ck's;
it was York's.

PART IV

THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE BATTLE

Tourcoing is an action the preliminaries of which are easy to describe,
and need occupy little of our space, because it was a battle in which the
plan of one side was developed and prosecuted almost to its conclusion
without a corresponding plan upon the other side.

As a rule, the preliminaries of a battle consist in the dispositions taken
by each side for hours or for days--sometimes for weeks--beforehand, in
order to be in a posture to receive or to attack the other side. These
preliminaries include manoeuvring for position, and sometimes in the
fighting of minor subsidiary actions before the main action takes place.

Now, in the case of Tourcoing, there was none of this, for the French at
Tourcoing were surprised.

The surprise was not complete, but it was sufficiently thorough to make
the whole of the fighting during the first day, Saturday (at least, the
whole of the fighting in the centre of the field), a triumph for the
allied advance.

Let us first appreciate exactly how matters looked to Souham when, on the
15th, the Thursday, the blow was about to fall upon him.

He had under his orders, with headquarters now at Courtrai, now at Menin
(see sketch map on p. 58), rather less than 40,000. In that dash upon
Courtrai a fortnight before, which had led to the dangerous establishment
of so large an advanced body in front of the main French line, one main
effect of that advance had been to push back, away to the left beyond the
Lys, more than 16,000, but less than 20,000 men under the Austrian
General, Clerfayt. With that army, Clerfayt's body, Souham had remained
continually in touch. Detachments of it were continually returning to the
valley of the Lys to harass his posts, and, in a word, Clerfayt's was the
only force of the enemy which Souham thought he had need to bear in mind.

The bulk of the Austrian army he knew to be quite four days' march away to
the south, at first occupied in the siege of Landrecies, and later
stationed in the vicinity of that fortress.

Of course, lying in his exposed position, Souham knew that a general
attack upon him from the south was one of the possibilities of the
situation, but it was not a thing which he thought could come
unexpectedly: at any rate he thought himself prepared, by the use of his
scouts and his spies, to hear of any such advance in ample time.

In case he should be attacked, the att