Whatever may have been his motives, Marshal Bazaine directed his Army to retire upon a position of exceptional strength on the heights to the westward of Metz, which look towards the wooded ravine of the Mance brook throughout its course, and beyond its source over the undulating plain in the direction of the river Orne. This ridge of upland abuts on the Moselle near Ars, is covered at its broad southern end by the Bois de Vaux, is intersected by the great highway from Metz to Verdun, which is carried along a depression where the wood terminates, and over the shoulder above Gravelotte. North of the road the high ground, with a westerly bias, runs as far as Amanvillers, and thus trending slightly eastward, ascends to St. Privat la Montagne and Roncourt, and back to the Moselle bottom lands below Metz. The left of the position, opposite the Bois de Vaux, is curved outwards, its shape being indicated by the high road, which, after bending round and creeping up the hill as far as Point du Jour, turns abruptly to the west, and crosses the Mance upon a causeway east of Gravelotte. This bulwark, occupied by Frossard’s Corps, from near Point du Jour to St. Ruffine in the lowlands, was made more formidable by shelter-trenches, field works, and gunpits. The two houses at Point du Jour were pierced for musketry, and the immense quarries in the hill-side, at the elbow of the ridge facing the Mance, were filled with troops. The only mode of reaching the front was either up the narrow causeway by St. Hubert, or across the deep ravine. Behind this strong front the ground sloped inwards, so that the troops and reserves could be, and were, screened from view as well as from fire. In the bottom stood the village of Rozérieulles; and above, the eminences on which the engineers had planted the forts of St. Quentin and Plappeville. The hollow through which the highway ran was bordered with vineyards, and near to Metz villages and houses clustered thickly astride of the road. On the right of Frossard were the four divisions forming the Corps of Lebœuf, extending as far as the farm of La Folie, opposite Vernéville. Here the ground was high and open, yet also sloping to the rear as well as the front, and its chief strength lay in the strongly-built farmsteads of St. Hubert, seated on the roadside just above Gravelotte, in those of Moscow and Leipzig, standing on the bare hill-side; and in the Bois de Genivaux, a thick wood, which filled the upper part of the Mance ravine. Beyond the 3rd Corps lay the 4th, under De Ladmirault, having its left in the farm and château of Montigny le Grange, and its right at, and a little north of, Amanvillers, a considerable village, planted in a depression at a point where one of the roads from Metz quits the deep defile of Chatel St. Germain, and bends suddenly westward to join, at Habonville, the road to Briey. The track of the railway, then unfinished, ascends this wooded gully, and winds on to the open ground at Amanvillers.