The fields of the Battle of Ramillies

Fresh snow fell last night and this morning. The sun is out now and the snow is melting again. We live in rolling agricultural countryside in the French part Belgium, about an hour's drive southeast of Brussels. These are what fields around us look like today.

The Battle of Ramillies, a major engagement of the War of the Spanish Succession, was fought in these very fields on the 23rd of May, 1706. Historians estimate that around 12,000 were killed or wounded, and another 7,000 were captured. Walking through these fields today, the only thing you'll hear will be the wind howling, or crows cawing, but it's not difficult to imagine the horror of that day. Tractor plows occasionally unearth battle relics - a warhorse's lost shoe, perhaps, or a fragment of human bone. Requiescant in pace.