Battle of Ramillies their disastrous defeat at Blenheim in 1704, the next year brought the French some respite. The Duke of Marlborough had intended the 1705 campaign – an invasion of France through the Moselle valley – to complete the work of Blenheim and persuade King Louis XIV to make peace but the plan had been thwarted by friend and foe alike. The reluctance of his Dutch allies to see their frontiers denuded of troops for another gamble in Germany had denied Marlborough the initiative but of far greater importance was the Margrave of Baden’s pronouncement that he could not join the Duke
The Battle of Life The Battle of Life The Battle of Life: A Love Story is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in 1846. It is the fourth of his five "Christmas Books", coming after "The Cricket on the Hearth" and followed by "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain". The setting is an English village that stands on the site of an historic battle. Some characters refer to the battle as a metaphor for the struggles of life, hence the title. "Battle" is the only one of the five Christmas Books that has no supernatural or explicitly religious elements. (One scene takes