That fortnight was full of minor actions, not a few of them interesting to the student of military history, and one again remarkable as a feat of English horse. I deliberately omit all mention of these lest I should confuse the reader and disturb his conception of the great battle that was to follow. That battle proceeded upon a certain plan thought out in detail, perfectly simple in character, and united in conception. It failed, as we shall see; and by its failure turned what should have been the cutting-off and destruction of Souham's command into a signal French victory. But before we can understand the causes of its failure, we must grasp the plan itself in its major lines, and with that object I shall discuss it in my next section under the title of "The Plan of the Allies." PART III THE PLAN OF THE ALLIES If the reader will look at the map opposite he will see in what disposition the armies of the allies were, at the end of April and the first days of May 1794, to carry into effect the plan which I proceed to describe. There, in its triangle or advanced wedge, with a base stretching across Lille and an apex at Courtrai, lay the exposed French division, Souham's. Clerfayt was to the north of that wedge. The French, in pushing their wedge up to Courtrai, had thus separated him from the rest of the allies. Clerfayt lay with his command round about the district of Roulers; he attempted to return and oust Souham, but he failed, and to the north of the French wedge, and separated from the rest of the allies by its intervening thousands, he remained up to, throughout, and after the great battle that was to follow. [Illustration] Right away down south, nearly sixty miles as the crow flies, lay the bulk of the Austrian army, Coburg's command, round the town which it had just captured, Landrecies. The Duke of York's command, detached from this main army of Coburg, had been ordered north, and was, by May 3rd, at Tournai. To the east lay the Prussian forces together with a small body of Hanoverians, about 4000 in number, which last could be brought up on to the Scheldt River when necessary. It will thus be seen that the allies, at the moment when the plan was about to be formulated, lay on either side of the French wedge, and that any scheme for cutting off that wedge from the main French line must consist in causing a great force of the allies to appear rapidly and unexpectedly between Courtrai and Lille. In order to do this, it was necessary to get Clerfayt to march down south to some point where he could cross the River Lys, while the rest of the allies were marching north from their southern positions to join hands with him. When this larger mass of the allies coming up from the south and the east should have joined hands with Clerfayt, all the great French body lying advanced in the valley of the Lys round Menin and Courtrai would be cut off.