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.