Realising the danger, the Duke of Marlborough resolved to alleviate the peril to Vienna by marching his forces south from Bedburg and help maintain Emperor Leopold within the Grand Alliance.

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

The John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough | Duke of Marlborough's march from Bedburg ( near Cologne ) to the Danube.

The Duke had assured the Dutch that if the French were to launch an offensive he would return in good time, but Marlborough calculated that as he marched south, the French commander would be drawn after him.

In this assumption Marlborough proved correct: Villeroi shadowed the Duke with 30, 000 men in 60 squadrons and 42 battalions.

Portrait of the Duke of Marlborough by Adriaen van der Werff ( December 1704 ) Uffizi

Some Allied officers who were acquainted with the superior numbers of the enemy, and aware of their strong defensive position, ventured to remonstrate with Marlborough about the hazards of attacking ; but the Duke was resolute – " I know the danger, yet a battle is absolutely necessary, and I rely on the bravery and discipline of the troops, which will make amends for our disadvantages ".

In February 1705, Queen Anne, who had made Marlborough a Duke in 1702, granted him the Park of Woodstock and promised a sum of £ 240, 000 to build a suitable house as a gift from a grateful crown in recognition of his victory – a victory which British historian Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy considered one of the pivotal battles in history, writing – " Had it not been for Blenheim, all Europe might at this day suffer under the effect of French conquests resembling those of Alexander in extent and those of the Romans in durability.

Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough: vol. i. London, ( 1847 )

Also determined to fight a major engagement, the Duke of Marlborough, commander-in-chief of Anglo-Dutch forces, assembled his army – some 62, 000 men – near Maastricht, and marched past Zoutleeuw.

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 in strength for the coming offensive.

The year 1705 proved almost entirely barren for the Duke whose military disappointments were only partly compensated by efforts on the diplomatic front where, at the courts of Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Vienna, Berlin and Hanover, Marlborough sought to bolster support for the Grand Alliance and extract promises of prompt assistance for the following year ’ s campaign.

With these reverses, the Dutch now refused to contemplate Marlborough ’ s ambitious march to Italy or, indeed, any plan that denuded their borders of the Duke and their army.

Marlborough wrote an appeal to the Duke of Württemberg, the commander of the Danish contingent – " I send you this express to request your Highness to bring forward by a double march your cavalry so as to join us at the earliest moment …" Additionally, the King in Prussia, Frederick I, had kept his troops in quarters behind the Rhine while his personal disputes with Vienna and the States-General at The Hague remained unresolved.

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough ( 1650 – 1722 ) by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

The following day, at 01: 00, Marlborough dispatched Cadogan, his Quartermaster-General, with an advanced guard to reconnoitre the same dry ground that Villeroi ’ s army was now heading, country that was well known to the Duke from previous campaigns.

Marlborough ’ s horse tumbled and the Duke was thrown – " Milord Marlborough was rid over ," wrote Orkney some time later.

" Fortunately Marlborough ’ s newly appointed aide-de-camp, Richard Molesworth, galloped to the rescue, mounted the Duke on his horse and made good their escape, before Murray ’ s disciplined ranks threw back the pursuing French troopers.

After a brief pause, Marlborough ’ s equerry, Colonel Bringfield ( or Bingfield ), led up another of the Duke ’ s spare horses ; but while assisting him onto his mount, the unfortunate Bringfield was hit by an errant cannonball that sheared off his head.

The Duke of Marlborough receives captured standards at Ramillies.

Marlborough realised the great opportunity created by the early victory of Ramillies: " We now have the whole summer before us ," wrote the Duke from Brussels to Robert Harley, " and with the blessing of God I shall make the best use of it.

By the time Marlborough had closed down the Ramillies campaign he had denied the French most of the Spanish Netherlands west of the Meuse and north of the Sambre – it was an unsurpassed operational triumph for the English Duke.

This 1930 edition also had songs in it by Vernon Duke and Ira Gershwin, by E. Y. Harburg and Duke, and by Harry Myers.

Back and forth Duclos had to go, between M. De Cury and Jean Jacques and between the Duke D'Aumont and Jean Jacques again, as his little operetta, The Village Soothsayer, though still unperformed, took on ever more importance.

Henry, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, then took command of the troops of the league, and after Albert had been placed under the imperial ban in December 1553 he was defeated by Duke Henry, and compelled to flee to France.

Because Albert was a member of the Brandenburg-Ansbach branch of the House of Hohenzollern, it had been hoped that his election as Grand Master would reverse the decline of the Teutonic Knights since 1410 ; Duke Frederick of Saxony of the House of Wettin had been elected for the same reason.

Albert was chosen as his successor early in 1511 in the hope that his relationship to his maternal uncle, Sigismund I the Old, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, would facilitate a settlement of the disputes over eastern Prussia, which had been held by the Order under Polish suzerainty since the Second Peace of Thorn ( 1466 ).

Gaimar asserts that King Harold did this because he had heard of Duke William's landing in England, and needed to rush south to counter it.

But on 9 June 1448, when the king came of age, Peter had to surrender his power to Afonso V. The years of conspiracy by the Duke of Braganza finally came to a head.

In the summer of 1214, Andrew had a meeting with Grand Duke Leszek I of Poland and they agreed that they would divide the Principality of Halych between Hungary and Poland.

Ken Mattingly had originally been assigned to the prime crew of Apollo 13, but was exposed to the measles through Charles Duke, at that time on the back-up crew for Apollo 13, who had caught it from one of his children.

One of nineteen astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966, Charles Duke had never flown in space before Apollo 16.

During the third and final lunar excursion of the mission, astronauts Young and Duke were to explore North Ray Crater, the largest of any of the craters any Apollo expedition had visited.

Young and Duke, in the LM, successfully rendezvoused and re-docked with Ken Mattingly, who had remained in orbit to perform observations while his fellow crewmembers explored the surface, in the Command / Service Module.

After opening the hatch and reuniting with Mattingly, the crew transferred the samples Young and Duke had collected on the surface into the CSM for transfer to Earth.

However, Mary II died childless in 1694, after which William III did not remarry, and Princess Anne's last surviving child, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, died six years later, after which it was unlikely she would have any more children due to her age and the large number of miscarriages she had previously suffered.

The current most senior living descendant of the Electress Sophia who is ineligible to succeed due to the act is George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews, the eldest son of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, who married the Roman Catholic Sylvana Palma Tomaselli in 1988 ; he would now be 29th in the lines of succession if he had not lost his place.

Soon, however, the Duke of Canossa, Alberto Uzzo, who had been advised of the rescue, arrived and carried her off to his castle, where she was besieged by Berengar.

Feeling against Catholics, and especially against James, Duke of York, was running strongly ; the Exclusion Bill had been passed by the House of Commons, and the popularity of James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, was very great.

Aldona had two daughters, Cunigunde ( died in 1357 ), who married Louis VI the Roman, the son of Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, on 1 January 1345, and Elisabeth ( died in 1361 ), who was married to Duke Bogislaus V of Pomerania.

In 1796 the Duke of Zweibrücken, Maximilian Joseph, the future Bavarian king Max I. Joseph, was exiled to Ansbach after Zweibrücken had been taken by the French.

Originally known as Buckingham House, the building which forms the core of today's palace was a large townhouse built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1705 on a site which had been in private ownership for at least 150 years.