At Menin the army was parted into two divisions. The first, consisting of the Hanoverians, ten British squadrons and foreign troops, or about fourteen thousand five hundred men, under the Hanoverian Marshal Freytag, was to form the covering army; the other, of nearly twenty-two thousand men, including the rest of the British troops, under the Duke in person, was appointed to besiege Dunkirk. ◆Aug. 19.◆ On the 19th, Freytag marched from Menin by Ypres upon Poperinghe, which he occupied with his main body on the ◆Aug. 20.◆ 20th, at the same time pushing his advanced guard further north-west to Rousbrugge on the Yser. ◆Aug. 21.◆ On the following day a detachment of Hessians, with great skill and at small cost to themselves, drove the French from Oost Capel and Rexpoede into the fortress of Bergues, with the loss of eleven guns and some four hundred men; and Freytag then took up his line of posts to cover the besieging army. His left was stationed at Poperinghe, covered by the fortress of Ypres; and from thence the chain ran north-west to Proven on the Yser, and westward up that stream by Bambecque to Wylder, where it turned north, and passing midway between Bergues and Rexpoede rested its right on a point called the White House, hard by the canal that runs from Bergues ◆Aug. 23, 24.◆ to Furnes. On the 23rd and 24th Freytag drove the French from Wormhoudt and Esquelbecque with the loss of nineteen guns, and surrounded Bergues by detachments at Warhem to east, Coudekerque to north, Sainte Quaedypre to south, and Steene to west. From this last an outer chain of posts was extended southward to Esquelbecque, and thence east by Wormhoudt and Herzeele to the Upper Yser at Houtkerque. The whole circuit thus embraced measured about twenty-one miles; from which it will be concluded that Freytag was a believer in the cordon-system. ◆Aug. 20.◆ Meanwhile the Duke of York marched on the 20th to Furnes; ◆Aug. 22.◆ and on the 22nd, moving thence parallel with the strand, he drove in the enemy’s advanced posts upon the entrenched camp of Ghyvelde, which the French abandoned in the night. ◆Aug. 24.◆ On the 24th, after several hours of sharp fighting, which cost the Allies nearly four hundred men,[148] the French were forced back from the suburb of Rosendahl into the town; whereupon the Duke entrenched himself in his chosen position, with his right resting on the sea and his left at Tetteghem, facing full upon the eastern side of the town and about two miles distant from the walls.