n a prompt and energetic
man, and to have had a full appreciation of the place which surprise
occupied in the chances of success. If, indeed, the Emperor got the Duke
of York's message in time on the 12th, if he had at once accepted the
plan, and had with Napoleonic rapidity ordered the bulk of his forces
(which were still right away south and east) to move, he might have had
them by forced marches upon and across the Scheldt, and ready to execute
the plan by the 14th, or at any rate by the morning of the 15th.

But from what we know of the family to which the Duke of York belonged, it
is exceedingly improbable that this younger son of George III. had, on
this one occasion only, any lightning in his brain; and even if he did
appreciate more or less the importance of rapid action, the Emperor did
not appreciate it. He committed the two contradictory faults of delaying
the movement and of asking too much marching of his men, and it was not
until the morning of the Wednesday, May the 14th, that the bulk of the
Austrian army, which still lay in the Valenciennes and Landrecies
district, broke up for its northward march, to arrive at the rendezvous
beyond the Scheldt, and to carry out the plan.[2]

It was not until Thursday the 15th of May that the Emperor joined the Duke
of York at Tournai, and very late upon the same day the Arch-Duke Charles
had brought up the main body of the Austrian forces from the south to the
town of St Amand.

We shall see later what a grievous error it was to demand so violent an
effort from the men of the Arch-Duke Charles' command. From Landrecies
itself to St Amand is 30 miles as the crow flies; and though, of course,
the mass of the troops which the Arch-Duke Charles had been thus commanded
to bring up northward in such haste were most of them well on the right
side of Landrecies when the order to advance reached them, yet the
average march undertaken by his men in little more than twenty-four hours
was a full twenty miles, and some of his units must have covered nearer
thirty. I will not delay further on this point here; its full importance
will appear when we come to talk of the action itself.

The Arch-Duke Charles being only as far as St Amand on the evening of
Thursday the 15th, and his rendezvous, that of the fifth column in the
great plan, being Pont-a-Marcq, a further good sixteen miles
north-westward, it was evident that the inception of that plan and the
simultaneous advance of all