At tattoo the detachment fell in silently before the camp of the right wing, and at nine o’clock moved off without a sound in two columns, the one upon Neerhespen, the other upon the Castle of Wanghe before Elixheim. An hour later the rest of the army followed, while at the same time Overkirk, under cover of the darkness, crossed the Mehaigne at Tourines and joined his van to the rear of Marlborough’s army. The distance to be traversed was from ten to fifteen miles; the night though dry was dark; and the guides, frequently at fault, were fain to direct themselves by the trusses dropped on the way by the advanced detachment. ◆July 6–7/17–18.◆ Twelve years before to the very day, a French army had toiled along the same route, wearied out and stifled by the sun, and only kept to its task by an ugly little hunch-backed man whom it had reverenced as Marshal Luxemburg. Now English and Dutch were blundering on to take revenge for Luxemburg’s victory at the close of that march. The hours fled on, the light began to break, and the army found itself on the field of Landen, William’s entrenchment grass-grown before it, Neerwinden and Laer lying silent to the left, and before the villages the mound that hid the corpses of the dead. Then some at least of the soldiers knew the work that lay before them. [Illustration: LINES OF THE GEETE. July 7/18 1705 Scale of 1/2 mile _Stanford’s Geogl. Estabt., London._ ] ◆July 7/18.◆ At four o’clock the heads of the columns halted within a mile of the Geete, wrapped in a thick mist and hidden from the eye of the enemy. The advanced detachment quickly cleared the villages by the river, seized the bridge before the Castle of Wanghe, which had not been broken down, and drove out the garrison of the Castle itself. Then the pontoniers came forward to lay their bridges; but the infantry would not wait for them. They scrambled impatiently through hedges and over bogs, down one steep bank of the river and up the other, into the ditch beyond, and finally, breathless and dripping, over the rampart into the lines. So numerous were the hot-heads who thus went forward that they forced three regiments of French dragoons to retire before them without attempting resistance. Then the cavalry of the detachment began to file rapidly over the pontoon-bridges; but meanwhile the alarm had been given, and, before the main army could cross, the French came down in force from the north, some twenty battalions and forty squadrons, in all close upon fifteen thousand men, with a battery of eight guns.