The league-long column thrust up the road through the darkness hour upon hour, with its confusion of vehicles and that difficulty in marshalling all units which is the necessary handicap of an advance in the darkness. Long before their task was so much as half accomplished, it was apparent not only that Pont-à-Marcq would not be reached at dawn, but that the mass of the infantry would not be at that river-crossing until the morning was far spent. When day broke, though cavalry had been set forward at greater speed, the heads of the infantry column were but under the Hill of Beuvry. It was long after six before the force had passed through Orchies, and though Kinsky learnt, in the neighbourhood of eight o'clock, that the cavalry of the fifth column were up on a level with him and had reached the river, the main force of the fifth column was not available for crossing Pont-à-Marcq until noon, and past noon. Kinsky, thus tied to the broken Bridge of Bouvines until Pont-à-Marcq should be forced, saw mid-day come and pass, and still his force and that of the Arch-Duke upon his left were upon the wrong side of the stream. Yet another hour went by. His fourth column and the fifth should already have been nine miles up north, by Mouveaux, and they were not yet even across the Marque! It was not until two o'clock that the passage of the river at Pont-à-Marcq was forced by the Arch-Duke Charles, and that, as the consequence of that passage of the stream, the French were taken in reverse in their camp at Sainghin and were compelled to fall back northward, leaving the passage at Bouvines free. Kinsky repaired the bridge, and was free to bring his 11,000 over, and the two extreme columns, the fourth and the fifth, would then have joined forces in the mid-afternoon of the Saturday, having accomplished their object of forcing the Marque and uniting for the common advance northward in support of Otto and the Duke of York. Now, had the Arch-Duke Charles' men been machines, this section of the general plan would yet have failed by half a day to keep its time-table: and by more than half a day: by all the useful part of a working day. By the scheme of time upon which the plan was based, the fifth column should have been across the Marque at dawn; by six, or at latest by seven o'clock the French should have been compelled to fall back from Sainghin, and the combined fourth and fifth columns should have been upon their northward march for Mouveaux. It was not seven o'clock, it was _between three and four_ o'clock by the time the Arch-Duke was well across the Marque and the French retired; but still, if the men of this fifth column had been machines, Kinsky was now free to effect his junction across the Bridge of Bouvines, and the combined force would have reached the neighbourhood of Mouveaux and Tourcoing by nightfall, or shortly after dark.