established his glory upon the misfortunes of France.  Marshals Tallard and Marsin were commanding in Germany together with the Elector of Bavaria; the emperor, threatened with a fresh insurrection in Hungary, recalled Prince Eugene from Italy; Marlborough effected a junction with him by a rapid march, which Marshal Villeroi would fain have hindered, but to no purpose; on the 13th of August, 1704, the hostile armies met between Blenheim and Hochstett, near the Danube; the forces were about equal, but on the French side the counsels were divided, the various corps acted independently.  Tallard sustained single-handed the attack of the English and the Dutch, commanded by Marlborough; he was made prisoner, his son was killed at his side; the cavalry, having lost their leader and being pressed by the enemy, took to flight in the direction of the Danube; many officers and soldiers perished in the river; the slaughter was awful.  Marsin and the elector, who had repulsed five successive charges of Prince Eugene, succeeded in effecting their retreat; but the electorates of Bavaria and Cologne were lost, Landau was recovered by the allies after a siege of two months, the French army recrossed the Rhine, Elsass was uncovered, and Germany evacuated.  In Spain the English had just made themselves masters of Gibraltar.  “This shows clearly, sir,” wrote Tallard to Chamillard after the defeat, “what is the effect of such diversity of counsel, which makes public all that one intends to do, and it is a severe lesson never to have more than one man at the head of an army.  It is a great misfortune to have to deal with a prince of such a temper as the Elector of Bavaria.”  Villars was of the same opinion; it had been his fate, in the campaign of 1703, to come to open loggerheads with the elector.  “The king’s army will march to-morrow, as I have had the honor to tell your Highness,” he had declared.  “At these words,” says Villars, the blood mounted to his face; he threw his hat and wig on the table in a rage.  ‘I commanded,’ said he, ’the emperor’s army in conjunction with the Duke of Lorraine; he was a tolerably great general, and he never treated me in this manner.’  ‘The Duke of Lorraine,’ answered I, ’was a great prince and a great general; but, for myself, I am responsible to the king for his army, and I will not expose it to destruction through the evil counsels so obstinately persisted in.’  Thereupon I went out of the room.”  Complete swaggerer as he was, Villars had more wits and resolution than the majority of the generals left to Louis XIV., but in 1704 he was occupied in putting down the insurrection of the Camisards in the south of France:  neither Tallard nor Marsin had been able to impose their will upon the elector.  In 1705 Villars succeeded in checking the movement of Marlborough on Lothringen and Champagne.  “He flattered himself he would swallow me like a grain of salt,” wrote the marshal.  The English fell back, hampered in their adventurous plans by the prudence of the