“Never did Louis XV. show more gayety than on the eve of the fight,” says Voltaire.  “The conversation was of battles at which kings had been present in person.  The king said that since the battle of Poitiers no king of France had fought with his son beside him, that since St. Louis none had gained any signal victory over the English, and that he hoped to be the first.  He was the first up on the day of action; he himself at four o’clock awoke Count d’Argenson, minister of war, who on the instant sent to ask Marshal Saxe for his final orders.  The marshal was found in a carriage of osier-work, which served him for a bed, and in which he had himself drawn about when his exhausted powers no longer allowed him to sit his horse.”  The king and the dauphin had already taken up their positions of battle; the two villages of Fontenoy and Antoin, and the wood of Barri, were occupied by French troops.  Two armies of fifty thousand men each were about to engage in the lists as at Dettingen.  Austria had sent but eight thousand soldiers, under the orders of the old and famous General Konigseck; the English and the Hollanders were about to bear all the burden and heat of the day.

It was not five in the morning, and already there was a thunder of cannon.  The Hollanders attacked the village of Antoin, the English that of Fontenoy.  The two posts were covered by a redoubt which belched forth flames; the Hollanders refused to deliver the assault.  An attack made by the English on the wood of Barri had been repulsed.  “Forward, my lord, right to your front,” said old Konigseck to the Duke of Cumberland, George II.’s son, who commanded the English; “the ravine in front of Fontenoy must be carried.”  The English advanced; they formed a deep and serried column, preceded and supported by artillery.  The French batteries mowed them down right and left, whole ranks fell dead; they were at once filled up; the cannon which they dragged along by hand, pointed towards Fontenoy and the redoubts, replied to the French artillery.  An attempt of some officers of the French guards to carry off the cannon of the English was unsuccessful.  The two corps found themselves at last face to face.

The English officers took off their hats; Count Chabannes and the Duke of Biron, who had moved forward, returned their salute.  “Gentlemen of the French guard, fire!” exclaimed Lord Charles Hay.  “Fire yourselves, gentlemen of England,” immediately replied Count d’Auteroche; “we never fire first.” [All fiction, it is said.] The volley of the English laid low the foremost ranks of the French guards.  This regiment had been effeminated by a long residence in Paris and at Versailles; its colonel, the Duke of Gramont, had been killed in the morning, at the commencement of the action; it gave way, and the English cleared the ravine which defended Fontenoy.  They advanced as if on parade; the majors [?sergeant-majors], small cane in hand, rested it lightly on the soldiers’ muskets to direct their fire.  Several regiments successively opposed to the English column found themselves repulsed and forced to beat a retreat; the English still advanced.