Not until Marlborough with his army had reached Coblenz, did he give any hint of his intentions, except to the two or three persons necessarily in his confidence. Even then he only declared to the Dutch that he found it necessary to go further south; and they, finding that a deaf ear was turned to their remonstrances, let Marlborough take his own course, and even sent reinforcements after him. The distance to be traversed, the necessity of arranging every detail for troops moving by different routes, made his progress necessarily slow. The French did not in the least guess his design, but nevertheless persevered in their plan of reinforcing the army in Bavaria, a process which the Margrave of Baden, who commanded for the allies on the upper Rhine, ought to have rendered much more difficult. Not till Marlborough, ascending the Neckar, began to penetrate the hill country that separates the basins of the Neckar and Danube, was his real purpose apparent. He had before then met Eugene of Savoy, who was as he hoped to command the imperial army destined to co-operate with him: but the Margrave of Baden, who was Eugene's senior in rank, insisted on taking the more important part, and leaving Eugene to command on the Rhine. Marlborough's purpose was something like Napoleon's at the beginning of the famous Austerlitz campaign, to concentrate his army, reaching the Danube by various routes, near Ulm. In Marlborough's time however Ulm was not yet an important fortress: and the Elector abandoned it on the allies appearing in the vicinity, and marched down the Danube to a great intrenched camp near Dillingen. Marlborough's first object was necessarily to secure a point of passage across the Danube: and he determined to seize Donauwerth, a small fortified town lower down. His zeal was quickened by the tidings that the French army under Marshal Tallard was on the point of marching from Strasburg to assist the Elector. He therefore, as soon as his troops had come up in sufficient numbers, without waiting for full concentration, circled round Dillingen, and directed his march on Donauwerth. The Elector divined his intention, and occupying that town, with the hill of the Schellenberg adjoining it, began to put in order the fortifications. Marlborough saw the urgent necessity for haste: a couple of days' delay might render the works on the Schellenberg unassailable, in which case his chance of securing a bridge over the Danube before Tallard arrived would be but small. He therefore ordered an attack immediately on reaching the place, though his men had had a very long march, and it was verging towards evening.[56]