They retired slowly and skilfully. Their batteries were withdrawn from the hills one by one, without letting the Germans know that they were being moved to the rear. The commander of one battery did not give the order to retire until the Germans were within five hundred yards of him. It was perilous and difficult work getting the guns down the steep slope. The gunners man-handled them until they reached the foot, and then they were limbered up and taken across a shaky pontoon bridge which had been thrown across the river at Missy. Guns on the right and centre had to be abandoned, but not before they were rendered useless. By the evening of the 14th the Germans had advanced their line until they held the whole of the north bank of the Aisne from a mile east of Soissons to Missy. By this time the French, who only numbered 12,000, had been reduced to half their strength, and they had lost about twenty guns. Von Kluck had begun well, and, under the eye of the Kaiser, he now made a great effort to capture Soissons. Had he done so, he would have been in possession of a railway junction and the best bridge over the Aisne. He would also have been able to force the French to retire from the whole line of the river. The floods had not reached Soissons, so the French were able to pour reinforcements into the city. A great struggle took place at the village of St. Paul, on the right bank of the river, about a mile to the east of Soissons. The Germans advanced in dense masses, and won the village; but the French artillery speedily drove them out, and von Kluck found that he could advance no further. The Germans trumpeted abroad this little success as a smashing victory; but it was of no particular consequence, for they had only slightly improved their position, and in doing so had suffered a loss of at least 10,000 men. It was not so much German guns and rifles that drove the French from the spurs which they had won as the flooding of the river. Nature had fought for the Germans, but still they could not "make good." Some writers thought that it was very clever of von Kluck to postpone his big counter-attack until his enemies had a swollen river and flooded fields behind them; but the fact was that he could not attack earlier, because his reinforcements were late in arriving. The Germans owed their success not to good generalship, but to good luck. [Footnote 7: See Vol. II., p. 237.] [Footnote 8: Ku´fee.] [Footnote 9: Croo´ee.] [Footnote 10: Unnamed hills are numbered on the map by their height above sea-level. Thus Hill 132 means a hill which is 132 metres, or 440 ft., in elevation.] CHAPTER IX. WINTER FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE, THE ARGONNE, AND THE VOSGES.