Although Kaiserwerth had been taken and Nimeguen saved, the danger
which they had run, and the backward movement of the allied army,
filled the Dutch with consternation.
The time, however, had come when Marlborough himself was to assume
the command, and by his genius, dash, and strategy to alter the
whole complexion of things, and to roll back the tide of war from
the borders of Holland. He had crossed from England early in May, a
few days only after Rupert had sailed; but hitherto he had been
engaged in smoothing obstacles, appeasing jealousies, healing
differences, and getting the whole arrangement of the campaign into
something like working order. At last, everything being fairly in
trim, he set out on the 2nd of July from the Hague, with full power
as commander-in-chief of the allied armies, for Nimeguen. There he
ordered the British troops from Breda, 8000 Germans from
Kaiserwerth, and the contingents of Hesse and Luneburg, 6000
strong, under the Prince of Zell, to join him.
As these reinforcements brought his army up to a strength superior
to that of the French, although Marshal Boufflers had hastily drawn
to him some of the garrisons of the fortresses, the Earl of
Marlborough prepared to strike a great blow. The Dutch deputies who
accompanied the army--and whose timidity and obstinacy a score of
times during the course of the war thwarted all Marlborough's
best-laid plans, and saved the enemy from destruction--interfered
to forbid an attack upon two occasions when an engagement would, as
admitted by French historians, have been fatal to their whole army.
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