Tourcoing by Hilaire Belloc

At about ten o'clock in the morning of Friday the 16th of May, Clerfayt, in his positions right up north beyond the Lys -- positions which lay at and in front of the town of Thielt, with outposts well to the south and west of that town, -- received the orders of the Emperor.

These orders were what we know them to be: he was to march southward and westward and strike the Lys at Wervicq. He was to arrive at that point at or before nightfall, for in the very first hours of the morrow, Saturday, and coincidently with the beginning of the advance of the five columns from their southern posts, he was to cross the Lys and to proceed to join hands with those columns in the following forenoon, when the heads of them would have reached the neighbourhood of Tourcoing and Mouveaux.