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The 5. day we found three of the French ships at ancre: one called La foye de Honfleur, a ship of 220 tunnes, another called the Ventereuse or small Roebarge of Honfleur, of 100 tunnes, both appertaining to Shawdet of Honfleur, the third was called the Mulet de Batuille a ship of 120 tunnes, and this ship belonged to certaine Marchants of Roan.
The husband of Leonora Galigai, Concini, had amassed a great deal of money and purchased the Marquisate of Ancre; nay, more, he had been created Marshal of France, and he said to the Count of Bassompiere, "I have learned to know the world, and I am aware that a man, when he has arrived at a certain pitch of prosperity, comes down with a greater run the higher he has mounted.
On the right, or east, the advance began from the western end of Regina Trench from the British position about 700 yards to the north of Stuff Redoubt. From this point a German trench known as the Hansa line ran northwestward to the Ancre, directly opposite the village of Beaucourt. On the extreme right, north of Stuff Redoubt, to reach that trench meant an advance of only a score or so of yards.
The Germans had carefully timed their retirement when the ground was hard, but now owing to a week's thaw most of the Somme and Ancre area was transformed into liquid mud.
Fissures began to appear on the broken front; there was something very like a gap between the French and British near Roye, and another between Byng's Fourth and Fifth Corps across the Ancre, besides that between his and Gough's armies. Byng was the first to re-establish his line, partly because reinforcements from the north reached him first.
Then, too, on the two roads to the east of the Ancre River, the troops for the battle moved up to the line. The battalions were played by their bands through Albert, and up the slope of Usna Hill to Pozières and beyond, or past Fricourt and the wreck of Mametz to Montauban and the bloody woodland near it. Those roads then were indeed paths of glory leading to the grave.
But it seemeth that they were enioined by their commission to ancre neere vnto, or about Caleis, whither the duke of Parma with his ships and all his warrelike prouision was to resort, and while the English and Spanish great ships were in the midst of their conflict, to passe by, and to land his souldiers vpon the Downes.
At one point north of the Ancre a "tank" was useful in clearing the German first-line trench, and at another point south of the river one pushed forward and got ahead of the British infantry into a position strongly held by the Germans who swarmed around it and tried to blow it up with bombs.
On November 13 the British took a five-mile front in the German line near the River Ancre, capturing two towns and 3,000 prisoners, the Germans being taken by surprise in the early morning mist. Continuing their advantage the following day, the British took Beaucourt-sur-Anere with more than 5,000 prisoners.
To the westward, above Schwaben Redoubt half a mile, the advance was nearly 1,000 yards. By St. Pierre Divion, along the valley of the Ancre itself, the advance was over 1,500 yards. Everywhere in this sector the British troops were successful. They gained in this offensive a stretch of 3,000 yards north of the Ancre to an average depth of about a mile.
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