[Larger Image]

Sketch Map showing the peril the French centre ran towards
noon of being turned on its left.

The plan of the allied generals, it will be remembered, was that the left of their army under the Prince of Orange should attack the wood of Lanière about half an hour after the right had begun to effect an entrance into the opposing forest of Sars. When that half hour had elapsed, that is, about half-past nine, the Prince of Orange, without receiving special orders, it is true, but acting rightly enough upon his general orders, advanced against the French right. Tullibardine with his Scottish brigade took the worst of the fighting on the extreme left against the extreme of the French right, and was the first to get engaged among the trees. The great mass of the force advanced up the opening between the coppice called the wood of Tiry and the main wood, with the object of carrying the entrenchments which ran from the corner of the wood in front of Malplaquet and covered this edge of the open gap. The nine foremost battalions were led by the Prince of Orange in person; his courage and their tenacity, though fatal to the issue of the fight, form perhaps the finest part of our story. As they came near the French earthworks, a French battery right upon their flank at the edge of the wood opened upon them, enfilading whole ranks and doing, in the shortest time, terrible execution. The young leader managed to reach the earthworks. The breastwork was forced, but Boufflers brought up men from his left, that is, from the centre of the gap, drove the Dutch back, and checked, at the height of its success, this determined assault. Had not the wood of Tiry been there to separate the main part of the Prince of Orange’s command from its right, reinforcements might have reached him and have saved the disaster. As it was, the wood of Tiry had cut the advance into two streams, and neither could help the other. The Dutch troops and the Highlanders rallied; the Prince of Orange charged again with a personal bravery that made him conspicuous before the whole field, and should make him famous in history, but the task was more than men could accomplish. The best brigade at the disposal of the French, that of Navarre, was brought up to meet this second onslaught, broke it, and the French leapt from the earthworks to pursue the flight of their assailants. Many of Orange’s colours were taken in that rout, and the guns of his advanced battery fell into French hands. Beyond the wood of Tiry the extreme right of the Dutch charge had suffered no better fate. It had carried the central entrenchment of the French, only to be beaten back as the main body between the wood of Tiry and the wood of Lanière opened.

At this moment, then, after eleven o’clock, which was coincident with the success of Lottum and Schulemberg in the forest of Sars, upon the right, the allied left had been hopelessly beaten back from the entrenchments in the gap, and from the edge of the wood of Lanière.

Marlborough was hurriedly summoned away from his personal command of Lottum’s victorious troops, and begged to do what he could for the broken regiments of Orange. He galloped back over the battlefield, a mile or so of open fields, and was appalled to see the havoc. Of the great force that had advanced an hour and a half before against Boufflers and the French right, fully a third was struck, and 2000 or more lay dead upon the stubble and the coarse heath of that upland. The scattered corpses strewn over half a mile of flight from the French entrenchments, almost back to their original position, largely showed the severity of the blow. It was impossible to attempt another attack upon the French right with any hope of success.

Marlborough, trusting that the forest of Sars would soon be finally cleared, determined upon a change of plan. He ordered the advance upon the centre of the position of Lord Orkney’s fifteen battalions, reinforced that advance by drafts of men from the shattered Dutch left, and prepared with some deliberation to charge the line of earthworks which ran across the open and the nine redans which we have seen were held by the French allies and mercenaries from Bavaria and Cologne, and await his moment. That moment came at about one o’clock; at this point in the action the opposing forces stood somewhat as they are sketched on the map over page.

The pressure upon the French in the wood of Sars, perpetually increasing, had already caused Villars, who commanded there in person, to beg Boufflers for aid; but the demand came when Boufflers was fighting his hardest against the last Dutch attack, and no aid could be sent.

Somewhat reluctantly, Villars had weakened his centre by withdrawing from it the two Irish regiments, and continued to dispute foot by foot the forest of Sars. But foot by foot and tree by tree, in a series of individual engagements, his men were pressed back, and a larger area of the woodland was held by the troops of Schulemberg and Lottum. Eugene was wounded, but refused to leave the field. The loss had been appalling upon either side, but especially severe (as might have been expected) among the assailants, when, just before one o’clock, the last of the French soldiers were driven from the wood.