enemy to form line for attack after struggling through it. The latter error might easily have been remedied by a short advance, but nothing was done. Tallard, it is said, uneasy about the weakness of the centre when he saw the enemy massing at Unterglauheim, urged Marsin to post his reserve of infantry there; but Marsin thought, rightly as the event showed, that his reserves were needed on the left. Why Marshal Tallard did not withdraw from Blenheim several of the useless thousands that crowded it, is a question easier to ask than to answer. Tallard had plenty of time to correct his dispositions, had he known how, for the battle did not begin for several hours after the allies came in sight. Eugene and Marlborough had agreed that the army of the former should constitute the right, Marlborough's the left, of the line of battle. As their line of march had been near the Danube, and the ground through which Eugene's columns had to make their way was broken and wooded, it was a long time before he was opposite Luzingen, ready to begin the action, and Marlborough was of course obliged to wait for him. The allied generals had discerned the defect in the French position: a vigorous attack on the centre ought to cut the line in half. Their plan was that Eugene should occupy the Elector and Marsin, and that Cutts with Marlborough's left should assail Blenheim directly, while the duke himself undertook the decisive movement. All preparations were duly made while Eugene was on the march: the pontoon train was brought up, and bridges laid at intervals from Unterglauheim downwards: the artillery was posted to command the opposite bank: troops were pushed forward to seize the small existing bridges near Blenheim. Except for a not very serious cannonade, Tallard remained inactive: he had in fact no longer any choice, unless he retreated (for which there was no reason), after he had allowed all the passages of the Nebel to fall into his enemy's hands. About one o'clock came the welcome news that Eugene had completed his march, and the battle began at once on both flanks. Of the conflict on the right very little need be said. The Nebel above Oberglauheim was not a real obstacle, and Eugene attacked directly. The contest was long and obstinate, with considerable vicissitudes: Eugene's troops, exhausted by the long march under a hot sun, were scarcely equal to the exertion required of them. The Elector and Marsin held their ground till Tallard was routed, and then made an orderly retreat, but they could not spare a man to help their colleague. Eugene's share in the action, though not in itself successful, was a necessary and important contribution to the victory.