h century, with its
amazingly disciplined professional armies, alone can furnish in all the
history of war, an episode of which the Guards at Fontenoy were, a
generation later, to afford the supreme example, and one depending on that
perfection of restraint for which the English service was deservedly
renowned. When a distance but a yard or two longer than a cricket pitch
separated the advancing English from the palisades, the French volley
crashed out. One man in three of the advancing line fell agonised or dead.

The British regiments, still obedient to Row's instructions, reserved
their fire until their leader touched the woodwork with his sword. Then
they volleyed, and having fired, wrestled with the palisades as though to
drag them down by sheer force. Perhaps some few parties here and there
pressed in through a gap, but as the English soldiers struggled thus,
gripped and checked by the obstacle, the French fire poured in again was
deadly; the British assault was broken, and fled in disorder over the
little field to the watercourse. As it fled, the Gendarmerie charged it in
flank, captured the colours of the 21st, were repelled again by the
Hessians in reserve (who recaptured the flag), and the first fierce moment
of the battle was over.

One-third of Cutts' command had been concerned in this first failure
against Blenheim village. Two-thirds remained to turn that failure into a
success. But before this second two-thirds was launched, there took place
an episode in the battle, not conspicuously noted at the time, and given a
minor importance in all accounts save Tallard's own. It was significant in
the extreme.

As Cutts' broken first line was passing out of range and was effecting its
retirement after the first disorder, and after the Hessians had repelled
the first and partial cavalry charge of the French, the Gendarmerie, eight
squadrons strong, prepared to charge again as a whole. They came upon the
English before these had regained safety. Cutts naturally begged for
cavalry to meet this cavalry danger, and Lumley sent five British
squadrons to cross the stream and check the French charge. The English
horse came to the further bank after some little difficulty with the mud
of the sluggish stream, which difficulty has been exaggerated, and in no
way affected the significance of what followed.[17]

For what followed was the singular sight of eight French squadrons
charging down a slope against only five, those