The Collected Works of Hilaire Belloc. Hilaire Belloc
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with Clerfayt without delay. Had Clerfayt been, as he should have been at that hour in the afternoon of Saturday the 17th, between the Lys and the line Mouveaux-Tourcoing, the order given by the Austrian staff to the Duke of York would not only have been approved by the military opinion of posterity, but any other order would have been thought a proof of indecision and bad judgment.
Upon receiving this order to take Mouveaux, York obeyed. The afternoon was now far advanced, very heavy work had been done, a forward march of nearly six miles had been undertaken, accompanied by continual fighting—latterly, outside Roubaix, of a heavy sort. But if Mouveaux was to be held before nightfall, an immediate attack must be made, and York ordered his men forward.
Mouveaux stands upon one of those very slight crests which barely diversify the flat country in which 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 setting sun glared.
Neither, as his troops prepared to bivouac for the night upon the slopes of Mouveaux, could York, looking southward, find any indication of the fourth and fifth columns under Kinsky and the Arch-Duke which should have come up to this same position at Mouveaux by noon seven hours before. The flat and marshy fields upon either bank of the Marque were anxiously scanned in vain as the twilight deepened. Down there, far off, the cannon had been heard all that afternoon round the French camp at Sainghin, but nothing had come through.
It was therefore under a sense of isolation and of confusion, with the knowledge that their left flank was open, that Clerfayt in front of them was not yet in reach, that the second and third columns, which had so thoroughly accomplished their task, established their posts under the early summer night to await the chances of the morning.
III
THE FOURTH AND FIFTH COLUMNS UNDER KINSKY AND THE ARCH-DUKE CHARLES
Now what had happened to the fourth and fifth columns under Kinsky and the Arch-Duke? I must describe their fortunes, show why they had failed to come up, and thus complete the picture of the general advance from the Scheldt, before I turn to conclude the explanation of the disaster by detailing the further adventures of Clerfayt after he had crossed the Lys.
(A) The Fourth Column under Kinsky
Kinsky with his 11,000 men had been delayed, as we have seen, at Froidmont by the message which the Arch-Duke had sent him from St. Amand, to the effect that the fifth column could not hope to be at Pont-à-Marcq before dawn upon the 17th.
At the moment, therefore, when in the small hours of Saturday the 17th Otto and the Duke of York started out simultaneously from Bailleul and Templeuve, Kinsky was still pinned to Froidmont. But he knew that the Arch-Duke had started with his great column some time after dark in the Friday night from St. Amand, and when he estimated that they had proceeded far enough along the road to Pont-à-Marcq to be up level with him upon his left, Kinsky set his men in march and made for the Bridge of Bouvines, which was the crossing of the Marque immediately in front of him.
The Bridge of Bouvines lay right in front of the great French camp. It was strongly held, and the hither side of the river, as Kinsky approached it, was found to be entrenched. His men drove the French from those entrenchments, they retired over the bridge, and as they retired they broke it down. Upon the far side of the river in front of their camp the French further established a battery of heavy guns upon that slight slope which is now crowned by the Fort of Sainghin, and Kinsky could not force the passage until the fifth column, or at any rate the head of it, should begin to appear upon his left.
It will be seen upon the frontispiece map that when the Arch-Duke’s men reached Pont-à-Marcq and crossed the river there, they would take the French camp and the main French forces there in reserve, weaken the power of the French resistance at the Bridge of Bouvines, afford Kinsky the opportunity of crossing at that point, and that, immediately after that crossing, Kinsky and the Arch-Duke, having joined hands, would be in sufficient strength to push back the French from Sainghin and to march up north together towards Mouveaux. The appearance of their combined force at Mouveaux by noon would fulfil the time-table, and at mid-day of Saturday, if the time-table were thus fulfilled, the whole combined force of the second, third, fourth, and fifth columns would have been astraddle of the Lille-Courtrai Road, would have cut off Souham’s corps from Lille, and could await Clerfayt if he had not yet arrived. When, therefore, the Arch-Duke and the fifth column should have crossed the Marque at Pont-à-Marcq, the fortunes of the fourth column would have blended with it, and the story of the two would have been one. We may therefore leave Kinsky still waiting anxiously in front of the broken bridge at Bouvines for news of the Arch-Duke, and conclude the picture of the whole advance from the Scheldt by describing what had happened and was happening to that Commander and his great force of 17,000 to 18,000 men.
(B) The Fifth Column under the Arch-Duke Charles
When the Arch-Duke Charles had let Kinsky know upon the day before, the Friday, that he could not be at the appointed post of Pont-à-Marcq by the next daybreak, he had implied that somewhere in the early morning of that Saturday, at least, he would be there. Exactly how early neither he nor Kinsky could tell. His troops had sixteen full miles to march; they had but one road by which to advance, and they were fatigued with the enormous exertion of that hurried march northward to St. Amand, which has already been set down.
Such were the delays at St. Amand in preparing that advance, that the night was far gone before the fifth column took the road to Pont-à-Marcq, and the effort that was to be demanded of it was more than should have been justly demanded of any troops. Indeed, the idea that a body of this great size, tied to one road, could suffer the severe effort of the rush from the south to St. Amand, followed by a night-march, that march to be followed by heavy fighting during the ensuing morning and a further advance of eight or nine miles during the forenoon, was one of the weakest points in the plan of the allies. No such weakness would have been apparent if the main body of the Austrians under the Arch-Duke had been called up on the 12th instead of the 14th, and had been given two more days in which to cover the great distance. But, as it was, the delay of the Emperor and his staff in calling up that main body had gravely weakened its