Maps and plans have been a matter of extreme difficulty, owing to the inaccuracy of the old surveys and the disappearance of such fugitive features as marsh and forest. I have followed contemporary plans wherever I could in fixing the dispositions of troops, but in many cases I should have preferred to have presented the reader with a map of the ground only, and left him to fill in the troops for himself from the description in the text. Blocks of red and blue are pleasing indeed to the eye, but it is always a question whether their facility for misleading does not exceed their utility for guidance. Actual visits to many of the battlefields of the Low Countries, with the maps of so recent a writer as Coxe in my hand, did not encourage me in my belief in the system, although, in deference to the vast majority of my advisers I have pursued it. It remains to say a few words on some minor matters, and first as to the question of choosing between Old Style and New Style in the matter of dates. Herein Lord Stanhope's rule seemed to be a good one, namely to use the Old Style in recording events that occurred in England, and the New for events abroad. But I have supplemented it by giving both styles in the margin against the dates of events abroad; lest the reader, with some other account in his mind, should (like the editor of Marlborough's Despatches) be bewildered by the arrival in England of news of an action some days before it appears to have been fought in the Low Countries. One difficulty I have found insuperable, which is to discover when the New Style was accepted in India; but finding that the dates given by French writers differ by eleven days from those of Orme I have been driven to the conclusion that the Old Style endured at any rate until 1753, and have written down the dates accordingly.