The commencement of the war was uneventful. The king of France had taken possession of Belgium in the name of his grandson Philip, the French claimant of the crown of Spain, which alarmed the Dutch for their homes. In Spain itself the French party was preponderant, but not unopposed. Louis had every motive for standing on the defensive. Marlborough was as yet powerless to move his allies. It was not until the alliance of Bavaria with France opened a road for French armies into the heart of Germany that decisive events occurred. The chief item in the French plans for 1704 was that Marshal Tallard should march from the Rhine into Bavaria, where another army under Marsin had wintered; then the two armies, combined with the Bavarian contingent, were to advance down the basin of the Danube. It was calculated that the Emperor, already greatly hampered by an insurrection in Hungary, would be unable to oppose effectual resistance, and would purchase peace on almost any terms. If this were achieved, the keystone of the alliance against France, the candidature of an Austrian prince in Spain, would be removed, and the whole fabric might be expected to collapse. The plan was well conceived: it was an instance, on the great political scale, of acting upon the fundamental military maxim—strike at the vital point. But for Marlborough it must have succeeded, so far as anything can be safely predicted in war. But for the practice, invariable in that age and perhaps inevitable by reason of the badness of roads and of organised supply, that all military operations should be suspended during the winter half of the year, Marlborough would have had no time to prepare his counter stroke. His plan was indeed fully thought out before the winter, in concert with the imperial general Eugene of Savoy, but he had many obstacles to overcome before it could be carried into operation. Even to the English cabinet he did not venture to disclose his whole purpose, but he succeeded in obtaining a large addition to his own army, and increased money grants. The Dutch had but one idea, to guard their own frontier: they would not even assent beforehand to Marlborough's proposal, intended to conceal his real object from friend and foe alike, that he with part of the German contingents should operate against France from the Moselle, while the Dutch, with the rest of the Germans, defended the Netherlands. Marlborough was obliged to be content with the assurance of his one firm supporter in Holland, the Pensionary Heinsius, that consent should be obtained when the time came. Much trouble had also to be taken with other minor members of the confederacy, but Marlborough attained his ostensible object of being free to move with his own army to the Moselle.