“By Heaven, sir!” he said, addressing Colonel Rhodes, “they are our own men!”

“Impossible, Fairburn!” the colonel answered.  But Blackett and others backed up George’s opinion.  The word ran quickly along the line that the shots came from friends, not from the foe, and some consternation prevailed.

The next moment, at a nod of assent from the colonel in answer to their eager request, Lieutenants Blackett and Fairburn were galloping madly across the intervening space, each with his handkerchief fastened to the point of his sword, and both shouting and gesticulating.  Bullets began to patter around them, but heedless they dashed on.  It seemed impossible they could reach the advancing column alive.

Half the distance had been covered, when the two horsemen saw on their left a great body of troops tearing along towards them in furious haste.  “The French!” George exclaimed; “there’s no mistake about them!” On the two flew towards their friends, for the men towards whom they were speeding had by this time discovered their mistake and had ceased firing.  It was a neck and neck race, and a very near thing.  As the horsemen cleared the open space and dashed safe into the arms of their friends, a huge rabble of demoralized French swept across the path they had just been following.  No narrower escape had the two young fellows yet had.

The truth was at once evident.  The Dutchman’s division, having driven the enemy from the high ground, had wheeled, and was thus meeting the Prince’s wing, which in its turn had advanced along a curving line.  Each body in the growing darkness had mistaken the other for the enemy.  The plucky dash made by the two young fellows, though happily not in the end needed, nevertheless received high praise from their brother officers, and especially from the colonel himself.

For the next half-hour the fleeing French poured headlong through the gap across which the lieutenants had galloped, between the Dutchman’s division and the Prince’s.  Darkness alone prevented the slaughter from being greater than it was.  The numbers of those who fell on the field of Oudenarde, important as the battle was, were in fact far short of those killed at Blenheim or Ramillies.

What was there now to prevent Marlborough from marching straight on Paris itself?  He was actually on the borders of France, victorious, the French army behind him.  He was eager; the home Government would almost certainly have approved of the step.  The heart of many a young fellow under the great leader beat high, when he thought of the mighty possibilities before him.  But it was not to be.  The Prince raised the strongest objections to the Duke’s bold plan, and the Dutch were terrified at the bare thought of it.  So Marlborough turned him to another task, the siege of the great stronghold of Lille.  It may be observed in passing that Vendome wanted to fight again the next day after Oudenarde, but Burgundy refused.  Vendome in a rage declared that they must then retreat, adding, “and I know that you have long wished to do so,” a bitter morsel for a royal duke to swallow.