the south and east of me; it is pretty big, but not yet exactly dangerous,
though I shouldn't wonder if I were attacked in a few days from that
quarter. What I am much more certain of is that active and mobile force
which I beat off the other day, but which is still intact under the best
General opposed to me, Clerfayt. I hear that it is marching south again,
and my best troops and my offensive must be directed against that. I am
far superior in numbers to Clerfayt, and if I can bring him to an action
and break him, I can then turn to the others at my leisure: for the moment
I have only one front to think of--that on the north."

But the negligence which he or his informants were guilty of--a negligence
that was to prove so nearly fatal to all those 40,000 French
troops--consisted in the failure to discover what was up upon Friday the
16th.

During those twenty-four hours the Arch-Duke Charles had brought up his
column to St Amand; the other four columns upon the Scheldt were
concentrated, and upon the north of the Lys, Clerfayt had got orders to
move upon Wervicq, and was, during the middle hours of Friday, actually
upon the march. Yet, during all that day, Friday the 16th, Souham remained
ignorant of the extremity of his peril.

The orders which he dictated upon the Friday night, and largely repeated
upon the following morning of Saturday the 17th of May, show how little he
expected the general action that was upon him. He arranged, indeed, for a
cordon of troops to be watching, in insufficient numbers, the side towards
the Scheldt, and he sent to Bonnaud and the camp at Sainghin, outside
Lille, orders to keep more or less in touch with that cordon. The
instructions to this cordon of troops along the eastern side of the French
position is no more than one of general vigilance. It is still to
Clerfayt and towards the north alone that he directs an offensive and
vigorous movement.

In a word, he was a good twenty-four hours behind with his information. He
was wasting troops north of the Lys in looking for Clerfayt at a time when
that General was already on the march to Wervicq, and he was leaving a
scattered line of insufficient bodies to meet what he did not in the least
expect, the rapid advance of Bussche, Otto, and York during that Saturday
upon Mouscron, Tourcoing, and Roubaix.

Therefore it was that although Bussche's insufficient force was driven out
of Mouscron at last by superior numbers, Otto and York succ