The morning after the battle Marlborough marched a few miles up the river, and then encamped for four days to rest his weary troops, to set his hospitals in order, and to dispose of his prisoners, of whom Millner speaks as “a luggage that retarded our progress.” During this respite from organised pursuit the French hurried back to the Rhine, whither they were followed by the Allies, who laid siege to the fortress of Landau. The XVIIIth was employed in the covering army, and in the middle of October, a few weeks before the place was taken, all the British infantry were embarked on river boats and floated down the Rhine to Nimeguen, where after a ten days’ voyage they disembarked, so greatly reduced by their losses in the campaign that for administrative purposes the fourteen regiments were treated as seven provisional battalions. The troops marched to their winter quarters to enjoy a well-earned rest and to discipline the recruits who joined them from home. While the XVIIIth was at Ruremonde, where it spent several months, Brigadier Frederick Hamilton retired from the service,[40] and was succeeded as Colonel by Lieutenant-General R. Ingoldsby, from the 23rd regiment of Foot. The year 1705 afforded the XVIIIth no opportunities of adding to its laurels, for as far as the regiment was concerned the campaign was one of hard marching, great fatigue, and no fighting. Marlborough had planned an invasion of France, and again entrusting to the Dutch the defence of the Low Countries led his British contingent and a large number of their Continental Allies towards the Moselle, whence he hoped to overrun Lorraine and then carry the war into the enemy’s country. He expected to be joined by a strong body of Germans under the Prince of Baden, a general from whose jealousy and stupidity he had suffered acutely in the operations of 1704; but after waiting many weeks for reinforcements which never came, Marlborough determined to return to Flanders, where the enemy had begun to show alarming signs of activity. Though Marshal de Villars, one of the best soldiers of France, was watching his movements closely, Marlborough broke up his camp and slipped away unmolested by the French, who were nearly double his strength. With the elaborate politeness of the time, he wrote to de Villars to apologise for retreating without giving battle. “Do me the justice,” said he, “to believe that my defeat is entirely owing to the failure of the Prince of Baden, but that my esteem for you is still greater than my resentment for his conduct.”[41]