Roubaix and Lannoy, and the group of hills about Tournai itself; but it was thickly studded with villages, linked together by chains of innumerable cottages and farm-houses, which were all of them enclosed by hedges. The fields were cut up by swampy brooks and by a ramification of wide drains, which, with other enclosures, practically forbade the movements of troops except by road. The roads, however, even then were many; and the principal highways were nearly broad enough to permit an advance in column of half-companies;[1] but all of them, as well as the waterways, were lined with trees, making it extremely difficult to see the movements of troops from a distance. Thus it was and is a country unfit for cavalry, and far better adapted in that day to the tactics of the French than of the Allied infantry.[2]
Within the parallelogram the French were somewhat widely scattered. Osten's division of ten thousand men lay at Pont-à-Marque. To the left or northward of it the bulk of Bonnaud's division of twenty thousand men was encamped at Sainghin, with detachments occupying also Pont-à-Tressin and Lannoy, further north upon the Marque. Souham's division of twenty-eight thousand, and Moreau's of twenty-two thousand men lay on the south bank of the Lys between Courtrai and Aelbeke, a village nearly four miles south of it, with Thierry's brigade at Mouscron, and Compère's brigade at Tourcoing to preserve communication with Bonnaud. In all, the French army numbered eighty-two thousand men.
- ↑ Ditfurth, ii. 90. He says actually that there was nearly room for the full width of a company, of course in triple rank.
- ↑ Great part of the battle-field is now built over. Lille alone covers a vast extent of it, and Roubaix and Lannoy are to all intent part and parcel of Lille. But the general character of the ground, and in particular its blindness, remains unchanged.
