Page:British campaigns in Flanders, 1690-1794; being extracts from "A history of the British army," (IA britishcampaigns00fort).pdf/100

 thousand men and twenty-four guns, to prepare the roads, construct bridges, and make dispositions to cover the passage of the Scheldt below Oudenarde. By half-past ten he had reached the river, just above the village of Eyne, and on ascending the low heights above the stream and looking westward he saw before him a kind of shallow basin or amphitheatre, seamed by little ditches and rivulets, and broken by hedges and enclosures. To the south the rising ground on which he stood swept round almost to the glacis of Oudenarde, thence curved westward from the village of Bevere into another broad hill, called the Boser Couter, to the village of Oycke and beyond, turned from thence northward across the valley of the river Norken to Huysse, from which point trending still to northward it died away in the marshes of the Scheldt. Near Oycke two small streams rise which, after pursuing for some way a parallel course, unite to run down into the Scheldt at Eyne; beyond them the Norken flows beneath the heights of Huysse in a line parallel to the Scheldt.

Presently parties of French horse appeared on the ground to the north. Vendôme's advanced-guard, under the Marquis of Biron, had crossed the Scheldt leisurely at Gavre, six miles farther down the river, and was now moving across his front with foragers out, in happy unconsciousness of the presence of an enemy. A dash of Cadogan's squadrons upon the foragers quickly brought Biron to Eyne and beyond it, where he caught sight of Cadogan's detachment of scarlet and blue battalions guarding the bridge, and presently of a body of cavalry in the act of crossing; for Marlborough,