As we had no Artillery, I sent an urgent request to the Commander of the French Division of Douai to come to our help, but he could not, as he was threatened on three sides at the same time. We were, therefore, reduced to Gendarmes, to Scout Chasseurs, and to the Eecloo Volunteers, with the addition of a Cyclist Corps under Lieutenant Gerard. This officer had been ordered to destroy the Thulin bridge, over the canal from Mons to Conde. Unfortunately, the Belgians were betrayed by a woman in the neighbourhood and fell into an ambush, thereby losing forty men out of the hundred and twenty of which their contingent was composed. The others fell back on Tournai. They were all daring young men, full of enthusiasm, and quite ready to undertake the most dangerous missions in the enemy's lines. I remember, among others, a soldier of the 12th Line Regiment. He had walked some miles, bringing a wounded comrade with him in a wheelbarrow. Towards ten o'clock at night, on the 30th of September, Lieutenant Gerard had come to me and placed himself at my service. I explained to him the situation, and that very night he went and blew up several fortification works on the railway line between Ath and Leuze. At midnight, Lieutenant Gerard came to tell me that he had been beyond Ligne and had succeeded in his daring enterprise. Thanks to this bold expedition, the first Uhlan patrols did not reach Tournai till late the following morning. As we were threatened from the south-east as well as from the south, I was obliged to divide my poor forces in a way to bar the passage for the enemy in these two directions, and also towards the north-east, on the Tournai-Frasnes road. In the plains, my patrols of Gendarmes and Volunteers scoured the country. My method was to send out strong patrols of twenty men, half of them Gendarmes and half Volunteers. I gave them instructions to await the patrols of enemy Cavalry, until they were only one hundred yards away, so that they could fire effectually, and not to let either a horse or its rider escape. On the northern border of a little wood, about a mile and a half to the west of Ramecroix, to the south of the Tournai-Leuze road, a patrol of twenty men, under the orders of Captain Motry of the Gendarmerie, allowed an enemy patrol of seven men, commanded by an officer, to approach within a hundred yards. With one single volley, they then brought down all the riders with their horses. Our soldiers took the horses' bits and the overcoats of the men they had killed, in order to show me the result of their work, and made off at once, as, to the south of the wood, a second enemy patrol was on its way to the rescue of the first one. A good number of Uhlans of this fresh troop also had to eat the dust.