est, with its thick woods and heavy
entrenchments, was at once the strongest part of the French position in
its garnishing and artificial enforcement, yet weak in that the salient
angle it presented was one that could not, from the thickness of the
trees, be watched from any central point, as can the salient angle of a
fortification. Lottum on the one side, Schulemberg on the other, were
attacking forces numerically weaker than their own, and separate fronts
which could not support each other under the pressure of the attack.

It was wise to engage the forces upon the French side opposite the allied
left in the wood of Laniere half an hour after the assault had begun upon
the forest of Sars, for it was legitimate to expect that at the end of
that half hour the pressure upon the forest of Sars would begin to be felt
by the French, and that they would call for troops from the right unless
the right were very busily occupied at that moment.

Finally, it was wise not to burden the centre with any great body of
troops until one of the two flanks should be pressed or broken, for the
centre might, in this case, be compared to a funnel in which too great a
body of troops would be caught at a disadvantage against the strong
entrenchments which closed the mouth of the funnel. An historical
discussion has arisen upon the true role of the left in this plan. The
commander of the allies gave it out _after_ the action (as we have seen
above) that the left had only been intended to "feint." The better
conclusion is that they were intended to do their worst against the wood
of Laniere, although of course this "worst" could not be expected to
compare with the fundamental attack upon the forest of Sars, where all the
chief forces of the battle were concentrated.

If by a "feint" is meant a subsidiary part of the general plan, the
expression might be allowed to pass, but it is not a legitimate use of
that expression, and if, as occurred at Malplaquet with the Dutch troops,
a subsidiary body in the general plan is badly commanded, the temptation
to call the original movement a "feint," which developed from breach of
orders into a true attack, though strong for the disappointed commanders,
must not be admitted by the accurate historian. In general, we may be
certain that the Dutch troops and their neighbours on the allied left were
intended to do all they could against the wood of Laniere, did all they
could, but suffered in the process a g