pressure being exercised on the other side. The French weakened
before it, and in the neighbourhood of eleven o'clock a great part of the
forest of Sars was already filled with the allies, who were beating back
the French in individual combats from tree to tree. Close on noon the
battle upon this side stood much as the sketch map upon the opposite page
shows, and was as good as won, for it seemed to need only a continuation
of this victorious effort to clear the whole wood at last and to turn the
French line.

This is undoubtedly the form which the battle would have taken--a complete
victory for the allied forces by their right turning the French
left--and the destruction of the French army would have followed, had not
the allied left been getting into grave difficulty at the other end of the
field of battle.

[Illustration: Sketch Map showing the peril the French centre ran towards
noon of being turned on its left.]

The plan of the allied generals, it will be remembered, was that the left
of their army under the Prince of Orange should attack the wood of Laniere
about half an hour after the right had begun to effect an entrance into
the opposing forest of Sars. When that half hour had elapsed, that is,
about half-past nine, the Prince of Orange, without receiving special
orders, it is true, but acting rightly enough upon his general orders,
advanced against the French right. Tullibardine with his Scottish brigade
took the worst of the fighting on the extreme left against the extreme of
the French right, and was the first to get engaged among the trees. The
great mass of the force advanced up the opening between the coppice called
the wood of Tiry and the main wood, with the object of carrying the
entrenchments which ran from the corner of the wood in front of Malplaquet
and covered this edge of the open gap. The nine foremost battalions were
led by the Prince of Orange in person; his courage and their tenacity,
though fatal to the issue of the fight, form perhaps the finest part of
our story. As they came near the French earthworks, a French battery right
upon their flank at the edge of the wood opened upon them, enfilading
whole ranks and doing, in the shortest time, terrible execution. The young
leader managed to reach the earthworks. The breastwork was forced, but
Boufflers brought up men from his left, that is, from the centre of the
gap, drove the Dutch back, and checked, at the height of its success, this