of the French to advance in force after two o'clock would have
led to their certain disaster, for the allies were now in possession of
their long line of earthworks.[14]

On the other hand, the allies could not advance, because the men upon whom
they could still count for action were reduced to insufficient numbers.
Something like one-third of their vast host had fallen in this most
murderous of battles; from an eighth to a sixth were dead. Of the
remainder, the great proportion suffered at this hour from an exhaustion
that forbade all effective effort.

The horse upon either side might indeed have continued charge and
counter-charge to no purpose and with no final effect, but the action of
the cavalry in the repeated and abortive shocks, of which a list has just
been detailed, could lead neither commander to hope for any final result.
Boufflers ordered a retreat, screened by his yet unbroken lines of horse.
The infantry were withdrawn from the wood of Laniere, which they still
held, and from their positions behind the forest of Sars. They were
directed in two columns towards Bavai in their rear, and as that orderly
and unhurried retreat was accomplished, the cavalry filed in to follow the
line, and the French host, leaving the field in the possession of the
victors, marched back westward by the two Roman roads in as regular a
formation as though they had been advancing to action rather than
retreating from an abandoned position.

It was not quite three o'clock in the afternoon.

There was no pursuit, and there could be none. The allied army slept upon
the ground it had gained; rested, evacuated its wounded, and restored its
broken ranks through the whole of the morrow, Thursday. It was not until
the Friday that it was able to march back again from the field in which
it had triumphed at so terrible an expense of numbers, guns, and colours,
and with so null a strategic result, and to take up once more the siege of
Mons. Upon the 9th of October Mons capitulated, furnishing the sole fruit
of this most arduous of all the great series of Marlborough's campaigns.

No battle has been contested with more valour or tenacity than the battle
of Malplaquet. The nature of the woodland fighting contributed to the
enormous losses sustained upon either side. The delay during which the
French had been permitted to entrench themselves so thoroughly naturally
threw the great balance of the loss upon the assailants. In no battle,
free,