The year 1703 brought no laurels to the British in Flanders. Dutch incapacity and obstinacy again hampered Marlborough’s movements; he failed to bring the French to battle, and accomplished little beyond the retaking of a few small fortresses. At the sieges of two of these places, Huy and Limberg, the XVIIIth was present. The regiment spent the first part of the winter at Breda, then reinforced the garrison of Bergen-op-Zoom, and afterwards returned to Breda, whence it sent a strong detachment to Maestricht. But if little of importance happened on the shores of the North Sea during this campaign, great events took place in the south of Germany, where the Elector of Bavaria had deserted the coalition and attached himself to the fortunes of Louis XIV. The Gallo-Bavarians, as the troops of the new alliance were called, captured several fortified towns belonging to the Emperor of Austria, and defeated the Imperialists at the battle of Hochstädt.[28] Encouraged by these successes, Louis evolved a plan of campaign almost Napoleonic in its grandeur. Its main object was the capture of Vienna. One army was to force its way from Italy through the Tyrol to Austria; another was to march from Strasburg on the Upper Rhine into South Germany, reinforce the 45,000 Gallo-Bavarians, and join hands with the troops from Italy; while to harass Austria from the rear a strong detachment was to be sent to Hungary to help the inhabitants in their chronic rebellion against the Emperor. In Flanders de Villeroi was to remain on the defensive, while on the Moselle 10,000 troops stood ready to reinforce either flank. On his side Marlborough had also conceived a daring scheme. As a soldier, he saw clearly that a mere war of sieges would produce no decisive results; as a politician, he saw equally clearly that the coalition would go to pieces unless Austria was delivered from the Gallo-Bavarian peril,--and he decided that the best way of helping the Emperor was to leave to the Dutch the defence of the Low Countries, and to carry the war into the heart of Germany. As he knew that the Dutch would oppose his project to the uttermost, he took only two or three of his officers into his confidence; he wrung a reluctant consent from the Dutch Government to the withdrawal of troops from Holland by pretending that he was about to attack the French on the Moselle, and for several weeks after he had set his army in motion the troops had no idea to which part of the Continent they were heading.