_Photo, Daily Mirror_.] Now, while the gates at Arras and the Yser were thus being guarded by Allied forces too weak to do more than barely hold their own, what had happened at the middle gate of La Bassée? On 11th October, two days after the Germans made their triumphal march into Antwerp, General Smith-Dorrien and the Second Corps detrained, marched to the line of the La Bassée Canal, and took up a position along its southern bank. On their right were the French cavalry, linking them with Maud'huy's army; on the left were the brisk squadrons of Gough's cavalry, who were clearing the Germans from the wooded country to the north of the Lys. The Germans were holding the high ground south of La Bassée, where the French trenches had baffled Marlborough more than two hundred years before, and were in strong force on the road to Lille. That great industrial city had not yet fallen, so Sir John French decided to make a great effort to save it. On the morning of the 12th, in a thick fog, the Second Corps wheeled on its right, and took up a new position facing east, its left resting on the Lys and its right on the canal north of Béthune. It then advanced eastward, finding its way much impeded by the difficult character of the ground. Our soldiers from the coal-mining districts of Great Britain found themselves in familiar country--amidst the large, straggling, connected villages, the pit-heads, refuse mounds, and factories of their own homeland. They had to advance across a flat country with a patchwork of fields and hop-gardens, hemmed in by high bedraggled hedges, and cut across by interminable ditches, with frequent canals by way of variety. The roads, which were lined by scraggy poplars, were narrow, and deep in mud owing to the heavy traffic. Through this flat, depressing country in which good gun positions were few and far between, the British marched to meet the Germans. By nightfall, however, they had made some progress amidst the slippery maze of the muddy dykes, and had driven back several counter-attacks, both by steady fire and by bayonet charges. Next day the Second Corps began to wheel. It pivoted on the village of Givenchy,[41] which stands on the north bank of the canal, less than two miles due west of La Bassée, and endeavoured to get astride of the La Bassée-Lille road, so as to threaten the right flank and rear of the enemy's position on the high ground south of La Bassée. The enemy was found to be strongly entrenched, and supported by artillery in good positions. Before long the fighting was of the most desperate character. The British advanced across the marshy fields under a fierce and devastating fire with the utmost courage, fighting pitched battles in the villages, where every house had been loopholed and turned into a miniature fortress. [Illustration: The Fighting about La Bassée. Sketch map showing front held by the Second Corps on October 19, on night of October 22, and about mid-November 1914.]