It would only be a matter of minutes now, he thought, before the enemy came on again. He could see the grey-coated Frenchmen pouring through the village to his right and centre, and it seemed that if they continued their advance they might push the entire Allied line back into the Scheldt. Hansam saw it too. ‘We appear to have exceeded ourselves, Jack.’ ‘Quite so, Henry. And I wonder what the Duke intends to do about it. We’ve a marsh and the river to our rear. We cannot retire. The left certainly looks strong enough, but look over there.’ He pointed, and both men stared up the rising ground to the right where a large body of scarlet-and-gold-clad enemy horse was advancing steadily behind their infantry. Just then a commotion from some distance to their rear, followed by the crack of splintering timber and screams, made both men turn to look. At first Steel thought that the French must have succeeded in shelling the flimsy pontoon bridges, but then he realized that it was sheer weight of numbers that had brought two of them crashing down.
