The War of the Spanish Succession is in its fourth year by 1704.

The previous year had been one of success for France and her allies, most particularly on the Danube, where Marshal Villars and the Elector of Bavaria had created a direct threat to Vienna, the Habsburg capital.

Vienna had been saved by dissension between the two commanders, leading to the brilliant Villars being replaced by the less dynamic Marshal Marsin.

Nevertheless, the threat is still real by 1704: Rákóczi's Hungarian revolt is already threatening the Empire's eastern approaches, and Marshal Vendôme's forces threatened an invasion from northern Italy.

In the courts of Versailles and Madrid, Vienna's fall is confidently anticipated, an event which will almost certainly lead to the collapse of the Grand Alliance.

To isolate the Danube from any Allied intervention, Marshal Villeroy's forty-six thousand troops are expected to pin the seventy thousand Dutch and English troops around Maastricht in the Low Countries, while General de Coigny protects Alsace against surprise with a further corps.

The only forces immediately available for Vienna's defense are Prince Louis of Baden's force of thirty-six thousand stationed in the Lines of Stollhofen to watch Marshal Tallard at Strasbourg; there is also a weak force of ten thousand men under Field Marshal Count Limburg Styrum observing Ulm.

Both the Imperial Austrian Ambassador in London, Count Wratislaw, and the Duke of Marlborough realize the implications of the situation on the Danube.

The Dutch, however, who cling to their troops for their country's protection, are against any adventurous military operation as far south as the Danube and will never willingly permit any major weakening of the forces in the Spanish Netherlands.

Marlborough, realizing the only way to ignore Dutch wishes is by the use of secrecy and guile, sets out to deceive his Dutch allies by pretending to simply move his troops to the Moselle—a plan approved of by The Hague—but once there, he will slip the Dutch leash and link up with Austrian forces in southern Germany.