Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
2000 and 3000 mounted men, was sent off on the march to the south-east just as the first negotiations of Marlborough with Surville were opened. With this mobile force Orkney attempted to pass the Haine at St. Ghislain. He all but surprised that point at one o’clock of the dark September night, but the French posts were just in time. He was beaten off, and had to cross the river higher up upon the eastern side of Mons, at Havre.
The little check was not without its importance. It meant that the rapid forward march of his vanguard had failed to force that extreme extension of the French line, which was called “The Line of the Trouille” from the name of the small river that falls into the Haine near Mons. In point of time—which is everything in defensive warfare—the success of the defence at St. Ghislain meant that all action by the allies was retarded for pretty well a week. Meanwhile, the weather had turned to persistent and harassing rain, the allied army, “toiling through a sea of mud,”6 had not invested Mons even upon the eastern side until the evening of the 7th of September. On the same day Villars took advantage of a natural feature, stronger for purposes of defence than the line of the Trouille. This feature was the belt of forest-land which lies south and a little west of Mons, between that town and Bavai. He strengthened such forces as he had on the line of the Trouille (the little posts which had checked the first advance upon Mons, as I have said), concentrated the whole army just behind and west of the forest barrier, and watching the two gaps of that barrier, whose importance will be explained in a moment, he lay, upon the morning of Sunday, September the 8th, in a line which stretched from the river Haine at Montreuil to the bridge of Athis behind the woods; keeping watch upon his right in case he should have to move the line down south suddenly to meet an attack. As Villars so lay, he was in the position of a man who may be attacked through one of two doors in a wall. Such a man would stand between the two doors, watching both, and ready to spring upon that one which might be attacked, and attempt to defend it. The wall was the wall of wood, the two doors were the opening by Boussu and the other narrow opening which is distinguished by the name of Aulnois, the principal village at its mouth. It was this last which was to prove in the event the battlefield.
All this I must make plainer and elaborate in what follows, and close this section by a mere statement of the manœuvring for position.
Sketch Map showing the Lines of Woods behind Mons,
with the two gaps of Boussu and Aulnois.
Villars lying, as I have said, with his right at Athis, his left on the river Haine at Montreuil, Marlborough countered him by bringing the main of his forces over the Trouille7 so that they lay from Quevy to Quaregnon.
Eugene brought up his half, and drew it up as an extension of the Duke of Marlborough’s line, and by the evening of the Sunday and on the morning of the Monday, all the troops who were at Tournai having been meanwhile called up, the allied army lay opposite the second or southern of the two openings in the forest wall. Villars during the Sunday shifted somewhat to the left or the south in the course of the day to face the new position of his enemy. It was evident upon that Monday morning the 9th of September that the action, when it was forced, would be in the second and southernmost of the two gaps. On that same Monday morning Villars brought the whole of his army still further south and was now right in front of the allies and barring the gap of Aulnois. By ten o’clock the centre of the French forces was drawn up in front of the hamlet of Malplaquet, by noon it had marched forward not quite a mile, stretched from wood to wood, and awaited the onslaught. A few ineffective cannon-shots were exchanged, but the expected attack was not delivered. Vastly to the advantage of the French and to the inexplicable prejudice of the allies Marlborough and Eugene wasted all that Monday and all the Tuesday following: the result we shall see when we come to the battle, for Villars used every moment of his respite to entrench and fortify without ceasing.
With the drawing up of the French army across the gap, however, ends the manœuvring for position, and under the title of “The Preliminaries of the Battle” I will next describe the arrival of Boufflers—a moral advantage not to be despised—the terrain, the French defences, and the full effect of the unexpected delay upon the part of the allies.
IV
THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE BATTLE
The arrival of Louis Francis, Duke of Boufflers, peer and marshal of France, upon the frontier and before the army of defence, was one of those intangible advantages which the civilian historian will tend to exaggerate and the military to belittle, but which, though not susceptible of calculation or measurement, may always prove of vast consequence to a force, and have sometimes decided between victory and defeat. This advantage did not lie in Boufflers’ singular capacity for command, nor, as will presently be seen, was he entrusted with the supreme direction of the action that was to follow. He was a great general. His service under arms had occupied the whole of his life and energies; he was to have a high and worthy reputation in the particular province of his career. But much more than this, the magic of his name and the just prestige which attached to the integrity and valour of the man went before him with a spiritual influence which every soldier felt, and which reanimated the whole body of the defence. His record was peculiarly suited for the confirmation of men who were fighting against odds, under disappointment, at the end of a long series of defeats, and on a last line to which the national arms had been thrust back after five years of almost uninterrupted failure.
Boufflers at this moment was in his 66th year, and seemed older. His masterful, prominent face, large, direct, humorous in expression, full of command, was an index of a life well lived in the business of organisation, of obedience, and at last of supreme direction. Years ago at Namur his tenacity, under the pressure of a superior offensive, had earned him the particular character which he now bore. Only the year before, his conduct of the siege of Lille, when he had determinedly held out against the certitude of ultimate surrender, had refused to yield the place even after receiving orders from his sovereign, and had finally obtained, by his unshakable determination, a capitulation of the most honourable kind, was fresh in the minds of all. There is a story that on his arrival in the French camp the cheers with which he was greeted reached the opposing line, and that the allies were moved by the enormous rumour to expect an instant assault. He was one of those leaders who, partly through their legend, more through their real virtue, are a sort of flag and symbol to the soldiery who have the good fortune to receive their command.
Nine years the senior in age of Villars, of a military experience far superior, in rank again possessed of the right to supreme command (for he had received the grade of marshal long before), he none the less determined to put himself wholly at Villars’ orders, for he knew of what importance was continuity of direction in the face of the enemy. At the end of the last campaign, when he had expected peace, he had honourably retired. His life was nearing its close; in two years he was to die. He sacrificed both the pretension and the fact of superiority so dear to the commander, and told Villars that he came simply as a volunteer to aid as best he might, and to support the supreme command in the coming fight.
He had arrived at Arras on the same day that Tournai had surrendered. Upon the morrow he had reached Villars’ headquarters near Douai, Sin le Noble, in the centre of the defensive line. He had followed the easterly movement of the mass of the French army along that line to their present establishment between the two woods and to the terrain whereupon the action would be decided. In that action he was set at the head of the troops on the right, while Villars, attending in particular to the left, retained the general command and ordered all the disposition of the French force.
* * * * *
The landscape which lay before the French commanders when upon the Monday morning their line was drawn up and immediate battle expected, has changed hardly at all in the two hundred years between their day and ours. I will describe it.
From