An even more desperate conflict was all this time raging on the left.  Here Marlborough placed himself at the head of the Dutch and Hanoverian battalions, and led them back against the French, who were advancing with shouts of victory, and desperate struggles ensued.  Alison in his history says: 

“The ground on which the hostile lines met was so broken, that the battle in that quarter turned almost into a series of partial conflicts and even personal encounters.  Every bridge, every ditch, every wood, every hamlet, every enclosure, was obstinately contested, and so incessant was the roll of musketry, and so intermingled did the hostile lines become, that the field, seen from a distance, appeared an unbroken line of flame.  A warmer fire, a more desperate series of combats, was never witnessed in modern warfare.  It was in great part conducted hand to hand, like the battles of antiquity, of which Livy and Homer have left such graphic descriptions.  The cavalry could not act, from the multitude of hedges and copses which intersected the theatre of conflict.  Breast to breast, knee to knee, bayonet to bayonet, they maintained the fight on both sides with the most desperate resolution.  If the resistance, however, was obstinate, the attack was no less vigorous, and at length the enthusiastic ardour of the French yielded to the steady valour of the Germans.  Gradually they were driven back, literally at the bayonet’s point; and at length, resisting at every point, they yielded all the ground they had won at the commencement of the action.  So, gradually they were pushed back as far as the village of Diepenbech, where so stubborn a stand was made that the allies could no longer advance.”

Overkirk had now got the rear of the army across the river, and the duke, seeing that the Hill of Oycke, which flanked the enemy’s position, was unoccupied by them, directed the veteran general with his twenty Dutch and Danish battalions to advance and occupy it.  Arrived there, he swung round the left of his line, and so pressed the French right, which was advanced beyond their outer bounds into the little plain of Diepenbech.  The duke commanded Overkirk to press round still further to his left by the passes of Mullem and the mill of Royeghem, by which the French sustained their communication with the force still on the plateau beyond the Norken; and Prince Eugene to further extend his right so as to encompass the mass of French crowded in the plain of Diepenbech.

The night was falling now, and the progress of the allies on either flank could be seen by the flashes of fire.  Vendome, seeing the immense danger in which his right and centre were placed, endeavoured to bring up his left, hitherto intact; but the increasing darkness, the thick enclosures, and the determined resistance of Eugene’s troops, prevented him from carrying out his intention.  So far were the British wings extended round the plain of Diepenbech, that they completely enclosed it, and Eugene’s