pushing
forward through the late hours of an afternoon by wretched lanes full of
loose sand, and finding the darkness upon them with that distance still to
do, he would perceive the importance of the gap. If he further considers
that it was only the heads of the columns that had reached the high road
by dark, and that two great bodies of men were stretched out two miles and
more behind, and if he will add to all this the fact that fighting would
have to be done before Wervicq, three miles away, could be occupied, let
alone the river crossed, he will discover that Clerfayt had missed his
appointment not by three miles only in space, but by the equivalent of
half a day in time.

Even so he should have pushed on and have found himself at least in
contact with the French posts before his advance was halted. He did not do
so. He passed the night in bivouac with the heads of his columns no
further south than the great high road.

So much for Clerfayt. The Republic would have cut off his head.

While Clerfayt was thus mishandling his distant and all-important
department of the combined scheme, the corresponding advance from the
valley of the Scheldt northward was proceeding in a manner which is best
appreciated by taking the five columns seriatim and in three groups: the
first group consisting of the first column (Bussche), the second group of
the second and third columns (Otto and York), the third group of the
fourth and fifth (Kinsky and the Arch-Duke).

I

THE FIRST COLUMN UNDER BUSSCHE

This column, as we have seen, consisted of only 4000 men, Hanoverians. Its
function and general plan was to give the French the impression that they
were being attacked by considerable forces at the very extremity of their
advanced wedge, and thus to "hold" them there while the great bulk of the
allies were really encircling them to the south and cutting them off from
Lille.

When we bear this object in view, we shall see that Bussche with his
little force did not do so badly. His orders were to advance with
two-thirds of his men against Mouscron, a little place about five miles in
front of the village of St Leger where he was concentrated; the remaining
third going up the high road towards Courtrai. This last decision, namely,
to detach a third of his troops, has been severely criticised, especially
by English authorities, but the criticism is hardly just if we consider
what Bussche had been sent out to do. He was, of course, to