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For a time George endeavoured in vain to find a way through the struggling mass of men and horses to the brink of the Gheet; the press and the confusion were too great. Accordingly he ran on behind the lines of horse, to find a place where he might thrust himself in. Where his own comrades were he could not tell.
The march to the place went on till it was stopped by a small but awkward brook, the Little Gheet, on the farther side of which the French were very strongly posted in great numbers. So formidable an affair did the crossing appear that the Dutch generals objected to the attempt being made.
Namur had always been greatly esteemed by the French, and, in dread alarm, Louis ordered Villeroy to take immediate action. The result was that the two hostile armies, each numbering about sixty thousand men, met face to face near the village of Ramillies, half way between Tirlemont and Namur, and near the head waters of the Great and Little Gheet and the Mehaigne.
From it four rivers take their rise the Great Gheet, the Little Gheet, the Dyle, and the Mehaigne. The French camp was placed immediately above the sources of the two Gheets. The plan of the battle should be examined carefully, and the events of the great battle will then be understood without difficulty. The descents from the plateau to the Great Gheet are steep and abrupt.
"So much the better," was George's laughing answer; "without hard knocks there is no promotion, eh?" All was ready; the bugle rang out the signal for the attack. The long line of Marlborough's horse fronted the Gheet at no great distance away, the field-pieces were in position, the infantry and reserves somewhat to the rear.
The other rivers rise in wet marshes, in some places impassable. The French left was on the crest of the ridge, above the marshes of the Little Gheet, and extended to the village of Autre Eglise; while the extreme right stood on the high ground overlooking the sources of the Mehaigne.
On Whit-Sunday, the famous 23rd of May, 1706, my young lord first came under the fire of the enemy, whom we found posted in order of battle, their lines extending three miles or more, over the high ground behind the little Gheet river, and having on his left the little village of Anderkirk or Autre-eglise, and on his right Ramillies, which has given its name to one of the most brilliant and disastrous days of battle that history ever hath recorded.
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