| 677 | 678 | 679 | 680 | 681 |
| 1 | 171 | 343 | 514 | 685 |
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the valley; each of these patches of vegetation marked the place of a
buried regiment. There Guyomar's Brigade had been annihilated; there,
the Lhéritier Division had been exterminated; here the 7th Corps had
perished; there, without having even reached the enemy's infantry, had
fallen "beneath the cool and well-aimed firing," as the Prussian report
states, the whole of General Margueritte's cavalry. From these two
heights, the most elevated of this circle of hills, Daigny, opposite
Givonne, which is 266 mètres high, Fleigneux, opposite Illy, 296 mètres
high, the batteries of the Prussian Royal Guard had crushed the French
Army. It was done from above, with the terrible authority of Destiny. It
seemed as though they had come there purposely, these to kill, the
others to die. A valley for a mortar, the German Army for a pestle, such
is the battle of Sedan. I gazed, powerless to avert my eyes, at this
field of disaster, at this undulating country which had proved no
protection to our regiments, at this ravine where all our cavalry were
demolished, at all this amphitheatre where the catastrophe was spread
out, at the gloomy escarpments of La Marphée, at these thickets, at
these declivities, at these precipices, at these forests filled with
ambushes, and in this terrible shadow, O Thou the Invisible! I saw Thee.
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