters patent of December 16, 1702.
[2] As the French dispatch goes, 7500 men, every horse, and all the
waggons, save 120, which had got into difficulties on the way; Fortescue's
note suggesting that 1500 men only reached the Franco-Bavarians (vol. i.
p. 42) is based on Quincy.
[3] It is, of course, an error to say, as is too often done in our school
histories and the official accounts of our universities, that the French
commanders had no idea of a march upon the Danube. A child could have seen
that the march upon the Danube was one of the possible plans open to
Marlborough, and Villeroy expressly mentions the alternative in his letter
of the 30th of May. The whole point of Marlborough's manoeuvres was to
leave the enemy in doubt until the very last moment as to which of the
three, the Danube, the Moselle, or Alsace, he would strike at; and to be
well away upon the road to the former before the French had discovered his
final decision.
[4] It is worthy of remark that the opportunity for victory which the weak
forces under Marcin and the Elector of Bavaria offered at this moment to
the superior forces of the allies would have led to an immediate attack of
the last upon the first when, two generations later, war had developed
into something more sudden and less formal, through the efforts of the
Revolution.
Marlborough and the Duke of Baden, with their superior forces, would have
attacked Marcin and the Elector had they been their own grandsons.
Napoleon, finding himself in such a situation as Marlborough's a hundred
years later, would certainly have fallen on the insufficient forces to his
south, for it was known that reinforcements were coming over the Black
Forest to save the Franco-Bavarian forces. To break up those forces before
reinforcement should come was something which a sudden change of plan
could have effected, but not even the genius of Marlborough was prepared,
in his generation, for a movement necessitating so great a disturbance of
calculations previously made. Donauwoerth was his objective, and upon
Donauwoerth he marched, leaving intact this inferior hostile force which
watched his advance from the south.
[5] As a fact, the advance along this "isthmus" on to the Schellenberg is
slightly downhill, and against artillery of modern range an
|