Roubaix and Tourcoing stand. The
summit of that crest is but little more than fifty feet higher than the
bottom of the low, broad depression between it and the centre of Roubaix,
of which swollen town it is to-day a western suburb. Slight as is the
elevation, it does, as I have said, command a view towards the Lys and
Wervicq; and the evenness and length of the very gentle slope upon the
Roubaix side make it an excellent defensive position.

I have pointed out how the columns of attack as they advanced could not
fail to find an increasing resistance. Roubaix had held out more strongly
than Lannoy, Mouveaux was to hold out more strongly than Roubaix. The
position was palisaded and entrenched. Redoubts had even been hastily
thrown up by the French at either end of it, but the weight of the
attacking column told. It was again the Guards who were given the task of
carrying the trenches at the bayonet, and after a sharp struggle they were
successful. The French, as they retired, set fire to the village (which
stands upon the very summit of that roll of land), and were charged in
their retirement by Abercromby with the English Dragoons. They left three
hundred upon the field, and three field-pieces as well. Despite the great
superiority of numbers which York's columns still commanded over the enemy
immediately before him, it was a brilliant feat, especially when one
considers that it came at the very end of a day that was hot for the
season, that had begun before one o'clock in the morning, and that had
involved the carrying of three positions, each more stoutly defended than
the last, within an advance of over seven miles.

Mouveaux thus carried, the head of York's column was on a line with the
head of Otto's, which held Tourcoing just two miles away. The heads of
either column now occupied the main road between Lille and Courtrai (which
passes through Mouveaux and Tourcoing), and the heads of either column
also held the slight crests from which the belated advance of Clerfayt
from the Lys could be watched and awaited.

But though there was evidence of heavy fighting down in the river valley
five miles to the north and west, and though it seemed probable from the
sound of the firing that Clerfayt with the sixth body had crossed the Lys
at Wervicq and was now on the right side of it, upon the southern bank,
there was no sign of his advancing columns in those empty fields towards
Linselles and the river over which the settin