tle stream has a deep and muddy bottom, and the fields upon its
banks are occasionally marshy. This feature has been exaggerated, as have
the other features I have mentioned, in order to explain or excuse the
defeat, but, at any rate, it prevented the use of crossing places other
than bridges. The Marque has no true fords, and there is no taking an
army across it, narrow as it is, save by the few bridges which then
existed. These bridges I have marked upon the sketch.

So far as the terrain is concerned, then, what we have to consider is
country, flat, but containing low defensive positions, largely cut up,
especially between the Scheldt and Roubaix, by hedges and walls, though
more open elsewhere, and particularly open towards the north: a serious
obstacle to the advance of one body in the shape of the River Lys; and
another obstacle, irritating rather than formidable in character, but
sufficient both by its course and its marshy soil to complicate the
advance, namely, the little River Marque.

* * * * *

As to the weather, it was misty but fine. The nights in bivouac were
passed without too much discomfort, and the only physical condition which
oppressed portions of the allied army consisted in the error of its
commanders, and proceeded from fatigue.

PART VI

THE ACTION

At about ten o'clock in the morning of Friday the 16th of May, Clerfayt,
in his positions right up north beyond the Lys--positions which lay at and
in front of the town of Thielt, with outposts well to the south and west
of that town,--received the orders of the Emperor.

These orders were what we know them to be: he was to march southward and
westward and strike the Lys at Wervicq. He was to arrive at that point at
or before nightfall, for in the very first hours of the morrow, Saturday,
and coincidently with the beginning of the advance of the five columns
from their southern posts, he was to cross the Lys and to proceed to join
hands with those columns in the following forenoon, when the heads of them
would have reached the neighbourhood of Tourcoing and Mouveaux.

Bussche, with the first column, his 4000 Hanoverians, had no task during
that day but to proceed the mile and a half which separated Warcoing from
the little village of St Leger, and, with the head of his column in that
village, prepare to pass the night and be ready to march forward long
before dawn the next day.

Field-Marshal Otto, wit