Free The Battle of Blenheim by Hilaire Belloc Page A

have effected the splendid concentration but a few hours since upon the Kessel—these formed a work sufficient to deserve the reward of victory, Marlborough had the fortune not only to deserve, but to achieve.
    The night of that Tuesday fell with no alarm upon the one side or upon the other. In the camp of Marlborough and of Eugene was the knowledge that the twin commanders had determined upon an action; in that of Tallard and the Elector the belief that it was more probable their opponents would follow the general rules of war, and fall back to recruit their supplies by the one route that was widely open to them.
    Midnight passed. It was already the morning of Wednesday the 13th before the one had moved, or the other had guessed the nature of his enemy’s plan.
    It was moonless and pitch-dark, save for the dense white mist which, in the marshy lands of that river valley, accompanies the turn of the August night. This mist had risen and covered the plain. The little villages were asleep after their disturbance by the advent of so many armed men. Thecockcrows of midnight were now well past when there was stir in Marlborough’s camp, and from this moment, somewhere about two of the morning of Wednesday, August the 13th, the action of Blenheim begins.
     
     
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PART V
THE ACTION
    The field of Blenheim has changed in its physical aspect less than any other of the great battlefields of Europe during the two hundred years and more that have passed since Marlborough’s victory.
    He who visits to-day this quiet Bavarian corn-land, with its pious and happy peasantry, its modest wealth, and its contempt for haste and greed, sees, if he come in the same late summer of the year, just what the mounted parties saw who rode out upon that Wednesday before the eight columns of Marlborough and Eugene under the early morning.
    Thus, approaching the field of Blenheim from the east, the view consists in a low and strangely regular line of closely-wooded hills to the right and northwards; southwards, and to the left, a mass of undergrowth, the low trees of the marshes, occasional gaps of rank herbage which make bright greenpatches interspersing the woodland, mark the wide and marshy course of the Danube, with its belt of alluvial soil and swamp on either side.
    Between this stretch of damp river-ground to the south and the regular low wooded hills to the north lies a plain just lifted above the level of the river by such few feet as are sufficient to drain it and no more. Crossing this plain transversely, on their way to the Danube, ooze and trickle rather than run certain insignificant streams; each rises in the wooded hills to the north, falls southward, and in the length of a very few miles reaches the main river. These streams are found, as one goes up the great valley, at every mile or so. With one, the Nebel, we shall be particularly concerned, for during the action at Blenheim it formed the only slight obstacle separating the two armies. This plain, which in August is all stubble, is some three miles across, such a space separates the hills from the river, and that distance, or a trifle more, is the full length of the little muddy brooks which thus occasionally intersect it.
    To the eye which takes in that landscape at a first glance, bare of crops and under a late summer sun, the plain seems quite even and undisturbed by any hollows or rolls ofland. It is, in fact, like most such apparently simple terrains, slightly diversified: its diversity is enough to affect in some degree the disposition of soldiers, to afford in certain places occasional cover, and to permit of opportunities for defence.
    But these variations from the flat are exceedingly slight. The hollow which the Nebel has made, for instance, is not noticed on foot or even in mechanical traction as one follows the main road which runs the whole length of the plain, though if one goes across country on foot, one notices the slight bank of a few feet separating the