It is now time to revert¹ to England and to the preparations for the campaign of 1706. Marlborough, as usual, directly that the military operations were concluded, had been deputed to visit the courts of Vienna and of sundry² German states in order to keep the Allies up to the necessary pitch of unity³ and energy. These duties detained him in Germany and at the Hague until January 1706, when he was at last able to return to England. There he met with far less obstruction⁴ than in former years, but none the less with an increasing burden of work. The vast extension of operations in the Peninsula, and the general sickliness of the troops in that quarter, demanded the enlistment⁵ of an usually large number of recruits. One new regiment⁶ of dragoons and eleven new battalions⁷ of foot were formed in the course of the spring, to which it was necessary to add yet another battalion⁸ before the close of the year.[329] Again the epidemic⁹ sickness among the horses in Flanders had caused an extraordinary demand for horses. The Dutch, after their wonted manner, had actually taken pains to prevent the supply of horses to the British,[330] though, even if they had not, the Duke had a prejudice in favour of English horses, as of English men, as superior to any other. Finally, the stores of the Ordnance¹⁰ were unequal to the constant [465]drain of small arms, and it was necessary to make good the deficiency by purchases from abroad. All these difficulties and a thousand more were of course referred for solution to Marlborough.
April 14 25 .

When in April he crossed once more to the Hague he found a most discouraging state of affairs. The Dutch were backward in their preparations; Prussia and Hanover were

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