The chief interest in this part of the campaign is centred in Marlborough’s success in keeping the besiegers supplied with food and ammunition, for the French could range at will over the greater part of the country between Ostend and Lille, and they had possession of the sluices that could inundate the districts through which the convoys had to pass. After the brilliant little fight at Wynendal, where a valuable convoy fought its way through a very superior force, de Vendôme laid the neighbourhood of Ostend under water; but the Duke organised a service of punts in which, despite the attentions of French gunboats, stores were transported over the deepest part of the flood, and then transferred to vehicles fitted with very high wheels to keep their loads above the level of the water.[54] The strain upon the Commander-in-Chief at this time must have been indescribable, for in addition to the constant anxiety about his commissariat, things did not always go well at Lille, where de Boufflers defended himself in a masterly manner: Eugene was so badly wounded that for some weeks he could not direct the operations: the engineers made mistakes, and the supply of ammunition was always scanty. When to these troubles was added the arrival from the Rhine of a large body of the enemy under the Elector of Bavaria, who laid vigorous siege to Brussels, the nerves of most men would have suffered; but with unbroken serenity Marlborough prepared to rescue Brussels from the danger threatening it. After misleading the French by false reports about his movements, he burst through their line of defences on the Scheldt, and so alarmed the Elector that he hurriedly decamped, leaving behind him his sick, his wounded, and his guns.