His presence was sorely needed on the Meuse. Villeroy, who commanded the French in Flanders, finding no occasion for his presence on the Moselle, had moved out of his lines, captured Huy, and then marching on to Liège had invested the citadel. The States-General in a panic of fright urged Marlborough to return without delay, and Overkirk, who commanded the Dutch on the Meuse, added his entreaties to theirs. Marlborough, when once he had made up his mind to move, never moved slowly, and by the 25th of June he was at Düren, to the eastward of Aix-la-Chapelle. Here he was still the best part of forty miles from the Meuse, but that was too near for Villeroy, who at once abandoned Liège and fell back on Tongres. Marlborough, continuing his advance, crossed the Meuse at Visé on the 2nd of July, and on the same day united his army with Overkirk's at Haneff on the Upper Jaar. Villeroy thereupon retired ignominiously within his fortified lines.
These lines, which had been making during the past three years, were now complete. They started from the Meuse a little to the east of Namur, passed from thence to the Mehaigne and the Little Geete, followed the Little Geete along its left bank to Leuw and thence along the Great Geete to the Demer; from thence they ran up the Demer as far as Arschot, from which point a new line of entrenchments carried the barrier through Lierre to Antwerp. Near Antwerp Marlborough had already had to do with these lines in 1703, but hitherto he had made no attempt to force them. Villeroy and the Elector of Bavaria now lay before him with seventy thousand men, a force superior to his own, but necessarily spread over a wide front for the protection of the entrenchments. The marshal's headquarters were at Meerdorp, in the space between the Geete and the Mehaigne, which he probably regarded as a weak point. Marlborough posted himself over against him at Lens-les-Beguines, detaching a small force to re-capture Huy while Overkirk with the Dutch army covered the siege from Vignamont. Thus, as if daring the French to take advantage of the dispersion of his army, he quietly laid his plans for forcing the lines.
The point that he selected was on the Little Geete between Elixheim and Neerhespen, exactly in rear of the battlefield of Landen. The abrupt and slippery banks of the river, which the English knew but too well, together with the entrenchments beyond it, presented extraordinary difficulties, but the lines were on that account the less likely to be well guarded at that particular point. Marlborough had already obtained the leave of the States-General for the project, but he had now the far more difficult task of gaining the consent of the Dutch generals at a Council of War. Slangenberg and others opposed the scheme vehemently, but were overruled; and the Duke was at length at liberty to fall to work.
June 30
July 11.
July.
Huy fell on the 11th of July, but to the general surprise the besieging force was not recalled. Six days later Overkirk and the covering army crossed the Mehaigne from Vignamont and pushed forward detachments to the very edge of the lines between Meffle and Namur. Villeroy fell into the trap, withdrew troops from all parts of the lines and concentrated forty thousand men at Meerdorp. Marlborough then recalled the troops from Huy, and made them up to a total of about eight thousand men, both cavalry and infantry,[319] the whole being under the command of the Count of Noyelles. The utmost secrecy was observed in every particular. The corps composing the detachment knew nothing of each other, and nothing of the work before them; and, lest the sight of fascines should suggest an attack on entrenchments, these were dispensed with, the troopers only at the last moment receiving orders to carry each a truss of forage on the saddle before them.
July 6 17 .
July 6-7 17-18 .
At tattoo the detachment fell in silently before the camp of the right wing, and at nine o'clock moved off without a sound in two columns, the one upon Neerhespen, the other upon the Castle of Wange before Elixheim. An hour later the rest of the army followed, while at the same time Overkirk, under cover of the darkness, crossed the Mehaigne at Tourines and joined his van to the rear of Marlborough's army. The distance to be traversed was from ten to fifteen miles; the night though dry was dark; and the guides, frequently at fault, were fain to direct themselves by the trusses dropped on the way by the advanced detachment. Twelve years before to the very day a French army had toiled along the same route, wearied out and stifled by the sun, and only kept to its task by an ugly little hunch-backed man whom it had reverenced as Marshal Luxemburg. Now English and Dutch were blundering on to take revenge for Luxemburg's victory at the close of that march. The hours fled on, the light began to break, and the army found itself on the field of Landen, William's entrenchment grass-grown before it, Neerwinden and Laer lying silent to the left, and before the villages the mound that hid the corpses of the dead. Then some at least of the soldiers knew the work that lay before them.
July 7 18 .
At four o'clock the heads of the columns halted within a mile of the Geete, wrapped in a thick mist and hidden from the eye of the enemy. The advanced detachment quickly cleared the villages by the river, seized the bridge before the Castle of Wanghe, which had not been broken down, and drove out the garrison of the Castle itself. Then the pontoniers came forward to lay their bridges; but the infantry would not wait for them. They scrambled impatiently through hedges and over bogs, down one steep bank of the river and up the other, into the ditch beyond, and finally, breathless and dripping, over the rampart into the lines. So numerous were the hot-heads who thus broke in that they forced three regiments of French dragoons to retire before them without attempting resistance. Then the cavalry of the detachment began to file rapidly over the pontoon-bridges; but meanwhile the alarm had been given, and before the main army could cross, the French came down in force from the north, some twenty battalions and forty squadrons, in all close on fifteen thousand men, with a battery of eight guns.