How bitterly Marlborough felt this want of support, on the part of the cabinets both of London and Vienna, which prevented him from following up the victory of Blenheim with the decisive operations against France which he would otherwise have undoubtedly commenced, is proved by various parts of his correspondence. On the 16th of December 1704, he wrote to Mr Secretary Harley--"I am sorry to see nothing has been offered yet, _nor any care taken by Parliament for recruiting the army_. I mean chiefly the foot. It is of that consequence for an early campaign, that without it _we may run the hazard of losing, in a great measure, the fruits of the last_; and therefore, pray leave to recommend it to you to advise with your friends, if any proper method can be thought of, that may be laid before the House immediately, without waiting my arrival."[16] Nor was the cabinet of Vienna, notwithstanding the imminent danger they had recently run, more active in making the necessary efforts to repair the losses of the campaign--"You cannot," says Marlborough, "say more to us of the _supine negligence of the Court of Vienna_, with reference to your affairs, _than we are sensible of every where else_; and certainly if the Duke of Savoy's good conduct and bravery at Verue had not reduced the French to a very low ebb, the game must have been over before any help could come to you."[17] It is ever thus, especially with states such as Great Britain, in which the democratic element is so powerful as to imprint upon the measures of government that disregard of the future, and aversion to present efforts or burdens, which is the invariable characteristic of the bulk of mankind. If Marlborough had been adequately supported and strengthened after the decisive blow struck at Blenheim; that is, if the governments of Vienna and London, with that of the Hague, had by a great and timely effort doubled his effective force when the French were broken and disheartened by defeat, he would have marched to Paris in the next campaign, and dictated peace to the _Grand Monarque_ in his gorgeous halls of Versailles. It was short-sighted economy which entailed upon the nations the costs and burdens of the next ten years of the War of the Succession, as it did the still greater costs and burdens of the Revolutionary War, after the still more decisive success of the Allies in the summer of 1793, when the iron frontier of the Netherlands was entirely broken through, and their advanced posts, without any force to oppose them, were within an hundred and sixty miles of Paris.