The battlefield of Sedan may be described as the space lying within the angle formed by the Meuse, and its little affluent, the Givonne, which flows in a southerly direction from the hills near the Belgian frontier. After passing Bazeilles and its bright meadows, the greater river meanders towards the north-west, making, a little below Sedan, a deep loop inclosing the narrow peninsula of Iges on three sides, and then running westward by Donchery, Dom le Mesnil and Flize to Mézières. From the northern end of the loop to the Givonne, the ground is a rugged, undulating upland, attaining its maximum of height a little south of the Calvaire d’Illy, at a point where the Bois de la Garenne begins to clothe the steep slopes on the south and east. Lower still is a deep defile, called the Fond de Givonne, through which, turning the wood, runs the highway from Sedan to Bouillon, a town on the Semoy in Belgium. The eastern face of the position, therefore, was the line of the Givonne, a belt of cottages, gardens, factories and villages; the southern and south-western was the fortress and the Meuse; the north-western front was on the hills between Floing and Illy, and the lowlands on the loop of the Meuse. The interval between Illy and the Givonne was, at first, neglected because the French held that no troops could work through the dense forest and broken ground. The issues from this man-trap were the narrow band of territory between the head of the Meuse loop and the wooded Belgian frontier; the high road to Bouillon; the routes eastward to Carignan up the Chiers, and the gate of Torcy on the south. They were all difficult, and in the nature of defiles which can only be traversed slowly, even in time of peace, by large bodies of men, horses, guns and wagons.