Meanwhile Saxe, sending forward a cloud of irregular troops to mask his movements, had despatched Count d'Estrées and the Count of Segur with a strong force of infantry and cavalry to seize the villages of Montenaken and Wilre on the left flank of the Allies. This service was performed with little loss. At the same time he directed the Marquis of Salières, with six brigades of foot and twenty guns, to attack Vlytingen, and launched five brigades, with as many guns, backed by a large force of cavalry, against Lauffeld. The assault of the French infantry upon Lauffeld was met by a furious resistance. It was just such another struggle as that of Neerwinden, from hedge to hedge and from wall to wall; and the French, for all their superiority of numbers, were driven back headlong from the village with terrible loss. Salières met with little better success against the brigade of Guards in the hedges of Vlytingen; but with great readiness he turned half of his guns to his right against Lauffeld and the remainder against a ravine on his left, with most destructive effect. Cumberland, observing the fury with which Saxe had concentrated his attack against these two villages, asked the Austrians to relieve him by a diversion upon his right; but the Austrian troops could not face the fire of Salières' guns, and it became clear that Vlytingen and Lauffeld must be held by the British and Hanoverians alone. Saxe's first attack had been brilliantly repulsed. He at once replaced the beaten troops by two fresh brigades of infantry, with cavalry to support them, and renewed the assault, but with no better success. The British were driven back from the outer defences only to stand more fiercely by those within, and Lauffeld remained unconquered. But Saxe was not to be deterred from his purpose. Two more brigades, including the six Irish battalions that had saved the day at Fontenoy, were added to those already on the spot, and the whole of them launched for a third attack against Lauffeld. They were met by the same stubborn resistance and the same deadly fire; and the Irish brigade lost no fewer than sixty officers in the struggle. Nevertheless Irish impetuosity carried the rest of the troops forward; the British were borne back to the rearmost edge of the village and the French began to swarm up the slope beyond it. Cumberland promptly ordered the whole of his line of infantry to advance; and the French at once gave way before them. The French cavalry was obliged to drive the foot forward at the sword's point, but Cumberland continued steadily to gain ground despite their efforts. Then at an unlucky moment, some Dutch squadrons in the centre were seized with panic and came galloping straight into the British line, carried away the Hessians and one squadron of the Greys and fell pell-mell upon the Twenty-first and Twenty-third Fusiliers. The Twenty-first, anticipating the treatment of the Belgians at Waterloo, gave the Dutchmen a volley