r, 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 manoeuvring for position.

[Illustration: 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 Trouille[7] 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
Eugen