circumstances where defeat could be attended with nothing short of total ruin. The French and Bavarian army consisted of fifty-five thousand men, of whom nearly forty-five thousand were French troops, the very best which the monarchy could produce. Marlborough and Eugene had sixty-six battalions and one hundred and sixty squadrons, which, with the artillery, might be about fifty thousand combatants. The forces on the opposite sides were thus nearly equal in point of numerical amount; but there was a wide difference in their composition. Four-fifths of the French army were national troops, speaking the same language, animated by the same feelings, accustomed to the same discipline, and the most of whom had been accustomed to act together. The Allies, on the other hand, were a motley assemblage, like Hannibal's at Cannae, or Wellington's at Waterloo, composed of the troops of many different nations, speaking different languages, trained to different discipline, but recently assembled together, and under the orders of a stranger general, one of those haughty islanders, little in general inured to war, but whose cold or supercilious manners had so often caused jealousies to arise in the best cemented confederacies. English, Prussians, Danes, Wirtemburgers, Dutch, Hanoverians, and Hessians, were blended in such nearly equal proportions, that the arms of no one state could be said by its numerical preponderance to be entitled to the precedence. But the consummate address, splendid talents, and conciliatory manners of Marlborough, as well as the brilliant valour which the English auxiliary force had displayed on many occasions, had won for them the lead, as they had formerly done when in no greater force among the confederates under Richard Coeur-de-Lion in the Holy War. It was universally felt that upon them, as the Tenth Legion of Caesar, or the Old Guard of Napoleon, the weight of the contest at the decisive moment would fall. The army was divided into two _corps-d'armee_; the first commanded by the duke in person, being by far the strongest, destined to bear the weight of the contest, and carry in front the enemy's position. These two corps, though co-operating, were at such a distance from each other, that they were much in the situation of the English and Prussians at Waterloo, or Napoleon and Ney's corps at Bautzen. The second, under Prince Eugene, which consisted chiefly of cavalry, was much weaker in point of numerical amount, and was intended for a subordinate attack, to distract the enemy's attention from the principal onset in front under Marlborough.[10] With ordinary officers, or even eminent generals of a second order, a dangerous rivalry for the supreme command would unquestionably have arisen, and added to the many seeds of division and causes of weakness which already existed in so multifarious an array. But these great men were superior to all such petty jealousies. Each,