The cavalry covered the British march, and these were in the morning attacked by the French horse under the Duke of Burgundy.  The British were outnumbered, but fought with great obstinacy, and before they fell back, with a loss of 720 men and a convoy of 300 waggons, the infantry had pushed forward, and when the French army reached Nimeguen its ramparts bristled with British bayonets.  Boufflers, disappointed in his aim, fell back upon the rich district of Cleves, now open to him, and plundered and ravaged that fertile country.

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.  Marlborough therefore was obliged to content himself by outflanking the French, compelling them to abandon Cleves, to cross the Meuse, and to fall back into Flanders, with some loss, and great haste and disorder.

In vain the French marshal endeavoured to take post so as to save the Meuse fortresses, which stood at the gates of Flanders, and by their command of the river prevented the allies from using the chain of water communications to bring up supplies.  Marlborough crossed the line by which his siege train was coming up, and then pounced upon Venloo, a very strong fortress standing across the Meuse—­that is to say, the town was on one side, the fort of Saint Michael on the other.

After this chapter, devoted to the necessary task of explaining the cause and commencement of the great War of Succession, we can return to the individual fortunes of our hero.