1703. The Duke of Marlborough passed the summer of this year in fruitless attempts to stimulate the timid spirit of the Dutch generals with whom, as commander-in-chief, he was destined to co-operate, and to unite the discordant opinions by which his operations against the French were weakened, and his plans wholly frustrated. So harassed and dispirited was the great commander at this time, when all his persuasions could not avail to induce the allied armies to attack the French lines, that he looked forward with something like pleasure to the projected siege of Limburg, as to a sort of episode to his weary existence amongst his friendly, but obstinate coadjutors. One painful and inconvenient effect of mental anxiety continually attacked the Duke, in the cruel form of continual and severe headache. To this, and to the harassed frame and dejected spirits of which it was a concomitant, he refers, when writing to the Duchess, in terms which ought to have made an affectionate wife careful lest she should increase his uneasiness by any line of conduct which she could possibly avoid. “When[15] I last writ to you, I was so much disordered, that I writ in very great pain. I cannot say I am yet well, for my head aches violently, and I am afraid you will think me lightheaded, when I tell you that I go to-morrow to the siege of Limburg, in hopes to recover my health. But it is certainly true that I shall have more quiet there than I have here; for I have been these last six days in a perpetual dispute, and there I shall have nobody but such as will willingly obey me.” The Duchess was too much absorbed in her own schemes, to regard the unkindness and impropriety of adding to her husband’s perplexities, which were already sufficiently overpowering, and which demanded an undisturbed attention. She was carried along, as it were, by a torrent. Her hopes, her endeavours, centered all in one point; the abasement of the high church party, and the establishment of the Whigs at the head of affairs, were the objects of her political existence. To accomplish this purpose, she now employed all the force of her arguments, not only to convert the Duke, but by correspondence, and in conversation, to sway the mind of her sovereign, and bend it to her purpose.