situation, if they had known it, required that every horse, man and gun should have been in motion at dawn, yet they all lingered; and it may be said that neither superiors nor subordinates were alive to the peril in which they stood—not of defeat, still less rout, the odds available against German enterprise were too great,—but of a blow which would make them reel and, perhaps, turn them aside from the paths to the Meuse. _The Vionville Battlefield._ The road from Gravelotte to Verdun passes by the villages of Rezonville, Vionville and Mars la Tour through a generally open and undulating country. The ground slopes irregularly and gently upward on all sides from the highway; the villages on the route are in the hollows or shallow valleys. North and south of Rezonville a ridge separated two ravines, the larger, on the east, formed by the Jurée brook, had its origin north of Gravelotte, the smaller on the west, came down also from the northern uplands, and parallel to its bed ran the principal road from Gorze to Rezonville. At the southern declivity of the ridge, and extending eastward as far as the Moselle, were a series of forest—the Bois de Vionville, Bois St. Arnould, the Bois des Ognons, the Bois des Chevaux. To the west and south-west of Rezonville the country was generally open; but there was a clump of trees shading a pool near Vionville, and, north of the high road, were larger patches of woods, named after the village of Tronville. North also of the highway, and within the French lines, woodlands covered the hill sides towards St. Marcel, the hamlet of Villers aux Bois being seated on the highest ground. Along this upper plateau are traces of a Roman road, running due west, the ancient route from Verdun to Metz; traces visible also in the fields nearer to the fortress. The French occupied the higher stretches on the eastern and north-eastern edge of this irregularly undulating and wooded region. General Frossard was posted on the left of the line in front of Rezonville; Canrobert on the heights towards St Marcel; Lebœuf had his troops about Vernéville, the Guard stood at, and in rear of Gravelotte, and the careless cavalry brigades under de Forton and Valabrègues had set up their camps west of Vionville, and thence kept a listless watch towards the heights and hollows, west and south-west, just in their immediate front. _The French are Surprised._