Explore "Tourcoing" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Tourcoing is an action the preliminaries of which are easy to describe, and need occupy little of our space, because it was a battle in which the plan of one side was developed and prosecuted almost to its conclusion without a corresponding plan upon the other side.
As a rule, the preliminaries of a battle consist in the dispositions taken by each side for hours or for days -- sometimes for weeks -- beforehand, in order to be in a posture to receive or to attack the other side. These preliminaries include manoeuvring for position, and sometimes in the fighting of minor subsidiary actions before the main action takes place.