The Austrians were now commanded by the archduke Charles, who, after all detachments had been made, disposed of some 56,000 men. At first he employed the bulk of this force against Jourdan, but on hearing of Moreau's progress he returned to the Neckar country with 20,000 men, leaving Feldzeugmeister v. Wartensleben with 36,000 to observe Jourdan. In later years he admitted himself that his own force was far too small to deal with Moreau, who, he probably thought, would retire after a few manoeuvres. The archduke's plan. But by now the two French generals were aiming at something more than alternate raids and feints. Carnot had set before them the ideal of a decisive battle as the great object. Jourdan was instructed, if the archduke turned on Moreau, to follow him up with all speed and to bring him to action. Moreau, too, was not retreating but advancing. The two armies, Moreau's and the archduke's, met in a straggling and indecisive battle at Malsch on the 9th of July, and soon afterwards Charles learned that Jourdan had recrossed the Rhine and was driving Wartensleben before him. He thereupon retired both armies from the Rhine valley into the interior, hoping that at least the French would detach large forces to besiege the river fortresses. Disappointed of this, and compelled to face a very grave situation, he resorted to an expedient which may be described in his own words: "to retire both armies step by step without committing himself to a battle, and to seize the first opportunity to unite them so as to throw himself with superior or at least equal strength on one of the two hostile enemies." This is the ever-recurring idea of "interior lines." It was not new, for Frederick the Great had used similar means in similar circumstances, as had Souham at Tourcoing and even Dampierre at Valenciennes. Nor was it differentiated, as were Napoleon's operations in this same year, by the deliberate use of a small containing force at one point to obtain relative superiority at another. A general of the 18th century did not believe in the efficacy of superior numbers--had not Frederick the Great disproved it?--and for him operations on "interior lines" were simply successive blows at successive targets, the efficacy of the blow in each case being dependent chiefly on his own personal qualities and skill as a general on the field of battle. In the present case the point to be observed is not the expedient, which was dictated by the circumstances, but the courage of the young general, who, unlike Wartensleben and the rest of his generals, unlike, too, Moreau and Jourdan themselves, surmounted difficulties instead of lamenting them.