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By Root 2092 0

could be seen was a few regiments of the 12th corps and the 1st, crawling like lines of insects across the stubble and sometimes disappearing in the narrow valley where the hamlets were hidden; and on the opposite side the other rising ground could be seen, light-coloured fields with the green patch of the Chevalier wood. But what could be most clearly seen was the 7th corps, to the north, filling with its moving black dots the plateau of Floing, a broad band of reddish earth stretching from the little Garenne wood down to the grassland by the river. Beyond that there was still Floing, Saint-Menges, Fleigneux, Illy, villages huddled away in the ups and downs of the land in a rugged piece of country broken up by escarpments. To the left also was the loop of the Meuse, with its slow waters, pale silver in the bright sun, enclosing the peninsula of Iges in its vast meandering detour, cutting off all routes to Mézières and only leaving between its further bank and the impassable forests the one outlet of the Saint-Albert gap.

The hundred thousand men and five hundred cannon of the French army were there packed together and hounded into this triangle. And when the King of Prussia turned westwards he saw another plain, that of Donchery, empty fields extending to Brian-court, Marancourt and Vrigne-aux-Bois, a waste of grey earth, powdery-looking under the blue sky, and when he turned to the east there was yet again, opposite the huddled French lines, an immense vista, a crowd of villages, Douzy and Carignan first, then as you go up, Rubécourt, Pouru-aux-Bois, Francheval, Villers-Cernay, right on to La Chapelle, near the frontier. In all directions the land belonged to him, he could move at will the two hundred and fifty thousand men and the eight hundred guns of his armies, he could take in with one sweeping look their invading march. Already on one side the XIth corps was advancing on Saint-Menges, while the Vth corps was at Vrigne-aux-Bois and the Wurttemberg division was waiting near Donchery; on the other side, even though trees and hills were in the way, he could guess what moves were being made, for he had just seen the XIIth corps penetrating the Chevalier wood and knew that the Guards must have reached Villers-Cernay. These were the jaws of the vice, the Crown Prince of Prussia’s army on the left and that of the Crown Prince of Saxony on the right, and they were opening and irresistibly closing round while the two Bavarian corps were hammering away at Bazeilles.

At King William’s feet, from Remilly to Frénois, the almost continuous line of batteries were ceaselessly thundering, pounding La Moncelle and Daigny with shells and firing right over the town of Sedan to rake the plateaux to the north. It was not much after eight in the morning, and he was awaiting the inevitable outcome of the battle, his eyes on the giant chessboard, busily manoeuvring this dust-storm of men, the furious attack of these few black dots in the midst of eternal, smiling nature.

2

AT first light on the plateau of Floing, in a thick fog, Gaude’s bugle sounded reveille for all it was worth. But the air was so saturated with moisture that the merry tune was muffled. Nevertheless the men of the company, who had not even had the heart to put up the tents but had rolled themselves up in the canvas and lain in the mud, did not even wake up but were like a lot of corpses already with pallid faces, stiff with fatigue and sleep, and had to be shaken one by one and pulled out of their torpor. They rose up as if from the dead, ghastly looking, with eyes full of the terror of being alive.

Jean had roused Maurice.

‘What’s up? Where are we?’

He looked about him, scared, but only saw the grey sea of fog in which the shades of his comrades were floating. You couldn’t make out anything twenty metres in front of you. You lost all sense of direction, and he could never have said which way Sedan was. Just then his ear caught the far off sound of gunfire somewhere.

‘Oh yes, the fighting is to be today… Good, we shall get it over!’

Voices round him were saying