Figure 6b shows exactly the same stage as figure 6a, that is to say, the end of Blue’s third move.  A cavalry-man lies dead at the tail of Red’s middle gun, an infantry-man a little behind it.  His rightmost gun is abandoned and partly masked, but not hidden, from the observer, by a tree to the side of the farmhouse.

And now, what is Red to do?

The reader will probably have his own ideas, as I have mine.  What Red did do in the actual game was to lose his head, and then at the end of four minutes’ deliberation he had to move, he blundered desperately.  He opened fire on Blue’s exposed centre and killed eight men. (Their bodies litter the ground in figure 7, which gives a complete bird’s-eye view of the battle.) He then sent forward and isolated six or seven men in a wild attempt to recapture his lost gun, massed his other men behind the inadequate cover of his central gun, and sent the detachment of infantry that had hitherto lurked uselessly behind the church, in a frantic and hopeless rush across the open to join them. (The one surviving cavalry-man on his right wing will be seen taking refuge behind the cottage.) There can be little question of the entire unsoundness of all these movements.  Red was at a disadvantage, he had failed to capture the farm, and his business now was manifestly to save his men as much as possible, make a defensive fight of it, inflict as much damage as possible with his leftmost gun on Blue’s advance, get the remnants of his right across to the church—­the cottage in the centre and their own gun would have given them a certain amount of cover—­and build up a new position about that building as a pivot.  With two guns right and left of the church he might conceivably have saved the rest of the fight.

That, however, is theory; let us return to fact.  Figure 8 gives the disastrous consequences of Red’s last move.  Blue has moved, his guns have slaughtered ten of Red’s wretched foot, and a rush of nine Blue cavalry and infantry mingles with Red’s six surviving infantry about the disputed gun.  These infantry by the definition are isolated; there are not three other Reds within a move of them.  The view in this photograph also is an extensive one, and the reader will note, as a painful accessory, the sad spectacle of three Red prisoners receding to the right.  The melee about Red’s lost gun works out, of course, at three dead on each side, and three more Red prisoners.

Henceforth the battle moves swiftly to complete the disaster of Red.  Shaken and demoralised, that unfortunate general is now only for retreat.  His next move, of which I have no picture, is to retreat the infantry he has so wantonly exposed back to the shelter of the church, to withdraw the wreckage of his right into the cover of the cottage, and—­one last gleam of enterprise—­to throw forward his left gun into a position commanding Blue’s right.