alliance felt that no other hand could govern the jarring
motions of this extensive and complicated machinery, or
direct its future operations with harmony and effect. Accord-
ingly the camp of Herenthals became the scene of those
diplomatic negotiations which influenced the fortune of the
war and the fate of Europe. Of all the cabinets with which
he maintained an intercourse, that of Vienna was the most
difficult to be directed or controlled, as well from the danger
which threatened on the side of Hungary, as from its inability
to maintain at once the war in the Low Countries, Germany,
Italy, and Spain.

The great services of Marlborough in forcing the lines
awakened a proper feeling in the breast of the sovereign, by
whom their effects were particularly felt. But this satisfac-
tion was not unmixed with jealousy, lest the duke should be
induced by the Dutch to pursue his success in the Nether-
lands, instead of resuming the attack on the Moselle, recover-
ing the Austrian possessions on the Rhine, and liberating
Loraine. Numerous applications from the imperial court
were therefore made, both to Marlborough and the queen,
pressing his return to the Moselle, promising their zealous
assistance, and announcing that positive orders had been
issued, both to the margrave of Baden and the German
princes, to co-operate in his military plans.

In several of the letters which Marlborough wrote during
his retrograde march from Treves, he had indeed evinced a
resolution of returning to the Moselle as soon as he had re-
stored the affairs in the Netherlands; but his short though
bitter experience of the little dependence to be placed on the
aid of the German princes and the promises of the Austrian
cabinet sufficed to convince him that any further attempt in
that quarter would prove hopeless.

In fact, the captious conduct of the margrave of Baden
was alone sufficient to discourage a more sanguine general
from relying on his co-operation. We spare the reader the
long correspondence which passed on this subject between
the margrave, the duke, and the imperial ministers, because
two letters from the agents who were employed at the court
of Rastadt will place the character of the German com-
mander in its true light.

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