reat deal more than Marlborough had
allowed for.

* * * * *

These dispositions once grasped, we may proceed to the nature and
development of the general attack which followed that opening cannonade of
half-past seven, which has already been described.

The first movement of the allies was an advance of the left under the
Prince of Orange and of the right under Lottum. The first was halted out
of range; the second, after getting up as far as the eastern flank of the
forest of Sars, wheeled round so as to face the hedge lining that forest,
and formed into three lines. It was nine o'clock before the signal for
the attack was given by a general discharge of the great battery in the
centre opposite the French entrenchments in the gap. Coincidently with
that signal Schulemberg attacked the forest of Sars from his side, the
northern face, and he and Lottum pressed each upon that side of the
salient angle which faced him. Schulemberg's large force got into the
fringe of the wood, but no further. The resistance was furious; the
thickness of the trees aided it. Eugene was present upon this side;
meanwhile Marlborough himself was leading the troops of Lottum. He
advanced with them against a hot fire, passed the swampy rivulet which
here flanks the wood, and reached the entrenchments which had been drawn
up just within the outer boundary of it.

This attack failed. Villars was present in person with the French troops
and directed the repulse. Almost at the same time the advance of
Schulemberg upon the other side of the wood, which Eugene was
superintending, suffered a check. Its reserves were called up. The
intervals of the first line were filled up from the second. One French
brigade lining the wood was beaten back, but the Picardy Regiment and the
Marines stood out against a mixed force of Danes, Saxons, and Hessians
opposing them. Schulemberg, therefore, in this second attack had failed
again, but Marlborough, leading Lottum's men upon the other side of the
wood to a second charge in his turn, had somewhat greater success. He had
by this time been joined by a British brigade under the Duke of Argyle
from the second line, and he did so far succeed with this extension of his
men as to get round the edge of the French entrenchments in the wood.

The French began to be pressed from this eastern side of their salient
angle, right in among the trees. Schulemberg's command felt the advantage
of the