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
War of the Spanish Succession diverted in June to seize the Spanish Bourbon [[Kingdom of Naples]]. The delays contributed to the failure of the siege of [[Battle of Toulon (1707)|Toulon]]; by the end of 1707, fighting in Italy ceased apart from attempts by Victor Amadeus to recover his trans-Alpine territories of Nice and Savoy. [[File:Duke-of-Marlborough-signing-Despatch-Blenheim-Bavaria-1704.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.15|Blenheim, August 1704; Marlborough's first major victory knocked Bavaria out of the war.]] [[File:Holy Roman Empire c. 1700.png|thumb|right|upright=1.6|Holy Roman Empire; main actions occurred along the Moselle, Rhine and Upper Danube.]] The first objective for the Grand Alliance in this theatre was to secure the Dutch frontiers, threatened by the alliance between