"13th August 1704.
"I have not time to say more, but to beg you will give my duty to the queen, and let her know her army has had a glorious victory, Monsr. Tallard and two other generals are in my coach and I am following the rest. The bearer, my aide-de-camp, Colonel Parke, will give her an account of what has pass'd. I shall doe it in a day or two by another more at large.
"Marlborough."
So Colonel Parke galloped away with the news to England, and the broad Danube bore the same tale to the east as it rolled the white-coated corpses in silence towards the sea.
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The total loss of the Allies amounted to four thousand five hundred killed and seven thousand five hundred wounded, of which the British numbered six hundred and seventy killed and over fifteen hundred wounded. No regimental list of the casualties seems to exist, but judging from their loss in officers the Tenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Twenty-first, and Twenty-sixth regiments of Foot, and the Third, Sixth, and Seventh Dragoon Guards were the corps that suffered most severely—the Twenty-sixth in particular losing twenty officers, the Carabiniers ten officers and seventy-four horses, and the Seventh Dragoon Guards six officers and seventy-five horses. But most remarkable, and perhaps most splendid of all, is the record of the regiments which had been so terribly shattered at the Schellenberg. The Guards lost their colonel and seven other officers; the two battalions of the Royal Scots lost twelve, and the Twenty-third nine officers, notwithstanding that the former had already lost thirty and the latter sixteen little more than a month before. Troops that will stand such punishment as this twice within a few weeks are not to be found in every army.
The losses of the French and their allies in killed, wounded, and prisoners, on the day of the battle and during the subsequent pursuit, fell little short of forty thousand men. Marlborough and Eugene divided eleven thousand prisoners, while the trophies included one hundred guns of various calibres, twenty-four mortars, one hundred and twenty-nine colours, one hundred and seventy-one standards and other less important items, together, of course, with the whole of the French camp.
August 3 14 .
The Allies lay on their arms on the field during the night after the battle, moved on for a short march on the morrow, and then halted for four days. The troops were very greatly fatigued, and Marlborough was much embarrassed by the multitude of his prisoners, so the pursuit, if pursuit it can be called, was left to the hussars of the Imperial Army. The Elector, however, needed no spur. On the night of the battle he crossed the Danube at Lavingen, and destroying the bridge behind him hurried back toward Ulm. Then, without pausing for a moment or attempting to obtain aid from Villeroy, he hastened on by forced marches, rather in flight than retreat, through the Black Forest to the Rhine. The sufferings of his troops were terrible. He had carried with him a thousand wounded officers and six thousand wounded men; and there was not a village on the line of march that had not its churchyard choked with the graves of those that had succumbed. The Imperial hussars too hung restlessly round his skirts, cutting off every straggler and bringing back multitudes of prisoners and deserters. Altogether it was a disastrous retreat.