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 the Books attacks, as in the later "Battel of the Poets" (1729, by Edward Cooke), which was an attack on Alexander Pope. As a set piece or "topos" of 18th-century satire, the "Battle of the Books" was a standard shorthand for both the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns and the era of Swift's battle with William Wotton. The Battle of the Books "The Battle of the Books" is the name of a short satire written by Jonathan Swift and published as part of the prolegomena to his "A Tale of a Tub" in 1704. It depicts a literal battle between books