Nor was the relative support of the three arms of battle better understood. If in the past the men-at-arms formed the mainstay of the attack, so here, with a slight difference, is the same result apparent. Much as the infantry had improved and come to the front, it was, apparently, not even now recognised that it was a principal arm of battle, to which all others are accessory. Then, when the decisive moment of the day, about 5 p.m., came, the cavalry, some 8000 strong, were led by the duke himself against the French position. There was still personal leadership of men rather than the direction of them that the general showed. “The infantry were in _support_, with intervals between the battalions, so that the squadrons, if repulsed, might pass through.” The admixture of the dissimilar arms of infantry and cavalry in the same fighting line is still curious. Similarly, says General Kane, “the Gens d’armes ... _began_ the battle by a most furious charge, and broke through part of the front line” of Cutts’ division. The probable fact is that the cavalry, being more mobile than the infantry, whose fighting power depended on the fire-action, which was necessarily slow, were used for the real attack, as the infantry were less able to take a vigorous offensive. Besides, the enemy’s centre was composed chiefly of the mounted arm. The artillery, slow moving like the infantry, were brought up in _support_ of the more mobile body. It was only therefore when the ground was hopelessly bad for the mounted arm, as at Oudenarde and Malplaquet, that the decisive blow was given by infantry, and then the fight was more prolonged, more bloody, more stubbornly contested and less resultful. Good as the infantry was,--so good that “Salamander Cutts” advanced his regiments right up to the palisades of Blenheim without firing a shot, and he contained and held therefore in the village the mass of troops that finally had to surrender there,--it was not the principal arm yet. The infantry _supported_ the main attack of the cavalry, and completed the victory. Time was to come when the cavalry were to reverse these tactics, and complete the success that the infantry had begun. The proportion of the cavalry to infantry again proves the case; nowadays it would be absolutely abnormal. Of the 52,000 Allies (9000 of whom were English), there were 20,000 cavalry. Of the 56,000 French, 8000 were cavalry. It is a stage in the tactical history, and that is all. The artillery took the preparatory part of the battle, and practically stopped there. The infantry finished what the cavalry had begun by Marlborough’s “decisive attack” with his two lines of cavalry; but the value of artillery to support such an advance and its increased mobility is foreshadowed by the advance of the guns across the Nebel.