e 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
manoeuvring 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 ev